A Christmas Story

The more I tell and re-tell my kids about Christ and that He came to die the more I've found my heart joyful over the reality of God's plan of salvation.

I hope this video works for you...it's fabulous.

The Christmas Story from St Paul's on Vimeo.

A Birthday Greeting

It was my sweet sister-in-law's birthday recently and I thought I'd send her a quick, cute photo to wish her well . . .so we sent her this:

But these cute photos don't necessarily come easily...

(he's saying "SMI-ILE")

nonetheless, we wished her well . . .

Summer Rain

Some days I grab my phone just in time to snap a picture. Sometimes it works out well. Like today.

We had a sudden downpour and I asked Emma if she wanted to put on her rain coat and go out into the rain - I was surprised that she was so keen...until I realised she wanted to 'jump in muddy puddles' just like her ham heroine, Peppa Pig (a kids TV show . . .I advise you to google it, it's very funny).

It's Here!

You see this gorgeous boy?

This handsome, adventurous, naughty, cute, sweet, funny, mischievous, delightful, busy little boy?

 Well....he's two. Today.

And we could not be more pleased to have him in our lives.

"Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward. Like arrows in the hand of a warrior are the children of one's youth. Blessed is the man who fills his quiver with them! He shall not be put to shame when he speaks with his enemies in the gate." ~ Psalm 127:3-5

Happy Birthday William boy!

1

ONE..... (I'm excited!!)

2

~TWO....~

3

THREE...

4

FOUR...

Beauty and the Beast

(No, his hair hasn't grown back - this was taken in September)

Mornings in my room

Our kids come into our bed for snuggles in the morning. I love it.

Face Painting

Do you remember the chalkboard I posted about? Well, we use it for painting. Painting, is a supervised activity. I obviously wasn't present-of-mind when he painted on his face, but I was (or at least I thought I was) when he tried to eat the paint brush. Ahhhh, bless him. *sigh*

He said "Yuck" after eating it....

I claim that as a small positive that came out of this scenario.

Walking Up A Hill

We went to a friends birthday party today and at one point I captured this.

We have a Chalk Board!

It seems this was a brilliant purchase. (I was encouraged by a friend who said her 10 year old still uses theirs to teach the younger sibling when they play "teacher, teacher")

Given, these pictures were taken on the first day of purchase but the children use it almost every day.

 And I bought them painting smocks too. Being such a novelty at this point I haven't had any issues getting them to wear them while they paint.

 My little artists in the making!

Emma has been learning to read (slowly! but it's begun) and I sometimes play 'teacher, teacher' with her, writing words on the board for her to sound out. I wrote "see" the other day and she said it immediately and laughed saying "that's easy! It's 'see'!" I was impressed and happy.

Caught this on Twitter

I saw this reposted on Twitter today and was tremendously encouraged about being a mother. It's strange that being a Christian mother is hard enough - comparing ourselves to the next door neighbour who works full time and has children but it's almost beyond sense to compare ourselves to each other - something I'm completely guilty of - when we should be merely loving God, loving our husbands and loving our children.

This article is by Stephen Altrogge who is a pastor of a Sovereign Grace Church in the USA.

Here's the link:
http://www.theblazingcenter.com/2012/10/dear-moms-jesus-wants-you-to-chill-out.html

And here's the actual article (if you couldn't be bothered to click):

FACT: If your children can’t read by age four there is a 95% chance they will end up homeless and on drugs.

FACT: If your children eat any processed food there is an 85% chance they will contract a rare, most likely incurable disease, by age 12.

FACT: If  you’re not up at dawn reading the Bible to your children, you are most likely a pagan caught in the clutches of witchcraft.

FACT: If your children watch more than 10 minutes of television a day there is 75% chance they will end up in a violent street gang by age 17.

Obviously, the “facts” listed above are not true (at least, I don’t think they are). But, I’ve noticed that the Internet has made it much easier for people, and moms in particular, to compare themselves to each other. Now, just to be clear, this is not a post against “mom blogs”, or whatever they’re called. If you write a mom blog, that’s cool with me. This is a post to encourage the moms who tend to freak out and feel like complete failures when they read the mom blogs and mom Facebook posts.

Moms, Jesus wants you to chill out about being a mom. You don’t have to make homemade bread to be a faithful mom. You don’t have to sew you children’s clothing to be a faithful mom. You don’t have to coupon, buy all organic produce, keep a journal, scrapbook, plant a garden, or make your own babyfood to be a faithful mom. There’s nothing wrong with these things, but they’re also not in your biblical job description.

Your job description is as follows:

• Love God. This simply means finding some time during the day to meet with the Lord. It doesn’t have to be before all the kids are awake. It doesn’t have to be in the pre-dawn stillness. Your job is to love God. How you make that happen can look a million different ways.

• Love your husband (unless you’re a single mom, of course). Your second job is to love and serve your husband. Husbands are to do the same for their wives, but that’s for a different post. If your husband really likes homemade bread, maybe you could make it for him. But don’t make homemade bread simply because you see other moms posting pictures of their homemade bread on Facebook.

