Party time

In addition to the fun and games we had with family on his actual birthday, we decided that we'd also host a party so Eli could celebrate with his friends. I'd agreed to this task on the proviso that Eli would help out in getting everything ready and to his credit he was very helpful, especially when it came to tidying the place up (ie tidying up his toys!) and loading up the party bags. This year we went for colourful noodle boxes, with a couple of glow sticks sticking out the top (I thought that they looked great like chop sticks - aren't I clever? - although I'm not sure that anyone else made the connection).

Regardless, we were ready to party! We had about a dozen of Eli's friends over, mostly from school, and Eli loved it. We played a few games - first was dancing statues which was a closely run thing with Eli just being edged out from top spot (thankfully he didn't cry or even complain about not winning, which is surely a sign that he is getting older!).







...statues...

 ...not statues

After dancing statues we had a mintie hunt outside - I'd hid two packets of them throughout the garden. This time Eli came in third (second if you count the fact that he found some extras the following day), with one of his friends filling his pockets with 26 minties!

The final party game was a new creation of mine, sort of a slightly more grown up take on 'pin the tail on the donkey'. Here the kids used a nerf gun to shoot three darts at a target, with the closest to the target taking home the sharp shooters trophy. Eli had suggested that this game would be best if they still wore a blindfold, but in the interests of safety I decided that it would be best if they could see where they were shooting. All of the kids enjoyed this game and Eli came in second again - which, as he pointed out, meant that in the overall scheme of things he would have won the party games gold medal (yes, he is still just a little bit competitive).

After the games it was time for Cake #2 from Grandma and boy did she deliver the goods with this effort!

And here's Eli ready to blow out the candles (thankfully not the re-igniting type this time)!

The highlight of the party (for me at least) was when Eli gave his speech after cutting the cake. I'd asked him the day before to practice what he wanted to say, to make sure that could remember it all on the day. And here's pretty much what he said "Thank you everyone for coming and thank you for your presents. Thank you to Grandma and Grandad for making the cake and thank you to Grandma and Grandad for helping out. And thank you Dad for ...doing good things (insert chuckle from all of the parents here). And I hope you all have a great rest of your day." Given that six year olds never give speeches at birthday parties I was pretty impressed and very proud of Eli's effort. What a great big six year old I have! 

Six of the best

Eli is six. That means we're now only seven short years (and a bottle or two of mutagen) away from him living his dream of becoming a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle. Yes, he is obsessed with the Ninja Turtles. As a result, he was totally thrilled when most of his birthday gifts were Ninja Turtle themed. Not only did he get the Leonardo sword and mask that he'd been asking for over the past few months (thanks Grandma Susan!), but he also got Ninja Turtle books, games and even undies (I couldn't resist!). He also got a very large playset from me, so now he has a great place to play with his Ninja Turtle toys.

Here he is with his freshly assembled Ninja Turtle playset - it is almost as big as he is!















Given that he'd been waiting so long, I guess I shouldn't have been surprised that he wanted to wear his mask all morning and practice his Leonardo moves with his katanas. This is serious stuff!

After a busy morning of Ninja Turtling, we headed over to see Eli's cousins - Eli was very excited to share his birthday with them and gave each cousin a nice big cuddle to celebrate his gift (some Ninja Turtle lego!).

Here are Eli and Alora...

...and Eli and Harrison...

...and Eli and Charlie...

 ...and Eli and Oliver...

...and then I went for the totally impossible group shot...

After a crazy runaround in the afternoon, we had dinner with the whole family, including Grandma and Grandad. Eli was very happy being the centre of attention and was very excited to blow out six candles! It took him quite a while to get them all out though, because Grandma had unwittingly bought some re-lighting candles, so everytime they were blown out they'd light themselves up again. Eli's big puffs eventually won out and we all thought that it was very funny.

And then Eli cut the cake and made a wish - what a big (and very happy) boy he is now!

On the boat with Captain Eli...yarrrgghh!

For reasons that are not entirely clear, but are obviously linked to the fact that he's a five year old boy, Eli often becomes a pirate when he's on our boat. On a recent trip down to the beach for a surf, Captain Eli was the first on board and here he is, ready to go, with his hands on his hips and his crooked pirate 'smile'.


He even kept is pirate smile on whilst driving the boat...

...and here he is navigating his way across Weyba Creek with First Mate (Uncle Tyden) watching on. He did a really good job (not too much oversteer!) and I think he looked very much at home behind the wheel.


After much prompting from me, he eventually dropped the pirate smile for one more typical of a landlubber (I think his cheeks were starting to get sore)...

Easter feaster

The Easter Bunny has a hard job. For our family he even does it harder than Santa, because we have an easter egg hunt and the poor rabbit has to place way-too-many eggs throughout the garden. If that's not enough, he has to contend with the threat of rain and the risks posed by curious birds or other animals that might feast on the booty before the kids emerge. In addition, the eggs need to be evenly, or at least fairly, distributed across all of the kids - five of them - to make sure that nobody misses out (I can just imagine the tears and chaos if Eli raced around collecting every single egg, or worse still if ended up with none at all!).

