You know you haven't had enough sleep when...

... you take paracetamol before you go to bed, and when you wake up in the morning you think "I'd better take another lot of those tablets..... wait, I'm not actually due for my next (4 hrly) dose for another HOUR!!!!" Oh.

How not to spend Christmas Eve....

I'm sure some people spent today frantically buying last minute gifts, cooking food to share with their loved ones or taking a few quiet moments to meditate on the miracle of Jesus' birth. Not me though. Oh no. I had a far better idea. I decided to sew through my finger with my sewing machine and then pull my finger away with enough force to break the needle off in my fingertip. The staff at the hospital were lovely and helpful, but it's not what I'd recommend for a fun day out.

The Milkybars are on me!

Big Kev's splashing money around in a vain attempt to prop up our ailing economy, and some of it's coming my way! I'm so buying myself a new 8 ft plasma TV. I totally deserve it.

On a not-quite-related note, has anybody else (apart from my Dad who pointed it out to me) noticed how much our esteemed prime minister looks like the Milkybar kid? Well obviously someone has because I came across this hilarious You Tube video - you can check it out and see the uncanny similarity for yourself!

Questions #1

I've been thinking about the balance (or lack thereof) that I manage to achieve in my life. Last week I wrote about some of the things I do and don't do, and since then I've been thinking about how I should be deciding what I use my time for. Alot of my decisions have been made without alot of thought and I thought it might be helpful for me to think a bit more clearly about what I'm doing, especially with a new year looming.

I've been thinking about how I can know whether or not I'm doing "enough" for my family... what things should I be looking for to let me know I've got the balance right (or wrong?).

I'm realising that the Bible itself isn't terribly prescriptive about exactly what a person in my situation should be acheiving. Actually it isn't very "acheivement" focussed, as far as I can tell. Maybe it will help if I think about the different things I'm resposnsible for on the home front and look at what I should be doing according to the Bible, and think about how I'll know if that's happening.

I'm just going to think about my responsibilities to my kids tonight because I'm so tired and I can't get blogger to save a draft!


I'll jot down my thoughts.... feel free to disagree or add your own ideas :)

I need to teach them about God (eg Deuteronomy 6:7), love them (Titus 2:4, if I need a reason!) and teach them to be obedient (Ephesians 6:1). It's interesting to me that the Bible doesn't say my job is to make them happy or confident which seems to be what alot of people want for their kids (not that I don't want it, YKWIM).

So the questions I should probably be asking myself are
* Do I have time to teach my kids about God?
* Do I have time and energy to make learning about God interesting?
* Do I have the mental energy and time to answer their questions, or am I too busy thinking about other things to engage with them properly?
* Am I loving my children, or am I so busy that their needs irritate me?
* Do my kids feel loved? Do I have time and energy to do the things that matter to them (eg JoJo having her hair done in 4 plaits, which often feels like about 4 plaits too many to me!).
* Do my kids seem loved and cared for to other people? This feels important to me, but I'm not sure if it should be.
* Do I have the patience to discipline my kids without getting angry and frustrated? Am I making it hard for them to be obedient by taking them to too many "things" so that they are getting tired and cranky?


There's alot of other stuff I'd like to do with or for my kids, but I'm thinking the things listed above should be my highest priorities. I can see I've got some work to do! Better get to bed :)

More pics

And 3 more... Phil texting madly at the park, JoJo and Grandad, the boys escaping at the zoo!

Fun!

Some more pics from Melbourne... JoJo having her nails painted (possibly the highlight of the trip for her!), Xander braving a crocodile at the Melb zoo, the 3 cousins together and X and J having fun at the park.

Dolls!

Check out this cute little lady! A couple from church are heading back to the Democratic Republic of Congo early next year to work in a hospital there, and they are trying to get a whole lot of dolls together to take with them for the kids there. There are children there who are either orphaned or are there because their mums have been raped and have come to the hospital for treatment. There are no toys for them to play with, so I'm very happy to have signed up to make some dolls.... although I think I might have said I'd make 20.... what was I thinking?!!

If I can track down a scanner somewhere I'm hoping to get the pattern for this doll up on my free patterns page (which currently only has one pattern - I should say my free pattern page!). It's fast to make and uses only small scraps of fabric.

