You only turn 1... 3 times?

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Miss Grace Mina Parker turned 1 on October 19, 2011!!!

Fun facts about the birthday girl:

1) She doesn't cuddle, she tackles... she's a firm believer in the idea of 'go hard or go home'

2) She is such a momma's girl...and I love it!

3) She makes disturbingly deep growling noises when she is eating or when you tickle her feet...

4) If she's not happy, put her outside and everything will be perfect in her eyes

5) She has a smile that melts my heart... <3

Happy birthday sweet girl!

And because I was soooo stoked to be celebrating my first child's first birthday...she had 3 parties!

First was an ice cream party with the kids at Sam's school, then a small birthday bash at home. Then on the 29th, Grace had a joint party with her BFF Abigael, who was born 2 weeks after her. Here are the billions of photos that go with all the birthday madness...enjoy! 

Enjoying birthday time at home....

And then there was the birthday blow out for her and Abbie...and it was AWESOME!

Dude...I was so proud of myself for pulling this cake off! :)

Karen, Steve and birthday girl Abigael (Abbie)

 We love love love the Richards family! They have kept us sane throughout our whole NT stint and we have had a great times with them! 

Singing happy birthday to Abbie and Grace

Abbie (and Karen) blowing out the candles

Mmmm... more cake!

Whose kid is this? Getting them hyped up on cake and then overwhelming them with dozens of people?

Oh, wait...that's right..that's my baby! Me thinks it's nap time.....

Great party mum! (Abbie giving kisses to Karen)

We had so many awesome friends come to celebrate our girl's first birthdays... here's a couple of our good friends who were able to make the party

Renee and Jacob (I love this little guy! Want to take him home...)

Kylie and little Halo Mali (fellow community peeps)

Phoebe (my most awesome midwife who I wish I could steal and drag around with me to help me have all my babies) and little cutie pie Sophie!

Hannah and Heidi

Oh...and Heidi is also my preggo twin...both due in March while taking care of one year old girls....

Alana and baby Kaylee

Bec (Sophie's mum) holding birthday girl Abbie

Well, there are tons and tons more pictures but I will leave it there!

Thanks to everyone who made Grace and Abbie's day special!

It was a perfect first birthday in every way!!!!

BOY OH BOY!

That's right folks! I've got that illness again...ya know the one that makes you bloat up like a hippo...

Yep..we are pregnant!

And it's a boy!!! Woot woot! so excited!

Here's a picture of his little face. The ultrasound guy didn't give us any pictures of his little boy bits, so you'll just have to take our word for it. Too bad...we could have played the 'guess what we are having?' game! But I guess this spares the boy from embarrassing photos for at least a couple months!

Due March 10th! Ready or not world... here he comes!

Bitter Springs and good times

So, uhhh...what happened to the every Sunday blogging? I KNOW! Fail on my part! BUt here's TON of pictures to catch you up....not that we've been up to much (except getting ready for little miss to turn one!) but we do have some pretty great times here in good ol Beswick. Have fun watching the craziness that is Grace....

 Teddy...she carries it everywhere...it is glued to her...and if she leaves it behind she will turn around and tackle it, squealing the whole time... :)

 She LOVES the outdoors! I put her in little dresses so she looks girly but she isn't really a little princess... sticks, leaves and dirt are her thing! (But isn't she pretty all dressed up anyway?)

Oh...and pizza...she has no teeth... but she loves pizza.....

 And footy.... 

We are in our last term here in Beswick. We have decided that enough is enough...we need something then endless summer heat so Sam resigned and we are packing up. But before we started this last little push to get home, we had a week school holidays which we decided to spend part of in Mataranka. Mataranka is an hour away and boasts a bunch of natural 'hot' springs. Not like the hot hot sulpher type in America, just naturally flowing water that comes out of the ground and is a nice warm temp.

Oh and Sam decided to bike there...through the bush (yes, I knew he was crazy when I married him) :)

The cabins we stayed at in Mataranka were only a short walk to Bitter Springs pools and were perfect! The cabin owners even had a baby wallaby which Grace spent endless amounts of time playing with

For breakfast we headed down the road to a place called The Manor. They had a huge variety of birds on the grounds (including this gorgeous guy) plus a live barramundi show, where they taught about barra and let people hand feed them. Sam was brave enough to get in and feed a huge male barra...was pretty awesome! (of course I have no photos of Sam feeding the barra, but I blame that on my inability to hold a camera and a squirming baby...come on Amanda...learn some skills!)

 Some photos of the super green Bitter Springs pools that we swam in! They are gorgeous!

 Okay, that's all for now... gotta save your eyeballs for the gobs of birthday photos coming up! :)

Internet error

NO don't worry....the blog has not been forgotten...we are just out of internet...that's right out of internet! Because in Australia they don't believe in unlimited internet... once you use up your quota, you go back to dial up speed... translation...no pictures until the 24th. Sorry y'all! Guess we should have waited to download 'Despicable Me' until after the blog was done...oops! :)

Just call me Picasso

Hello all!

I am doing better at the regular blogs! I only missed this Sunday because we were setting up our NEW COMPUTER!!!

It rocks! We got a mac mini and just hooked it up to the 42" HDTV we got off Ebay...and poof! Insta-giant computer! It's awesome!!!!

But I digress....

This week was all about PAINTING!!!!!

I took Grace out and we made some awesome art work! Thank goodness for non-toxic paint and great outdoor weather!

Of course the first thing she did is taste the paint...good thing it tasted bad. She only tried it once! Ha ha!

And this week we decided it was time for some new family photos! The last ones we had were from when Grace was newborn...so here are our self-photographed family photos! We got a couple good ones! :)

Gosh my family is good looking....... ;)