An award :)

Mim - over at Mim's Muddle has kindly awarded me with a bloggy award:

The Love My Friends Award is given to those bloggers who aspire, inspire and share the most beautiful of human attributes: art, wisdom and friendship. Deliver this award to eight bloggers who must choose eight more.

Wow - that is something to aspire to for sure... art, wisdom and friendship.

So here we are with my picks:

Rachel - my IRL friend who lives in KL at present. Very much admire her crafty productions, value her friendship and chats about parenting, faith, family etc. So annoyed I was sick this weekend and couldn't entertain her before she heads back.
Sharon - fellow scrapbooker/Twitterer/food lover, excellent photographer, mother to two boys and fellow book club member
Janine - I enjoy reading her posts, seeing where her creativity is taking her and what she's making and her honest blogging.
Kristen and Amy - my online friends who I met on a parenting forum before DS was conceived and with whom I've shared numerous milestones, discussions, worries about parenting. They both have green aspirations like me. I really, really want to meet them IRL someday, somehow. Both explore photography as a form of creativity.
Mel , Em & Hen - who make me laugh, faithfully comment on my blog and Facebook, share the book club books, parenting "issues"....

I also have a number of non-bloggy friends who I am grateful for their friendship, their creativity and just for being there.

weekend away

FIL has been in hospital for a gall bladder removal, so we went up north to see the whanau on the weekend.

We decided to go for a $2.00 thrill and check out the new toll road and tunnel. Reckon for $2.00 the tunnel should have been longer! ;-)












On the way up we thought we'd visit Tawharanui to see what it was like. DH wanted to vet it for photographic possibilities and I was keen to see what it was like for camping. It was a lovely crisp, clear day.

The kids and I played on the beach while DH wandered round the rocks.

Both of us have favourable reports about it so looks like we will re-visit it.

After lunch we headed further north to Whangarei. Tim complained about having a sore tummy. I thought he was just grumbling until he chundered all over the back seat, his car seat and the foot well just as we came into Warkworth. *gag* So we had to pull into the rest area and clean him up. Amazing what you can do with tissues and wet wipes! Thankfully we had some clean clothes for him. DH was ready to give up and go home but we'd come so far, and I knew SIL and MIL were keen for our visit. So we pressed on. Tim seemed ok - a bit pale but he thought it was cool I let him have chewing gum.

"I hold it with my teeth and don't swallow it eh Mum?"

We got there with no further puking incidents and I wrote it off as car sickness, but he did have another go after dinner so I sent him to bed early. He was fine the next day.

We visited FIL several times and spent a quiet weekend with them all. The kids enjoyed the novel toys, I enjoyed them messing up somebody else's lounge for a change!

Here they are Sunday morning before we headed out for church.

Here's SIL teasing her brother by giving him a kiss.

Here is MIL watching her kids being silly! :-)

FIL has been allowed to go home today, so everyone is pleased about that.

Welcome to the blogging world!

DH surprised me yesterday with the announcement he has begun a blog. :)

If you are interested in photography then you might like to add this one to your rss feed and make a few comments. He intends to blog about his work, techniques etc. Without sounding immodest, I do think he knows quite a lot about the topic ;)

Here is the link: http://roddersd29.wordpress.com/

Backyard Princess

Backyard Princess
Originally uploaded by pdugmore2001.

Was thinking of submitting this to the new magazine Innovations but can't be bothered writing out all the stuff I used so am posting it here instead. Lazy huh?

just for a giggle

Not sure what they are barbequing here at this new restaurant near my work but I'll bet it comes in pairs.

May Reading Round Up

Bonk: the curious coupling of science and sex /Mary Roach
Okay - you can stop snickering now. Honestly! You may remember me reviewing this author's other book Stiff (ahem). Well I happened to see that she'd written this one, and had also been on TEDTalks talking about her book so intrigued I got it out. Being a G-rated blog I can't tell you some of the more interesting items inside this book but suffice it to say it is well written and very interesting. And also funny. As a highly dedicated observer of humanity I very much enjoyed it. :)

So what else have I read?

I haven't read the Book Club's book of the month yet (still on the hold list) so I can't review that but some of the other girls have:
The 19th Wife / David Ebershoff
Mel, Susannah, Janine, Sharon,
Sharon has reviewed June's book as like me, she was on a long waiting list at the library. I've also read this month's book but will wait to post my review later - mainly for my own continuity, others need not feel such compunction.
Kate has reviewed April's book as she's had a lot of real life to deal with lately!

I managed to delete my reading history off my library card record so I can't remember if I read more than Bonk. Silly of me to rely on technology I suppose. I know I started to read The Opium Clerk/ Kunal Basu and couldn't get into it. There was also a book with a yellow cover but can't for the life of me remember what it was.

Oh!! Now I remember - I read these two.
Call the midwife : a true story of the East End in the 1950s / Jennifer Worth.
Shadows of the workhouse / Jennifer Worth

These are Worth's autobiography and I highly recommend them. As the title suggests, she worked as a nurse/midwife in the East End during WW2 and after. The stories she tells will make you laugh and some will make you cry. There were some beautiful stories of people overcoming poverty and others that will make you want to rage at the injustice. Great stuff. Includes a women who had 25 children. No, really!

She's written a third and final book which I've yet to read.

And I'm now on a Gabaldon kick right now which means I started on Cross stitch and am now on Fiery Cross - 4 books in2 weeks. I know they aren't everyone's cup of tea but I find them engrossing. I really like the ongoing story of the Jamie/Claire relationship. So many stories stop at the marriage day and leave it as "happily ever after". I also like the strange diseases etc she describes. I'm going to be very sad when the series ends. I hope she writes some more in similar vein since her other series (Lord John Grey) doesn't entirely reach me.

And apropos of nothing, I see Elizabeth George has killed off Inspector Lynley's wife and unborn child. *meh*

Jack Frost has been visiting

Yeah yeah, I know you Southerners have to "lick motorway clean wit' tongue" and all but the frosty mornings have provided us with a bit of entertainment. DS claimed he was going to "tell it for news" when he saw the ice in his sandpit.