More holiday pics

I realised I've hardly put up any pics of our recent holiday to Melbourne, and my poor blog is looking a bit boring, so here are a few pictures from our trip to the museum with my gorgeous nephew J. How cool is that big window?

Balancing Act

I've been thoroughly enjoying reading Jean's blog lately... she's been talking about some of the issues Christian women encounter trying to balance the different demands of life, which I've found challenging and encouraging.

In a recent post she asked people to share their thoughts on balancing "ministry" (or "doing things for God" as I prefer to call it ;) ) inside and outside the home and I thought rather than just commenting on her blog I might as well get a blog post out of it myself!


Some random thoughts on the topic:

* It's important to realise that everything families do is going to involve costs and benefits - it's not just "ministry" that makes demands on families. Every family makes sacrifices for the things they regard as important (eg kids doing more household chores because both parents are working, financial restricitons to make sure the kids have music lessons, waking up early to get little Johnny to cricket on Saturday morning). For me it's important that the sacrifices my family makes are for the things God thinks are important. I feel a bit concerned that people will think some of the decisions my family is making are asking too much of my kids so I need to remind myself that every family makes sacrifices... they're just different kinds of sacrifices for different things.

* Another thing I've been thinking about is the tension I feel between letting kids feel the cost of having God's priorities - because there IS a cost, the Bible is clear about that - and my instinct as a parent to try to protect my kids and shield them from anything difficult. Being a Christian isn't easy; alot of the things the Bible says seem downright wierd, if not completely stupid to the rest of the world and it's a really hard thing to be thought of as a wierd or stupid person. If I want my kids to grow up with a real faith in Jesus I need to prepare them for the "cost" part of being a Christian.

* There are so many ways to do things for God that I'm only limited by my own imagination and flexibility - there will always be more opportunities than I can possibly hope to take up, so the challenge is to find the ones that will have greatest benefit without too much cost to my family. I don't really feel very limited by my small children ... I just need to think outside the box a bit to find heaps of worthwhile things ways to serve God.

* Something I've realised is that if my family is going to make sacrifices to do what God wants us to, I can't expect my family to also make sacrifices for too many other things (eg my hobbies, my slackness or disorganisation). For me this means I don't get nearly as much time as I'd like to to do the various crafty things I'd love to do, and I've had to make a rule for myself that the computer doesn't go on while the kids are awake.

* I think that the parents (not the kids) should cop the brunt of the "making sacrifices" part of serving God. One hard thing for Jeremy is that this means he hardly has any leisure time and one hard thing for me is that we never get time to do any maintenance around the house or garden.

How it looks for me / my family at the moment:

Non-negotiables:
* Aim to have time to read stories, play games, talk, sing, tickle, chase and generally enjoy my kids every day.
* Aim to be home for a midday rest for everyone.
* Prioritise my relationship with Jeremy - I figure if our marriage isn't strong then everything else will fall apart.

I do:

* Make meals for people
* Mind other peoples' kids
* Get my house ready for a bible study every week
* Stay awake for said bible study even though I'm usually exhausted
* Try to have a rest on the afternoon of the bible study so I'm not completely exhausted (obviously this is only semi-successful!)
* Help my husband make plans to study theology full time next year
* Try to read the Bible and pray every day
* Ring my sick Grandma and visit her as often as possible
* Try to be cheerful when I have to get up at the crack of dawn every morning with my kids
* Go to church every week
* Teach the toddler Sunday school class 1/3 of the year

I don't:
* Go to my mothers' group anymore because playgroup at church is on the same morning and I think it's more worthwhile
* Go to the womens' bible study at church because my kids get really distressed when I leave them in the creche
* Iron our clothes (I do wash them though!)
* Visit many people without kids because I'm worried my kids will ransack their houses. I want to work on that one though
* Get as much time as I'd like to do things with Jeremy, or with our family of 4
* Have people over as often as I think we should
* Care for the people in our Bible study group very well (eg with emails, phone calls, socialising)

So there you go, there's some thoughts on the topic, and how it looks (in part) for us at the moment. There's obviously alot of room for improvement, and we're about to enter the impoverished world of student life next year, so that will be a new challenge... I'll have to see how we go with that!

