The Big Op!

On Friday the 12th our beautiful little girl  Harper went into Westmead childrens hospital at 7am with no idea of what was about to happen to her, happily playing with all the toys and other kids in the waiting room.

I on the other hand was fully aware of what was happening and spent the night before and morning of feeling anxious and sick.
Rudi had organised the day off of work so he could be around and take Ocea to Pre-school and meet me in there.

Haper and I arrived at Westmead at 7am she was admitted and then we waited until a Nurse came and got us, asked us a bunch of questions, and then told us the anethsitist and doctor would come and talk to us soon. They came in pretty quickly and told me what was going to happen, and let me know that I was going to be able to go in the room when Harper was put to sleep for surgery.
Pretty much as soon as they left the nurse was back in to put a gown and cap on me and then to take Harps in :(. It's hard to explain the feelings that you have as your walking your just turned one year old to be put under a general anaesthetic.
We got to the room where there was a little bed waiting for her, the surgeon came in and explained that he was going to be taking an extra bone out of Harpers thumb which had formed, stitching the bone together, putting a wire in and fixing the ligaments, to then put a cast on for five weeks and remove the wire then too, While he was explaining this, I couldn't help but get teary. I then laid my little girl down and the anethitist put the mask on her and she slowly fell asleep. This was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do. i walked out feeling a little silly for being so upset as I know what Harper was having done was so minor in comparison to what other little kids get done. The Nurses were lovely, and chatted to me and tried to reassure me that all would be ok.

While in the Surgery waiting room, Rudi arrived. Harper was in Surgery for an hour and a half and came out awake, which was so sad she was sooooooo upset and beside herself I had never seen her like this before and gave the anethitist holding her a big hit on the head with her cast. I quickly held her and tried to calm her down, it was like she was awake but not, it was weird and scary. She knocked the lid off her lttle needle tubey thingy?? off twice and there was blood everywhere, the poor little girl didn't settle for about half an hour and then once she did, she slept for about and hour.
When she woke up later she was a lot happier, which I was grateful for. because this kid seriously never cries! so it was heart breaking.
Rudi and I kept commenting on how it totally didn't look like her. I even had to check her tags just to double check it was her!! she just looked bigger everywhere, especially her face!

When we were able to leave and got home Harper didn't have a care in the world. It was like she had no idea of the traumatic (for me anyway) situation she had just gone through!! She was crawling around on the ground banging her little 'Bommy Knocker every where on our hard wood floors!

This little girl is one tough cookie!!

Before  the op at 1 week old

Night before

Our poor little girl after Surgery not looking herself :(

Our Happy girl the next day with her new 'weapon'!

ONE!!!

It's official, my baby girl is one!!!! This year has gone too fast for my liking!

This past year has been filled with sweetness!

Harper you have the sweetest little personality and have been that way since you were born.

You give the most beautiful kisses

You crawl absolutely every where as fast as you can and have no desire to even try walking, you'll pull yourself up on things and walk around them but thats about it.

You give high fives and have been for about 7 months.

I'm you're favourite in the family, and I love it! you still get excited though when your daddy comes home from work  and greet him with a lot of baby talk.

You wear 00 - 0 clothing, some things you still wear are 000 you're my petite baby!

You love your food, especially the sweet stuff!

You're favourite word is 'Ba' and you use it for everything, You also say mummum, dadadad and bye bye while waving.

You like to act like an Indian and bat your mouth!

You love being outside in the little red car or playing on the trampoline

You love the park and the swings 

Your such a happy girl and hardly ever cry

You are so smiley and love to laugh which we all love!

You love to play with your sister in her room especially on her Dora piano.

As soon as you hear clapping you stop what your doing and start clapping, and think that you are so very clever.

You are an awesome sleeper and will sleep from 6.30pm - 6.30am have a feed go back to sleep and then wake at about 8!! although you haven't always been this way and from about 6 - 10 months it was horrible and you were waking all. the. time!

Your sister is so proud of you and often when we are out she will introduce you to strangers, she also gets excited when you do something new, and you love it.

You love to laugh and squeal with your sister

You love hanging upsidedown, being tickled, and being rasberried!
You have 4 teeth the two top front and the two bottom front. The top two have a big gap and I love them.

