a treasure map birthday cake baked by most of the children
and decorated by J13
a treasure map quilt
L7 is so happy to be SEVEN *at*long*last*
Archive for October, 2007
We have some very special friends!!
Please do check out their blogs.
Please CLICK for E10’s crafty blog and J12’s sailing-history-adventure-blog.
Our friends love comments just as much as we do 
Today we (J 11 and 13, L6 and M5) had the first swim of the season. For the record, the water was 16°C and the conditions were windy and sunny. We only stayed in for about 10 minutes!!! Our next-door neighbour had his fire on;-)
Last Friday we had Mum’s birthday dinner, because we had friends over for the day on Saturday, which is Mum’s real birthday. So J13 and me (J11) made Mum a cake. Here is the recipe for The Best Chocolate Cake Ever:
2C flour
1 1/2 – 2C sugar
1t BP
1t BS
3/4 C cocoa
Mix in a bowl
1C milk
1/2C oil
2 beaten eggs
1t vanilla
1C black coffee
Add to dry ingredients(makes thin batter)
Pour into a large greased tin
Bake at 180 oC for 30 – 40 min (or more)
I ice it with Chocolate Icing after an hour or two.
I hope you enjoy this recipe and use it .
This recipe was given to us by Becca and it has NEVER failed.
J13 writing.
Yesterday Mum told J11, K10 and me that she would like to see a book review from each of us by the end of the week. So here is mine.
Book: Great Escapes Of World War II
Author: George Sullivan
Date read: Thursday 11 October 2007
What the book is about: This book is a small collection of stories about men who were captured in WWII and how their bravery helped others to escape from the prison camps. Only sometimes did their plans work and when they did work, the people who escaped usually got captured again. There is one story, which I particularly like; it is said to be one of the most amazing escapes of WWII and so it is now known as ”The Great Escape” and it takes place in a German prison camp. More than 600 men got together and decided to tunnel their way to freedom, but they didn’t just dig one tunnel, they did three, and so as not to make the guards suspicious they named the tunnels Tom, Dick and Harry!!! Well when you dig a tunnel, you’re going to have to put the dirt somewhere, so they dug it into the gardens, but as they dug deeper the dirt turned into bright yellow sand. For a while the digging stopped, because there was nowhere to put the sand, but finally they found a solution: to scatter the sand around the crowds while watching a game of volley ball. Unfortunately that didn’t work as the guards saw the sand and immediately went in search of a tunnel. So the tunnelers started putting sand down Tom…it was all going nicely and the tunnels were almost finished (the tunnels were positioned to come out into the woods surrounding the camp)….until….disaster….the guards were clearing back the forest and so the tunnelers had to keep digging further. At last Harry was finished and when measured it was 345 ft. long!! Now had come the long-awaited moment of ESCAPE…. Johnny Bull was the to be the first person to climb out of Harry, but when he did a nasty surprise awaited him…. the tunnel was 10 ft. short of the woods!!! But that didn’t stop the men, seventy-nine escaped before the guards realized what was happening. Bob McBride was the eightieth man out of the tunnel, but as he was half way out he was surrounded by guards and was recaptured. Of the 79 men who escaped only three made it to England and freedom.
Well J13. My little comment, that was actually retracted upon seeing dismal looks shadow the faces of the boys, spurred you on to a great wee piece. It sounds like you enjoyed the book as much as I did and remembered more than me! Now I wonder if you’ll review one of the new books – they were the ones I had in mind!!!! Never mind if you don’t want to – the boys have said they want to blog about them!!!!
Last week Dad was on holiday and when he is on holiday we all are!! There were heaps of fun things that happened like going on beach-walks….finishing off a model aeroplane whose name is “The Peacemaker” (which we all think is quite a funny name for a plane that can drop up to 80 bombs!!!)….one evening Dad suddenly deciding that he would like ice-cream for dessert so we all jumped into the car after dinner in our pjs….camping in our pup-tents on the back lawn….going in the spa pool and getting our togs bleached, because there was too much chlorine….J12 turning 13 (that’s me!!)…and just being with Dad. We love it when Dad is on holiday!!!
Last Sunday, we went to Karekare for a walk along the beach. We had to go through a stream, which was warmer than we expected, although it was still chilly, to get to the beach. After racing each other across the sand and jumping into it, we came across a small dead seal near some rocks. Upon finding a little cave we were about to go in it when we saw another dead seal there. So we stayed out. Then we ran up and down the sand dunes for a while, followed by lunch at a picnic spot near the carpark.
to prompt our memories over the next few days, we’re going to brainstorm everything that’s been going on over the past month:
- thunderstorms and hail
- J13’s birthday
- M5 and T3 being dry
- Saturday party
- Lego castle
- Grandpa and Gran visiting
- sleeping in the tents
- sea lions at Karekare
- spa pool
- Dadda on holiday
- lots of new books being read
- 5-10 year olds writing books
- ER screaming
- knitting (J11’s ball)
- trip to Western Springs
- scrapbooking
- model aeroplane
- cooking and baking
- art lessons
If you are promising to comment, we will promise to blog more! We like to post pictures on our blog, but since Mama changed it to WordPress, we ahve to upload them to Photobucket first and then when we put them onto the blog we have to do all sorts of resizing and copying and pasting and it’s all a bit tricky and we forget how to do it….and so in the end we have ended up blogging nothing. And Mama doesn’t tell us we have to coz it’s our blog. She’s going to see if Flickr is easier to use.
You asked what we’ve been up to.
We’ll tell you over the next few days;-)
