After quite a few lazy days, I finally got off my bottom and took Gwen out for some photos this afternoon. Now, I know I’ve taken photos very similar to these before (angel wings, field, etc etc), but today Gwen wanted to use the wings, anything else and she wasn’t interested. So not only am I rehashing an old idea, I even had to include the added bribe of a candy watch for her to participate at all!

I must say, even though we’ve done these before, I do love some of todays! It’s very cool to look back and see how much more grown up she looks in the face, with her expressions, how she’s changed as my “model”. I can’t believe she’s growing up so fast!

Gwen posed herself today, so there’s a fair bit of her trademark poses going on! Oh, and if anyone’s wondering why her eyes are closed in nearly all the photos, the sun was too bright for her eyes and if I asked her to open them, it was just an argument waiting to happen!

I think this is possibly my favorite from today, but it’s too hard for me to choose!

I think this was the end of the eye contact for a while!

Gwen’s pose, through and through. The light was beautiful this afternoon, too. Pitty she isn’t really as sweet as she looks most of the time!

Love her little hands. I think she was being coy here. She could have looked at me if she really wanted to.

She was standing it quite the perfect spot for the sunray behind her… Well, perhaps one step her her right and it would have been perfect! Not quite sure what she’s doing with her hands or thinking, but it’s cute none the less!

Looking quite the grown up little lady.

Doing the “Chicken Butt Dance”. Apparently Mr Jones, her P.E teacher taught her class the chick butt dance. Now, I’d really love to know if she’s misheard the name, but since the first week or two of school she’s being going on about this dance and she get’s quite angry if I question her on the name.. So it really must be right!

Gorgeous light in this spot.. We were on our way back to the house after I was attacked by ants time and time again. How she didn’t step in all the nest’s I did, I’ll never know! Love how her hair looks here.. Beautiful! (If I do say so myself!)

We weren’t allowed to go to the house until she posed on the log. She’s getting quite brave actually, she lay down on the log, got dirty, and it was very tricky to lay down on it without falling off.. 6 months ago she wouldn’t have had a bar of it!

If there’s one thing Gwen loves to do, it’s write and draw. She could sit there for hours drawing pictures, writing us “letters”. She certainly goes through a lot of paper! It can definitely be hard due to the fact that she desperately wants to write things but her little 4 year old brain just isn’t old enough to take in all of the information she want’s to know!  Over the last couple of weeks she’s been working very hard trying to figure words out just like her teacher has taught her. She “stretches” them out and figures out how to spell them. Go phonics baby! Unfortunately due to the fact that the english language is ridiculous at time’s, she get’s frustrated with me when I don’t help her the “right way” lol. For example,  try explaining to a four year old why moon and book both have two o’s when one makes a short O sound and one makes a long O sound, or why the word “shoe” has an oe, instead of a u!!

Here she is doing her thing. She’s writing her teacher a card (who I think she has a crush on lol), and she sounded out and wrote the whole card all by herself. Her choice of words, her spelling!

Using her finger to measure her spaces.

Her picture to go with the card. On the left we have Mr Shane, in the middle we have Gwen (you can always pick her, just look for the page long hair), and on the right we have.. Wait for it.. Santa! They’re in Canada, in the snow. Apparently.

Drawing another picture because the other ones upside down.

Translation: Gwen – Mummy

To Shan – To Shane

I lik pones – I like ponies

The cat sat on a mat – Wooo no explanation needed!

The pig and the frog had fan – The pig and the frog had fun. After two attempts, she was finally happy!

From Gwen – Clever girl!

Oh and the picture on the left. Gwen and Mr Shane, in Australia under the sun, with a blue sky and two trees.

