April 2009

This month held western and eastern easter. the picture at the top is brothers, Zoran and Trene, with cousins Juliana, Daniella, Jasper and Sequoia. As zoran is Macedonian and they mark the Gregorian calendar for christian events, Easter was a week after the catholic/anglican easter. We went down to Zoran's mother's home for thursday and good friday, travelling back to Sydney on Saturday as Z had too much work to stay for the easter sunday feast as well. On friday evening we went down to the church with Zoran's brother and his eldest two, Juliana and Daniella. We all lit candles for our loved ones (I think every family member reading this had a candle lit in their honour!!) present and in other realms. The kids all had a candle each which they lit as well. Then we joined the rest of the community for a parade around the streets at 9pm, holding our candles and following the preist as he did his prayers at four corners of the streets, in memory of the marck through jerusalem. it is so nice for the kids to have this connection to their father's culture.





Our suburb reminds me of our drives through the smokey mountains (USA) at the moment. Everything is colourful and there is the first of the woodsmoke in the air. The days are sunny and pretty and nights are cool. Sequoia, as usual isn't sleeping so this last month has been a sleep deprived blur. She learnt to open the bedroom door, so when she stirs in the night she gets up and comes to us, and we lead her back to bed, and again, and again... everyone tells us that if you keep taking them back to bed they will stay there but four weeks and a lot of crying later we let her stay with us after abouot visit number four (usually around 4am by this time) so we can get a bit of sleep.

The kids have had some great home play days. We have made rocket ships out of old plastic bottles and egg cartons and we had a great holiday project of mosaic tiling the kids old play table. We all went to the hardware shop and chose a myriad of coloured tiles. Jasper loved bashing them with a hammer on the concrete steps to shatter them into tiny pieces. Then we made a freestyle pattern, laying them down on tile glue. Even Sequoia had a great time helping and getting herself covered in sticky mess. We grouted with black grout on the last day before school tern started (but ran out of grout so will finish it after our next trip to the hardware shop here is a pic of where we got to...). It was great fun!




It has been two weeks of school holidays, so we have had lots of lovely but messy home days and some great park days. Here is a pic of Jasper running across the sand playground in our local Kuringgai Chase National Park, at an inlet named Bobbin Head. We had a lovely day here with new friends lisa, and her children anna (2yrs) and Louis (1yo), and Sarah with her kids Jo (5yrs) and Evie (2yrs). They played, then scaled rocks and bush paths and we all had a picnic lunch.



But the highlight of the hols was the mad racing around baba Milicas house with the cousins. They played and played and played for nearly three days straight!

A cousonly kiss: Jasper and Daniella...


Cousin cuddle: Sequoia and Juliana...


Jasper thinking up a game to play...


And a daddy hug after a spill...


Txx