Happy 2010. I have been meaning to post for days now but summer has been getting in the way. Lazy walks on the beach, friends, bbqs, electric storms, parks, pools, mexican food and birthdays have been on the agenda. We have been busy in the laziest possible way. Ricky had only a few days off but in this time he managed to reorganise the entire laundry, not a small task. our laundry was becoming a dumping zone for the household. Piles of clothes(clean mostly) ensured that the door was to remain closed out of embarrassment, but now it is a place of peace and pride we can see the floor and we have systems. I am eternally grateful for Ricky's efforts for the laundry is on space that I can never seem to get on top of. The endless tide of clothes going in and out is just relentless in this place. Enough about the laundry I feel that i need a few retrospective posts to bring you up to speed so here goes;

Just before Christmas we hosted a gingerbread party for the kids in our street. It was a huge success. We are luck to live in a street full of children, most are the same age more or less as my children. I grew up in a street full of children. We rode our bikes up and down and climbed the trees in each other's garden. My summers were full with building cubby houses and rafts, and playing in the long evening light before it was time to go in. This is the childhood I wanted for my children too and i feel so lucky that it has eventuated. I watch Zar toing and froing with the other kids in the street, drawing with chalk on the footpath between our houses and it makes me smile.

We had five children to the party. I baked the gingerbread house and glued them with royal icing. The kids arrived to find a gingerbread house with their name on it and tray set out with little bowls of different lollies and chocolates, sugary and shiny. They also had a little bowl of icing and an icy-pole stick to apply the icing glue. I made a display house that sat in the middle of the table as a suggestion. The kids needed little instruction and busily got to work decorating their houses. I put out some extra lollies and pretzels for the kids to eat and the kids actually started using the pretzels as fences something i completely didn't think of.

All the kids a sugary blast and all we very proud of their creations, so much so that a few have still not eaten them because they are to special.