Bit of a quickie tonight, I still have to make a school lunch and find a uniform and it’s 12:30am! Gwen’s behavior hasn’t been tooooooo bad lately, so as a treat after school today I took her to get an ice cream while we were shopping to kill some time before her swimming lesson. The ice cream shop have started selling ice cream cupcakes (which I must say, looked better then they tasted lol), so I thought one would be a lovely treat for Gwen rather then just plain ole’ ice cream in a cup. Well. I wasn’t expecting them to be quite so expensive .. $4.50 for a little bit of ice cream, frozen cream which tasted old, and some sprinkles!! Oh dear. Lucky Gwen didn’t mind! Now that I’ve seen how they’re made, I’m quite inclined to try my own, with nicer cream and better flavours of ice cream.. Shame about that diet!

Pretty! – Pitty it didn’t taste quite as good as it looked!

Sooo ready to eat it!

Mmmm sprinkles. Gwens favorite part I think!

And her favorite ice cream.. Rainbow.

It’s no secret that I have a special place in my heart for moody black and white photos (especially of Gwen because she’s usually such a ham!). It’s one thing my POTD has been missing so far this month! We didn’t have much of an opportunity to do anything today, between visiting a friend and picking up my husband from work we really only had a few minutes and it was already dark!

Anyhow, we did end up trying but unfortunately my camera takes appalling photos if it’s even a little dark so the 10 or so photos we took today really weren’t salvageable. I did however attempt to save one of them because I did like it, and I couldn’t really post another photo of my toes lol. I don’t really ever try to *save* photos, it’s far too much effort but I’m glad I did today. I could never really print this which is a shame because I do really love it. We’ll have to go back and try to do some more when it’s actually light out.

Here she is (not that everyone hasn’t seen enough of her!), my beautiful girl who I think pulls off moody and pensive equally as well as giddy, funny faced ham.

First of all, please do excuse any typos, it’s 2am here and I’m very tired!

Well, the holidays have absolutely flown by for us. I can’t believe there’s only one more day left until Gwen’s back to school. I haven’t done NEAR as much what I wanted to do with her this holidays, so I’m having a bit of mummy guilt, but I have enjoyed just having her at home with me again. As much as I do love her being at school (especially when she’s a being  a pain in the rear!), I do miss having her at home sometimes.

Anyhow, after a blissful sleep-in today we spent the afternoon shopping with her dad and grandma which was lovely. We spent an hour or two at home this afternoon (playing with some froggies!) before going over to our friends place for the night. Well, we were just going for a tea and a quick visit, but it turned into an all night bludge and have a chat on the couch which was lovely, we haven’t done it in ages! Gwen had a marvelous time playing with Jack & Alex, and she was so well behaved tonight on the way home. Not a tantrum when we had to leave (although I’m sure the two biscuits she had right before leaving did sweeten the deal a bit!), she ate a *whole* banana in the car on the way home for dinner (*ahem*.. 11pm dinner, a banana in the car. No mother of the year award there!), got herself dressed when we got home, brushed her teeth without arguing, and here’s the clincher – She let me brushed her whole head of matted hair without a single tear or whinge!! (erm, see very, very messy hair in photos.. those are 2 day old plats lol). She finally went to sleep like a dream at 12am lol, 7:30pm tomorrow, here we come!

All in all it’s been a lovely day, other then the fact that I’ve hurt my back somehow, and now I’m in a lot of pain.. Boo hoo, I know, I shouldn’t whinge! I hope it’s not too bad tomorrow!

Here’s my squinty eye’d girl, that decided it’d be far nicer to play with her toes then pose for me.

Now, we have a little pond out on our front porch, so we have little frogs everywhere!! They’re THE cutest little things you’ll ever see, and they’re deceivingly small! They’re the most gorgeous little frogs, they sit out there and croak all night (although, sometimes it’d be nice if they stopped at bedtime!). If you go out during the day, they all hop away and hide so fast, it’s hard to see them, but if you go out with a torch at night time it’s spectacular. I’ve never seen a frog croak in person, but if you shine light on the lilypads, you see all these little frogs with their throats puffed out, croaking away to each other. It’s spectacular to watch!

Here’s how tiny he is, he’s smaller then my fingertip!!

Here’s Gwen inspecting the frog on my fingertip. She wasn’t keen on holding it at all!

