The Baynhams

Three kids get off the school bus all talking over one another to be the first to tell me how their day went. They make it into the kitchen abandoning shoes, school-bags, water bottles, hats and socks on the way. They see three plates in a row with three slices of yesterdays birthday cake.

One child grabs the biggest piece and eats half it in one huge mouthful.

Another child grabs the next biggest piece and starts to lick the green icing from the top before deciding they desperately need to go to the toilet. But will the cake be safe while they are gone?

The last child nearly gets knocked to the ground by the one racing to use the toilet and this is shouted out by a clever pair of lungs...

"Don't eat my cake, I have licked ALL OVER IT!"

Now that is how you survive in a family of three kids!

4 comments - click here to leave your comment  

Sian is in her schools all girl Oz Tag team and today they participated in an all day 5 match marathon competing against other local schools.

I was a driver helping to get them to the Rugby ground. It gave me a chance to watch this low contact version of the sport for the first time.

Each player had a belt with two "tags" hanging from it. The tags are attached with velcro.



The aim of the game is to tag players in the opposing team to prevent them scoring a try.

To tag them you just need to catch up with them and pull hard on one of their tags tearing it off the belt and then throw it on the ground.

The player then returns to pick up their tag and has to pass the ball on to a team mate.

It certainly is a better game for girls than the full-on-face-in-the-mud Rugby Union and makes for prettier daughters without crooked broken noses and cauliflower ears!

It was a hot day and they coped brilliantly, sitting under the shade of the trees and drinking loads of water between games. By the end of the day we had renamed them "Undefeated" because they won every match!

Go Joeys!

1 comments - click here to leave your comment  

Every year in school the kids have a book week. The finale of Book Week is the "out of uniform" day where they dress up as their favourite book characters. I needed to leave for work at 6.30 this morning but Rhiannon needed help with her hair. She wanted me to make it look like Pippi Longstocking and she didn't trust Byron to do it!

And so I had a busy 6am start to my early day and left the kids in the capable hands of Mr B to carry on and get them to school on time. He did a great job and even stopped to take some photos for me so I could see how great they looked.

Sian was dressed as Marty the Zebra from Madagascar (complete with home made mask printed off from a google search!)

Rhiannon was Pippi Longstocking

...and Gareth was Ben10 (another home print job!)

Thank goodness for Google, the printer and a great husband!

3 comments - click here to leave your comment  

I hate supermarket shopping with my kids. There is nothing worse than dragging three reluctant kids up and down the supermarket aisles while trying to remember what 6 things I have come in for. Unless of course we go straight from school on a hot sticky afternoon when they are more tired and grumpy than normal. So today being a hot and sticky afternoon I knew it wasn't such a great idea to head to Woolworths but I only needed a few things, just a basketful...

The silver lining to shopping with three kids is the 6 extra hands they come with to carry the extra things that overflow out of the basket. They asked could they choose a piece of fruit each. I was happy to let them as it kept them distracted for a few minutes. Rhiannon chose a pear, Gareth a huge mushroom (?) and Sian a tiny kumquat. Ten minutes after walking in the supermarket door I walked out with 6 bags, 3 happy kids and headed for the car. Success!

As we got into the car a couple were walking across the car park towards us. They were having a disagreement. I looked at them and I judged the man instantly. He looked a bit rough, unshaven, tattoos down his forearm. His voice was raised and irritated by whatever the lady had said to him. I worried a bit for her. You hear so many bad stories in the news every week. Domestic violence, road rage, people using fists instead of words to sort out their differences. She looked up and into my eyes, she looked OK but I decided to wait a moment before driving off just in case.

They walked behind my parked car and I waited to see them reappear in the other wing mirror but they didn't. Then he knocked on my driver window. I jumped. He had squeezed in the narrow gap between me and the next car, his face was close against my window and he was pointing at me. "Hey you" I know that I looked terrified. I clamped my hands on the wheel wishing I had started the engine so I could pull away. "Hey you" he shouted again through my closed window. "You left a bag of groceries on the ground behind your car" I opened the door and sure enough the bag of milk was still on the ground next to the boot. He grinned "You looked like you were scared for your life there" She grinned at me too, they held hands and walked on. "I was actually" I grinned back "Thanks"

Note to self: Don't judge a book by its cover.

