Decadent Delites

I remember my mum talking about this person who had once said to her "I will not go to heaven if they do not have pavlova there".

I thought tonight i might share some of my heavenly must haves:

1: World famous in New Zealand - Tim Tam Slam.
First step, make a Hot Chocolate from Cadbury drinking Chocolate. It must be made with milk not milk and hot water. Although you can make it with cream and milk. mmmm.
Then get yourself a Tim Tam (double coat is best), bite of a small amount from each end, place one end in your hot chocolate and proceed to suck your drink through like with a straw. Only suck until you have a small mouthful of hot chocolate then quickly eat your melting chocolate biscuit before it falls apart in your hands. This is the best way to eat chocolate biscuits. I was thinking the other day as i was indulging myself in a few of these, that if i could only add maybe some mint essence to the hot chocolate, then it would be perfect.

Notice how its an empty packet!!

2: This is one that i craved a lot while pregnant with Madison.
It is very simply a bowl of ice cream with milk and or cream poured over the top. mmmm oh so creamy.

3: Good old homemade milk shakes made from fruit, yoghurt, ice cream, milk and maybe cream if you have some.

4: Gingernuts and cream.
My Mum is the only person i have known to make this the way that we do. Most people i know make like a log of gingernuts and cream. I on the other hand find that somewhat messy and awkward to eat. So i like my mums version.
Heat your oven to 180°C. Place gingernuts on a muffin tray and heat in the oven for about 5min, or until gingernuts are soft. Push the gingernuts down into the tray so the cup. When they are cooled, dollop some cream in the middle. Much less messy to eat.
I made these tonight and ate them all before i even got to writing this section of my post. I added grated chocolate to the tops because i thought it looked yummier.
Yes yes i know, all my heavenly delights contain a lot of milk and or cream. Rather naughty for someone who may have a mild intolerance to the substance. My mum and my 2 sisters can not have dairy and i have been told that i to may not be able to tolerate it as well as others. But i have not had any adverse affects to having dairy. Well sure ok every now and then if i drink milk my stomach will get a mild twinge but thats all that happens. I did at one point say that i was going to cut dairy from my diet. But that lasted all of half a day. One sip of rice milk and i went running back to my beloved cows milk. I do not like soy milk so i thought i would give rice milk a go. Turns out, i don't like that either. But its not like cream is a big part of my diet. Cream is a special treat that i only buy every now and then. Mostly when i go shopping on my own i will get myself a little bottle and make it last as long as i can. I do love drinking it straight.
But for now i will continue on my dairy seen as i am nursing a baby and need all the calcium and milk producing factors as possible. Well thats what i like to tell myself.

Sticky fingers

Kids seem to have the stickiest fingers i have ever known about. Sticky in the sense that they get into everything they shouldn't, and sticky the kind of sticky that you need to wash your hands from.

As i was making the kids lunch, i reached to the margarine and found that it had disappeared. I hunted all through my kitchen but had no luck in its reappearance. So i ventured out to see if it had grown legs and walked right out of the kitchen. It had indeed walked out of the kitchen but it had not grown its own legs, it instead enticed Jahshia with its sunny bright colour which she could not resist. I found her sitting in the couch munching away on its golden goodness with butter like globs innocently sticking to her smeared face.



And again on Thursday she comes running into the living room, dressed in her favourite pretty dress up dress, clutching the creamy golden goodness that she had only just swiped from the kitchen. Swiped while Daddy was washing the dishes and completely oblivious to the crime that was about to unfold right under his nose. Luckily i was in the living room and was able to apprehend the culprit of the margarine theft and thus return the stolen item before any of it was gobbled away by this sly little mischief.



Our mischief Devin too has a sneaky appetite. Not for the buttery goodness of margarine but for the more scandalously seductive chocolate biscuits. Or any biscuit for that matter. As soon as his sticky little fingers learnt how to open the biscuit cupboard, all of its contents where now found in the pits of the mischiefs stomach.
He is also the mischief who finds amusement in throwing mums baking goods around the house. When he was 11 months old, not even walking yet, crawled into the kitchen, opened the pantry and proceeded to make it "snow" flour in our kitchen. I found him hovering over the flour bucket, covered from head to toe in flour. Even his eye lashes had turned white with caked on flour. As this mischief has gotten older, the desire to feed the house with baking goods has in no form ceased. Just the other day i stumbled upon his recent baking affair in the living room. I walked in to find a bag of wheat bran had been opened with Devin proceeding to sprinkle its contents all over my nice vacuumed floor and poor mischief Jahshia. Although it seems that Jahshia very much enjoyed her shower of bran flakes and would have in no way complained about this fun event.
Unfortunately the pictures of the floor covered in wheat bran did not turn out. They where rather dark and you couldn't see the mess. But i thought the pictures of Jahshia covered in bran with a smiling Devin would suffice.

