from somewhere in my imagination

Girls for a Change

The following is a post sponsored by Yahoo! Every time someone clicks here to make Yahoo! their homepage, they're showing their support for Girls For A Change. I was selected for this opportunity by Clever Girls Collective, which endorses Blog With Integrity, as I do.

I love that I have daughters (although I am eternally grateful for the boy, I don't think I could have managed 4 girls!).  I am thankful that we live in a community where girls are typically valued, encouraged to set goals and can achieve anything they set out to achieve.  That's what I'm trying to teach them anyway, they are values and beliefs that I was lucky enough to be raised with.

It must have sunken in somewhere along the wa because I managed to achieve a level of professional success within a male dominated industry and was often asked to talk to groups of school girls about my career.  Girls can do anything boys can do...only better :)

However, not all girls are born into familes or communities with positive values and or role models and the Girls For a Change Organisation is doing something to change this by empowering girls to lead personal and social transformation in their communities.  It's the sort of organisation that I'd love to get involved with when my own kids are a bit bigger and I have more time to offer.

Yahoo will be donating $10 for every person who changes their home page to Yahoo within the next 24 hours or so via this link. I've changed my homepage (news.com.au was starting to get a bit boring anyway) and I'd love you to do the same...and let your friends know too.  The easy way is to facebook like or tweet it using the buttons below.  It would be fantastic if there are enough people changing over to acheive the full $10000 donation possible.

Pupil free day here tomorrow and I am really looking forward to spending a three day weekend at home with my babies.

Tatum xx

The Uncooperative Toddler

We are going through a period of challenging bedtimes in our house.  Before we left for our trip J had started climbing out of her cot, so we took the sides off, but she kept on creeping into Sebastian's bed and co-sleeping with him.

He didn't love it.

Then we spent 6+ weeks away from home.  Bedtime was typically 10-11pm (or later) and she would fall asleep in her pram/being carried/on a lap during the day if she just couldn't keep those peepers open another second.

Now that we are home day sleeps are just not happening, that I can deal with...afternoon rest time on the couch with a movie instead...no biggie, but at bedtime she is being a nutter.

She hits a wall about 4-5pm when her eyeballs start hanging out of her head and she often looks like she's been hit by a truck, that 'hilarious' hair kind of adds to the 'i need to go to sleep right now look'.  She'll come looking for snuggles and has even started dragging her pillow and blanket out to the couch.

We change into pj's before dinner, eat around 6pm then it's stories and wind down time before bed and it's at this point, with some food in her belly, that she perks up.  So when 7-7.30pm bedtime rolls around she's flying high again and it's taking up to 2 hours to get her settled in bed.  Even the tough love isn't working, she is a determined little madam.

To be honest it is stressing Steven more than me.  We've been there done that, I don't think I'll ever forget those nights with 2 and 3 year old Lil and Charlotte when Steven was doing shift work when I finally managed to crawl into bed around midnight after battling with them for hours to get them to sleep.  It's the bit where she's crawling into bed with us at some small hour of the morning and I'm waking up to find my head pushed off my pillow and a small girl sleeping diagonally between us.  I'm just too sleepy to get it together and mover her back to her own bed.  She is a SERIOUS BED HOG.

After 4 kids I know it's an ages and stages thing, she has been consistently one of my best sleepers, but I'm looking forward to this small measure of defiant independance to manifest elsewhere (if I think it's going to disappear I'm kidding myself!) so she gets enough sleep for that little body to grow...and Steven and I get our couch time together back of an evening.  She passed out on it the other night when we couldn't face putting her back to bed for the 50th time

We'll stick with the routine and eventually it will pass!

It's a good thing she's cute!  Next we have to tackle toilet training...

Tatum xx

 

Leaving Las Vegas

I didn't love Vegas.

I guess after NYC pretty much anywhere would have been a bit of a downer.

We stayed at Circus Circus

We renewed our vows.  That was fun.  So was riding in a Limo and seeing the Lion King.

We were totally bummed when we realised Fat Boy Slim had played while we were there.  We didn't know until we saw a billboard in LA.  Not sure it would have been a child friendly concert though.  Praise You was our wedding song.

We didn't spend much time in Vegas itself really given that a whole day was taken up with our trip to the Grand Canyon and we didn't get in from NYC until 9pm on the Saturday.

To get out of the hotel part of Circus Circus we had to go through the casino, ou have to go through the casino to get anywhere in all of the casinos I suspect.  Being a non-smoker the fact that smoking is still allowed in the casinos made it kinda gross...especially when it seems to take forever just to get out of a place...or to where you want to go.  That is what made me not love Vegas.

It made me laugh that it might be 6am but the staff will always say 'Have a good night'.  There are no windows and no clocks in the casinos and the doors are few and far between.

The main part of the strip does look very cool, there is clearly alot of money and thought behind heach of the casinos.  I didn't realise that MGM Grand own as much of Vegas as they do.  You can book anything back to your room from any of their casinos.  I think I'll enjoy it more in 10 years time when we don't have 4 little kids in tow...perhaps?  Or maybe it's just not my thing.

 
 

Something I did love about Vegas was the shopping.  Hello Premium Outlets.  It would seriously take 2 full days to properly look in every shop in just one of the two in Vegas.  Holy Moly.  Hello Kate Spade handbag.

We'd planned a quick shopping trip on Tuesday morning before we left Vegas...by the time we managed to drag ourselves away it was about 2pm and we headed out of town in the direction of Death Valley.

The turn off from the main road to take us through Death Valley.  We wondered if easter bunnies were cheaper in the off season?

Crossed the border from Nevada into California and the last week of our holiday.

Long straight roads and sand, kinda like home.

Once we started heading into Death Valley the mountains were totally bare and the sky got crazy.  These clouds had us pretty impressed.

We stopped at one of the windiest places I have ever experienced.  It was 100F and blowing an absolute gale (see Charlotte's hair and Lil's dress).

J thought it was pretty funny.  I think she liked it a bit better than the snow.

A family photo taken while struggling to stand upright.  I love this one.

We passed through elevations up through 7000ft and down below sea level.

Finishing with an amazing sand storm down in the valley as the sun was setting.

It was a truly amazing drive.  Made even more amazing by the day that followed.

It was a fascinating drive through Death Valley.  I can't believe that there are people who actually live there.  Inhospitible is kind of an understatement.  I haven't seen anywhere quite as barren and furnace like.  The awesome power of weather systems and their impact on geomorphology is pretty incredible.

I needed a couple of days off from USA posting...the NYC post made me pine more than I had anticipated and couldn't quite face another lot of NYC photos just yet.  Soppy as it sounds I have totally fallen in love.

Tatum xx