This week began with Easter Sunday. I LOVE Easter weekend. In Australia, Easter weekend is a four day weekend because Good Friday and Easter Monday are both public holidays. This means my husband doesn't have to work for four days in a row and this is the ONLY time in a year when he gets that many days off without a client needing him. So we protect our Easter weekend and devote it to family time as we concentrate on Jesus' death and resurrection from the dead.
When I headed outside to get in the car for the drive to church, I noticed this beautiful day lily in bloom in our front garden. The newest challenge for my Facebook Photography group is "Fill the Frame" so I took the opportunity to use this beautiful flower to complete that challenge and the right hand photo is my submission for the challenge. We shall see if I get the chance to photograph and submit two more photos...
Special photos with Munchkin and Pastor A in celebration of Munchkin's 10th birthday. We intended to take the photos after church on Good Friday (his actual birthday) but she had to leave right after the service so we postponed to Easter Sunday. First we did the "serious" nice photos...
Then we did some funny ones... Pastor A wanted to put her hat back on as she is still adjusting to her "new" hair and from there they got the idea for Munchkin to try the hat on and it got pretty silly for awhile...
Then we did a nice photo with Pastor A, Munchkin, and Munchkin's birthday buddy, Mr A... his birthday is about a week before Munchkin's though he is a year younger, and his parents are Munchkin's god parents, so they have a pretty special friendship.
Pastor A then asked for another set of photos with Monster so I took these lovely photos of the two of them together. I'm still in shock at just how much taller Monster is than Pastor A now!!
Finally I asked to have some photos taken with Pastor A as well and Monster took over the job of photographer and snapped a couple of shots of us together. I plan to keep my hair short short short until Pastor A's hair has grown back to the length it was before her chemotherapy treatment.
I'm so glad we had this opportunity to get all these photographs... they are absolutely precious to me.
After church on Easter we headed to the beach for the first time this year... the La Nina summer has really made it difficult to do things outdoors so we jumped at the chance when the weather was so glorious... While the boys played in the sand and the water I took the opportunity to have fun with my photography!
Munchkin enjoyed playing in the water even though it was a bit cold for his liking...
I found this piece of seaweed on the sand and decided to have some fun with composition and settings... I do love that I have a monochrome setting on my camera so I can take black and white photos without having to fiddle around with an editing program later.
Trying (and failing really) to get some wave photos with the rocks...
Monkey and Munchkin having lots of fun in the water...
More fun photographing the waves on the rocks and a beautiful shell on the sand. I would have LOVED to get a bit more creative with the shell but the sand was really wet and cold so I did NOT want to get down on the ground at all.
The seagulls flocked around our blanket in the sand when Monster decided to feed them our leftover chips (french fries) from lunch.
Monkey spent a good amount of time rubbing a rock on top of this rock and actually wearing away a bunch of the rock and creating a little crater... so he begged me to take a photo of it. They are hoping that when the tide goes out it leaves water in the "hole".
Monday Munchkin and I tackled his "creative clutter" on the bookshelves in the playroom as there was NO WAY I intended to start Term 2 with this mess still staring me in the face. This is the BEFORE shot... In fairness to Munchkin the hose, box, and two drawers on the left hand side of the photo was stuff of his dad's and NOT his mess.
The DURING photo... Munchkin and I worked hard and he really stuck with the process so I'm incredibly proud of him. He knew it would be easier to have things organised even though it is really stressful for him to clean and de-clutter.
In the end it was all worth it! The AFTER photo and both of us felt REALLY good to see how much better the room looked when we were finished. Now the tough part (for both of us) is going to be keeping it this clean (or close to this clean)!!
As we were cleaning the bookshelves in the playroom, we discovered that one of our resident Blue Tongue Lizards was sunbathing on our front veranda. We get sunshine in the front of our house all afternoon each day so the lizards do know it is the place to hang out... He stayed there for a really long time and we gave him his space and didn't disturb him because we want him to stick around.
The next day we discovered the lizard hanging out on this pot plant "grass" that we have on a bookshelf on our front veranda. It was at this point that we realised this lizard is "Legless" the injured lizard I discovered near our rubbish bins several months ago. When we first found him he had a facial wound and was missing a leg and had almost NO tail. So it is good to see that "Legless" is still alive, his facial wound has healed nicely, his tail is growing back, and he is doing well without his leg. Legless climbed into an old tennis shoe on the shelf when night fell, spent the night there, and then took off early the next morning.
A "far away" photo taken on my phone... Legless is on the left-hand side of the photo just to the right of the pot plant if you can spot him.
The two younger boys were THRILLED that Bingo was back at the library for school holidays and they really enjoyed the activity. Meanwhile, Monster settled himself in a chair by the window where he could soak up autumn sunshine and read a book... and I spent my time browsing books and checking out ALL our reserves for Term 2 that had arrived by then.
All of the books below are Munchkin's independent reading choices for the week... the older boys ARE reading but much less than Munchkin and much longer books then Munchkin chooses as well.
I love that Munchkin enjoys the Roald Dahl books so much. Buying the boxed set well before we even HAD children was a very good investment.
Being given the first Captain Underpants book by our Pastor's wife and a friend sparked Munchkin to purchase a few more books from our local op-shop. He enjoys reading and re-reading them.
His favourite choices for the week...
While at the library for Bingo, the boys chose some picture books they love, plus I had put Nick Bland's Bear books on reserve as well because they are so fun to read aloud.
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