Anyone have any thoughts to add? I'll keep thinking about this and post again soon.

Patterns

Some good free patterns I've come across lately:

Baby pants

Baby shoes

Itty bitty baby dress - the site isn't working at the moment, but there's a bigger version here which would be easy enough to downsize until the original is working again

How to draft an A Line skirt

Cute doll pattern


It's obviously baby present season!

The first day of the rest of my life

It's been an ..... interesting... week for us this week. First there was the devastating storm last Sunday, and the days of power failure and associated food-throwing-out, mess-cleaning-up, shopping-in-horribly-crowded-shops and stressed out / feral children (yes, mine!). In the middle of all the mayhem we had a peadiatrician appt for JoJo to try to sort out some of her ongoing issues, and he got me to take her for a blood test... it was good that the Dr took me seriously, but awful to have him agree that there is something amiss with JJ.

On Thursday night the Dr rang to tell me that JoJo's readings for coeliac disease all came back off the scale, so it looks like we're heading into gluten-free territory. She needs to have a biopsy done, which I am praying will be able to be done very soon because I need to keep her on a normal diet until it's over. It's just killing me giving her food that I know is making her sick, especially when I have to look into her pale little face as she tells me she has a tummy ache and make her keep eating :( I just want her to be well, and it's pure torture to delay starting the diet that will almost certainly make her feel alot better.


I know it's not really a big deal in the scheme of things, especially compared to what it could have been, but it feels like a big deal at the moment. It's good for me to know that God loves JoJo more than I do and that he's got it all under control... it's just not what I would choose for my family.

Pancakes

1/8 cup polenta
1/4 + 1/8 cup tapioca flour
1/8 cup brown sugar
175 mL buttermilk
15g melted butter
1 tsp bicarb soda
1 egg

After the storm

It's a very strange feeling around our suburb at the moment. There are chainsaws and mulchers going all the time, helicopters flying overhead (news choppers having a gander at the destruction left by the storm) and when I went out this morning to take JoJo's kindy application form to the child care centre (my little girl is going to kindy! excuse me while I freak out) there were soldiers - SOLDIERS!! - and army trucks everywhere. Very bizarre. The CC centre J will be going to has had to delay its opening because it had a whole pile of trees fall on the roof of the brand new buildings. I'm just so glad it didn't happen on a day that the centre was open.

On the plus side everyone is being very friendly to each other because they have something to talk about. I've talked to more random strangers in the past few days than I have in ages!

The pic above is what we saw when we went to the library yesterday - that's not even a particularly dramatic example of the debris that's everywhere at the moment, but it was easy to photograph!

Power to the people!

We've just spent a fun (ha!) few days since a huge storm tried to tear our house apart on Sunday afternoon. We only had our power restored at about 3am today, which made for two very dark and unpleasant nights. Mum and dad saved the day by letting me use their house as a base yesterday and letting us use their stove for the past 2 nights. We did lose pretty much everything in our 2 freezers though, which was a bit sad.

Anyway, I'm SO glad to have the power and the phone back (not to mention the internet!), but so exhausted from all the to-ing and fro-ing and cleaning of the past couple of days.

Xander has been left with a fairly severe fear of rain / storms though - he cries if he gets wet in the rain now, and tonight he grabbed my hand during dinner when he noticed it was raining and said "pray... God.... rain" because he was scared!

Gorgeous...

We picked these flowers at a semi-disused train station in Daylesford. I was maybe just a tad over-excited about it as we have to buy this kind of flower in Qld.

My husband (behind the flowers) on the other hand I picked from a crowd of guys at Uni - and he's the kind of quality you just can't buy anywhere. Far more excited about that acquisition in the scheme of things, but the flowers were pretty cool too!

A great Christmas idea...

Check this out... you can contribute without it costing a cent :) What a great idea!

Oh wow oh wow oh wow!!

I just discovered that I can now do my grocery shopping online!!!! Oh boy (insert sounds of me hyperventilating with excitement) this could change my life :D

(It may help provide some context if I explain that I got home from the grocery shopping this morning with the worst joint pain I've had for a month or two, which is saying something.)

