December 2011

Mum turned 70 on December 7th.  She looks good hey?  Every year my mum's extended family get together for a Xmas BBQ in early December, so we took the opportunity to also have a cake and to sing Happy Birthday to her.  The cake was a white chocolate bourban cake....quite more-ish.

Mum's b'day cake

 At the Xmas BBQ, the kids get a present out of the Santa Sack.  Tom was absolutely delighted with his present this year - an Angry Birds game.  He is just soooooo into Angry Birds at the moment.  It was the best 0.99c iPhone app we ever spent!!

A warm day in December....

 Last day of daycare and school.  Next year, Biddy leaves daycare behind and moves into 4yo kinder.  She is in the same complex,, but will have different teachers.

Biddy with Vicki

What a difference a year makes.  This photo of Tom makes him look like he is in about grade 2!  His first year of prep done and dusted!

With Judy Carr - one of the prep teachers

With Nicole McNamara - his prep teacher

With Angela Kelly, St Mary's school principal

At the end of the year, we lost one of our cats.  Felix was about 16yo and was on a steady slippery slope of health.  In fact, he had an abscess removed from his neck that he never really got over and in the end it was all a bit much.  However,  living on a farm means that you really need a cat and our other cat - Spare - is also getting on in age.  The kids and I thought that it would be good to give Mark a new cat for Christmas.  Problem: kittens are few and far between at this time of year.  Luck was on our side when a St Mary's school family had an unexpected litter.  The kittens were far too young to be picked up prior to Chrissy, so we went out the week before, took a photo and gave this pic and a sachet of kitten food to Mark for Christmas!  We were only going to get the orange one, but the tortise-shell one was just so damn cute.  Mind you, there was another one there as well that the family tried to give us!  But I think 2 is enough!

Fred and Ginger....except the sexes are the opposite way around!

 After a significant period of time with no poultry on farm, it was time to get some new chooks.  Mark's sister got onto a free range business that was closing up shop and had chooks for cheep (!  get it?!), so we grabbed 5.