Red Cat Inn

Today.  Well, today was wonderful.  You know its been a wonderful day when you have too many awesome photos to choose from.  And not just beach photos.  Brothers and sisters playing piano.  Babies climbing dollhouses.  Boys and aunties jumping branches.  Mummies doing the limbo.  And this…

A daddy wearing a baby.  A daddy gazing tenderly at his daughter.  Which is quite fitting since its is really his American Father’s Day.  I know, I say it every year, it really is incredibly unfair that technically he gets two Father’s Days — his American one and the Australian one — and I only get one Mother’s Day.  (By the way, my Mother’s Day card is still in his bedside table.  And yes.  I will keep bringing that up until he actually gives it to me.  And no, it is not for Mother’s Day 2014.)  But of all the daddies in the world, he surely does deserve be celebrated the most.

Today I just feel like I really nailed it in the photo department too, you know?  Well any professional photog will go ahead and find all the things I’ve done incorrectly with these photos but I’m happy.  I feel like I am really getting the hang of my 35mm lens (which technically acts as a 50mm on my Nikon D80) and I’m so happy with my shots.  I could’ve put my old lens back on to go to the beach (we did see a whale after all and a 35mm is not whale suitable) but I love my 35.  I just do.

And I just love this little boy.  His imagination has just blossomed of late and I love observing the little worlds he creates for himself.  A stick is a sword.  Surrounded by a grass castle.  He is awesome.

This morning he announced he didn’t want to go to church.

“But we have to go today.  Daddy is praying for the communion.  He is going to thank Jesus for the bread and the juice that represents how much God loves us in front of everyone.”  I told him.

So Xavier thought for a moment and prayed his own little prayer.

“Fankoo Jesus for da bread, an a jooce, an smoked salmon.  Amen.”

Did I mention how much I love this kid?!

He cracks me up!

Its always super hard to pick a few favourites from the week before but I have to go with this iphone back and whites (next year, I want to do an Instagram 365)/ a little girl and her bear/ I am partial to babies in knits on the beach/ and these little ladies look like a lot of fun!

 

“I wasn’t crying about mothers,” he said rather indignantly. “I was crying because I can’t get my shadow to stick on. Besides, I wasn’t crying.” 
~ J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“All the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow.”

~ Leo Tolstoy

Obviously I am having a hard time only picking one photo at the moment…

31-5-2013

She crawls and she crawls.  She is very confident.  She also climbs small ledges I might add.  It’s freaking me out.  Baby gates are popping up everywhere.  Barricades.  Decoys.  And boy is she unhappy about not being able to touch the lamp.  She’s got her eye on the stairs.  She is a determined little miss.

31-5-2013

Its nearly Winter.  Which means cold, miserable, rainy weather and…Winter Solstice!  Now before you think we have turned Pagan (we haven’t), I just want to say how excited I am to finally have a holiday in the midst of the most dreary of seasons to celebrate!  Our little town goes all out with a beautiful lantern festival and decorates the downtown.  There is a concert and night market with a huge bonfire at the end.  We’re talking Hare Krishna food, street performers and candles everywhere.  I do love me a good festival.

This year, the home education group is marching in the parade.  Now whether or not we will actually join them marching is yet to be seen but of course this means we have to make lanterns.

Xave helped me locate the address (by loudly reading all the numbers as we drove down the road, thus preventing Eva from sleeping that afternoon) until we found the massive warehouse that houses more paper lanterns than you could ever poke a stick out.  Upon entering the building (no smoking please!) Xave whispered in a low voice, “Wow Mummy.  Dis is cooool.”  To say the little boy was impressed was an understatement.

He loved it.

He has become quite the Picasso of late.  He likes to paint and do “cutting and gwuing”, so this was right up his alley.  He decorated two sides of his lantern before he spied a little hand drum.

It’s hard to say whether he enjoyed the decorating or playing the hand drum more.  My guess is the hand drum.  I think he just lost himself in this magical warehouse full of oversized frogs and giraffes and Neptunes and giants.  I do believe he was talking to the Chinese dragon and I saw him tracing the patterns on the massive lanterns with his fingers.  He walked around, banging the little drumming and just talking to himself.  No one seemed to mind.  All the artists just smiled and kept about their work.  I called Xave back from a certain area and an elderly man told me not to bother, Xave could go where he liked.  I looked at the open paint cans and obviously health and safety violations and thought, if the artists don’t mind then it can’t be that bad, right?  Maybe I need to feed his artist’s imagination more often.

The lantern (or Mountain as he calls it) is in our office (read: junk room) at the moment.  Every so often, Xave proudly declares “I maked dis!  I maked dis mountain!”

That’s Xave’s masterpiece at the front there (the pyramid).  Um…totally amazing, no?

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