Making up for the Cake..

 I made such a mess with Phebe's cake, lucky for me , unlucky for Phebe we have two April birthdays..
Gary's cake was looked and tasted awesome.

 Kate came around to visit us and it just happened that we were cutting the cake in the morning...
What else did Gary do on this birthday, well he spent 2 and half hours on the Internet buying One Direction tickets for Phebe and Eliza. Yes we did finally get some and have to wait til next year to see them..

No 1 tiurns 15

Phebe has always joked that she is our No 1 child, so in April (yes April, lost my blogging mojo) our No 1, first born or tallest child turned 15...Did she get to sleep in on her birthday.. No her mother made her go to a PUMP class at the gym as it was one of my favourite gym instrustors 40th birthday and after attending the gym she was allowed to rest.

 After the gym she went out to lunch with some of her friends at a local cafe.

 For her birthday we brought her a water proof camera so when she came home after lunch we that we would test the 'waterproof' part of the camera out..

There is no picture of Phebe's cake I could lie and say that it was SO yummy that it was ALL eaten before I had time to take a photo.. Truth is it was such a disaster that it went in the bin before a photo was taken..

We love ya Phebe's and thanks for being good about the cake!!!!

Feb so far..

February so far has been an up and down month for us.
It started with Eden turning 4 she had a quite and lovely day, maccas and cake....



The girls had some time to catch up with some friends and nanna pat...


One of my goals this year is to teach the girls all my favourite recipes, so when I get old they will cook me food I like... Well I can hope anyway...



The girls also went back to school this month.... YAY......
and Eden started child care one day a week.....


February will also mark the 1 month since Aaron passed away. Every day we are reminded the make the most of each day...
Two other friends have also said goodbye to their father in laws this month and Caleb, April's son passed away also.......
It is hard to be happy when you see sadness in other peoples eyes...

So with this picture I will do a little jump of joy, as we have brought a block of land and will start building soon...
I'm very excited to finally move from the 'shoebox on the hill' and live somewhere that the 5 of us can move...
Happy and Sad days this month, hopefully with 9 days left this month, my friends who are sad might able to start smiling again....

my amazing friend.

I am still lost for words over what has happened since 26th of January this year..
Lisa, Aaron, Jay, Harri and Kobe were at the airport to say goodbye and where there again to welcome us back home...
I am again lost for words how amazing, strong and an example Lisa is to others.
Please take time to read her story. (click on the photo below)

back together..

After a year away, I'm glad that these guys are still good friends.....

While we have been away Kobe has become a good dancer so I think he will teach some of his awesome moves.

to winter to summer

When we arrived in Melbourne we thought that weren't going to catch our flight to Tasmania, we were very glad that the plane we were catching was delayed. But that meant our small group of friends and family had to wait 30 mins more. But I think they had a good time catching up with each other.
Only 1 of our 13 bags didn't make it on the same flight as us, but Tim our friend who works at the airline was happy to bring it to us when it arrived.

It was good to see our friends and as soon as we landed we were happy to be back..


We bunked down and Jacquie and Jared's house for a while and what a non stop party it was. Eating all our favourite foods and the 6 kids playing outside together.. Jacquie and I would lock them out to give us some peace...
We also caught up with some friends at the bike center. Children and Adults had a great time catching up.
I didn't take many photo's at the bike center but I got this one of Kobe, Phebe and Eliza..


Next stop for me was the gym, I missed going to the gym buddies while I was away. And of course Michelle made me get up on stage with her..


With most of the eating and catching up done we thought we better give Jacquie and Jared their space back and collect our stuff out of storage and move back into our house.


Lets not worry about unpacking the boxes though, just find the bedding boxes, some kitchen things and head down the beach..


While we were down the beach we had a delayed Woodward Christmas lunch. Turkey, Ham, lots of vegies, yummy desserts and heaps of laughs were on the menu..

Eden loved wearing the hats from the Christmas bon bons.
I do like Summer but I miss the snow.

on the way back.

The other night a new TV show started: ALCATRAZ. I was a bit excited as we had just been there. Then I remembered that I haven't blogged since landing back in Australia, so there might be many blog posts in a row.
When we left Utah we were sad but also excited as we knew that we were going to hang out with the Lloyd Family who had recently moved from Provo and now live in Livermore, CA.
Livermore is about 1hr away from San Francisco; we knew that we had to make a trip to see this famous tourist destination. We were warned to book in advance so we decided to go on the 1:45 tour and come back on the last ferry. It was a nice day and each ferry ride was packed so we were glad that we booked..Great views of the Bay area.


Eden loved hanging out with the Lloyd's children as she missed them when they moved.
We all missed Anna as every Sunday night she would bring brownies or cookies that she would bake.


And of course I love hanging out with Susan, one of the best things about Provo was the life long friends we met along the way.Susan invited the SOUTH family for dinner. Andrew studied at BYU last year as well and now studies at Standford.

Livermore was a great place to stop and have a mini break before we hopped on the 16 hr flight to Tasmania.