Beautiful Dunedin

One of the biggest selling points for us in purchasing our home was the breath taken views that we can see from every bedroom and the lounge. I find this picture is far to small and does little justice to its real beauty. We can see from Mt Cargill to the ocean.

When i woke Wednesday morning, I open the curtains to find clouds rolling beside the Mornington hills which would have been over town and the harbor. Here are some of the awesome pictures i captured. Unfortunately these pictures only show a small amount of beauty that the eye sees, so it was much more spectacular than what you can see in this blog.



Our dream is to one day build a mega deck spanning the length of our house. When that is done, we can then enjoy our views while sitting outside in the nice Dunedin sun sipping away on our mormon cocktails. I don't think there is such a thing as mormon cocktails, but it sounds cool and sophisticated.

I have big dreams for our house. Another reason to why be bought this house was that we saw potential to renovate and make it more our own home. I so wish that i had all the money i need right now to do all we want to our house, But that wont happen for a while yet. I can't wait.

Birthday Blitz

New Born
To
2 Years

Happy Birthday

Seen as it is Jahshias birthday today, i thought it rather appropriate to dedicate this post entirely to Jahshidom.

This little mischief burst into the world at 10 minutes to 2, early Saturday morning, 19th August 2006. She was by far my easiest labour, seen as i refused to believe i was actually in labour till around 11pm - only a few short hours before she arrived. I only arrived at the hospital around 12.30am. She came racing into this world only 12 minutes after the midwife gave the "all clear" to start pushing. She must have thought she was running late and had to hurry seen as she has been my only mischief to have gone past my due date.

Facts about our Jahshie

* Full name - Jahshia Alice Bunge-Krueger
* Name came from a combination of Jacob and Alicia, middle name Great Great Grandmothers name.
* First rolled over on Christmas day2006
* First walked - Just after her first birthday. One weekend she just got up and walked.
* First word - Well she doesn't speak much and im guessing she will just one day decide she will talk. But she understands so much about what we say and the world around her. But the words you hear her utter most frequently -"my baba"
* Her favourite toys are her babies.
* I always thought that she would be into cars and trucks because that is what Devin is into, so it is what we had around the house. But at 14 months old, she found a fluffy scarf of mine and set out draping it about her neck and strutting around the house like a she was the prettiest thing on earth (shh i think she was)
* She loves her food. She will eat almost anything you put in front of her.
* She loves her cuddles.
* She was a mummies girl but is fast becoming a little daddies girl
* She loves shoes, dresses and Skirts. She once though a hissy fit in the store because she wanted the pretty flower sandals and she wanted to wear them right now.
* She will go through her draws when she is meant to be going to sleep and play dress up with all her cloths.
* She cries if you put a hat over her "pretty pretties" which are her pig tails that must be tied in her hair on demand.
* She loves dressing as a fairy.
* She on occasion played rough and tumble with Devin.
* She has played tipped dirt all over Jahshia and absolutely loved it.
* Loves her family and little sister Madison.
* Has tried to breast feed her babies.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

We love you Jahshia and we look forward to many more Birthdays xxx

Schools the life for me??

I have been thinking lately about returning to school and starting some meaningful tertiary study. I have always found an interest in Psychology but never thought i had the smarts to go through with my interests. But over the last few years that pull and desire to follow this interest has become stronger. I can not help tho, to recall my dreaded school days and lack of scholastic abilities. These thoughts have been and still are my barrier i must over come in order to pursue these desires to study. I thought i might share my school adventures to maybe help me get over my lack of self worth in this area.

