Serenade by the Children

Well this weekend was a nice and quiet one just like our week. On Friday night Adam and I went out to a 30th Birthday dinner for my brother in-law Buzz. I made him a chocolate flower arrangement. It is not as girly as it sounds. I had never made one before, but I had seen one of the girls at work bring one in. I decided that I could probably make one of them, so after asking her a couple of questions like "how do you get the chocolate to stay on??" I decided to try. With a little bit of help from Adam's mum I was able to make a black and yellow one for Buzz. I do have pictures but they are on my phone and I am not sure how to get them off.
On Saturday we just spent some time at home together, on Sunday after church Adam had to go out for some meetings so I got some things out for the kids to do. Ashley and Samuel were doing some beading, I bought some beads from Ikea and you place them on mats and then melt them and they form really cool mats/coasters. Samuel in particular likes doing it, he seems to have a bit more patience for it then Ashley. Mean while Joseph was playing on the floor with his Lightning McQueen truck set. I was in the kitchen getting dinner ready when he just burst in to song. He was singing a primary song called 'When Jesus Christ was Baptised'. It was so cute to hear him singing without any prompting. It is nice to know that the things that we are teaching them are sinking in. Of course because he was singing the other two decided to join in as well. So it was nice I was serenaded by my children with Primary songs.

Mundanes of Life

Well this week has been nice and quiet. Nothing big going on. I don't mind that at all. In fact I was actually able to have a nap on the sofa today while Joseph watched something on TV. I am sure it was a good show, he always chooses wisely. So while I lay there half asleep keeping my ears open for any noises I was also thinking that I had to get up soon to get the kids from school. If only they could get themselves home. Unfortunately they cannot so I pulled myself off the sofa and went and got them. I think I should have left them to make their own way home. My house was so much quieter without them here. As soon as Ashley got in the car she was complaining of hunger pains. Samuel and Joseph just wanted to play the Playstation. So we got in the house, Ashley complaining of hunger and not wanting to watch the boys, so off she went to my room to watch Barbie while the boys played. Every 5 mins Ashley is out to see what she can eat and to see if the muffins are cool enough to eat. They are now so I might get some piece and quiet for maybe 10 mins until she starts again.

Sorry to bore you with the mundanes of my life. But hey it is my blog.

Time for Family

Well this week has been a time to reflect on the importance of the family and friends in our lives. This week we have been to a funeral for Adam's cousin, and the most important message from the funeral was that we really need to appreciate our families more and make the effort to spend time with them. You just don't know how long we might have. So today I am going over to one of my sisters houses to have lunch with all the girls. All the girls being all of my sisters and my mum. We try and do this as regular as we can it usually ends up being about once a month, unless we are all really busy. It is something I really enjoy doing, I don't get to socialize with my sisters much, our kids are at school and kindy so it is hard to catch up during the week and by the weekend we are all busy with our husbands and families. It is nice for just the girls to catch up. Of course we have an assortment of children with us from newborns to 4 year old but that is ok, they are usually happy being at someone else's house playing with someone else's toys.

So I just want to let my family know how much I love and appreciate them and all that they do. We can never spend enough time together as a family and I include in that my extended family. The family I married into is as important to me as the one I was born into. I don't even know if any of them read this blog, but I read it so that is enough.

The student becomes the teacher

My kids are pretty smart, at least I think so. They can beat me at pretty much any computer game we own. The other day Joseph asked me if he could play something on the game console, I said he could but that I didn't want to help him as I was busy at the moment. So we got it all set up for him and he was playing quite happily. Until he got to a bit he couldn't do, so there he is pleading me to help him. I cannot resist him sometimes so I stopped what I was doing to help. Now it was pretty tricky, I was trying my hardest but apparently it was not enough. Joseph knew what I had to do but I just couldn't do it. Eventually he just asked for it back and did it himself. Now how bad is that, my 4 year old is better on the computer then me. He then proceeded to tell me everything he was doing as if I was the child and he was the teacher. Eventually I left the room and he was still going on about it. Yesterday Adam and Samuel were playing a game together on the computer and Samuel was beating Adam, now Adam did say that his hands were too big, and I will give that to him, it is easier for little hands to play this particular game. But I would never of believed it unless I had seen it. So now the student (child) has become the teacher (parent).

Gotta love those kids.

Hate the mess, love the clean.

Don't you hate it that to do a really through clean up you have to make a really big mess. At the moment I am trying to sort out my kitchen. On the weekend Adam put up the overheads, so I now have all this excess storage space. I am sure it will not be excess for long. Recently we put big drawers in for the plates, bowls and serving dishes, so I have been rearranging this and cleaning out cupboards that I have not seen the back of for over 18 months. I put things in when we first put in the kitchen and have not looked at them since. So at the moment my kitchen is a big mess and I have to cook roast for dinner!! I am sure I will get it all done. The roast basically cooks itself I just have to remember to put it in.

