Love Yourself

Sometimes Luca says the most random things when we put him to bed. I think he just likes to hear himself talk (and delay going to bed). This made both James and I laugh -

James: Goodnight Luca, I love you.
Luca: I love myself.
James: What?
Luca: I love myself too.
James: Ummm...okay, Goodnight...

Ha ha ah ha!

ANZAC day 2010

Click on the video!

Today is ANZAC day - a national holiday to remember those that sacraficed their lives for New Zealand while serving in the armed forces. It's a big day, celebrated all over the country - in the main cities, and also the tiny itty bitty farm towns. The festivities start off with a dawn parade - each city/town has their own, and then there are usually civic ceremonies around 9am. After each ceremony people congregate at the RSA (returned service association) for breakfast and drinks. Yep, that's right they start drinking at about 7am! - well some do. The cool thing is that it's not just military personnel or RSA members that take part in the day....the whole community takes part. Scout groups, Police, surf lifesaving clubs, schools, politicians, etc. James attended the dawn parade at Linton Military camp where he hosted the local MP around Camp. The boys and I didn't go with him - even though I was up feeding Wyatt at about 5:45 am - It just would have been too complicated to try to get there that early. We attended the civic ceremony at Foxton with James and his parents at 9am. Foxton is quite a small town, so the ceremony was smaller than any of the ones I had been to in previous years, but it was still quite nice.
Luca went on to church with Jo and Bruce, while the rest of us went back to their house. I made good use of the two hours by cleaning out the car - there has been a really bad smell coming from it....like moldy socks or something. The thick layer of crumbs, trash, and toys were starting to get on my nerves too - so I did a big clean out. Even wiped out all the little cracks and crevices and radio buttons. Ahhhh! I felt so much better after doing that. When the car is dirty it makes me feel uneasy. Same goes with the garage (hint hint James). With kids in your life, things just get so dirty and cluttered, and you have no idea where your sanity has been hidden.



James looks pretty handsome in his dress uniform. The only difference now that he is an officer is that he has a leather sash and belt, gloves, and stars on his shoulders. He also carries a sword. The gloves are really soft and nice - In fact I wouldn't mind a pair for myself!

Wyatt Turns 3 months old this week!

The holiday was marred by a tragic accident. An airforce helicopter crashed as they were flying down to Wellington to do a fly over for the national ceremony in Wellington at 6am this morning. 3 men were killed and one seriously injured in hospital. I heard the helicopter fly over our house while I was feeding Wyatt this morning. I can even imagine how the familes must feel....such a routine flyover that went horribly wrong. The whole country is in mourning.

Boy Toys

It took a little while to get my head around having two boys. The estrogen is clearly outnumbered in our household. I'd be lying if I didn't admit that my dreams of dance recitals, prom dresses, becoming a girl scout leader, and girly outings together flew out the window when we guessed we were having a second boy. Who's going to play with my hair now? When I was pregnant I used to find myself wandering over to the baby girl clothing racks (soooo many cute girl things to buy!) or casting an eye at the girl toys....dress up, make believe kitchen supplies, fake food, dolls, princesses etc. Things that even looked fun for me at my old age...ha ha!

Little cowboy fast asleep

I shouldn't whinge though...I know how lucky we are to have two incredibly healthy and handsome young boys. All little girl thoughts that I used to have, have been replaced by boy stuff, and over the past 3 months I've realized just how cool it is to have two boys. The most practical is the clothing/toy situation. Yes, we do save tons of money not having to buy a new wardrobe in pink and purple (and ugggh! I would hate to have an all pink/red/purple wardrobe anyways!) and we can recycle most toys.



We'll encourage them to have their own interests (and yeah, I still think it would be cool if they wanted to take dance lessons....shhh! don't tell James) but just think if they both choose to do the same sport. Saturday mornings would be spent all at the same venue and the likelyhood of wasting gas as we drive all over town taking both a little boy and little girl to their different extracurricular activities might diminish. Get what I mean? Also....I think James will make a pretty good soccer coach for the boys one day.



I can already tell that we'll be making many trips to the dr with broken bones, scrapes and falls - I think that's just in the territory of having boys.



I don't even look at the pink stuff in the stores any more. I'm focused on boy stuff all the time. If it's a truck, train, motorbike, tractor, or airplane Luca is sure to love it. If I want to really make him bust out in a giggle fit, I just have to pretend something is icky, or that it stinks, or that it's humongous, or I'm scared. Boys seem to like that stuff. Boys are programmed to like completly different things than the little girls. It's all about big loud things, smelly things, balls, and transport vehicals. As we drive around town Luca can point out front end loaders, dump trucks, fork lifts, cherry pickers, diggers, excavators, bulldozers, rubbish trucks, milk tankers....oh, and he's obsessed with trailors - all kinds, horse trailors, flatbed trailors, little garden trailors. He knows stuff that I have no clue about. That's boys for you.



When I saw a poster for the "Kids Big Rig" event a few weekends ago, I knew it would be right up our alley. It was a fundraiser for Kids Cancer and all these truck drivers, and motorcycles parked up and let kids go for rides and play around. I think most of these truck drivers spent the entire weekend polishing up their trucks, and getting to show off for the kids. Luca even got to honk the horn of a big truck. It took him by suprise how loud it was - I think he nearly pooed in his pants after that. Alas, it was a good day. A day of Boy things.



