Meet the Family

We are Team G. Our family is not story-book perfect (those families are only in the movies, or on the Prairie)

We wrestle, we argue, we whinge with the best of them... but we are determined that good times outweigh the bad 10-1; that our kids grow up secure, knowing they are loved; that they have plenty of great memories of fun and silliness to bring a warm fuzzy glow when they look back on their childhood.

We're working on it. In the meantime we like to crazy-dance in the kitchen, dress up at the slightest provocation and have takeaways and DVDs on a Friday night cosied up in our PJ's...

Names have been changed to protect the guilty, so meet Dash (7), Miss Fab (5), Scrag (2) and Mr G (their daddy).

T H E   K I D S . . .

Dash: Seven years old, a mad keen football player; green eyed, freckle-faced funny guy.

Dash is best known for his gazillion soccer goals and his ability to name all the teams and players in the English Premier League. He is a bit of a clown, a bit sensitive, a bit silly.

He can be very charming with young ladies and has been known to waltz and pour tea. Dash is a fussy eater who would munch happily on junk food all day if I let him.

My favourite thing with Dash: Bedtime Snuggles and Chats after Dark

Miss Fab (a.k.a. Princess): Five and a half going-on-fifteen; Miss Fab is a big personality. You can hear her coming long before she comes into view.

She is a girl of extremes - blazing sunshine or thunderstorms - with not much in between. Miss Fab loves pretty clothes and lipgloss and trying new hairdos. She also loves swinging on the monkey-bars and turning cartwheels.

A girly girl who gives the boys a run for their money, Miss Fab is kindhearted, generous and eager to please. She is also a sucker for Sharpay Evans - so HSM is banned from our house until further notice.

My Favourite thing with Miss Fab: Long squishy cuddles, kissing her velvety cheeks and playing "I love you more..."

Scrag: Two years old, Scraggy is our baby. He is a bundle of joy, a character, a laughing charmer. Scrag loves choo-choos and cars.

His favourite thing is Thomas the Tank Engine. Scrag keeps us all laughing. He has twinkly eyes brimming with mischief and is a permanent ray of sunshine in our family.

All of us dote on him. He is sturdy and strong, tall for his age and full of mischief. his favourite words are "no!" and "mine!" - a typical two-year-old but not terrible at all.  (Click HERE for Scrag's Story)

My favourite thing with Scrag: Receiving his sloppy kisses and when he plonks himself on my knee for a cuddle... I breathe in his hair and kiss his sweet little cheeks and feel my heart about to burst with love.

T H E   H U B B Y . . .

Mr G: Tall, platinum and handsome, Mr G is my younger man (the platinum George-Clooney look is very appealing, but has only been in evidence since having kids!) 

Mr G is English, a Geordie from the North-East who emigrated to NZ in 1996. His strengths are: His generosity, his integrity, his kind heart and his sense of fun and adventure (among other things). His downside? A slight obsession with dust and paranoia about security. But such minor things in the face of all that greatness.

Mr G is legendary at Birthdays and Anniversaries. He spoils me rotten. We have been married for 10 years this year, and we probably love each other more now than we did then.

Favourite thing with Mr G: Drinking wine on the couch watching re-runs of British comedy series like Auf Wiedersehn Pet and Benidorm. And being wrapped in his big tall strongess when I am scared. That's all you're getting - this is a family blog!

Some Family Adventures:

• Our UK Holiday
• Clown Camping
• Going Commando
• Lessons from a Theme Park

T H E   G R A N D P A R E N T S . . .

Nan & Grandad: My parents; they live in Palmerston North (which is too far away for my liking). Dad is a former-pastor, currently a postman. He had a heart attack last year which gave us all a scare.

Mum is one of my best friends. We ring each other up and chat regularly. It's mum who taught me to make Christmas and birthdays special. Me and my sister Kris are working on getting them to move north to Auckland! Watch this space. My Favourite thing with mum and dad: having them here!