You love to play with my eyelashes and i even caught you playing with your own while looking at them in the mirror!

You love, love love your baths and always have! but you hate, hate hate getting dressed and love to squirm away from me and just crawl around with no nappy!

You are so loved and we are so glad you are part of our family! You bring us so much happiness!!!

Excuses, Excuses.....

I'm running out of these to keep me home from here!

First I had just had a baby, so there was nooooo way I could work out, then I just couldn't find the time, then everyone  was sick, after that my baby was waking up 10 million times a night! but now that my baby is sleeping from 6.30 'til 6 yes you read right! through the night! and then goes back to sleep at 6 'til 8 - I'm a lucky mamma! I have run out of excuses to tell myself!

 Every Sunday night I say to myself, 'this is the week I'm going to try and get back into to shape' then it just never happens. but I just got so sick of never going through with this particular promise with myself. So this week I was determined to make it happen and try and make it a habit! I'm 2 days down. YAY!! So yesterday morning before the crack or dawn I was not only up, but I was up and at the gym working out! and this morning I was down there doing the same thing again. even though Ocea was up during the night sick - No excuses remember!


6am seems to be the only time that works out and I have to admit once I'm up it is a great start to my day! So I've dusted off my running shoes and committed..... now I just need this habit to stick!

Birthday Boy

It's this boys birthday today!

(Old photo can't find the cord to upload a new one, so I thought a old birthday photo is better than none at all!)

I Love him lots!

New addiction

Have you ever been trawling through blogs and seen an awesome tutorial that you love or a cool thing to do with the kids, recipes, idea for the house, places you want to visit, craft ideas, the list goes on right??
Well I have recently discovered with help of some facebook friends.....

It is so cool, it basically is a network of people who all have 'pin boards'. and when you find a cool idea, or recipes etc, you pin it on your pin board for later and can share your ideas with everybody else. I've found lots of inspiration from friends pin boards and have re-pinned them on mine. I'm not very good at explaining so you'll have to look for yourself!

Start Over...

So can I have a do over and start again?? I'm not very good at keeping up with this whole blogging business! I've just been busy, or maybe just not organising my time very well.... but I'm back, and I'm going to try and do better! (I sound convincing right!?)

This last month has been full of colds, vomiting, more colds, getting teeth and more vomiting, so it has been fun, fun, fun! But in between all this sickness we have been to free Dora concerts, gone on car rides in the 'rumble rumble' car, making bears with Aunties and Uncles, gone to school fetes, played with cousins, had a broken heater, dressed up like Michelin men, got gas connected and got a new heater, yay! And a whole lot more. (it's hard to remember all the stuff from a month ago!)

So I'll just write about what we did on Saturday!
Rudi went motorbike riding with one of his brothers and some friends at one of his mates tracks. This place is amazing. While the boys ride, there is stacks of stuff for the kids to play on. So we headed down a little later than Rudi and met him there.
 Ocea was in heaven. There's Timber Town, pretend boats to drive, a swing set, volleyball net and court, an outdoor bowling alley, and old truck to drive and play in and on, a mini rugby field, needless to say we had so much fun!

Watching their Dads trying not to hurt themselves do massive jumps!

One of those days!!

Ok, to start with, I have been very slack with blogging, it's been really bugging me, but i have been finding it hard to find the time to blog. or not organising my time properly - either one.
I don't know why I thought it would be any different to journaling, I've never been very good at being a consistent journaler! (is that even a word?) except as a young teenager when my friends and I were avid journal keepers and would write about which boy(s) we 'loved' at the time :) anyway..... back to blogging I have to start blogging at least once a week!! That's my goal, I really do want to record the moments of our kids, my thoughts or feelings at the time etc.

So that's it, at least once a week I will be here!!!

As the title says today is one of those days!! My 'awesome' day started at 12.30am - yep AM! when Harper decided she was not going to sleep! My poor little girl is sick, so I was up with her for most of the night trying to soothe her and get her back to sleep. She did eventually sleep for a total of 3 hours straight though which I was so grateful for! when we 'woke up' (did we ever really go to sleep?) it was pouring rain out side and freezing!! Yesterday our heater decided to stop working, so that was another awesome moment! we don't have any insulation under the house and we have floor boards which doesn't help the warmth situation. We did decide a week or so ago that we are going to insulate under the house and get gas put on in our house - YAY!!! - warmth! so while we are waiting for that to all happen the kids and I look like Michelin men all bundled up!