To the Easter Bunny's credit he came up with a very clever scheme to avoid the aforementioned Easter disaster this year, by laying out streamers that served as a guide (and a barrier) for each of the kids. Eli and Alora had no trouble chasing their trails, but the younger boys needed a bit of coaching, as you can see in the photo.  

At the end of the trail lay the 'grand egg prizes' for each child and as you can see, all of the kids were pretty happy with their lot. And Eli certainly wasted no time at all in feasting on the spoils of his hunt.

Later in the day we gave each other our Easter gifts - I gave Eli a toy instead of chocolate (I had a feeling he'd get a lot of it from the Easter Bunny!) and as you can see from the photo, he was pretty happy.

Another Easter down and it will be interesting to see what the Easter Bunny comes up with next year...I imagine that his planning should commence shortly.

Slip 'n slide

Santa delivered a slip 'n slide to Eli's cousins at Christmas time. Unfortunately it didn't see any use at the time, owing in part to Eli's untimely disagreement with some tiles and the subsequent stitches in his chin. Luckily Aunty Anne remembered it at Easter, so out it came, complete with dish soap to make it even more slippery. None of the kids really knew what it was all about, but it didn't take them long to get into it. They all started off sliding with an inflatable board, but after a while Eli ditched it and just went for the more traditional sliding action.

 

 

And now here's a sequence of shots on one of Eli's slides...

Of course Eli always likes to try and push the envelope with activities like this, so after a while he started to try and spin while he was sliding...this worked really well a few times, but quickly went wrong when he tried to be a bit too creative and he ended up on the grass more than on the slide. He was largely undeterred though and continued running in and trying new stunts long after all of the other kids were done and had gone inside. I wasn't surprised then that he liked the sound of possibly putting the slide on the beach and sliding into the canal...but we'll save that activity for another day (and perhaps a time when the younger cousins aren't around).

The soldier crab catalogue - out now!

There were tens of thousands of soldier crabs on the sand bank at Noosa this Easter. They came in all sizes too, so, spoilt for choice, Eli and I decided that we would try to find the biggest and most colourful of all of the soldier crabs. This challenge started off tamely enough (don't they all!), but pretty soon Eli came running over to me with six soldier crabs in his hands asking me to photograph each of them so we could figure out which one was the best when we got back to the beach house. So, I dutifully began cataloguing our soldier crab finds - hence the large number of photos of crabs in this blog post.

Now you may think that all soldier crabs look the same (and you might actually be right), but we found that there was a lot of diversity in sizes and in the size and colour of their pincers...

...there was also two different styles of photos (the rinsed and the sand-covered shots) depending on how many crabs Eli was trying to hold at once and whether we were close to water or not...

Here are some of our photos (a very small sub-selection of the dozens and dozens I ended up taking - curse you digital cameras!).

It all made for a very busy trip to the sandbank - Eli had to split his time between hunting and posing - and I think he would have stayed there for a few more hours to see the job through...mercifully, we were there with Eli's cousins and they didn't share his passion for the task.

 NB. Eli was very gentle with the soldier crabs, so none were harmed during the making of this blog post.

Now THAT is an Easter hat!

Just before Easter, the Prep to Grade 2 students at Eli's school are involved in an Easter Hat Parade. I'm not sure why, it doesn't have anything to do with Easter per se, but I've learnt not to ask those sorts of questions and just get on with creating! Last year Easter Hat Parade was a disappointment for Eli - he wasn't happy with my creative output at all - even though it was colourful and had foam eggs dangling from the brim - so this year I got thinking early. The plan was to go for big and garish, something that would really wow the crowd.

So on the weekend before the parade, and after a mammoth shopping trip to Crazy Clarks for supplies, Eli and I set to the task of creating a bright and bold Easter hat. We had my cricket sombrero as a base and then went to town with a big roll of cardboard, pipe cleaners, feathers and a peacock feather for a little extra drama. And then, to complete the ensemble, I glued 20 small yellow chicks to the brim. I wasn't sure if they'd stay put, but the PVA seemed to do the trick.

So off we went to school on the morning of the Easter Hat Parade. Eli had to wear his school hat underneath our creation - both for comfort and logistical reasons - but he was very impressed with the fact that the creation effectively doubled his height! No sooner had we set foot in the school grounds then a group of older kids, possibly from Grade 5, noticed Eli's hat. Eli was thrilled, because they peeled off a few 'Holy Moly's!' to express how amazed they were with his hat. And that really just started the ball rolling - all morning, prior to the parade, Eli got lots of 'wow's' and 'oohhhs' and 'aaahhhs'. It actually started to embarrass him a little bit, but he was glad that the hat was such a hit (and that no other kids could match his for size or brightness!). The downside of having such a great hat was the attention that it attracted. Eli and I had to fight off (figuratively, not literally) quite a lot of kids that wanted to touch his hat - I was starting to worry about the strength of PVA glue versus the strength of prying fingers!
 

And then, it was off to the parade, where we truly saw Eli's hat standout amongst the crowd. I got a lot of great feedback from the Mum's and Dad's too - maybe my talents are wasted in science? Eli's grade put on a little performance and despite the attention Eli managed to keep his hat intact all morning - quite a feat I'd say. All in all he was very happy this time around and we've already started talking about how we can add to this year's effort to go out with a really big bang next year - so stay tuned!