Going on a Frog Hunt

Last week Andrew did a news story covering the new monitoring buoy that was about to be put in Lake Taupo. He was out at five mile bay shooting footage of the technicians hooking it up to the helicopter. He could hear lots of frogs, so on Thursday him and Charlotte went on a frog hunt. They stopped first at the toy shop to buy a net and then it was off on the adventure.

They spent over an hour hunting out frogs and tadpoles. Charlotte had a great time.

After they got home they rang me at work to tell me all about it. When I asked Charlotte if she had seen any frogs she told me that she tickled their bottoms. Andrew had to explain that they used pieces of grass to tickle to the frogs to make them jump.

We went back as a family on Saturday after swimming lessons to hunt down some more frogs. The pictures were taken then.

Off to search the swamp

Looking at the tadpoles

A frog

I'm Back

Well after 8 months of not writing I thought I should start again. I will not bore you with what we have been doing for the last months, but in case you have missed out on the news we are expecting baby number two. Jellybean as it has been nicknamed is due in 7 weeks time.

Charlotte has been a bit unwell over the past month and a half. She has had two seizures, one of which ended in an overnight hospital stay and she has also had the chicken pox. We are off to the hospital tomorrow for a follow up visit on the seizures.

Not long now until the big man dressed in red comes to visit. Charlotte isn't that keen on him in person, but points out all the pictures of him the junk mail. She started calling him Christmas, but has learnt that his name is Santa. Santa is bringing her a bike (shh don't her).

Well I don't want you getting too excited that I am back posting again. But I promise it won't be 8 months before the next post.

Talking and Reading

Charlotte's favourite things to do at the moment are talk, read, feed the ducks and go to the park. She goes non-stop all day and chats away to herself. Her talking is becoming much better and we can understand a whole lot more. She also has bionic ears and we have started to spell out certain words so that she doesn't know what we are talking about eg duck, bubbles, banana.




Here are some pictures of her and her dad playing and two videos. The first is of her doing her duck impression and the second is of her talking.

This weekend we went to Celeste's and Jared's wedding. Her are some pictures of us before we went. We had an awesome time there and it was great to sleep in this morning. Mum and dad had Charlotte for the night and she chose to get up 6.15am - lucky them. Charlotte hasn't been getting up before 7.15 in weeks, so who knows what was different about being at Granny's house. By the time we picked her up at 10am they had been to feed the duck, played at the park and eaten a lot of breakfast.

The last two months

Opps i have been a bit slack at updating this - sorry. Well as you know Andrew turned 30 in February and we had a great weekend with our friends coming down. They went out fishing in the afternoon and then that evening we played poker.

Mum had a birthday on Friday - doesn't have another one for four years. She had a great day and we had the usual drinks on Friday night.

Charlotte is doing well - her speech is developing quickly and she can be a bit of a parrot at times. We are really having to watch what we say now.
She still can't say Granny or Sam, but Poppa is one of her favourite words and people. Some words are very similar sounding and it can take a while to work out which one she is saying (eg bottle, bubble and Bumble).

Charlotte can also do animal noises and actions. We are just trying to get her doing the duck on video. It is so cute she tucks her hands under her armpits and flaps her wings while saying duck duck duck.

All baths now have to have bubbles in them. We have used all the little miss bubble baths that Yvonne gave us and have moved onto some bright blue stuff form the supermarket.
Here is a wee video of her in the bath last night - if you listen carefully you can hear her saying bubbles right at the beginning. I pushed record a second too late or it would have been a lot clearer.

Not much else has been happening here. Work has been a bit slow for Andrew, but the fishing has been good. He had his dad over for a few days a couple of weeks ago and they did quite a bit of fishing. Work is going well for me - we are at a very busy time of the year trying to get all of our tax returns filed by 31 March, but I am sure we will get there.

We are looking forward to our holiday in July. It finally seems to be getting a bit closer. We have our e-tickets, but our real ones will come back with my Uncle Michael when he comes back from visiting Daina this month.

Our Little Artist

Some pictures of Charlotte doing her artwork this afternoon.

Charlotte was given the cute apron as a Christmas present form Michael and Sharon.