Daylesford

A couple of pics from our trip to Victoria last week - these were taken at a park in Daylesford.

The first one is JJ with the baby doll she played with constantly at Roger's house. She called it "Good Girl Good Girl" because all of her toys have 4 names at the moment (eg her doll called "Milla Nilla Milla Nilla" and her dog called "Riffy Ruffy Chewy Wewy"). I seem to have alot of photos of my kids at the top of a slippery slide... maybe it's because it's one of the only times they sit still!

The 2nd one is Xander with the "bewful fwowers" in the park. He was quite besotted with them.

The last one if of the the kids at the pump for the mineral spring water. That stuff is foul - JJ seemed to find it funny, and of course X thinks JJ laughing is hysterical!

Plans....

Awhile ago I mentioned that we were making some decisions.... well, one major one anyway! Hopefully next year Jeremy will be studying Theology at QTC (if he ever fills out the application form). I'm really excited about it - I feel it's going to take our family in a much better direction ... not that I was ever that into the whole IT "thing"!

There were a few things that brought us to this point:
* We're both Christians (well derr!)
* We want to use our lives for something more worthwhile than than the "make as much money as possible to have as nice a life as possible and then die, hopefully with lots of money to leave to the kids" thing that seems to be what you're "supposed" to do.
* Jeremy is a great communicator and explainer-of-interesting-or-hard-things and he'd prefer to use those skills to share the great news about Jesus than working for a bank.
* This year absolutely sucked in terms of working hours and family life. I mean it was really. really. bad. Something that's put us off the studying thing before is the fact that it could (will!) be hard to juggle study/work/family, but we figure that it can't be any worse than this year was!
* There's finally a college in Brisbane that is worth going to. Previously the only colleges we would have considered were in Sydney, and frankly I would rather poke needles in my eyes than move to Sydney (sorry Sydney people).

So there you go. We're not sure what will happen when the study is finished.... the 2 most likely options at this point seem to be either working overseas in a theological college that's getting started or being a "normal" (ha!) minister in a Presbyterian church in Qld. Maybe we'll discover something else along the way that seems like a better thing to do.

It's only been a very recent decision, but we're both really looking forward to it :)

A couple of pics

Just a couple of pics of our holiday.... I took our "normal" camera, our wonderful SLR and mum and dad's video camera away with us, but the only photos I actually took were on my phone! My excuse is that we were too busy actually having fun to be bothered getting the camera out :)

Ahhhhhh!

What could be more blissful than a holiday at the gorgeous Sunshine Coast? I'm feeling relaaaaaxed for the first time in, well, a long time! I'll post some pics when I can be bothered. :D

My back is stupid

Can I have a new one please please please? Anyone have an old one they could donate? Any offers gratefully accepted :)

Dyeing fun

Had a busy afternoon last week and dyed up a pile of gorgeous 10 ply Australian organic merino yarn. It is just so soft and bouncy and beautifully thick too. I've already made a hat for the lovely Melanie and I'm looking forward to using some of it on our upcoming holiday. Just have to decide which to take!

I really need to order more, but the poor old Aussie $ isn't doing so well and it's making my wool pretty expensive!

I'm excited!!!!

Oh wow oh wow there is a fabulous new fabric store just near me. I managed to limit myself to only one fabric purchase today but it was hard! Now I've just got to work out how to make the skirt I want....

There's lots of time for baking....

... when a certain somebody wakes you up at 5am. I made chocolate muffins, fruit loaf and focaccia today - I think I'm the new Nigella Lawson.

Something's telling me that my eyes would be able to focus on the computer screen a whole lot better if I'd had a teensy bit more sleep though.

Wow!

Did anyone else out there watch 4 Corners on the ABC on Monday night? What an incredible story! An amazing documentary "A Walk to Beautiful" about a Fistula hospital in Addas Ababa, Ethiopia screened, and it was an incredibly moving and inspirational piece. It really put into perspective how safe and comfortable and priveleged my fairly run-of-mill life in Australia is, and it just seems so wrong that my family spends more on unnecessary stuff in a year than it costs to completely turn around the life of an Ethiopian woman. Check out the hospitals website... it's great stuff!