I do actually have a little story to go with this frog if anyone actually wants to indulge me and read along! It’s actually quite scary! He was sitting on the leaf (in the first photo) just minding his own business, so I picked him up (well, it wasn’t that easy, it took me a few minutes to catch him lol) to show Gwen. Anyhow, after a few minutes of holding him, taking photos etc, Gwen wanted to put him in a bowl to see him swim. Well, he didn’t want to do that lol. He just kept climbing to the edge which was very cute in itself, it was like he was popping up to say hello! Anyhow, The poor little thing had enough of us, so he made one swift hop over to the wooded retaining wall, when all of a sudden this huntsman literally jumped on the poor, beautiful little baby frog. Oh my gosh, I wanted to cry!

Thankfully for a bit of fast thinking, I chucked the bowl of water he was swimming in on to the spider and poked him with a stick a few times to make him let the frog go (he HAD him in his fangs!!). Rather sadly, I thought it was too late for the little fellow. He wasn’t moving much, and I was trying to pick him up out of a hole with a leaf to move him away from the spider but he just got more still. I wanted to cry, he was just sitting up on the leaf so innocently! His little heart was still beating so I put him in the pond hoping he’d swim away, but he just sat there, his legs didn’t even come out into a star. Oh my gosh, what did we do?? Anyhow, after about 5 minutes of poking and prodding in the water, he hopped out onto a pipe and sat there quite happily. Gosh, I don’t know if he was just playing dead (I probably would have too, if I was just in a spiders jaws!), or if the spider really did stun him. Either way, I’m glad the poor little fellow’s ok! I’ve never felt so bad about picking up a frog in my life lol.  I won’t even think about WHY that naughty spider has a home right next to the pond.

Here he is, peeking out of the bowl.

Here’s said spider. He was actually VERY big!! Ewww it gives me the creeps just looking at it!

And here he is after he jumped out of the pond with a second chance at life. I didn’t take any photos of him um.. Floating. I was too distressed, and that would have been rather morbid, considering I did actually think he was dead lol.

Here’s our little self proclaimed Canadian. She’s sooo… Patriotic.

Another of our beautiful little green froggies.

Here’s the kids tonight, proud of their block tower they made. Mr Pose at Mum, Miss Cheesy, and Mr Stiff. Always entertaining in photos! (note Gwens horrendously messy hair. Under that scarf is plenty of matted knots, and the plats were like 2 big dreads. Ah, that’ll blame me for telling her that when it’s the weekend, I don’t have to do her hair. I’m not even allowed to BRUSH it some weekend days!)

Oh dear, Gwen got a little cranky when it got knocked over! Lucky it was short lived crankiness!

Here they are building another tower. Love Jacks cheesy grin on the right lol.

Since Gwen started school at the beginning of the year, as much as she loves her new school friends she desperately misses her close friends who she spent the last year or two with numerous times a week. The school holidays have been great, if only for the fact that she’s been able to play with her friends a little more. I haven’t done as many productive things this holidays with her like I was originally going to (they seem to have gotten away from me, only 2 days left and it’s back to school already!) which is a bummer, I’ll just have to try and do something tomorrow, Monday, and then after school some days to make up for it!

Now, I did mention in my January POTD that Gwen has a terrible fear of heights. This is one of the parks where I really see it over come her. This slide is actually quite scary to get to. It’s really very hard to explain, but there’s no platform to stand on, only skinny beams you have to climb across to get to it and they’re high! It really is the most ill designed slide I’ve seen, but most kids seem to love it. It’s just terrible for the littlies. Gwen turns into a stiff, sobbing mess when she tries to climb it, and one day I affectionately (albeit angrily!) named the way she COULD go the “Chicken way”.. It went something a long the lines of “Fine, if you don’t trust me to help you without letting you fall, go the chicken way then!!!” Oh dear, that certainly didn’t win me any mother of the year award lol. Needless to say, the name has stuck, Gwen now calls it the “chicken way herself”. I live in hope that one day she’ll actually give it another go. I’ll really never understand how phobias appear of  nowhere!

Anyhow, here she is at the top of the slide after climbing all by herself – The chicken way!! Looking mighty proud of herself too.

