WEEKEND....

I love the weekends - we get to spend a little time with family, Saturday is cleaning day (love a newly cleaned house), and we get to go to Church and feel the Spirit. Well last weekend was great.

On Saturday we woke up to really warm weather - we pulled out shorts and capris for the day. It felt so nice to see the sun all day long! I have been wanting to go to Paddy's market in the city for a long time now and since I am going home and need some Christmas presents to take with me I thought this might be a great place to go and get some Aussie style to take home. I looked up online to see what times it was opened and saw that there was a market closer to home by the Olympic Center. We decided to check it out instead. However, it was only a fresh food market - lots of fruit and veg. Oh well! We got a box of apples and one of oranges. It reminded me so much of the markets we went to in China. and I was so upset that I had forgotten my camera. People everywhere, yelling out of prices, and you get to taste the products. It was an experience. We did walk really quickly past the fish - really, I cannot ever get used to that smell. We are going to try Paddy's market in the city next weekend. This time I will remember my camera.

After our quick trip to the market we decided that since we were close to IKEA we might as well stop by. We are planning on putting Rylee in a toddler bed by the end of the year so we thought we would go and take a look. Well, we purchased a bed for her -although it is sitting in the garage probably at least until after our trip to the US. I know that for some of you this may seem too early to put her in a "big girl" bed - but this is about when I have always done it with the other kids too. They seem to adjust fine and I don't have to worry about them trying to climb out and hurt themselves. Since it works for me this is what I do.

The older kids love IKEA because they can play in the play place there, we get hot dogs, a drink, and an ice cream cone - what could be better!!! Madi was even happier when we got there and she saw the fairy princess face painting. She looked pretty good - luckily it all came off in the bath!!

When we finally got home on Saturday there was no time to rest. The lawn was so bad it needed to be mowed - it was actually getting pretty embarrassing. So we spent some time outside weeding, Kev mowed the lawn, and the kids played. The back yard lawn hasn't grown much, but the front yard grows like crazy because it is all clovers. I also have to tell you about Kev's lawn mower. It is the cutest little thing you have ever seen and so quiet. When we got here we had to buy a lawn mower. We didn't really want an expensive one because we have one back home and knew that we would sale it when we left anyway. So we decided on an electric lawn mower - it was the cheapest one we saw. It only takes about two minutes for the bag to fill up so Kev is constantly emptying it into the green bin. It is really quite though. It is like vacuuming the lawn.

Rylee spent most of her time picking the clover flowers and putting them in her little truck. She was sad when she had to move out of the way of the lawn mower and then all of the flowers had disappeared.

After the yard work was done we decided to go to the 7-11 to get slurpees. The kids had seen a 7-11 a few weeks ago when they were out with Kev and Madi remembered that it was where you get slurpees - of course a promise was made to get them so we had to fulfill that promise. I packed a picnic dinner and we took our slurpees and went to a park for dinner and a play. The perfect ending to a busy, yet fun, day - until Madi fell off the swings and scrapped up her elbows pretty badly. We then headed home, had baths, and fixed Madi up.

Well Sunday we woke up to a rainy, cooler, day. Church was a great - Primary was the usual interesting place to be. There is always something going on in Primary.....

While I was making dinner Kev took out the garbage and came in to tell the kids to come and see. This is what we saw right outside our front door. BEAUTIFUL!!!