Fun with Colin

What excitement!! The Colin Buchanan concert on Wednesday was excellent and the kids had a ball (after JJ stopped screaming and begging to go home because she was so overwhelmed by it all!). Jeremy got the morning off to come, and Lynn came too, so it was a far less stressful experience (for me) than last year. I love the pic of the kids watching the concert - X was too excited to sit on my lap to watch, but too short to see properly when he was standing up, so he spent half the time straining to see over the seat in front!

Instead of being literally last in the queue to see the man himself after the show, like last year (that was a fun hour!) we were actually first in line - woo hoo!


JoJo has a thing about wearing 4 plaits all the time at the moment (actually she has a big thing about the number 4 in general... "Mummy I'm going to smell your hair 4 times"... What the?) and she was very pleased when Colin liked them!

Fun with friends

Posting this a bit belatedly... Our church had a post-Mark-Driscoll-breakfast-for-blokes a week or so ago (they may have called it something different though!) and JoJo, Xander and I had great fun playing with our friends H and A (as well as S, who came after the pics were taken) so their dad(s) could go to the breakfast. Playdough was a big hit with all the kids - the boys found it hard to move past "roly poly, ever so slowly" but the girls made some spectacular creations! It surprisingly civilised having the kids so early in the morning (pre-8am) - they were all fresh and happy. We'll have to do it again soon!

Blue Poo!

Xander must have eaten more of that blue crayon than I realised! Erk!

One of the many problems with.....

.... blogging is that you feel you should have something profound, pithy and preferably witty to say (and of course heaps of amazing pictures). Oh well, sorry.
.... Henry the Octopus is that he is quite disturbingly reminiscent of JaJa Binks. *Shudder* Let us never speak of either of them again.
.... headaches is that they make it very hard to get things done that need to be done.
.... living in an affluent society is that it is hard to focus on the things that really matter.



Here's a photo of my daughter looking very attractive (she has her mother's looks) so this post doesn't look so boring.

Decisions, decisions

Spent an interesting morning this morning. One of our local schools is planning a Montessori program to run alongside its "normal" program and the principal talked to some playgroup friends and me about it this morning. It sounds pretty good on the whole, but I'm a bit worried about there being an "us and them" culture created at the school with the 2 diff programs, and I'm also worried about how the other teachers will feel about the Montessori kids getting such fantastic resources etc. I'm hoping to do some supply work at the school (maybe before the end of the year?) to suss out what's going on behind the scenes. Even though JoJo doesn't start prep until 2010 the primary school we pick will effect what she does next year for kindy. I just have to keep telling myself that kids are resilient and it doesn't reeeeeally matter what we pick. Hmmmm.

We're also trying to make some decisions re: Jeremy's work etc for next year. I can't really go into details here (oooh the suspense) but there are a couple of options and the one which seems more worthwhile also seems more scary and unknown. I was reading my new book (Amy Carmichael) last night and a couple of quotes from her stood out to me.... "to any whom the Hand Divine is beckoning: count the cost, for He tells us to, but take your slate the foot of the Cross and add up the figures there" ....... "Satan is so much more in earnest than we are - he buys up the opportunity while we are wondering how much it will cost". Wow that woman sure had a way of getting to the heart of the matter.

I have learnt an important lesson

If you have the misfortune to come into the possession of a perfume card which bears any mention of the name "Sarah Jessica Parker", do not under any circumstances use it as a bookmark. And don't say you weren't warned.

Cute hats!

Here's a couple of hats I made the other week for a photographer friend who wants them for her newborn shoots. Many thanks to the (disturbingly naked) Baby Zan for modelling so patiently.

*rubs hands gleefully*

Our Amazon package arrived yesterday - it's like Christmas! I have 3 great books I can't wait to read : Feminine Appeal, Faithful Women and Their Extraordinary God, and the one I've really been hanging out for, A Chance to Die (biography of Amy Carmichael). I love reading good christian biographies and haven't been able to find much of what I'm after at K**rong so I'm torn between wanting to sit down and read each book at a sitting, and trying to ration myself so I can make them last longer!

Jeremy got some boring books on computers and Greek *yawn*.

