Rachel and her new bike

We bought Rachel a pink ride-on bike for her birthday. The first time she tried it in the shop she had an excited look on her face. She even managed to get it to go backwards. It possibly was a fluke.

Here she is looking quite confident on the bike. Although she can still only go backwards, so is actually stuck in this photo. The top she is wearing was also a birthday present.

Andrew wanted to have his photo taken on his bike as well, so he backed himself into position beside Rachel.

Unwrapping Granny and Grandpa's present

We didn't get any good photos of Rachel opening her presents on Thursday morning, but we managed to capture the moment better when she was opening her present from Granny and Grandpa Denne later in the day. She is sitting on her new bike that Mummy and Daddy gave her for her birthday.

Examining the card.

Helping to unwrap the present

Cool its a DVD.

Andrew had to put the DVD away with the DVDs where it belongs. He also put the CD with the other CD's

A 2nd first birthday party

Tonight the Bonis family came around for dinner to celebrate Rachel's birthday.

Here are the four cousins playing with Rachel's birthday present from the Bonis family. It can entertain four kids happily plus the few adults at the same time. It plays music, makes animal noises, and the balls spin around. Rachel found it facinating.

Here is Rachel's second first birthday cake. This time in the shape of a one.

Stephen likes this second shot of Rachel's cake.

"peoples go on the bus"

Andrew got this toy for his birthday nearly two years ago from Grandparents Denne and it still gets played with most days. Here he is putting the peoples (his term) on the bus. The driver had to go in the door. He was having so much fun I tried to capture it. After a break (trying to help mummy with her jobs, although sitting on my knee while I write is not helpful) he has gone back to bus.

Andrew told me this is a photo of him "putting peoples in the bus in our lounge". Now he has bought the bus over to me. He is pointing to the photo and then the bus say "I got it".

Next will go the farmyard toys, another old favourite toy. Anyway I had better get back to what I was doing. I have some more blogs to post when I get some time.

A party for Rachel's birthday

Last Saturday we had a little party for Rachel's first birthday. It was a few weeks early as Grandma and Granddad Harris were here for the weekend.

Rachel's birthday cake that mummy made. It is a gingerbreadhouse. There is a R in the pebbles in the roof. Andrew thought she could have a train birthday cake.

Rachel opening her presents with some help from Andrew.

Rachel enjoys some birthday cake

We had our morning tea outside enjoying the Christchurch sunshine. Then the kids played with the bubbles.

Andrew and Trains

Andrew is still train mad. About a month ago we went to a vintage machinery day

Andrew and Stephen went riding on this traction engine. In Andrew's words : This is a "train". Andrew ride on the "train" with Daddy. We also went for a ride on a Steam train.

He will also tell you that "I built a train in the lounge." This can be out of train track, wooden blocks or megablocks.

Andrew is going to have a train birthday. He keeps wanting to look at the picture of the train birthday cake in our birthday cake book.

When we go to the library he wants to get books on trains out. I try to limit it to one each time. Yesterday he had all his train books collected together including the drawing pad with a train picture on the front.

We don't see that many real trains here unlike when we were in Wellington but when we were in Lyttelton the other day we just happened to drive past the wharf as freight train was leaving so we stopped to watch the train. We have occasionally had to wait for a train at the railway crossing.

Sometimes when I am using the laptop he asks to see train on the laptop.