July Highlights

Lia's Birthday

My cousin Lindsay (Lia) celebrated her 23rd birthday on 20th July.  Lia has been doing 'work experience' with me since when she was 15 years old! Her first job was assisting me with the clean up of the events storage room when I was a PR Assistant at Marrickville City Council. This room was called the 'cage' and it was situated underneath an old town hall. Not the place one would like to clean out alone! Even now, we cannot look at flags or banners the same way! I got her to work by telling her it would be good work experience for her and she could put it down on her resume. I then started working at Cancer Council as an Events Coordinator where for the past 7 years Lia has volunteered at my events including Australia's Biggest Morning Tea, Daffodil Day, Pink Ribbon Day and has been a Fairfield Relay For Life committee member for 6 years. In that time Lia completed her HSC in the States top 8%, graduated with a double degree in Economics and Commerce (or something fancy like that) from University of New South Wales and now has a HR job at a top firm so obviously she does not need to volunteer with me for experience any longer! This year she told me that she wants to volunteer for another charity.........as if I'm going to let her go!!! Haha

Apart from being a wonderful volunteer, Lia is also a talented cake baker/decorator. We give her a theme or concept and the result is a brilliantly decorated cake. So, for her birthday this year, her sister Tildy, my sister Flavia and myself went all out to make some delicious desserts for her. This is the result:

Clockwise from top right: Creme Brulee by Tildy and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting by me, Triple layer white buttermilk cake with buttercream and coconut icing Birthday cake made by me, White chocolate oreo cheesecakes made by my sister and Strawberry fruit jelly made by my Aunty Zinda. Lia was impressed by our efforts and felt the love.  It was all so delicious!

Happy Birthday Aunty Lia! Keira and Jaime love singing Happy Birthday and blowing out candles

Cheeky cousins creating their own fun at the party. Jaime rode the bike pulling Keira who was sitting on a chair behind him and then they swapped. Clever kids :)

Lilly's Visit

Cousin Lilly stayed over for a weekend. It was great for me as I had an extra pair of hands from a very willing helper! The pictures above are snapshots of what Lilly did over the weekend which included looking after the twins when we were at Play School, changing nappies, feeding the babies their solid food and comforting crying twins (she was pretending to scream in the picture or did she really want to scream? haha) Lilly also played with Keira and read her books. What a wonderful help she was and great practice for when her twin sisters arrive. She is going to be a great big sister! xo

Play School

Play School has started and on our first day, it wasn't as hectic as we thought it be! Hopefully it will continue to be haha but I know that Keira and myself had an enjoyable time.  They had a fun lesson on the Human body and next month they are learning about the Olympics :)

The 2-3 year old class learning shapes and colours. Hyrum looks disinterested, Mercedes is concentrating on colouring in, Kingston playing with cars and Keira playing with shapes.