We had a ‘chill out’ day in Ballina today and after a bike ride, a swim and fun in the games room, the kids were……… B.O.R.E.D. so I came up with a solution that kept them occupied for 1 hour!  Armed with a camera for 10 minutes, each of the children had a turn at sharing their artistic ability!  And so it is, the “Family Value Famous Photo Comp” was born - and YOU TOO can participate!

Above are the final entries from each of the 5 children! Being the healthily competitive family we are, the children are keen to have their photos judged by YOU - our Family Value Blog followers, Twitter followers and fans on Facebook! So vote for your favourite by putting the name of your favourite photo… in the comments section!

Voting closes tomorrow 5th March at 9pm.

Happy judging!

By the way, all children will get the same prize so don’t worry about causing fights in our mostly harmonic family!

JUST FOR FUN!

A rainy, humid day in Ballina - our first full day here and what can we do?  We thought it risk-free to explore Thursday Plantation - a World of Natural Medicine.  It’s FREE to enter, has a maze for the kids, a rainforest walk, sculptures and a theatre room set-up to explain the origins of Thursday Plantation.  Half of us enjoyed this attraction and half of us didn’t!  The staff were very helpful and friendly, allowing us to apply liberally their tea-tree Walkabout Insect Repellent.  Donning our Rainbird spray jackets we ventured deep into the sculpture garden, spirit of australia tea tree maze and the rainforest walk & botanical gardens. 

The sculptures were interesting and the maze was fun with the beauty of nature obvious in a beautifully designed spiderweb (we also found the spider!) and the occassional ‘interesting’ sculpture along the way.  From the maze we continued deep into the tea tree rainforest where mosquitoes were aplenty!  This is where the fun tended to demise from the childrens perspective as they felt they were being ‘eaten alive’.  Mozzies must LOVE children as I feel I came out of the experience relatively unharmed from those little pests.  The highlight of the rainforest walk, apart from the obvious beauty of nature was the door in the middle of the forest.  K5 enjoyed jumping over what he named ‘crocodile creek’ - a little stream running at the end of our journey.

Whilst the children were in a frantic hurry to get back in the car and return to our ‘holiday home’ I spent 5 minutes back at the gift shop and purchased some Thursday Plantation Walkabout Insect Repellent (it worked for me!), Thursday Plantation Tea Tree Antiseptic Cream, Thursday Plantation Tea Tree LipGuard & Thursday Plantation Tea Tree Skin Wash.  I hope the family doesn’t mind me smelling like a Tea Tree!

Have you been to Thursday Plantation? 

What did you think?

 Today I had ‘one of those moments’ - I just wanted to shrink and disappear!  Well meaning ‘ME’ thought it would be a wise idea to introduce 4 year old K5 to another child at kinder whom I think could be a potential long term friend.  I think it was a case of ‘bad timing’.  I introduced K5 to his new potential friend.  It was K5’s response which made me want to disappear…………. FAST!  “I don’t like you!  I don’t want to play with you!”.  As potential friend just looks forlorn and bewildered by this comment I realise potential friend has just turned into potential enemy.  Embarrassed I promptly apologised to the mother and assured myself that he didn’t mean it.  I took K5 aside and asked him why he said that, and he said “I haven’t known him for a very long time”.  Phew!  Perfect explanation BUT I now realise I need to do some serious ’social teaching’.  Just because you haven’t known him for a very long time doesn’t meant you DON’T LIKE HIM!!!!  Thankfully the potential friend, now the potential enemy’s mother is all forgiving and we are going to organise a ‘getting to know you’ playdate!  Hopefully this will go well! and I’d better help K5 in socialising a little more appropriately otherwise he might ‘fail’ 3 year old kinder.  Eeeeeeek!

I actually googled “4 year old telling friend he doesn’t like him and doesn’t want to play with him” and unsurprisingly I didn’t really get any useful advice, however, I did find the following articles:

Raising Children Network - Child Development 4/5 Years

Kidslife Readiness for Pre-School : Expectations & Preparations

You’re not my friend anymore by Karen Jacobsen

and I will be reading I’m not your friend by Sam McBratney at least every second night!