4 comments - click here to leave your comment  

Is Magnolia Envy a real condition?

I swear it is because I went to a friends house for the first time this weekend and she had about 200 Magnolia trees running along the side of her garden.

OK so I am prone to occasional exaggeration, I'm Irish, I'm genetically predisposed to it, but really, she had at least 20 of the most magnificent trees just overladen with beautiful huge Magnolia flowers.



If I could have uprooted one of those trees and slipped it into my handbag I would have run for the car whooping with excitement. To hell with the friendship, I would have had one of these magnificent beauties to gaze upon as I forgot that my friend Pauline ever existed.

Sorry Pauline, but you have to admit they are worthy of Magnolia Envy. Next time I come visit watch out, I'm bringing my super-duper-big-hold-everything-but-the-kitchen-sink-handbag!

3 comments - click here to leave your comment  

We are still trying to keep that Rarotongan excitement alive so we did a supermarket shop and invested in some tropical vivid coloured fresh fruit juices, paper umbrellas and mini watermelon and set up the Baynham Cocktail/Mocktail bar!

Now that the kids have gone to bed it might be time to get out a bottle of rum and make the mix a bit more tropical!

0 comments - click here to leave your comment  

This weekend has been a real RUGBY one. Yesterday Gareth's team played their final match of the season at their home ground. It was a draw so everyone was a winner (I will not mention the try that we all thought Gar got that was disallowed. It is not important. He is only 6 and we are not the kind of parents to get worked up over a child's sporting event)

Today we drove to Sydney to watch an International Rugby Union game. It was the Australian Wallabies playing The New Zealand All Blacks. What made it more exciting and more special than any other big sporting even we have ever been to before was the fact than some of the kids from Gareth's local rugby club had been pulled out of a hat to play a mini match on the pitch before the main teams played.

A group of families connected to the club travelled in cars and by bus to Sydney and cheered them on as they played their hearts out. What an honour to play to an almost full stadium of 80,225 people!

4 comments - click here to leave your comment  

Bushfire season is the name given to the height of the Australian summer, when temperatures hover in the high 30's and often hit 40+ degrees. This hot dry weather coupled with winds and lightning strikes makes the risk of bushfires higher than normal. We are still in Australian winter so when we saw thick smoke billowing into the sky near our house this weekend we assumed there must be a house fire.

As we got in our car to drive to Sydney we got closer and closer to the smoke. We realised that an area of bushland less than 1 kilometer from our house was burning. We counted 3 Fire Engines and multiple Firefighters still using hoses on the burning trees. The area of bushland was running behind a street of houses and some of the burning trees were actually in peoples back yards.

We had so nearly bought a block of land to build on across the road from where the fire was but had changed our minds at the 11th hour to the land we are now living on. It is still only 1km away but there are less trees directly around our house.

We have seen many news reports on bushfires since we moved to Australia but have never actually driven along a road where the trees are in flames. There has beeen nothing in our local news this morning about any injury or loss of houses so hopefully it was minor in it's damage.

2 comments - click here to leave your comment  

I've been very slack with my blog updates since we returned from our holidays last week. I tried telling Byron that there was nothing exciting after the magic of the holiday and he provided me with a list of things that I could have blogged about if I had wanted to! I guess he is right (as always!)

So here goes... Last Tuesday I celebrated my birthday. I was working that day so I was up at 6am and in the car by 6.30. I decided to wait until the evening to look at my cards or else I would just spoil the reading of the messages by rushing through them. I was nearly bursting when I finally opened my first card at 7pm! We had gone out for tea so I could escape the preparation and tidy up. Heaven! Byron took great pleasure in telling me I am no longer in my mid-thirties but am now nearing his ripe old age of 40. All this because I turned 36! I think he has a cheek. I think 36 still counts as mid thirties. What do you think?

Last week also was the week that the last of the tradesmen trampled their way through our flood damaged house. They put replacement carpets in the three downstairs rooms that had been bare concrete since the flood happened over 6 months ago. Oh the joy of walking on fluffy soft floors!