Here’s Gwen  and her friend Sammy who’s let me think, about 1.5 years younger or so, and brave enough to climb the slide the tricky (read: correct) way, even if it was a bit scary and he did need a bit of coaxing at first! He was so very proud when he made it there himself. Maybe if we go a little more regularly, Gwen will learn from her younger peers and get the courage to try again!

Another quick one from me tonight I’m afraid! I did have more plans for today, but after puncturing a tyre  on my car and having a flat camera battery (whoops!), it just didn’t really happen for me today!

Now technically, because this was taken after midnight I *should* be using it for tomorrows post but I’ll let it slide because I was so slack and took nothing else today! Every night Gwen goes to sleep with 2 things. One of her Carebears, and a white terry towel. She hugs bot to sleep, but I usually end up moving the terry (like tonight) because she has it right up around her face and the sweats and gets so hot! So here she is, beautifully peaceful – Asleep with her Carebear.. This one’s a collectors edition gold bear (with beautiful swarovski crystal eyes and gold fur, the photo doesn’t do him justice!)  so he doesn’t have a real Carebear name. She’s affectionately named him Goldie.

Quick one from me today. I’ve been super busy (not to mention *so* tired after all my late nights this week!), but today we headed off to one of Gwen’s school friends birthday parties. Gwen was so enamored with the fact that there were *so* many girls! Until she started school, she’d really only played with boys her whole life. All my friends have had boys so it’s just the way it’s been! So today we celebrated Ebonique’s birthday, and the girls had a fabulous time.

Ebonique & Gwen. Can anyone tell that Gwen’s completely over me taking photos already?

They had to model their shoes before I walked away!

Gwen enjoying a lollypop.

Gwen’s never been a big eater. In fact it’s a batter to get her to eat dinner, her lunchbox always comes home full, and breakfast is always painful. If we go to a party, I could bet any money I’ll find her at the chip and lolly bowls all day. People would swear she’d never seen a lolly or chip in her life!

Gwen & Eb’s raiding the lolly & chip bowls.

We had plans to go out somewhere today, but I really turned most of the day into a stay-in lazy day! When it got to about 3:30 in the afternoon, we made a last minute decision to drive nearly an hour away to the beach. Talk about last minute! By the time we got our stuff together and went for a drive, it was nearly 5pm before we arrived! The sun was already setting but I must say, it ended up working out perfectly! The weather was gorgeous, it was low tide, not many people.. Just perfect!

We had a lot of fun, the mud was mighty slippery though! How one of us didn’t go bottom up is beyond me. I did however have mud splatters up my back from running about with my camera – lovely! I done something scary and trusted Gwen with my camera today.. What a day to do it! At the beach, mud and water everywhere, slippery ground.. She done well though! I wasn’t going to keep any of the photos she took of me (I was made to be behind the camera, definitely not in front of it!), but I ended up really loving some of the shot’s she took of Dan and I, even though I look terrible and some aren’t quite in focus.. All in all, she done a marvelous job for a 4 year old.

I bribed her to take her crocs off.. Squishy sand feels funny apparently!

Love this one of her!

Love these as well.. She’s dancing in the wind here.

From dancing to surfing!

There’s the expressive face I know! No idea what she was doing here, trying to avoid looking at me, maybe? lol

She stood in a big mud hole.. She’s admiring her feet which have been swallowed by mud.

Here’s said mud!

Ergh, scroll fast! A self portrait of Dan and I! Not easy with a 50mm, this is as far back as my arm would allow! I am *not* a fan of posting photos of myself on here, but I promised myself this month I’d force myself to get in front of the camera with my family some more! .. lol.

When Gwen seen us trying to take a photo of ourselves,  she asked if she could have my camera to take some.  The one in the middle of us looking at the camera was one of the first she took of us.. I do like that one, we don’t have many photos of us together at all! Once she got one of the two of us together (and wow, THAT took some coaching! Although, once she figured out she had to hold the button for a little while, she was set to go)  she asked to take some of Dan, and then me.. Well, we got a little silly!