I put on some washing later in the morning, when it was done i chucked in the dryer put it on and thought that this might help heat up the house! anyway, about 10 mins after I put it on our stupid smoke alarm started blaring! and wouldn't stop for 45 minutes!! I was fanning it trying to get it to stop. I couldn't reach it to disconnect it, trying to figure out what it was that caused the alarm to go off, then finally realised it was the dryer! crazy I know! anyway after 45 minutes it finally stopped and our house was back to 'normal'.

I don't know if it is lack of sleep or what, but today is a horrible day! - only 8 more hours 'til the kids are in bed and I can go too! ( I wonder what is in store for us this afternoon) In saying that though, my two little bundled babies are being so good today and making up for me feeling blah! i hate having these days, but they do make me appreciate the good days!

I can't wait for tomorrow!

London Living

I was going through some old photos on our computer the other day and came across all our old London photos and it brought back memories of how much we loved it there!

We loved everything about London. We loved the people we met, the things we saw, the places we travelled, it was such a different life to the one we had been living at home in Coolum on the Sunshine Coast!

Rudi and I often talk about moving back and we would do it in a heartbeat if there was a job for Rudi over there. I would love to take my kids for a play in Hyde Park or for a stroll through the Portobello Markets, catching the Tube to church! It was all such an adventure!

I'm so glad Rudi and I took the opportunity to live in London and to travel to parts of Europe. We didn't get to do all that we wanted (I don't think you'd ever get through all you want to do and see in Europe!) and our time was cut a little short, (I fell pregnant) but we were there for a year and what an awesome time in our lives it was!

 

                    

My name's Brooke

.....and I'm a chocoholic.

I heard that admitting you had a problem was the first step to recovery, so here I am admitting that I have an addiction! An addiction to that deliciousness that is chocolate!!!!
I realised that I had a 'problem' when I found myself eating a chocolate Easter bunny like it was an apple , eating 2 blocks of chocolate in one week, eating all the left over Easter eggs, the list goes on (disgusting I know!)

I'm trying to think back to when this 'habit' really came to be. I thought maybe when I was a young girl and Mum and Dad used to put their stash on the top shelf of our huge fridge and I used to get so antsy for it that I would make the desperate climb up the slippery shelves to get my 'hit'. Or was it when I was older when Mum could no longer put it out of our reach, so she would buy Fruit and Nut - seriously who likes Fruit and Nut chocolate? Anyway I began to eat it, just so I could have chocolate! Or was it when I moved in with my sister and her husband, where it was like a ritual to have chocolate after dinner - yep I think it was then, the daily dose got me hooked and I blame my sister. No actually I blame her husband who actually got her taking it daily!

Anyway now that I've admitted this big little problem, it's time to go cold turkey! Yep you read right, no easing into this. When talking to my sister last night she suggested this to me so we're both on no chocolate for a week!

Aggghhhh, how am I going to get through!???

Daddy's little girl

I love how much Ocea loves her dad! They are so alike, in so many ways. From little character traits, to things that she and he find funny, to little faces she pulls. She adores him and I love how much he adores her right back. I love the special friendship that they have.

She is definitely Daddy's little girl!

Easter Long.... Long Weekend!

5 Days Long!!!!!

We had an awesome long Easter weekend full of sleep ins, afternoon naps, cleaning and sorting, kite flying,  Easter treat making, Two Easter egg hunts, chocolate eating (waaaay too much chocolate eating), BBQing, hanging out with family, donkey rides and remembering the massive sacrifice that Christ made for us - The real reason for Easter!
We all had a great Easter, and loved hanging out for 5 straight days as a family! Here's what it looked like for us....

                                  

Love this shot

Ocea was very excited to find that the Easter Bunny had been

So was Harper...

........and then the Easter Bunny visited Lol's house too!

Hanging out with cousin Caddie, Uncle Reilly and Aunty Aimee

Ocea Riding Snow with cousins Caddie and Jeong Soo

Love this photo