Reaping The Rewards

Licking Their Bowls

Today Bailey and Brandon learnt about setting up a good foundation in life, a bit of patience and then reaping the rewards. A bit like what my husband and I are trying to do with our property developments. Anyway, such a big life lesson came from such a simple, and cheap thing - Jelly!. I was up early and out at the supermarket by 8am this morning and I thought as I flew down the jelly aisle, Brandon and Bailey would love some of that. As soon as I arrived home the 2 boys and I made the jelly up. I was wondering how the 2 boys would go once they realised that they wouldn't be able to eat the jelly straight away, but once I explained things to them, and distracted them with a whole heap of other activities, they understood.

So the jelly spent the next 4 hours sitting quietly, and safely, high up in the fridge. Meanwhile, the 2 boys spent the next 4 hours peering longingly into the fridge. The recipe said it needed to be refrigerated for 4 hours and ours was refrigerated for 4 hours exactly, not 1 second over.

At 10:30am the 2 boys and I drove my husband and one of our neighbours into the train station so they could catch a train into the city and go off to the races. And as I write here it's 9:10pm and he is still partying on. Hope he's having a great time. I have a girls night out organised for 2 weeks time and I can't wait. After Brandon, Bailey and myself arrived home we ventured outside to play. Today was another very hot day. The wonderful thing about living in Queensland is that it's only 17 days since the end of winter and we already have Summer weather. Got to love it. I organised a BBQ for the 3 of us for lunch and while I cooked up the food Bailey played with mud under neath the trampoline while Brandon was having some very quiet time inside watching the TV. I think he was really affected by the heat and probably still recovering from our adventures from yesterday. Bailey is so very happy to just play by himself. He seems to like knowing that I am close by doing things and he just plays nearby. He is such a happy little kid. We all had lunch outside and that seemed to snap Brandon out of his melancholy mood.

Lunch was utterly delicious and the kids hoovered up their meal. It was almost like they had never been fed before. Just as well  I'd gone food shopping this morning and spent our customary $300 on food because it was disappearing very quickly before my eyes. Once their plates were licked clean they had their jelly. I thought they had just hoovered up their sausages and salad and bread, but now they were inhaling their jelly. They keep me entertained for hours. Again once their plates were clean enough to put straight back into the cupboard and they had reaped their reward of eating their jelly, we all went off to play. Firstly we played in all the mud that Bailey had made while I was cooking up the BBQ and then once both boys looked like a giant mud puddle, they jumped on the trampoline where I sprayed them with the hose for quite some time. Bailey tired of the water spray pretty quickly so he went to ride around the backyard with trucks while making as much muddy mess as he possibly could. Brandon kept jumping and I kept watering him.

Our next activity involved more mud. Both boys again jumped like crazy in all the mud, especially since more and more was appearing the more and more Brandon jumped through the water. Now I had 2 very wet and muddy boys who were both so incredibly happy. Bailey dried off almost instantly with his swimmers on while I had to change Brandon. Before I knew it I had 2 nude boys running around, standing on chairs, eating food and just being free as the birds. Once normality resumed (at times questionable), the 2 boys and I started playing with Lego. Brandon brought it all outside and the 3 of us played there for a very long time. Everyone played so very well. We made lots and lots of stories up and just had a great time. I told the boys that I just had to check the time because I truly had no idea of what it would be. Amazingly it was 4pm. By the time we cleaned up all our things from outside it was 4:30pm and as soon as we got inside I put the dinner on. I'm glad that I did because tonight it took both boys well over 1 hour to eat dinner. It must be all the fresh air because I am sure their stomachs are bottomless pits. For dinner they both had rice, chicken nuggets, dips, more jelly, sausages and nearly 1/2 a tub of yoghurt each.  They would have probably kept eating if I hadn't stressed that it was past their bedtime and they needed to get into bed.

I had a great day with the 2 boys. Hopefully tomorrow will be another fantastic day. I am looking forward to all 4 of us having a chance to hang out together and explore the world as a family. Goodnight everyone.