Over all I feel I am having a very productive morning, I have done the dishes (still love my dishwasher), cleaned the toilet (gotta love that job), done 2 loads of washing, vacuumed up all the dog hair in my hallway (I had enough to make a small dog) and vacuumed the lounge room. So now I am off to get Joseph from Kindy and then I will continue my kitchen. I suppose I don't mind doing it, I am finding things that are still in their boxes that were engagement and wedding presents. Now we were married over 9 years ago. But we are all for keeping things in mint condition lol. So maybe with my new cupboards I will be able to get them out of their boxes and use them more often.

Over my head

Today has been a busy day, more for Adam then for me, we decided to put up our kitchen overhead kitchen cabinets. We only got them recently and attempted to put them up last week only to find that we needed an extra bit of wood in the back of each of them to fix it to the wall. So we decided to wait for today. We put all the cabinets together, then Adam put them on the wall with a tiny bit of assistance from me. I was expecting to have to stand underneath these things and hold them up while he fixed them to the wall, but to my suprise he hardly needed me, my shoulders are not sore, my back does not ache and I am greatful for a husband who is so handy. At the moment he is attaching the kickboards and he doesn't even need my help. I have a couple of pictures of our over heads -

As you can see from these pictures we are in the process of tiling, hopefully that will happen in the next week, we only have one wall to go and then we can grout it all and then the kitchen will be complete. That is until I go out and purchase a rangehood. I just wanted everyone to know that I have a very good husband, who has given up his weekends just so my life can be easier. No one likes doing the dishes and I especially don't enjoy cooking dinner, but he has made my kitchen a place I want to be. He has done most of the work himself, we had a bit of help from the family, and knowing that he is capable of doing something like this makes me feel proud of him.

Freaky Hair Day

Well today was Freaky Hair day at school and I sent my children looking like this -

and this -

They both wanted me to put colour hair spray in but that was not about to happen. Samuel was thrilled to get his Mohawk, and well Ashley was a bit harder to please. I mean I am not a very creative hair person. I cannot even braid, so all she got was pigtails and then I decided to pu them in little buns, this made her happy. As I was leaving her classroom today, I noticed that they were coming out, so I don't think they will last long. But at least she was happy for a couple of minutes.

Last night Adam got home and had to fix our car. It was making a horrible clunking sound in the front end, he had figured out what is was and called some places to get the parts he needed, but then he sent me out to get these parts. So he rings me, asks me to go to the shop and pick up these parts they are holding for him. Sounds easy I can do that... I ask him what they are called, he tells me. I get to the shop and do you think I could remember what it was called, I am like "something like a sway arm bush" lucky for me the person knew what I was talking about. So last night he gets home and decided to fix the noise. It was still light when he started, but it was getting dark so I was running around trying to get torches for him to work by. I got him all set up and he was able to finish. I was quite happy about that. I was worried he wouldn't be able to do it and I would have no car to go to work in.

First Post

Well here we go, the first post of my new blog. I have been reading a few blogs lately and thought it would be a good way to record some of the events and happenings in my life. I find I don't get a lot of time to sit down and write a journal or anything, but I can always find a couple of minutes to get on the computer and type in some thoughts.

Like most mums my time is taken up looking after kids, house, husband and the dog. I must admit the dog is the easiest. For the last 18 months we have been renovating our house, now this doesn't mean that we have been pulling down walls and installing kitchens for 18 months just that it has taken 18 months to finally look like it might be finished. It all started while we were living in Canberra, our house in Adelaide was empty for a couple of months so we thought it would be a good time to rip out the kitchen, knock out a wall and repaint the entire house. So whenever Adam was back in Adelaide for work he would go over and do more work. He started doing this in about Feb 2008, by April the family was getting ready to move home and he had to try and make the house livable. I was under the assumption that I was coming home to a huge mess. Adam had ripped out our kitchen and as far as I knew I was going home to cook on the BBQ and wash dishes in the laundry. But when I got home and was escorted in I was presented with a beautiful but not complete kitchen. Now it is the not complete part that I want to talk about because it is almost complete now that it is Aug 2009. We were missing some cupboards and there was still a hole for a dishwasher. Well I finally got a dishwasher and we finally got around to buying my big drawers to put my plates and things in. We also got tiles for the walls and some overhead cupboards. So things are going along nicely. Adam is almost finished the tiling, and when we get a few more supplies from Bunnings (one of my fav shops) he will put up the over heads.

So all in all I am pretty happy with how my kitchen is progressing. I don't think the kids appreciate all the hard work I am getting them out of. I remember as a kid washing the dishes and hating it. My kids will not have to do the dishes by hand but I am sure they will still complain about having to load and unload the dishwasher, that is when I finally let them touch it, at the moment it is out of bounds.

Well must go now and load my dishwasher again, I love how easy it is to do the dishes now, even Adam will do them.

XOX