Happy Easter

Snuggled up in bed with Baby Bear, listening to the excitement of the three big boys as they hunt down all the choccies the Easter Bunny left for them. Love hearing the wonder and joy in their voices.

And I hope they clean up the little piles of jelly beans that the Easter Bunny deposited too...

Trees

In between project excavate-the-dino-tooth-from-the-driveway and swinging from the clothes line, the boys decided to make 'trees' to prop up in front of the kitchen window. While they were out at their preforming arts lessons, I snuck out and tied glow sticks to their decorations to surprise them when they returned in the dark.

Catch Up - Pigs, a Birthday, Teeth and More

  

 

We've visited Mount Gnomon Farm for their Rare Day Out. In between the rain, wind and hail we enjoyed some delish food and took a tour of the farm, seeing the Wessex Saddleback pigs and Belted Galloway cattle.

We celebrated Loo Bear's 7th birthday with our traditional jelly cups and bubble bath. This year Loo requested a chocolate cheesecake with berries on top so I had fun making and decorating a simple but very yummy Toblerone cheesecake.

The Burnie Arts & Function Centre hosted the Da Vinci Machines exhibition. We all thoroughly enjoyed the fascinating and hands-on displays, as well as the more in-depth explanations that one of the workers gave us. We also took the opportunity to turn it into as mini study on Leonardo Da Vinci.

Last year, when Baby Bear and I were at the hospital in Melbourne, the OH took the other 3 boys to the Devonport community gardens. He discovered that we were eligible for the Youth & Family Focus Inc.'s Veggie Patch Project, so he signed us up. Recently the team came out and installed 2 awesome raised garden beds as well as a compost bin.

We've discovered samphire at a local beach, so have gone foraging while collecting seaweed for the garden. Samphire has the saltiness of olives with a nice freshness and crunch. We ate it after blanching and it would go well in salads.

Meeting lovely new people while out and about...

 

After years of watching our tooth fairy visit his older brother, Loo Bear finally got his first wobbly teeth. One fell out recently and we popped it and a note into a 'Tooth Jar'. Bramble Ravenwing, our boy-tooth-fairy, exchanged the tooth for a letter and a dinosaur candle (he doesn't do money).

And speaking of teeth, we've started using xylitol. I dissolve it in water (about 1.5g of xylitol per 20ml dose) to make a mouth rinse that we use after eating. I chose a mouth rinse over substituting it into our diets so that we don't have to worry about how much we're consuming and possible side effects. We also have some Epic gum and mints that we use, mostly for when we're out and about. The kids love the fresh fruit 'mints' as they're not actually minty - they have a cool, tangy, fruity flavour. The OH and I like the spearmint gum. We are occasionally using the xylitol toothpaste too but I'm currently researching making my own toothpaste with a betonite clay, bicarb soda, coconut oil and xylitol base.