Can anyone else share their experiences in a similar situation?  Offer advice? I hope I’m not alone!

A humble Mini Golf course set in the hub of beautiful Sorrento.   With only 9 holes, and in cramped surroundings, this golf course is short and sweet, however, if you want to have another round, there is a second round available complimentary.  Whilst it is not the most well designed nor imaginative course, and it is near impossible to get a hole in one – the course record stands at 19, it is worth a challenge for all those mini golf fanatics! 

With the bushfire season upon us, and living in a bushfire prone area, this mother of 6 is beginning to feel quite a responsiblity with her young brood.  So it was, I insisted that we decide on a definate fire plan and practice it with the children,  and this INCLUDES me learning how to use the fire pump associated with our dam!  Our plan is of course to leave as early as we can, however, as we have been made aware by Black Saturday this is not always possible if the fire is imminent and we can see flames closeby.  So we now have a plan and now I KNOW how to turn the fire pump on!  It was quite a sight tonight when I got saturated after being successful in my first attempt!  Gave the children quite a laugh in an otherwise serious excursion to the dam!  Do you live in a fire prone area?  Do you have a plan?

Happy New Year!

Like millions of families around the world, last night we celebrated the new year, 2010!  Is it Two Thousand and Ten or Twenty-Ten?  We had a fantastic time with two families very close to us!  Although, our efforts at having a ‘dive-in outdoor movie night’ was  hampered by the extreme conditions of thunder & lightning, these 6 adults and 12 children partied on, enjoying each others company and finally seeing the New Year in!  The only casualties of the evening was our landline telephone and our modem which were damaged by the storms.  Unfortunately the folk in Strathewen encountered a poor start to the New Year with torrential rain causing mudslides. 

And like millions of people around the world, we have also made a few New Years Resolutions! 

Here are some of mine……..

• Continue to enjoy the company of my beautiful family & the people closest to us
• Embrace life and try not to allow the ‘insignificant things’ to get in the way
• List at least 700 new family attractions within Australia

For one of the first times EVER ‘losing weight’ is not one of my resolutions.  This year I’m hoping I will ‘tone up’ without the pressure of the resolution!!!!  We’ll see! 

Have you got a New Years Resolution you would like to share? OR Are you having trouble finding one?  Look here for some ideas!

Also, I managed to teach a few children the art of counting the time as to how far away the storm is!  I am now responsible for extremely frightening some children, however, they are now more educated!  :-)  Here is a link to some info on Thunder & Lightning!

Must admit Hubby Ian made an excellent dessert tonight - Golden Syrup Dumplings!  Disappointed I forgot to take a picture……. I’ll just have to get him to make them again! 

Hubby’s Golden Syrup Dumplings  -  SERVES 8

SAUCE:

• 2 cups water
• 1 cup white sugar
• 2 tbs golden syrup
• 2 tbs butter

DUMPLINGS:

• 2 cups SR flour
• 2 tbs butter
• 2 eggs lightly beaten
• milk  (as required)

Place sauce ingredients in a pan and heat.  Rub butter into flour, stir in egg and enough milk to make firm dough.  Roll into little balls and drop into the boiling syrup for between 5 - 10 minutes.

Today we ventured to the Merimbula Aquarium and had a wonderful time learning about many species of fish & sealife found in local waters.  We even witnessed a shark lay an egg which will not hatch for 12 months!  Read more about it here and please feel free to comment on your experiences at the Merimbula Aquarium.

We spent the afternoon at Wombat Holes Mini Golf - a well designed mini golf course set amongst our Aussie Bush Setting.  We even sighted a Kookaburra during our gameplay that had caught a baby snake!  YUM!  Have you played at Wombat Holes Mini Golf?  If so, tell us your experiences!  Our Family Value experience is documented here.

Jocks , socks, mini cookbook, t-shirt, mug, gardening gloves, stress ball, “I LOVE MY DAD” homemade book, a homemade tie, a card from the ‘girls’ & a card from the ‘boys’, pancakes with blueberries IN BED, coffee (”white with one”), and most importantly LOTS of KISSES & CUDDLES.

What more could a father want?