Come on over

Hey all, I got the new blog mostly figured out and the basic skeleton is up and running. I want to make sure we dont lose anyone who doesnt want to be lost. So I ask if you are wanting to read our blog you will comment on the new blog, even if it's anonymously just to let me know that you found it all right. You dont have to say anything special, just that you made it. Thanks everyone. THe new site is called Mrs. Moon rambles and is at moonfamilytales.blogspot.com

..hope to see you there

Verdict is-

All right after a bit of research and thinking and talking to a few people I have decided somewhat what my plans are going forward with the blog. I will create a new one.....and I have decided I will stick with blogger. THere are pros and cons for all the different hosts, but to be honest...I am comfortable and familiar with blogger and since I am not fancy or planning on making money or having a mass following I think blogger will continue to fit the bill just fine. In my dream world my blog would have some pretty cool things, but its time I dont want to take to learn how to do and so Blogger's simplicity will work! With that said I will get a new blog created and let you all know the site info. as soon as that happens! I am still up in the air about some things like....instead of using Erik's full name calling him something else, those sorts of security things. I will link back to this blog I think for a bit and then take the link away. I want to have some sort of link with Erik's adoption story in it still keeping in a safe but informative manner to keep those involved protected but still let new visitors learn about his journey into our family! So dont worry I havent forgotten about this and am working on it. Also I did order a book for this blog to be printed. It was an investment that is worth it I think. I did a condensed version and its still 300+ pages! But its our life starting back in late 2007 so thats pretty good! For anyone who is interested I ordered the book on the website - www.blog2print.com And they even ship internationally for those who have blogs outside of America! I shipped mine to my parents house to keep the shipping costs lower and then when they sent a package they can throw it in. I would have shipped it directly to our APO but that wasnt an option, bummer. But it will still be cheaper I think than shipping internationally. And now I am rambling so I am off.... like a dirty shirt as my dad would say! I will be back soon to let you all know the new address Sommer

Help!

Hey everyone. I just got on to post and upload some pictures and blogger is saying I am maxed out my photo storage. I am trying to figure out if this is true....I guess I have had the blog since 2008ish maybe just before. Ideas and suggestions for alternate blog sites with good storage, etc. would be useful. Blogger did say that I could purchase more storage but I dont want to pay for anything if I dont have to. So pictures on hold until I get this sorted. Thanks in advance for your ideas suggestions. Oh and I must admit I dont condense my pictures in size anymore when I upload because our little netbook doesnt seem to do that and its more time than I want. Is that truly necessary? Sommer

chat time

Erik is getting to be quite the talker and although we share a lot of pictures we dont often share video. This one took me nearly half the day to upload but I know that it will be well treasured so I will start making the effort to get more video up. THe video started out pretty slow as he was pretty involved in playing with his "cloud dough" but then you get a tiny glance into his imagination and hear him talk pretty well. I didnt realize how shaky I was with the camera...my apologies. Also while Erik does a fairly decent aussie accent....I understand mine is completely horrible and only did it so that I could get Erik to do his accent. So aussies-I know I cant even try to begin to pretend that I have an accent.

Captain Erik

Erik is named after Lindsay's best friend who passed away in his early twenties. He is now called Junior on such occassions when both Erik's are being spoken of so as not to confuse. So Junior was given a bear that was found in Erik's (senior) apartment when his family went through his belongings. The bear is a pilot and dressed in traditional pilot get up with the aviation goggles, red scarf, leather bomber jacket and leather cap with ear coverings. Junior loves this bear and for some reason loves to undress him. Junior then takes his aviation goggles and places them on his own face and becomes a pilot. Quite funny and it will be a surprise to him one day when those goggles meant for a teddy bear won't fit on his big noggin! And yes Erik was a pilot - an alaskan bush pilot to be exact.....so junior is destined for aviation!

footy fanatics

Winter here this year has been rather what you would expect to see in the stub-tropics. Cool and rain off and on. The crazy thing to me is that its supposed to be the dry season but this year there has been plenty of rain! Good thing for here since there was a drought for so many years but I have felt like I was living in seattle and that is not what I wanted when I knew we would be living in Australia! Oh well. So in between the overcast rainy days are the beautiful perfect winter days. One day we found ourselves wander to the local rugby field to play some footy.

