Monday, 27 February 2012

Dinosaur Shrimps

Milla's good friend, Ava, sent a very exciting birthday present to her from San Fransisco: a Triop hatchery! Yup, that's right, we are now trying to hatch us some dinosaur shrimps. They are also called Triops or Sea Monkeys, and when they are done they should hopefully look somewhat like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triops . They are not really dinosaurs, but they have been on earth for about 300 million years. Wrap you brain around this if you can: When these crustaceans first appeared on earth, there were no birds, no dinosaurs, and definitely no humans or other mammals. They are the oldest surviving group of animals.

But for now, they are just tiny little eggs
Can you see them? Just tiny dots on the white paper.

But we have prepared a hatching dish and a little crushed carrot will feed them at first. It should take about a day or so for the first eggs to hatch and after that we need to feed them three times a day; special Triop-food. We are all very excited! The picture below show a grown-up Dinosaur shrimp - a very cute pet!








I think Elliot has already checked on the eggs about 78 times:) Still no swimmers. We will let you know when we have some little Sea Monkeys bopping around in the dish!

Milla and daddy

This is me and my daddy


Saturday, 25 February 2012

Puff the magic dragon

The girls love to sing - but which song to choose??? Not an easy decision always...:)


Milla in her new 'relax-a-daxy' trackies from gudmor Elise - a little Vossastar!!! En herlig lat loerdag idag. We are just back after a cooling swim down at the beach. Resten av dagen soeker vi tilflukt inne i air-condition - for varmt ute idag! 42 grader akkurat nu!!


Koala fun in Preschool

Agnes and Elliot is now in preschool, and what a lovely place it is. The grounds are beautiful and the teachers are fantastic. There are Koalas in the trees and this week a big snake passed by! It is all very exciting.





 There is even a Viking ship to play on!!










Se jentene rope: Bye-bye i videoen under...!




Muppetshow

Every Saturday morning at 8 we go to swimming. Today is such a hot day...40 degrees and counting... So we figured that we would go and cool down at the cinema after the swim lessons - plenty of air-conditioning in there. We were going to see Alvin and the Chipmunks, but choice landed on the Muppets eventually, which was quite entertaining. Manah-manah...do-doo-do-doo-dooo!



Ps. Om enn 50 varmegrader ute, inne er det alltid kaldt, saa vi elsker fleecedressene vaare fra norske 'Me-Mini'. Tusen takk for den nye til Milla, gudmor Sissel!

Wednesday, 22 February 2012

Elliot's beauty tips

On the way to barnehagen [pre-school] today, Elliot said 'hang on, wait a minute...wait for meeeeee...' she ran back inside while we packed everybody in the car...and came back out...like this...


...all pretty in her hair!!

Monday, 20 February 2012

Morsdag i fedrelandet

Morsdag i Australia er ikke samtidig som hjemme i Norge. Her nede feirer vi morsdag i mai. Men til forrige helg hadde vi sendt bestemorsdags pakke til Besta...litt sjokolade, litt kaffe og et kunstverk fra alle jentene hennes. 


We love you, Besta!

Lotteri-vinner Agnes

Forrige lordag ringte det pa dora hos Besta i Bekkevollen....'si meg, bor det en Agnes her?'... Besten svarte 'nei, da ma du ha gatt feil'.....Besta kom lopende....'nei, nei, vant ho Agnes???'

Ja, jaggu vant ikke Agnes - ei stor marsipankake! Mmmmmm. Og akkurat i rett tid for morsdagen! Besta hadde kjopt lodd i navnet til alle jentene, og Agnes stakk av med gevinsten. Hurra for kake:)

Sunday, 19 February 2012

Rainbows and fireworks

Happy birthday to Milla! Our first little peanut is now five years old. She is quite the little party-planner, and for months before the big bash she started sussing out themes and cakes and birthday guests. We had a fantastic birthday party and she had so much fun with all her little friends...under the rainbow!

She wanted a rainbow cake this year. So we made one. Just wait for it...the surprise is on the inside. She got to decorate the outside of the cake with food-markers, and it was some beautiful artwork: a rainbow and all her little friends, and lots of lovehearts.







The girls love baking, so we made up LOTS of candy and goodies for all of us to eat...mmmmm! Fruitpunch to drink...



...fairy-bread number five's, of course...


...a rainbow fruit platter...


...a porcupine-melon...


...and rainbow cupcakes...


...little rainbow-teddy cars...


...yummy yummy...we love birthdays ...and funny faces!


The girls helped me sew paper rainbow party-bags this year - they love my sewing machine! We printed them out on thick paper in rainbow colours, and personalised them with guest names, saying: Thank you for coming and making my party so much fun! Love Milla Then we stitched them into triangles.



We made lots of marshmallow-lollipops for the party table in all the colours of the rainbow and some chocolate lollipops too...yay, for sugar-rush!!


We were waiting for all the kids to arrive, and then we were going on a treasure hunt to see if we could find the gold at the end of the rainbow!

Our first hinder was to brave the spy-corridor...




...and at the end of the spy-corridor there was a clue...
'Under the lemon tree
is the place to be
when you save all the apples from drowning
under the water blue you will find the next clue'


...found the apples!!!




...next clue...
'Now...you will find a block of ice
if you look really hard with your eyes'



...found the ice! And there is a clue in there! Agnes is first...hammer, hammer, hammer...




...the clue inside the ice said...
'Put your hands in the air
and smash the waterbombs like you just don't care'


...splash...all the waterballoons were splished all around...


...even Samba got a splash or two...


...and the next clue read...
'Go down to the grey wall
and totally smash them all'




...after the balloon stomping we found another clue...
'The red brick wall is covered in white
grab a spray can and spray with all your might
when all is covered the next clue will be in sight!'


...yay! Let's paint all the colours of the rainbow!!




...and the last clue said...
'The rainbow is near
...wait, is that gold I can hear
let's go have a look...where is the rainbow??'

Found it! We had made a 'punch-box' where they had to stick their hands through paper to find some gold...








...mmmmm, gold chocolates!!! Lots of them! Hurra!!!


After the treasure hunt we dug into all the candy, and got pink lovehearts in our hair and rainbow fingernails.





We opened some presents, and wow were there lots of presents!!!


And finally CAKE TIME!!! Everone sang Happy Birtday to Milla and she had a sparkly number 5 on her cake to blow out.




...a rainbow cake for rainbow Milla...









Here is all of Milla's beautiful birthday cards and lovely presents!!! There were even presents travelling all the way from Norway to Australia! Thank you so much to Besta, gudmor Sissel, gudmor Elise and gudmor Merethe! Thank you everyone for your generosity and for making Milla's 5th birthday so special for her and us!

And after the party was over, we got a text message with a photo from Harry and Poppy:
Dear Milla. Thank you so much for inviting us to your party. We all had lots of fun. And guess what we have in front of our house at the moment - a rainbow. That's a bit special isn't it. 
Love Harry and Poppy xxxx