Zara turns One!

Zara turned one on the 16th of January, it honestly feels like her first year of life just went by in a busy blur. She has brought so much love and happiness into our family. The older children all adore their baby sister and she always manages to put a smile on their faces - even when they are mad or grumpy.  Zara finally started sleeping through the night towards the end of 2016 which was a huge blessing. It was a long year of sleepless nights for me - longer than any of my previous babies who were sleeping through much earlier. Apart from the sleep though, Zara has been an absolute joy. We couldn't imagine our family without her in it. The big kids had so much fun wrapping Zara's presents and helping her unwrap them on her birthday. Zara loved all the attention. 

Zara loves other babies and formed quite an attachment to Gideon Lekias! She barely let him out of her sight and was obsessed with trying to cuddle and kiss him. It was an easy choice to buy her some "baby" dolls, Zara was thrilled!

We were still in the midst of unpacking our house at this stage and Zara didn't end up with the standard number one cake like the other kids (Grandma usually makes it for them too!). Zara ended up with a giant cupcake cake instead...the girls chose the roses to decorate it with. 

Zara enjoyed her piece of birthday cake and loved everyone singing to her. We just adore our Zara Maxine...she's growing up too quickly. 

Alissa's 4th Birthday

We moved into our new house a couple of days after Christmas. Clinton became engineering manager at his work at the end of 2016 and was able to move into a managers house. We were excited mainly because the house came with a pool and a big shed! We only moved one suburb over but it was still a huge job, we have too much stuff. Alissa turned 4 on the 1st of January - surrounded by packing boxes as you can see. 

She was very spoilt by parents, Aunties, Uncles and Grandparents. 

Alissa is such a character, she has us cracking up all the time. She's very hard to stay mad at because she has such a loveable, cheeky face. She fills our house with laughter and happy vibes. It's hard to believe she was only 4 weeks old when we moved to Karratha and now she's 4. 

The main thing she wanted was a "Puppy Surprise" - it's a toy dog with puppies inside it's tummy. The surprise is how many puppies you get, anywhere from 3 to 5. Here she is opening her Puppy Surprise from Aunty Kate. 

So excited!

Alissa ended up with 3 puppies in her Puppy Surprise, she was stoked! Here's a photo of the birthday girl ready for church.

 As we'd only just moved into our house, the Lekias family kindly invited us to their house for Alissa'a birthday dinner. I forgot my camera so I could only take iPhone photos. We had a Wendy's ice-cream cake for her birthday cake!

Enjoying cake with her best buddies.

Christmas Day 2017

Christmas morning started at the crack of dawn, with the kids getting up even earlier than usual. We read the nativity story with the kids using their puppets that Aunty made a few years ago. Alissa was not impressed...

Then the kids wanted to open their Christmas stockings...filled with all the usual suspects; chocolate, undies, socks and a few surprises! 

Zara picked up on the excited vibes around her and had a great morning!

Opening some family gifts from Santa - board games and a blow up slide for the pool 

Alissa asked for two things from Santa - makeup and wizz fizz lollies. Here she is opening her wizz fizz. 

And her makeup...

Grandma gave the girls new school bags for Christmas from Smiggle. They loved them!

Harrison thanking Sienna for her present 

Harrison getting his Creator Lego set from Santa 

Sienna asked Santa for a new pillow...she was very happy!

All dressed for church 

Decorated table for Christmas lunch (thanks K-Mart)

The Lekias family joined us for lunch and brought half the food! It was a lovely, relaxed afternoon. Clint made his famous ham and pork belly. 

Clint also made my favourite turkish delight ice-cream cakes - they are so good!

Some yummy truffles that Nicole made

Traditional Christmas pavlova 

We introduced the Lekias's to Holiday Bingo 

Poor Zara was stuck watching in her playpen because she kept trying to eat the m&m's 

Matthew winning a round!

Sweet baby Gideon 

We then had leftovers for dinner...it was a lovely Christmas. The next day we were packing and cleaning in preparation for moving house in two days time!