Princess Peaches, Happy Holidays, Exciting Easter & Transforming Tadd!!!

Ok so now it's my mother-in-law that is insisting we upload another post on the blog, so here's what the Marturano family has experienced over the past couple of months......

The month of March saw us purchase (thanks to Great Grandma and Grandad) a new addition to the family, a kitten named Peaches aka Peach, Peachy and Stupid Bloody Cat.  She is a beautiful peach and cream colour hence her very original name. 

 I don't know what it is with our family and cats, or animals for that matter of fact, but they are always a little strange or shall I say different.  Peach for instance, being the spastic cat that she is, loves water!!  She loves water that much that she sleeps in either the laundry sink or bathroom sink, and she even tries to sleep in the kitchen sink hence Stupid Bloody Cat! 

Here's one crazy story, regarding our spastic cat....One evening, while going into the bathroom to have a shower I noticed Peach was asleep in the vanity sink (completely normal for the backwards cat).  I thought she looked rather peaceful so instead of disturbing her I decided to just leave her where she was.  Within seconds of turning on the shower and jumping in, she was at the shower door meowing at me.  Having no idea what the crazy cat wanted I opened the door and would you believe the stupid cat jumped into the shower and sat in the corner of the shower cubicle?  She just sat there with her eyes half closed so the water wouldn't hit them.  Drenched with water, she just sat there for about 2 minutes before walking out and shaking her feet dry and going back to sleep in the vanity sink??? 

Further if you didn't think that was weird enough, her new past time activity is to chase her tail! Not just anywhere but on the second platform of our internal stairs!  Round and round she runs and she only stops when she either falls down the stairs or bangs into the wall!  I told you she was strange!

The month of April saw us holidaying with our friends in a beautiful four bedroom house in Rainbow Beach.  Ok so it wasn't just a holiday, unfortunately it was more of a paid holiday as we had to oil the decks and posts on the beautiful four bedroom house so that we could have the pleasure of staying there!  This holiday included a lot of drinking (followed by a spew from me thanks to the stomach ulcer), more drinking, swimming, some crazy dancing from Olivia, more drinking and lots of eating!  Below is a reenactment thanks to Noah of Olivia's dancing.

Between the drinking we even went for a walk through the national park to the sand blow.  You're probably thinking what is a sand blow well the best way to explain it is it's like a big gully on top of a hill overlooking the sea that is full of sand, ok disregard that as I've most certainly confused the crap out of you.  Below and beside are a couple of pictures of the boys at the below.  Yes I know, it doesn't sound that exciting, but it is actually quite amazing and beautiful!  While the girls took the tribe of boys to jump down the cliff on one side of the dunes (yes we were pushing them if that's what you're thinking and yes we were trying to cull the number of boys in the family) the big boys, who are suppose to be adults, spend the whole time drawing a 30 metre dick and balls in the sand! Another group of boys as mature as our boys, arrived within minutes and attached a man to our boys precious artwork.  Little did they realise when we were walking back to the car we passed a bridal party who were heading to blow to take their wedding photos!  The look on their faces, Priceless!

Easter - well what a topic this was for the boys.  They spent several morning discussing the ins and outs of Easter, from where the Easter bunny lives right through to whether the Easter bunny is a boy or a girl.  Below I have listed Kai and Noahs conversation which I overheard while getting ready for work one morning.

Noah: "Kai, did you know that the Easter bunny is a girl because the Easter bunny lays the chocolate eggs and poops jelly beans".
Kai: "Nah, they have a special machine in their work shop which makes the eggs."
Noah: "But they still poop jelly beans!  But, how does the Easter bunny get all the eggs to everyone?'
Kai: "It's magic!! They have magic powder to put on the eggs and then they just appear everywhere."
Noah: "Nah, I think that the Easter bunny borrows Santa's sleigh.  Did you know that the Easter bunny goes to Hawaii on holidays like Santa does when he's not making toys?"
Kai: "Yeh but he lives on Easter Island."

Although the boys were not exactly well behaved leading up to Easter, the Easter bunny still came and yes I had the fun job of making flour foot prints around the lounge room which the crazy Peaches laid in before hitting the small Easter eggs around the room!




After Easter I took them to see 'Hop' at the cinemas and it pretty much confirmed their previous theories, so that explains where they have got their bizarre theories from. And of course they absolutely loved it!!




Other than our normal beach shenanigans and TV/movie watching (thanks to all the rainy/lousy weather) not alot has happened over the past couple of months.  Ok so that's a lie our investment home was trashed by our previous tenants, filthy pigs!
Oh and Tadd will be heading away to the army within the next couple of months, talking about Tadd I think I'll sign off by showing you Tadd's different looks which he has rocked over the last couple of years.... 

  What I come home to most nights!

 Beardless!

 Beard!!!

 So proud of himself!

 Blue Steel 1!

 Blue Steel 2!

Chopper!

P.S.  I have a photo of him with long hair that I will upload once scanned into the computer. 

Love you hunny!

Until next time or should I say...until he takes revenge!!!