Having two handsome men to look after me when I'm older is a comforting thought as well. I firmly believe that boys are much harder on parents during their younger years, but I've heard that teenage girls can be even worse - so maybe we'll put in our hard yards now.

Easter

Easter celebrations started off at the catholic school I was working at. Everyone in NZ has off Good Friday and Easter Monday. The catholic schools get off Thursday afternoon as well - bonus! Thursday morning the students had a big litergy session and theatrical service. I saw them rehersing in the gym (it actually looked pretty cool) but had to feed wyatt at daycare, so I ended up leaving a bit early. Then it was 4 days off for both James and I to hang out with the boys together.

Pre-easter brunch - I love this photo b/c they are both looking at the camera...too bad it's blurry.

Friday night we visited our friends, the Condons (yeah, I know...how funny is that!?) and had dinner at their place. They live in this 'humongous!' house with an amazing heated inground swimming pool. They sold up everything in the UK and then moved over here. They have 3 children - the youngest which is about the same age as Luca. Unfortunatlly it was too cold to swim, but Luca was in heaven playing in their toy room.

Easter Afternoon at the beach - I know, I always take photos of Luca in the sanddunes, but we just have so much fun running (falling) up and down them.

Check out the bunny shoes!

The rest of the long weekend was spent visiting friends, and slowly getting more things done on the house - staked out where the new driveway will go, hung up another mirror, planted a few trees etc etc. Easter brunch was held at McDonalds (yeah, we get sucked into going there b/c Luca can be entertained at the playground and it's affordable) and that night we went out to the beach to have dinner with Jo, Bruce, Pete, and Cadyn.

Fun NZ random fact....on Good Friday and Easter Sunday there are no commercials on TV. How cool is that? It only took me 5 years to notice this. Also....just about everything shuts down on Good Friday, Easter, and Easter Sunday (and Christmas, and NY) - you should see the mad grocery stores the day prior!

Look who slept through Easter Dinner :-)

Easter Monday we hosted an easter egg hunt for Luca's coffee group friends. We didn't think it'd be too much fun looking for easter eggs in the dirt mounds around our house (someday we'll have grass) so we hosted it at the park near our house. The park that is usually always empty - we call it our own private playground - had a suprisingly large number of people at it. Unfortuantly we were in a mad rush to get out of the house and I forgot to take the camera...boo hoo.

First Student Teaching Thoughts

I've survived my first student teaching assignment - which was at a local Catholic School here in town. It was a middle school and a high school combined, so some of the kids looked really young, but I was only assigned to the HS students. I was assigned to three different teachers, and three different classes. A year 11 Economics class, a Year 10 advanced Social Studies class, and a year 10 remedial Social Studies Class. PE/Health is supposed to be my primary teaching subjects but there's a shortage of placements in town - maybe next placement I'll get to play PE teacher.

Who said Tigers don't like water?

It went well - really well. All my reviews were glowing (okay, sorry....had to brag just a bit). Of course there's some things that I need to work on - some things that will become a bit more second nature after I spend a bit more time in the classroom, but all in all....I was comfortable in the classroom. I knew that I'd be a good teacher, and I found myself really enjoying it. What I wasn't prepared for was how long I would spend on my lesson plans, and research what I was supposed to be teaching. I kept going back and rewriting them, all b/c there's this pressure to have the ultimate lesson b/c you know that everything you do is being evaluated.

Luca and his friend Ryan

Some of the many things I learned on my first practicum...

• The school - under resourced. OMG...people still use overhead projectors? I'm hoping that not all NZ schools are like this.
• Small school - good students, very friendly close knit staff. Generally an older staff, so I'm thinking unless someone retires chances are I won't be working here anytime soon.
• Catholic School - wow, this was an expierence! Mass on Fridays at lunch, and prayer every morning, and teachers had a 'reflection' time during the morning meetings. At first I found this to be a waste of time but after a few weeks, I really enjoyed it and it meant that the staff were quite close.
• Social Studies....LOVE IT. Economics, hate it.
• Helped out with supervising a school dance ("don't let the students get too close"), ran with the students during an all school 5K road race, attended a union meeting - teachers paid time off to go to it, watched canoe polo team, and generally enjoyed being involved in a secondary school community.
• Some kids were little sh*ts, but that was to be expected - no biggie. Some were great. Same goes for the teachers...ha ha. No they weren't that bad, but some were just so-so - others really connected with the students and were more inspiring.
• It'll be a lot easier when I have my own students, my own classroom.

Early dismissals, paid teacher union meetings, school holidays...Yeah, this is going to be sweet! one down, two to go.

I celebrated my 31st bday during the school practicum. Had a good day at school, and came home to a slow cooker meal, and took a walk with the boys along the river. Also got some awesome flowers and gift basket from Grandma Loomis and Dad and Fran delivered to my door. Yee-haw!

Game Over :

Wyatt, Luca.....Luca, Wyatt......Wyatt, Luca

And the only people to get it right were Toni L, Karlyn, and Amy! Woot-woot, you'll be getting a little sum'n, sum'n soon - congrats baby guessers :-)

If you scroll down to the previous post, I've labled the photos with the correct answers in case you want to take another peek. It really is crazy how similar they look.

And here's some incredibly cute pics of Wyatt. He's all smiles and funny faces at the moment. Dimples just like the rest of us. Gosh, he's so darn cute, I just want to squeeze him!