My earliest memories of schooling was going to Kindergarten. This is where i meet one of my best friends Sina. We ended up staying friends up until 7th form - last year of high school. We still sometimes talk now but we have gone down very different paths in life and have drifted apart.
My memories of kindy are of painting, shadow puppets and hiding up the tree during clean up time.
My first teacher was very scary. I can not even recall her name only but to call her "Witch Lady" which was our endearing name we used for her. Good thing i was born in November and only had to endure her for a few short weeks till the school year was over. I do however also remember seeing all my kindy mates sitting under her wrath as well.
The next important thing that happened in my school life was that i was subject to J3. For those that are unfamiliar with the old way of school years, i will enlighten you on the order.
Primary school
- New entrants (which you did if you where born after march)
- Junior1
- J2
- J3 or Standard1 (some unlucky people did both)
- Std2
- Std3
- Std4
Intermediate school
- Form 1
- Form 2
High school
- 3rd form
- 4th form
- 5th form
- 6th form
- 7th form

Although i was not unlucky enough to do both J3 and Std1, i still knew that the smart people where never left behind in the junior part of school. When i did move into the senior sector of my primary school i went direct to Std2. Which would have been good, but it was over shadowed by my perception of the class set up. Often in our classes we would have mixed years. Std1 mixed Std2, Std2 mixed Std3, Std3 mixed Std4. I was forever the higher year in my classes. This made me feel like i was stupid. I longed to be the lesser year so i would feel smart.
Also as i journeyed up the ranks of primary school, i noticed that the songs we sung in assembly became rather babyish. It's not that i outgrew the songs, its that the music teacher ceased to sing those "grown up" songs and replaced them with ones i thought should be in pre-school. There is one that has stuck in my head because i loathed it. I have forgotten most of the words but still remember the tune. The words that i despised the greatest have never left me..
"yum yum gobble gobble crunch crunch crunch, i've got a lovely bone to munch"
These words should never be sung by 10 year olds in school assembly. I already felt stupid by always being in the higher rank of the class, and now they make us sing baby songs. Nice.

Then came Intermediate. Form1, I was put in an average class. Thats fine by me because i was never made to feel stupid. But alas, this was the year i become gravely ill with cancer and spent 5 months in hospital. On my return back to school, in the second year of Intermediate, i had the privilege of choosing my teacher. I had unfortunately chosen a teacher who did not understand my situation and i felt showed little or no mercy towards my recovery. This year holds some rather untoward emotions and situations that even to this day brings tears to my eyes. I often light-heartedly amuse myself about how i can easily talk about my dance with death with little or no sorrow, But bring up the year after and my integration into life and the tears start to flow.

High school. Need i say more. I am yet to find someone with only the fondest memories of this turbulent affair. I was shoved in the "dumb ass" class even tho according to the teachers "there is no streaming". But when you are 3rd form sitting in Math class, the teacher hands you a colour the squares picture where if you colour all boxes with half fractions it revels a picture, your mind starts to put its own puzzle together to revel that there is in fact a "dumb" class. Just to add to the torment, there was a stream of questions from the class to the teacher "Miss is 3/4 half? Miss is 5/8 half? Miss is 2/6 half?". How on earth do they not know about fractions? Isn't that primary school learning?. In my class i was dubbed "brainy", this bugged me because i knew that i was not brainy, it was in fact that the rest of the class was morons.
To sum up High School it was a stream of useless teachers mixed with ones that i swear hated me with a pinch of being tossed to the side. Its no wonder that when it came time for my youngest sister to go to High School mum said to her "Choose what ever school you want to go to, even private if you like, just not Avonside girls" My other sister also had troubles while she was there. I will never forget 6th form Math. I was having a lot of difficulty trying to understand everything. I had an average test mark of 30%. My parents payed for a tutor 2 hours a week. My test marks suddenly jumped to an average of 75%. Go figure.
I also do not have School Cert. English.
My Art History teacher in 7th form kept telling me i can't write essays. She would tell me how i should be writing them, so i would do it how she wanted, but still she would tell me i didn't know how to write them. I suppose it didn't help that she was actually the Japaneses teacher who the school decided to have her teach Art History because she took a paper on it at Uni.

I like doing personality tests. Ive done a few. Every time i do one about my type of learning i come out highly kinesthetic, which means i learn by doing. Maybe thats why i failed so miserably at school. Or it could have been a mixture of both learning style and useless teachers, who knows. All i know is that im terrified of going back to study because i do not want to fail miserably again. But i have this urge and desire to learn.

