Child labour

The little guy wanted to clean the car.

An old sauce bottle full of water and Dad's golf-club-cleaning brush, and he was happy.

Hehe, he even managed to leave most of the paint on our aged and venerable car.

Today is another day

Oh my, I was in quite the funk yesterday.

Baby L.T's due date, should he have made it to a full 40 weeks. Thing is, his birth was to have been a scheduled c-section, so technically he would have arrived at least a week ago.
I didn't think the date would affect me all that much, but boo ya, who am I to dictate what my mind is going to do? At the same time as my body gives me a definite 'not pregnant anymore' sign. Yeah, go me.
One of those days where you just want to crawl under a rock and not speak to anyone.

But instead I took the boys out to the farmer's market, then later, up to the school to ride their bikes and play in the massive school sandpit. I got through it and today was a new day.

Meet (the) Eggbert(s)

When your family eats as many eggs as we do, you can end up with a lot of egg shells.

When you have two small boys, as we do, you need to come up with activities for those freezing, grey days of winter when they're bouncing off the walls.

Enter, the eggshells.

Ok, this was not my genius, I saw it somewhere on the blogosphere, but aren't they cute?

Hello Eggbert 1, Eggbert 2, Eggbert 3 and Eggbert 4.

Yes, we got creative with names, didn't we?

To make your own hairy little guys, save some shells from good old boiled eggs.

Place a cotton ball in the bottom of each shell and drip water on it till the cotton wool is fairly damp, but there's no extra water pooled around it.

Add sprout seeds.

We used................er can't remember. Cress and radish maybe?

Keep the cotton wool damp and in a lightish place, like a kitchen windowsill and your little baldies will have a fine crop in no time.

Then you can give them a haircut and eat the trimmings if you so desire.

(My boys did not desire, they left them to dry out and eventually let me consign all Eggberts to the worm farm. Er, I mean Eggbert heaven.)

My garden

First up, check out the colour of the pumpkins we grew!

All two of them, albeit, one giant one.

I picked up this passionfruit vine at the farmer's market a couple of weeks back, it's still looking for a home though.

And in the seed tray, can you spot the two baby apple trees?

Might need to enlarge it to actually see them...the boys and I saved the seeds from any apples that got eaten for a couple of weeks and planted them about three to a.......space? what do you call each individual space in a seed tray?.......patch of dirt in the seed tray!

Since this picture, two more have come up.

I have no illusions about how they will grow and whether or not they will produce, but still, it has been kinda cool. We just sat the tray out in the cold and after about 2 weeks the first one came up, about a month later the second one, and at least a month after that, the last two.

And, we've had a strange bird nesting in the garage.

Hmm, wonder what sort of creature will hatch out of those?