(insert snide comment in this space)

And don't worry, I've heard them all (this was at our local Halloween party on Sunday - it's Sarah's hat, though)

Possibly the best birthday message, ever.

In amidst all the presents and cards today for Olivia's birthday was a card from our friends down the road. Thalia, who is 6 months older than Sarah (and very precocious), wrote the following message: "Dear Olivia, Congratulations that you made it to 6. Some children in Africa can't do that."

What can I say. I am going to save it to show her when she's 30 - along with Sarah's drawing of herself and a group of friends, all carefully coloured and with elaborate clothes, with Olivia off in the corner of the page, half the size of the rest, and in pencil. Maybe by age 30, they'll think it's funny. Who'd have guessed that one of the biggest challenges of being a parent was learning to keep a straight face?

Land of a thousand fairy cakes...

OK, it was only 3 dozen, but they did seem to take a long time to ice and decorate. We thought Olivia would rather have a lot of fairy cakes than one big cake, and it was fun making them, mostly (though it's amazing the number of things sisters can find to argue about). And it will be much more practical for her party tomorrow, as I won't have to slice the cake to put it into party bags - I'll just be able to grab a cake each and hand them out.

The Bald Truth

OK, so today's lesson is this: when you are using electric clippers to clip the hair of the men in your family - husband, son, etc - be sure to hold them the right way around or someone will get a much shorter haircut than originally intended. Sigh. At least hair grows back quickly!

"I not naughty"

I was hanging out washing today and Alex was helping (i.e. playing with clothespegs). I have a couple of giant pegs for hanging things like blanket, etc and he was messing with these - putting them on his nose and stuff like that, when he dropped one onto the patio and it broke. "Oh dear" he says - I looked up and saw the peg was broken so I said "Did it break, then?" and he immediately says "I not naughty". "It's ok, Allie, you didn't break it on purpose" "No, I not naughty". It was very sweet...

The pumps don't work 'cause the vandals took the handles...

Recently we watched the excellent Dylan documentary No Direction Home (the one directed by Martin Scorsese) - may I urge everyone out there who is the tiniest bit of a Dylan fan - or in fact, everyone who is not antagonistic towards Dylan, even if you don't really like him - to watch this if you get a chance. It was just really really really fabulous. We'll be watching it again in future, that's for certain!