Erik actually used his money he had saved from chores to buy a footy ball holder thing. You know the thing that holds the ball so you can run up to it and kick it. I know the name of it but cant think of it. Anyhow the field was basically mud but we had fun anyway. We had taken a picnic lunch and I sat in the sun on the bottom of the bleachers trying to stay warm. It was colder that day than I expected. Although you cant tell because these two are males and naturally are warm and dont get cold easy. Maybe I am a wuss whose body has adapted to well to the tropical weather : )

 Working on lining up and getting feet in the right position to kick

 Practice swinging legs for kicks

 And there he goes....total airball but nice kick!

 Sweet shot, kicked it!

 Hi mom, cant stand here very long, sun is in my eyes.

Another good swing of the legs but didnt quite get the ball right.

 Food break, yummy deviled eggs and smiles

Practising the pass off. In real rugby lindsay wouldnt be laying on the ground but would be bent over and pas the ball under hislegs with his feet. Erik isnt quite coordinated yet to do this so this is how they pass off....lay on the ground and pass through the legs

Daddy tackle....and grab the ball upside down

And not a rugby pose but for all you gridiron (American football) fans here is your traditional football pose! Its not clear because I can hardly catch him while he zooms around but I kind of like that!

A family Drive In..

The pictures of this evening weren't anything huge but it was so fun, I just had to share. Lately I have been trying to think of ideas of how to let loose a bit with Erik. I think I often push him a bit hard and since he is an only child and who knows if more will come I want to parent him perfectly because it is my one shot. I know thats wrong and that is why I turned to our church for inspiration on how to help myself as a mother loosen up a bit, so he could enjoy things more and I wont freak out if he gets mud on his boots.

Ok, ok, its not that bad, but I definitely need to let up some slack. I need to let him take more risks and not always be so rigid about rules. While I was looking for guidance I found myself looking for things on our church's website. There is a section under relief society entitled Mother Education that I was keen to dive into, but my computer just wouldnt let me open the links. So then I decided to just check out the family section. I went under -wholesome recreation.....and behold I was filled with all sorts of inspiration. Basically after reading different quotes and articles from various church leaders...I decided one way I could let go and we could all benefit was to do some more things in our home, simple things! We do a lot of spontaneous things in our family. Lindsay is uber spontaneous and cant sit still for long so we often head out for adventure, but after reading I was realizing it is important to create tradition and fun wholesome recreational things in our home! I want all of our family to want to be home and be excited to do things, so I decided to a friday movie night with a twist.

 Family Movie night....drive in style. Now I didnt come up with this completely on my own, I have seen variations of this on the web, but it fit the bill. I told the family a couple nights prior of my plans and showed Erik how he was going to 'drive' into family movie night in the laundry basket. We were all stoked. It was amazing how something so simple gave even myself something to really look forward to at the end of the week.

The day prior when I was at the shops I let Erik pick out two bags of lollies and we got soda, which I never buy. Friday night we made dinner as a family (yummy macademia-coconut shrimp from this site), went and ran an errand, and then came home for drive in night. Because I allowed myself time to mentally prepare for this event....I had already decided I wasnt going to worry about Erik staying up too late, I wasnt going to harp on him for lolly intake and we would all just have a blast.

Blast we had! We watched Home Alone and it was fantastic! Erik loved watching the bad guys crash and get hurt (I love that he laughs out loud at movies)! We all had some sweets and enjoyed each others company! He stayed in his 'car' for about half the movie. I took the tray away for him after he finished his treats but it was still a bit cramped. Overall success and will be happening in our house again, I am already looking forward to the next one!

Another success- we figured out that night how to change our dvd player to read all regions dvds so now we can watch all our dvds  we brought over but have just stashed away! Win! The missionaries taught us that one-ha!

Computer lesson

I really debated this moment for a while. I realized that in taking this next step in teaching Erik to start learning the computer I may truly be shooting myself in the foot, but in the end I obviously took the risk. So far so good.

