Circus virgins no more!

Would you believe that nobody in Team Thomas had ever been to a real circus in a big top? Well, they hadn't until recently anyway. Now we're all seasoned circus veterans. Including Nana and Grandad Keith who we invited to join us. 

And you know what? Circuses are rather fun! Pretty awesome actually.

Oliver enjoyed it so much that he actually fell out of his chair, and when Paul asked if he was okay as he helped him back up, only got a slight nod as Oliver never took his eyes off the show.

Most of the photos didn't turn out, but there were jugglers, trapeze acts, acrobatics, clowns, horse and dog acts and even a couple of crazies that walked around this spinning circle of death thing blindfolded!! It made my butt clench a bit.

Where does the time go . . .

Time sure does seem to fly these days, and when I look back over the last couple of months, I know we've felt like we just can't get on top of things, but it's hard to work out what specifically has caused all the busy-ness.

We still do swimming lessons every Saturday, but we've been doing that much of the last five years so that's not anything we're not used to. And of course there's the keeping the house tidy and the yard mowed and whittling away at the mountains of laundry and trying to finish off little bits and pieces of our house that we've just not gotten around to before or fixing up the other bits that are already starting to fall apart.

And then, there's the not-so-fun, kinda hard stuff like continuing to work with Elliot and the poo problem and Oliver with his threenager temper and attitude issues. There are also the ongoing issues and lawsuit with the builder of our rental property, but these things haven't been eating up all of our time.

We have been finding some time for fun stuff too, of course, which I then feel pressure to catch up the blogging so that we can record the good times forever and ever in the chronicles of Team Thomas history. I better get back to that actually . . . 

Saving the world one tree at a time

School has been lots of fun this year. I've got the bestest teachers and lots of friends and every once in awhile Mom or Dad gets to help out in the classroom, come to an assembly, or accompany us on an outing, like this one where we helped out the environment by planting native plants and trees down by the local river. It was pretty rainy and muddy which made it extra fun! ~ Elliot

Ollie's Biggest Morning Tea for Cancer

While Mommy was off frolicking around Sydney, I was helping to cure cancer. Well my daycare hosted a morning tea to raise help raise money for cancer, anyway. And look who surprised me with a visit?!?!? It sure was super nice to see my Nana and Grandad and Rebeka too!! ~ Oliver

Vivid festival

Guess who was lucky enough to get to sneak off to Sydney with one of her best friends and watch one her favourite old bands? Yep, that lucky ducky was yours truly, and I sure did have one heck of a good time.

By day, Danika and I wandered and shopped and ate our way around the city. By night, we wandered and ate our way around the city and took in the amazing Vivid lights festival which saw many of the city's buildings including the Opera House lit up in an amazing show of lights.

And speaking of the Opera House, that's where we saw the Pixies play live. The band members may be older and fatter, but dangit, they sure do put on a great show. It was an awesome two hours of pinch-me-I-must-be-dreaming-JOY!

The last day, we ventured to Manly Beach where we did a bit more wandering and eating before I hopped onto a ferry for a magnificent ride through Sydney Harbour.

The weekend couldn't have been better. The weather was glorious. The company was divine. And the time away from being a mother was revitalising.

Lies

Elliot has developed a nasty little habit of telling lies. So after some consultation with Nana, we decided that writing lines every night for a week might help break that little habit (and give him some practice with his writing). It looks like it might have worked. Nanas are smart!

Skater boys

We found some cool retro skateboards on sale cheap so guess which little boys fancy themselves as skateboarders now?

My superheroes

Pretty tough-lookin' little cutie pies, don't ya think?