Things I'm grateful for: Baked Beans

They meant that our manic friend / outing filled day yesterday didn't end in disaster. Thankyou Mr Heinz!

Here comes the sun.....

I just have to comment on the absolutely beautiful weather we have here in Brisbane today - max of 28 degrees, not a cloud in the sky (this morning anyway) and a beautiful coolish breeze. Aaaah, who wouldn't live in Qld?

A moment in time

X is wearing his "pi'back" (piggy back) which he decided he just had to wear on the way up the stairs from the car (don't ask me why, he usually hates it). He didn't actually break the chair - it collapsed under JoJo quite spectacularly while she was talking to the boy next door - but he did spend quite awhile trying to fix it.

In the afternoon we had our first walk without the pram. X wore the monkey again and we walked around to the fruit shop, only realising far too late that I was not going to be able to carry much home! We saw a very friendly cat on the walk back, and luckily it enjoyed the kids' rather enthusiastic advances, but then JoJo cried half the way home because she wants a cat so much. Unfortunately for us, if we do get a cat it will have to be one of those hideous hairless ones because J is allergic to cat fur.

The kids had a great night with J - it's so different now that he's not coming home completely exhausted after work and he can play crazy games with them (not having a sinus infection seems to help too!).

They're baaaaaack!

My horrendous migraine style headaches that is.
At the moment I'm avoiding cheese, ibuprofen, citrus fruits, chocolate and I'm trying (not that hard) to cut back on tea. I think I need to try a bit harder in the tea dept though.

Shoo, begone you horrible things.

Nice!

Three good things that happened today...

* The shoe fixer upper man managed to fix my remote key for the car and didn't charge me!
* I discovered laundry bleach.... wow where has that stuff been all my life? My grotty washers now look slightly less grotty, which believe me, is something to be very glad about.
* I discovered I can touch my toes without bending my legs for the first time since I was a teenager. Time will tell how useful that skill turns out to be but I think I'm pretty safe to say I have a career in international gymnastics ahead of me.

Quote of the day...

Play is a child's work, and it is not a trivial pursuit ~ Alfred Adler

So that must mean that playing along is a mother's work, in which case it must be someone elses job to do the housework. Excellent.

Sewing!

Without warning my sewing mojo has returned - I'm going to make a bag! Woo Hoo! My dining table is covered with fabric, the kids are sleeping, my cutting wheel is ready to roll and I'm having IDEAS! Now to figure out how to re-thread the overlocker.....

What's working, what's not

Working:
* I'm trying to get the kitchen (and lounge if I'm feeling up to it) cleaned up and dinner semi-prepared at lunchtime. Before (this is the crucial bit!) getting to the computer. Having dinner half made makes a big difference when J isn't getting home till 6:40.
* X being weaned... not that I can go back now (it's been a week and a half), but it's good to know he's ok with it :)
* My joint is finally finallystarting to feel better. I've been in alot of pain more or less since I got pregnant with JJ, and have just found a great physio for pregnancy related problems. So far so good. I'm still far from perfect but it's great just to be making progress.
*Being pretty strict with myself about not having the computer on / doing woolly stuff when the kids are awake.

Not working:
* JJ's complete inability to eat independantly. I feel like I nag her constantly about eating and I hate it.
* Snacks for kids and me - they're eating far too many biscuits, but I can't think of anything else that a) they'll eat (quickly enough) and b) will pack enough of an energy punch to stop their sudden episodes of low blood sugar induced poor behaviour / emotional over-reactions. If you have any suggestions I'll all ears (or in this case eyes!).

I'll come back to this list in awhile and see if things have improved!

Random facts

Okey dokey, I've been tagged by the fabulous Simone to share 6 random facts about myself and not being one to let the chance to talk about myself slip by, I thought I would seize the first available opportunity, even though I still have a tissue shoved up my nose to prevent computer drippage (see my prev entry... if you dare!). First, here are the rules:

1. Link to the person who ‘tagged’ you!
2. Post the rules on your blog!
3. List 6 random facts about yourself!
4. Tag 6 people at the end of your post!
5. Let each person know they have been tagged by commenting on their blog!
6. Let the tagger know the entry is posted on your blog!