Another personality test i have indulged in is the test of "Introvert or extrovert". I seem to come up smack in the middle. 50% on either side. Go figure. But thats a whole new post all together.

Green eyes of jelousy

'mummy talk to me' Devin so kindly demanded.
'what would you like to talk about?' I replied.
'bees. bees in my mouth'
'oh really. what are they doing in your mouth?'
'ummm bees in my mouth'
'thats interesting. what colour are bees?'
'ummmm black'
'good boy. what other colour are they?'
'ahhh white'
'are you sure? is there yellow on bees to?'
'yeah yellow, bees black and yellow'
'where do bees live?'
'in the garden. bees live in the garden. bees sleep on the flowers'
'wow thats cool isn't it Devin. what do bees eat?'
'bees eat the butterflies'
'ooo ok then'

5 min of silence

'Mummy talk to me'
'alright Devin'
'spiders in my nose'

..............................................

Its harder than what you may think. Some people think that being at home all the time is so good and relaxing. Its not relaxing with kids. Not one single second of your life is your own. You are on call 24 hours 7 days a week. There is no such thing as a weekend, if you are sick you can't "call in" sick and spend the day in bed and you are constantly thinking about what other people need (mainly your children) and you forget about yourself and what you need. Your day is full of screams, crys and the almighty hissy fit tantrums. Although you are never alone, you get very lonely. The conversations you have are either ones along the lines of the one i mentioned before, which is one i had with Devin the other day, or they are to yourself. They say the first sign of insanity is talking to yourself and the second is replying to yourself. Im defiantly on the road to insanity with that one. Ive even started talking to, and answering myself when Jakob is around due to its just become a habit.

I love my children, i love them to bits and would do anything i can to be there for them. I do not regret having them at all. I do however get rather jealous of the things that Jakob is able to do right now that im not. In the grand scheme of life, this time i have now is so very short and there will soon come a time when i can do all those things that i can't now.

The things that im rather jealous of is being able to go out and not worry about the kids, he can go to the movies if he wants, he can have proper conversations with people, he can go spend time with mates and not have to say "oh hold up, baby needs a feed". I went to a Relief Society activity not that long ago. It was hard because Madison wanted me a lot and i felt that i couldn't relax and have fun. Other people came along and held and cuddled her so i could make my crafty things which was great, but i still couldn't relax. He also has many things he can talk to people about. His drama, His kids, His work etc. I have kids and thats about it. Thats all my life seems to be and when i meet with friends thats all we seem to talk about. Kids and nappies and all that stuff. I crave talking about other things, but other things have no place in my mind right now because it is so full up with baby stuff. Some nights i even go to sleep with the echos of Children screaming ringing in my mind.

The biggest dilemma that i seem to be going through with these green eyes is a concert. Jakob has recently discovered the band "Disturbed" who are coming to the good old New Zealand and to my home town Christchurch. I have liked this band since before i met Jakob and he was never keen to listen to this band till the other night when i found an album of theirs for cheep. So i bought it and put it on while Jakob was out of the room. His ears perk up and he thinks "hey these guys are rather awesome, Im going to their concert"
WHAT!!!!!! In one night he is almost forced to listen to something he hasn't wanted to for years and then declares hes going to their concert. My concert that ive been waiting for since i was 19 years old, and i can't go to it because i have a highly dependent child. When i first found out they where coming i thought "Dam. I can't go. Oh well these things happen when you have children and id prefer to have Madison than go to their concert". And that was that, till Jakob declared he was going.

I don't want him to go because i can't go and i don't see that as fair. But as he has said "what happens if they turn out to be one of my all time favourite bands and i missed out on their concert because you had a tan-trum and wouldn't let me go".
I don't want him to go, but i don't want to stop him from going.
Having him go will make me so jealous and grumpy because if anyone should go, i think it should be me. But stopping him will make me feel bad because i don't want to tell him what he can and can't do and what happens if it dose end up being one of his all time favourite bands.
What id like to do is spend that money he would have on a ticket and gas money traveling up to Christchurch on our house. Have it go towards finishing the fence and fixing bits and pieces. It wouldn't be much money but its almost half what we need to fence part of our section (thats building the fence ourselves).

So who am i going to be? The green eyes sulking in the corner, or the controlling banshee.

I hate dilemmas!!

p.s i love Madisons milky smell.