We caught up on a few health checks last week too. Gareth and Rhiannon had their final booster immunisations against meningitis. Sore arms but boxes of Smarties helped. The next day they were furiously scrubbing the Smarties away as we had our 6 month dental check up. We all got the thumbs up for clean white cavity free choppers so a big sigh of relief until another 6 months time.

And so now I feel a weight off my shoulders. I have shared the mundane details of our last week with you, Byron will stop nagging me and I will try to get back to the massive mountain of ironing that threatens to fall on me at any moment. Watch out on the news for a quirky news story about the mother found buried under 3 tons of crumpled laundry some day over the coming week. It will be me!

4 comments - click here to leave your comment  

She walked out of the school playground a little bit frazzled. It had been an early start and she hadn't wanted to get out of bed. The kitchen was still a mess from the half emptied suitcases. The holiday seemed like a lifetime ago. The hallway had been cluttered with furniture that was dumped there while the flood replacement carpets were relaid. They had made it to school slightly late and missing a hat on the very day the head teacher was doing a uniform inspection.

She was tired, tired from a week of work at the hospital, nursing and tending to the needs of strangers while her own family ran around in chaos. The fridge was empty. She needed to do a grocery shop. The ironing mountain was waiting at home, she knew it would avalanche on her as soon as she would open the front door. When had life become so complicated?

She often daydreamed about a reality TV show host appearing on her door step, de-cluttering her house, organising her kids wardrobes, imagined sitting down for a cup of tea in a spotless kitchen knowing that there wasn't a single item of dirty clothes in the wash basket. That every school shirt was ironed and hanging in the right wardrobe.... bliss!

She breathed in deeply and carried on walking. Not quite ready to get in the car and head to the supermarket she decided to walk a little. She was a story teller at heart, like her father before her, and there was a story she wanted to tell someone. A story about a small school on an island in the middle of nowhere with the same name as this Australian school. A story about a little nun who had welcomed her with a big hug only a week ago. An Indian nun who over the next hour realised she had a connection to the Australian nun that lived next to the school. And so she set out walking through the gum trees to this nuns house, time wasting and delaying the realities of her busy day ahead.

She stepped off the path and walked between the tall gum trees. The brittle leaves crunched under her feet releasing their eucalyptus scent into the air. The sounds of the school melted into the distance and instead she heard bell birds in the distant bushland. The sun was warm on her skin and she closed her eyes as she walked. Smell the roses she thought, Slow down and smell the roses. Be thankful for small things. Appreciate the beauty around you. She felt her heart lighten. She was having an Australian moment. A moment where the beauty of the Australian landscape, so different from the Irish landscape of her childhood, warmed her soul, made her so glad for her new life.

As she walked on eyes half closed, a smile on her lips, the warm sun on her skin she breathed the morning eucalyptus air deeply into her lungs. She felt happy. And then it happened, she walked straight into a monsterous spiders web. It was huge. It left sticky strands all over her face as she screamed and wiped furiously hoping the spider wasn't crawling over her head. Australia is great she thought but it has its realities too. The nun wasn't home so she brushed herself down, sighed and headed off to Woolworths and back to the reality of her messy house.

THE END

2 comments - click here to leave your comment  

Feeling a bit like a helium balloon that has slowly deflated and is gathering dust behind the sofa.

Home from our holidays. Tired already from work. Tripping over half unpacked suitcases and avoiding the massive mountain of laundry....

Unmotivated to blog about anything except to tell you how unmotivated I am to blog.

Bah Humbug!

4 comments - click here to leave your comment  

The Cook Islands are famous for their salt water black pearls. The women here mark their wealth by the size and number of these shimmering dark grey pearls around their necks. The pearls are graded on their size, shape, colouring and perfection. There are pearl shops dotted around the Island and you can also buy them from stalls in the market.

2 comments - click here to leave your comment  

The snorkeling here in Rarotonga has been one of the most memorable experiences of our holiday. The kids started off by having some free snorkeling lessons in the safety of the swimming pool wearing wetsuits, snorkels, masks and flipper all supplied for free by the resort. They were shown how to use the snorkels and how to blow out water from them after diving down to touch the bottom of the pool. It didn't take long to build up confidence.

0 comments - click here to leave your comment  

3 comments - click here to leave your comment  

1 comments - click here to leave your comment