Also, my apologies to those of you who know most of this stuff already :)

1. I spent a couple of years as a kid living just outside a small village in Kenya. We had no electricity or running water and did correspondence lessons for school. We also got some unusual and exciting parasites and other diseases. At the time I thought it was all good fun and just accepted it, as 7 yr olds tend to accept most things, but now I'm amazed that Mum and Dad left their comfy Aussie life to take their 3 little kids to a disease-ridden part of the world to help get an indigenous church there off the ground. I think having my own kids has made me realise what a big deal it was... I'm not sure I could face it!

2. I am really, seriously, very bad at keeping in contact with people when I don't see them regularly. I mean really bad. I feel very terrible about this, and I'm making an effort to get better. It's a long slow road though.

3. I was a moderator on a big internet parenting forum for awhile (until a few months ago). I enjoyed it for a long time, but got completely burnt out in the end. I really love forums for the way they let you connect with people you would never usually meet, and I enjoy the exchange of ideas and opinions. I have learnt alot about pregnancy, birth, breastfeeding and health in general from that forum and I'm really grateful for that. It was a great place to see what people think about christianity (which is close to my heart) and to talk to them in a more open way than I would usually get a chance to. What I don't like about internet forums is that (some) people seem to feel that good manners don't apply online - I think people don't realise how hurtful their harsh comments really are. In a strange sort of way though I think it's good to see what people are really like... we pretend to be "nice" and "normal" to the people we talk to face to face, but online people seem to expose more of what's really going on in their heads, and it's not always pretty!

4. I have a degree in music composition (and a degree in early childhood teaching - doesn't that mean someone should pay me to be a mum?). For some reason though, all my creative energy at the moment is going on crocheting and yarn dyeing. Mmmmm yarn! I think the combination of small creative spark + lots of mindless repetition is doing it for me at the moment. When I get more time (read when J isn't completely overworked and I'm not completely exhausted as a result) I'd love to get back into music a bit more.

5. At the moment I probably get most of my theological input from listening to Colin Buchanan CDs.

6. I would love, I mean really love, to be in a bush band. I know that's shockingly daggy and I should probably be embarrassed, but there it is!

Yikes, now I'm meant to tag 6 people.... let me think!

Jacqui, Leisa, Courtney, Lesley, Tracy, Sue, and that'll do I think!

Why.....

.... oh why oh why am I sick again? (I'm writing this post with a tissue shoved up my nose to stop myself dripping on the laptop... how's that for a nice mental picture?) And for that matter why are my poor kiddies spluttering and miserable and why is my lovely husband wheezing and coughing? Ah life isn't so much fun sometimes. On the plus side, J has been home (sick, admittedly, but still) all week and the kids have had a pretty fun time having dad around. It's been nice to not have to struggle through the day, hanging out for J to come home, which would have been no picnic this week. It makes me hang out for the future though - no more mourning, crying and pain sounds pretty good to me! (Revelation 21:4 for people who have no idea what I'm on about...I'm not at my most coherent tonight! ).

Some interesting quotes...

Nothing has an impact on kids except what they do daily ~ Ralph Winter

Babies need not to be taught a trade, but to be introduced to a world. ... [Women are]generally shut up in a house with a human being at the time when he asks all the questions that there are, and some that there aren't....How can it be a large career to tell other people's children [arithmetic], and a small career to tell one's own children about the universe? ... No; a woman's function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute. I will pity Mrs. Jones for the hugeness of her task; I will never pity her for its smallness. ~ G.K. Chesterton (shamelessly lifted from Jean's blog!)

Crafting...

I realised I haven't posted anything I've made for ages... here's a selection of my recent crocheting efforts. I've been enjoying making things for my family and people I know more than the shop lately, but I'm getting a few Spring-related ideas for the shop too... better get busy!

Shoes

As promised Caroline! :)

Before and After....

Look how hideous X's hair was this morning! Definitely time for his first ever haircut. I didn't even feel sad... just so glad to say goodbye to the horrible fuzz-mullet. He was terrified of the scissors, poor bloke, so it's not quite as even as I would have liked, but I think he looks very handsome!