I didnt know if I was ready to expose him to this for a variety of reasons, him wanting it all the time, he is only 3 and thus there is no need for a computer in his life, etc. But if I am going to let him sit in front of a screen I would like it to be interactive sometimes so I went for it on a cold icky day when we were staying inside all day.

 The first obstacle to overcome was the laptop's mouse and his urge to touch the screen like an ipad

 We headed over to the Sesame Street website and tried out a few of their games.

 He was liking this dinosaur digging one, he got the concept of the mouse pretty well but had trouble with the little detail of lifting the finger off and clicking without moving the cursor.

And out comes that tongue that makes it appearance when he is really focused on something.

He hasn't asked me continuously to play on the computer nor has he thrown a fit when I ask him to get off so we are still good. I know this may lead to obstacle down the road but really I want to be the one that he starts learning and exlporing the computer with. He already knows the ipad well and we have had to sit and chat with him about you tube and how he cant just touch every video that looks good because the internet can be dangerous, so here we are. I remember my mom saying that she hosted things at our house when we were teens and growing up because it was a way for her to observe and keep us safe from a distance because she knew just what was happening if it was at our house. So I took that as my motto, I want him to explore and learn with me not with someone else.

I kept the session short-about 20 minutes and stopped while he was still having fun. It was perfect. The next time we did it, he was having fun and I think 20 minutes is about good for him. He has a hard time sitting still for an activity for long so it was good. He wasnt bored at that point but he wasnt completely entrenched anymore either. I think we will save this fun for those days when we are shut in or are super bored but I am glad to have made the leap.

Party Animal

Erik was invited to a birthday party where the parents had hired a local petting zoo fo sorts to come bring some australian wildlife for the kids to learn about and touch.

To start off the party there was food (smart to have all the food taken care of before the creepy crawlies came out!)

There was a pizza delivered that was a square meter, it was ginormous! And it was funny because 3/4 of the pizza was pepperoni-a safe bet for kids and 1/4 supreme style for adults. Well here in Oz, sausage is different than in the states (this host family is also American). Let me digress for a moment-a big tradition in my family is to have summer sausage at family gatherings, but especially christmas. There is no such thing here in Oz-which was sad when we were trying to find a suitable alternative last christmas :(. Anyhow pepperoni is almost always spicy, not like in america, and thats all right. But with this large pizza, many kids didnt eat much....well combined with excitement of other kids, party happenings, and the adults didnt have to be shy!

 Sweet little guy, enjoying his. He likes spicy so he ate a bit of it, but then gave up.

 After food and treats, we all gathered in the  front garden (lawn) to see what animals we would get to see. There was such a crowd they tethered off a half circle for the kids to stay behind since chitlins seem to always scoot closer and closer - you know like the tv.....all of a sudden they could lick it if they stuck out their tongue. It was quite funny.

 Some spiky looking lizard. I know I am not good about remembering all the animal names and things I learn here, I should take notes or something, I just dont have it in me. I just like to take it in and move on. this one was named "Spike" I remember and it was going after a little worm on the pillow case.

 Erik reaching out to touch a different lizard. It had a head like a turtle kind of but the body of a lizard and skin kind of  like a snake, very interesting. Erik was hit and miss with the animals. He would get all anxious to have it be his turn and touch it and then he would panic and retract. Unfortuantely there were so many kids so he didnt have much time to change his mind if he did want to reach back out, so he missed out on a few.

 turtle...

Snake...smallish compared to the one you will see soon...

 I practically bribed him to have her put the snake around his neck. This was nearly the best pic I could capture of it-you can see it all in his face.....I am only doing this for you mom! He did not enjoy it in the least. And rightly so, snakes are scary, he doesnt like seeing them at the koala sanctuary too much either. Actually the first handful of times we went he wouldnt even go in the building. So this was a big step.

 The big snake!

 The big one slithering back into its box!

 This was a really cool looking bird. It looks sort of like an owl but its not one.

All in all Erik had a blast, there were lots of cool things to see. There was lots of fun food, there was a lot to learn and just fun times to be had.