Grandma (a.k.a. Winnie): Mr G's mum, who lives in Newcastle, England. Much too far away for all our liking. You could go a long way to find a better mother-in-law than mine! She is young hip and cool.

She loves my kids to bits and seeing as Mr G is her only child, my little-uns get the benefit of Grandma's undivided attention and devotion. Grandma comes to visit us about once a year. The kids just love her to bits (and so do we).

Favourite thing about Grandma: Having such a lovely mother-in-law!

Brown Grandad: Mr G's dad, now deceased. Originally from Scotland, Brown Grandad re-married and emigrated to NZ when Mr G was little. If he hadn't been here, Mr G would never have come to this fair land, we would never have met and this blog would have never been written. ("Brown Grandad" is how the kids distinguished between my dad and Mr G's dad; it's their name for him)

We miss Brown Grandad; he died of asbestosis (cancer) in December 2008. We will never forget him. xx

T H E   O T H E R   R E L L I E S . . .



My Siblings: I have two younger sisters and a brother, spread all over.

Aunty Kris, Uncle Craig and cousin Joel live in Auckland. Meet them here

Aunty Hayley, Uncle Gav and eight cousins live down south. We saw them here.

Uncle John, Aunty Judith and cousins Hector & Hannah live in Spain, near Madrid. They came to visit us here.

Mr G's Sisters...

Aunty Sarah & Uncle Buzz; Aunty Anna & Uncle Mark live in Whangarei. Sarah and Anna are Mr G's sisters from Brown Grandad's second marriage. We went to Anna's wedding here...

The British Rellies: 
There are lovely aunties, uncles and cousins untold in Newcastle, all bursting with love for our kidlets. Read about how we met them all here.

Great-Grandad John: Lives in Newcastle, England (Grandma's dad). He is in his eighties and still going strong. The kids loved meeting him when we visited the UK in 2009.

Great-Grandad Jack: Lives in Greenock, Scotland (Brown Grandad's father). He is also in his eighties and still going strong. We also met him in 2009 when we visited :)


That's our bunch. We are loud. We are messy. We sometimes scrap and shout. But we love each other. Our motto (created by Mr G) is: "Peace! Unity! Love! and Having Fun!" Imagine this to a rap beat and all of us dancing around chanting this...

"PEACE! UNITY! LOOOOOOVE! AND HAVING FUUUN!"
That's our goal anyway :)

It Had to Happen Sometime...

...and yesterday it finally did. On a crisp and misty Saturday morning our gorgeous bunch of football hunnies finally suffered their first defeat.

Even though they lost, the team can hold their heads up high; they played with all they had.

The opposition was also unbeaten and had been top of their division. We were down a few key players. Their coach/ref was an ass - he really was!! (nit-picking and constantly stopping the game) But I am not making excuses. We lost, I accept that.

But at the end of the game Coach Dad told them he was even prouder of them today than on the days they had won. I think we all were.

Nervous, Dash??? He's not usually a nail biter, but this game really was.

 Miss Fab sipped on her hot chocolate, promising to leave some for Scrag...

Hey, it's all gone! Scrag complains. Twenty seconds later he's wearing hot chocolate all over his hand-knitted Arran jumper (don't worry grandma, I got the stains out) 

Not wanting to psyche out his team with how formidable their opponents actually are, Coach Dad tells them, They're a good team, they're unbeaten, but so are we. We can win this!

It's non-stop running and tackling for both teams. Our team only have one sub and a key midfielder having to play defense...

At half-time it's 1-0 to them. But our team are still confident. other teams playing these guys in the past have been down 7-0 already at this stage of the game. We are competing hard.

The other team score again after half time, it's now 2-0. Our boys don't give up.

It's a physical game. There's some hard tackles and balls to the face. Our lads (and lass) get back up, brush off their tears and keep on fighting. Finally, a breakthrough. My little Football Star kicks an unstoppable blinder of a goal and the crowd goes wild... it's 2-1. Then the whistle blows. It's all over.