Master Fisherman

I'm under instruction to do a new blog on account of the mother-in law having a problem with the photo I posted of her last time. My lovely wife also instructed me about something to do with the photo's I posted of her, only the problem is, that after about 3 sentences in to this one sided conversation I may of tuned out and  didn't really hear weather she was pleased with me taking the mickey out of her constantly or not. She has a great sense of humour and I'm almost positive she said something like "Blah Blah Blah horrible photo's Blah Blah Blah Fantastic Blah Blah". Fantastic. So that's the Green Light Right. Right. Just in case your wondering what photo I'm talking about here it is.

Here's another for good measure.

"Please Sir may I have another".

No but really, with all the wet weather around lately we've been caught inside for a fair chunk of the school holidays witch as you can imagine with three boys it's been trying at best. This week though the sun finally came out so we set out for a spot of fishing. With the rain we have had the rivers and estuaries are full of freshwater and catfish, this isn't ideal. So off we went to the river mouth where hopefully there would be more saltwater than fresh. This trip would be short lived. We pull up Noah jumps out and instantly spot's the biggest meanest biker looking fisherman on the beach and proceeds to point his finger at him and in a way only Noah the "fog horn" can exclaims that "we aren't  fishing here cause that guy hasn't caught anything, maybe he doesn't no how to fish dad, dad he hasn't got anything dad!!dad!!! look DAD!!!!! ..........dad why are we getting back into the car dad dad dad". "No fish there champ". Once in the relative safety of our locked car speeding away from the incredible hulk, I did try to explain to him that we don't make fun of peoples inability to catch fish and especially don't point at people with tribal tattoo's all over there face. We did somehow manage to find a fishing spot away from the public and safe enough that I could let Noah out of the car. Kai got straight into the action landing some small ludrick (black fish) and a few small butter bream. Then blaze got on to a nice moses perch.

Meanwhile, Noah was growing impatient. Having seen both his brothers land fish and not wanting to be throw into the same basket as the man with the facial tattoos. He set about tying his own rig that he assured me would catch a large sting ray. 3 granny knots later he was finished.

I recon that's a pretty good effort for a 4 year old. He didn't end up catching anything but no matter, maybe next time. Just noticed looking at this picture of Noah how much he looks like his mum it's almost uncanny.

Hmm maybe not. Although I do see a bit of a food theme here. Look how small the ice cream looks with that big mouth, well darling that's why I married you "big mouth deep throat". There's still some resemblance though maybe this next picture will show it better.

"No Erin please don't eat me"

What the. Food theme again. Nah maybe Noah looks like me, unlucky unlucky.

Fishing was great as usual and on the weekend we did manage to go to Australia Zoo witch I will write about next time. Thanks to Gemma for the photos and to the Johnston family for being some of the most unphotogenic people I have ever seen.  

Becoming your Parent's???

Well after much therapy and reflection I feel I need to apologize to my beautiful Wife for all the sledging and horrible photos Iv posted on the blog Last year. Spending a fair bit of time with family over the last month or so has really helped me to understand that while we are all different we are in fact pretty similar (whether we like it or not) to our parents. Shock horror. So what I'm trying to say is, it's not Erins fault that she may not be the most photogenic person on the planet, some might say that our photo album resembles something out of a horror movie, due to some of the disturbing images of this wild beast the kids call mummy. That aside I did manage to capture the beast's I mean Wife's mother on Christmas morning.

HHMM... This is Sue, She likes long walks on the beach, scintillating conversation and sport. She is the reason. Umm Sue is the proud mother of 3 equally unphotogenic offspring and a pile of very cute grandchildren ( lucky for them they get there good looks from there father). She is on the right side of 50 (even if that's only for a short while). SINGLE.

 Anyway you can see what I'm getting at. We become our parents. Just looking in the cupboard this morning to fix the kid's some breakfast I was hit with an overpowering sense of dejuview as a mountain of 2minute noodles came avalanching down on me. I have in fact become my mum (and any of the 3000 men that could be my father). The food we feed the kid's. The way we tell them off (" wait till you have your own family ya little prick") ("when you pay the bills you can make the rules")("go ask ya father") OK the last one may be a bit of a stretch, I don't believe I ever heard that one, it was more like "that guy out there is your new uncle( for today anyway,) you do what he tells you I'm making dinner" (2 minute noodles no less). 

But for all the bad stuff we inherit there is also a fair bit of good stuff. Kindness. Chivalry. The ability to turn 6 cakes of 2 minute noodles into something remotely tasty.

Sometimes though I think as a parent you can teach to much. Take for instance Christmas this year, my eldest Kai being a very keen fisherman, I've tryed very hard to teach him everything my thousand or so uncles have taught me. Knot tying, casting, retrieving, putting bait on the basics pretty much. But teaching to much becomes to much that when on Christmas day the little beggar catches a bigger whiting than me.

Being the kind of person I am, I was not about to let this little smart ass who always complains about eating 2minute noodles all the time overtake his teacher. I changed his bait to a sausage no less. This would insure that I would catch a pile of fish and if he was lucky may catch his very drunk very hungry uncle Ben. (No it's not like that I haven't inherited everything from my mother, he is there uncle). That didn't happen.

This is our darling little noodle eater holding his bream that he caught on a sausage. Yeah on a whole sausage. No more fishing trips for him.

A week latter Blaze (he's the ripe old age of 2) gets in on the action with this stingray, caught first cast on a hand line.

I think the point of the story is, you cant help how incredibly disturbing you or your offspring look, but you can teach them Right, Wrong and a thousand different way's to cook 2 minute noodles.