Random Thoughts At The End Of The Summer

We are having a little party here tomorrow for the local relatives who didn't get to celebrate the twins' birthday, so I've been trying to tidy the house up a bit, clear the mess in the garden up a bit, sort through the photos a bit, and in between, make a cake.

For those of you who have seen my other blog, you may have noticed that my kids like their birthday cakes. I like making them, I have to say. There is something about creating a ferry boat that appeals to me, right down to using Micromachine Men as figurines. Maybe I should have gone into making museum exhibits.

Anyhow, I agreed to make the twins a big, iced cake, but trying to get the two of them to agree on one theme is like trying to shove a hippopotamus through the eye of a needle. Here are some of their ideas:

Indiana Jones Lego Men fighting Webkinz
(don't think this will go over well with FDPG)
Indiana Jones Lego Men climbing a large and complicated tower of Doom
(well, maaaybe)
Indiana Jones Lego Men racing away from a My Little Pony
(good one Dominic, FDPG will LOVE that)
Indiana Jones Lego Men...
(enough with the IJLM already!)
Webkinz Animals going down the slide into the water JUST LIKE THE TWINS DID!
(gosh, that shouldn't be hard at all, har har har)
Totoro!
(had that one last year, FDPG)
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind
(FDPG, that sounds awfully complicated, can't we get scale it down a bit?)
The Castle of Cagliostro and Indiana Jones on top of it
(hmmmm)

In sorting out the summer holiday shots, I noticed that I have an inordinate amount of one kid doing the same thing over and over again. I think he needs skiing lessons.































Wasp Slurry!
We came back from holiday to find that our neighbour's juniper bush had a MASSIVE wasp nest in it. It was impossible to see it, too, nestled as it was in at the back against the wall of the house. The neighbours are not outside very often and didn't seem to distressed by the fact that we were getting stung and chased around the yard every time we stepped outside, so Richard the Brave used another in our friend Robert's Patented and Odd Household Hints repertoire: he got out the shop vac and stuck it into the bush. This is the inside of the shop vac after about 2 hours of noise noise noise vacuuming.

Game of the Summer: Hide and Seek
Every year there is a summer game that gets played over and over and over and over again by all the kids. One year it was Cars UNO; one year it was trampoline games. This year it was hide and seek. See if you can find the 8 children that are hiding in this picture.

(See them? Don't worry, FDPG couldn't either)