Painting fun and Nonno's Birthday

We had our cute neighbour friends over earlier today for some painting. My idea was to create some frames to hold their artwork in, but in the end, we just did some big paintings on huge cardboard i picked up from the supermarket. I LOVE CARDBOARD!!!! Anyways, the kids were very happy painting and using their imagination.


Painting a huge rainbow under a dotty sky. Notice Joshy's
smile. He always smiles like that for photos!



Sienna and Emma painting a castle

And then later on we got together to celebrate Nonno's birthday. It was nice to see him after his trip to Italy. He's happy to be back home. Nonna made Nonno's favourite... the Mormom-friendly version of Tiramisu. It was delightful!

The lovely Nonna and Nonno!

The lovely Tiramisu!

Louie and I made chocolate brownies from this American recipe book entitled "Chocolate Sensations". I'm certain that not even Betty Crocker asks for as much butter as this book does. Nevertheless, our brownies turned out pretty good! (Though i must say, one brownie has enough calories to sustain life for a week).

Brownies as portrayed in the recipe book

And here's ours!!! We got a 9.5 for taste (but a mere 3 for presentation)

We'll see what more chocolate adventures we embark on next! There are still like 200 more chocolate recipes to try in that book!

catch up!

In the last few months i have been undecisive about continuing to blog... and though i've made plenty of excuses (from not having a really cool camera to take pics to debating my own narrative style), I continue to get inspired by amazing women like Stephanie Nielson, who writes the nie nie dialogues .That's the reason i began a blog in the first place. And although my blog will never inspire and strengthen people to the same extent (Stephanie's story is one of incredible faith and hardship but also an unabashful celebration of motherhood), I will still tell my story. So here it is.. for my family and friends, here's some more blogging to keep lost memories at bay.
 A picture of the kiddies in our yard, earlier this year. They love running around in the backyard. That's the main reason why i love our place. And it's so nice to hear the birds sing!
We went camping with our good friends the Rhodes, from Warrnambool. We learnt that we can pretty much survive any ill-destined camping trip. We had lots of rain, but we were well equipped and had an awesome easter hunt in the woods with the kids!

Joshy with Los Abuelos on a recent outing to Ballarat

Sienna doing a funky move for the swans :) 

The kids having fun at the Bacchus Marsh adventure playground. I love Bacchus Marsh. I wish it were closer!

Joshy and Papi on a very frosty walk from kinder

Michael and Collie (whom we love all the more now since we found him after he went missing last week for a whole 24 hours!!!). Don't leave us again Collie!

 Joshy pointing at and adoring the moon. Lucky he now points with the correct finger. A few months ago this very shot would not have been G-rated.

And that's me, about 30 minutes ago, with sleeping Joshy in my arms. All is good! Now i better log off and rescue my kids from the tv. They've been watching it for 2 hours!