Another one taken by Gwen.

Gwen and I, snapped by Dan.

She must have felt cheesy all of a sudden!

Now… This is for all of those people who comment on how easy it must be to take photos of Gwen…Oh no… Definitely not! Talk about miss attitude. At this particular moment, she was actually quite a way away from us, and she thought she heard me say that she has an ugly smile, little did she know I was talking about my self when I was looking at the photos of Gwen and I! Little monster she is… I get this face when shes growling at me, grumbling things  like “did YOU just say I have an ugly smile….” in a deep, demonic voice! So…. No. Not always so angelic!

When this is big, you can actually in the silhouette that they’re smiling at one another. The sun and clouds really turned it on for us this afternoon! Although, one minute we were talking waiting for the sun to get a little lower, and the next minute we looked back and it was gone behind the horizon! Whoops! We must have had about 5 minutes of light to do these.

This took a bit of convincing! Apparently Gwen’s too heavy to throw now.. Pffft, so much for Dan bragging about his muscles! This was the only shot I got of this – He tossed her once, and it was all over! I was so pleased I caught it, even if she wasn’t in mid air!

Not real happy with this one, neither of them were co-operating with me, but I’ll take what I can get! At least the sky was pretty!

Well, here we go again it seems! My poor blog has been rather neglected lately when life decided to throw a few curve balls at us, my husband ended up in Canada visiting family, and life just got oh so hectic! We seem to be getting back to normal now which is great. Now, on to my reason for posting. I really love looking back on my Photo of the Day photos from January, I look at them at least every week and it’s only been 2 months since doing them (on that note, holy moly, isn’t this year going SO fast!). I’d be lying if I said I loved taking them every single day because some days were hard, but as a whole project I miss doing it a lot! After a bit of thought (not to mention peer pressure!) I’ve decided to do (Read: try!) another month of my POTD.

I don’t think I’m going to be quite as strict with myself this time, if life gets in the way and I miss a day, so be it! I’ve come to realise that since Gwen has started school, I really haven’t taken her many places or done much with her. Bring on the mummy guilt. Time to start doing more fun stuff! I asked Gwen if she remembers when mummy took photos of her every day and if we could do it again, and I got a bit of a reluctant “…. yes.”, so away we go!

It seems I’m back to my late night blogging, with Gwen in school I won’t be able to keep this up when the holidays finish. I’ll need to clean up my act and get organised I think! Today being the last day of school, the parents of the preppies were invited up to the school to watch their “Bunnies and Bilbies” something or rather. Anyway, it was cute! The schools music teacher has done such a wonderful. They really did learn a lot of songs and rhymes that they sung back to back. Not a bad achievement when they only have music class once a week!

I’ve been hearing “Here come’s Peter Cottontail, hoppin down the bunny trail – Hippity hoppity, Easter’s on it’s way!” for the last week! Her efforts practicing paid off, she really was very cute singing in her first little performance, even if she did forget to sing sometimes when she was looking at me lol.

Surrounded by boys – As per usual!

Preppies singing their Easter tunes! Can anyone spot Gwen? It’s a bit like where’s wally!

I do believe they may have been singing “Mr Peter Rabbit (had a fly upon his nose)” here, but I can’t be too sure, they sang a few!

This one I *think* was Mr Peter Cottontail.. Concentrating on me rather then her music teacher.

Once the Easter sing song stuff was finished, all the mum’s (and Dad – yes that’s right, Gwen’s was the only one, go Dan!) were invited into the classroom to do a few activities with the kids. It was a fun afternoon!

Concentrating on writing her name.

Catching flie’s whilst thinking – Always an attractive look! Gwen’s not the greatest listener in the world, it took a bit of persuasion to get her to stop colouring and look at the teacher!

I adore this photo of my two special people. I’d kill to have a nice photo of Gwen and I.. It’s on the to-do list this month!

Gwen happily sat with Daddy for the whole duration of our visit and do some colouring and gluing.

Colouring in with him was obviously fun. Much funner then mummy of course!