In the team huddle it's hard for the boys to hold back their tears. They are quite an intense highly-wired bunch; they played with all their hearts and this is their first loss.

Coach Dad tells them, "I'm so proud of you. You all gave 100%. This team is the best team in the league; their scorelines have been 12-0. We held them to 2-1. You played excellent! If I had more than one trophy I would give it to each and every one of you..."

With his arm around the shoulders of one bereft little chap, he picks them out one by one and tells them exactly what each one did that made him so proud.

Our first time doing the Moro Moment couldn't have come at a better time (a lovely idea from Janice the Manager).

Each of us parents then hands our child a mini-Moro bar, and we tell them what made us proud of them too
So we give three cheers for the opposition, hip-hooray, hip-hooray, hip-hooray, and one for the Ref.
Wipe away tears, blow noses and walk away with heads held high. Yes it's a loss. But it's not a defeat, because our team are winners at heart, every one.

Showtime

We are all yawning our heads off over here after back-to-back evenings up at school for the United Nations festival - a show the school puts on every two years with each class learning about and performing a dance from a country around the world.
The downside of having one kid in the Junior School and one kid in the Middle School is two seperate shows; but I am not complaining, oh no. Pity my neighbour, who has three kids in three separate shows! They are all yawning muchly I am sure, and grateful that today is the last day of term, as are we.
But before I get onto wahoo-ing about the school holidays and all that they have in store, let me reflect on the last two nights of entertainment. The highs and the lows.

Bear (bare?) with me as I rave (again) about the fabulousness of my offspring...

Dash. His show was up first, his country: Nigeria.

After discovering that he was meant to be dressing as a girl (nuh-uh! not our kid!) and starring in a comedic role, Mr G headed up to talk to the teacher. No drama, all was sorted and his starring role revised. He still had the starring role (his clever teacher harnessing his clownish tendencies) but now he was a boy complete with afro wig. Phew.

Ahhh, this mother's heart burst with pride to see my kid boldly acting his part in front of a packed-out hall. No shyness there at all. His class performance was the stand-out hit of the night. Well done Room 45!

Afterwards, once I'd packed the other two off to bed, my little star's reluctance to go to bed rang some bells.

I starred in a school production once. oh yes. And the let-down after the final night...!

Thankfully my mummy-radar was working tonight and so I invited him to snuggle on the couch sipping milo and talking... a special time for just us to help him return to earth more gently.

Miss Fab. Her Thursday night performance had been rehearsed umpteen times in her bedroom. her country: Australia.

Her knowledge of the pre-recorded) script? Word perfect. In her mind she was the star of the show (and in mine too). She was to dress as an Italian immigrant, complete with fake pizza (Australia is the world's cultural melting pot, dontcha know?)... and then dance enthusastically to Men-At-Work's "DownUnder"...

Scrag had been a nightmare at Dash's show the night before, so we agreed that I would go and video the night, and daddy would stay home with that rascally Scrag.

Do you think I checked how much space I had left on the video disc?? Course not! I knew I had charged the battery, so in my mind I was good to go.

Imagine my horror when I saw the two-minute warning flashing before Miss Fab had even come on??

My heart sank. I did my best, people. I did my best to capture as much of her show-stopping performance as I could squeeze into two measly minutes.

My blunder was only slightly less gut-wrenching than last year's show, when I thought I had captured Dash's fab performance, only to realise to my horror that while I thought I was filming, I had the darn video camera on "pause" the whole time. We ended up buying the performance night DVD. Sigh.

Look who's artwork I spotted hanging near our seat in the hall last night?? Isn't she clever?

Afterwards, Miss Fab and I snuggled on the couch, sipped our milo and watched the pitiful snippets together. She was very calm and gracious about it all, and there were no tears or recriminations (that could still come later when I have to break the news to Daddy, who was asleep when we got home).

I gave my little star the biggest cuddle and squeezed her softy softy warmness, feeling like the dumbest videographer ever.

Don't worry, luv, I reassured her, I will make sure to buy the performance DVD when it comes on sale. Promise.