• Love your kids. Your calling as mom is to love your kids and teach them to follow the Lord. They don’t need to know Latin by age six. If they do, more power to you. But that’s a bonus, not part of the job description. Your job is simply to love your kids with all your exhausted heart, and to teach them to love Jesus. That’s a high calling. Don’t go throwing in other, extraneous things to make your life more difficult. If you want to teach your kids to sew, great. But don’t be crushed by guilt if your kids aren’t making stylish blazers by the age of 10.

Moms, Jesus want you to rest in him. He wants you to chill out. His yoke is easy and his burden is light. Don’t compare yourself to other moms. Don’t try to be something God hasn’t called you to be. If the mom blogs are making you feel guilty, stop reading them. Be faithful to what he has truly called you to do, and know that he is pleased with you. When your kids are resting, don’t feel guilty about watching an episode of “Lost”, or whatever your favorite show may happen to be.

Love God, love your husband, love your kids. Keep it simple and chill out.

On not keeping up...

Life is marching ahead too swiftly! I suppose it's that 'mother-of-young-children' stage I've heard of for so many years. I remember sitting in conferences and hearing the speaker say "of course this may not happen if you have young children" or "this may look a little different if you're a mother of young children" and I always thought to myself (ignorantly and ungraciously!) 'what a cop-out'. Of course now that I am a mother of young children I have been swiftly set in my place. Here are some examples of my current life circumstances:
- Humming small people tunes. I said "I have Humpty Dumpty in my head" at the dinner table last night to which Emma responded with a laugh, saying "Mummy, I have a spider on my head". I tried to explain but from what I remember it simply ended in me telling her to keep eating dinner without my laughing too much.
- Limited adult interaction. So much so that I find myself chatting to any moving adult in a shopping centre/shopping centre car park/shop/playground...and yes, even the postie - we have a female postie with a Russian accent. I saw my neighbour the other day, she was merely out to check her mailbox and we found ourselves talking for a good while, with both of us repeating "I'm sure that my boy is finished with his nap and wants to get out of his cot now" followed by further talk on educational standards in our local kindergartens.
- Not sleeping through the night even though my children are no longer babies. William coughs, wakes, cries or loses his dummy/paci, wakes, cries, or bangs his head, wakes, cries and while settling him I hear Emma stirring and waking from a bad dream - in the last bad dream she cut her thumb...?
- Lack of sleep resulting in tiredness.
- Tiredness resulting in the 'tired-mum' look. Caught an unflattering glimpse of myself today when I pulled out my phone camera and it was pointing to me instead of the kids - quite the fright I did receive!
The culmination of it all is that I don't really blog that much . . . (and have what feels like frustratingly limited brain capacity). But I suppose that's a good thing (the not blogging, not the small brain thing) - if I did my children may not have as many cuddles in their lives.

Picture time!

William is now in a big boy bed.

He has fallen out once but I happened to be walking in to check on him and caught him.

He did however wake up with a bruise across his eyelid yesterday morning. It explained what went 'bump' in the night.

 Our big girl is learning to READ! She loves it, I love it and it makes for some sweet Emma/Mummy time each day. Her word list currently includes: man, can, pan, ran, bee, see, the, Sam, bat, cat, hat, mat and possibly more but I'm getting tired.

 This was taken on Father's Day in September we took an afternoon walk after church.

 Swimming lessons. She has had 4 lessons and her hair has been fully wet ONCE.... but she is becoming braver and putting her face in more which is promising. 

 We have a fun walk through the "jungle" on the way home and see all sorts of imaginary animals. It's really a lot of fun.

(Will still smiles with his eyes closed)

 Speaking of Will - he got a tat! well, let's just say daddy pulled out the permanent marker at dinner one night...and then had the privilege of bathing our children all by himself. ha.

Making masks one afternoon. They didn't last long, most of our crafts don't unless I hide them and really there's no point in that because they're often made so poorly that they'll fall apart on their own anyway, so I take  pictures. I think subliminally I take the photos to make myself feel like I'm a good mum because the paper crafts, as helpfully time consuming as they are, make a big mess to clean up and inevitably end in one child crying at a destroyed work of art. But at the end of the hour I know somewhere in there we had FUN. At the same time. I have a good life.

New(er) Haircut

It's definitely weird to sit in front of a computer and take a photo of yourself and be pleased with the end result. I'm sure there may be a few people in the world who can do it, but I don't think I'm one of them. This is my latest 'do'. It's shorter than I think I've ever gone. So far one compliment has surpassed them all "You look younger". Janice (who said it) is my new bestest friend ever!

"At the Car Wash" and "The Girl Who Couldn't Smile"

The head car wash helper

I title this photo:

In desperate need of a professional haircut

 Thumbs up as daddy backs the truck around

 William discovered splashing is the ultimate joy for a 20-month-old.

Here he proudly slapped Lyle in the chest with the wet rag. I love Lyle's surprised face.

Flying Car Shampoo

"The Girl Who Couldn't Smile"

I know very few (read: one) photography tricks. I asked, nay, BEGGED Emma to smile...

"Emma can you smile for mummy sweetie?"

.......please?

.....PLEASE?

 Eventually this is all I got.

Although defeated, I vow to try again another day!

Great Haircut, Bad Idea

I had a hair appointment today and leading up to it I decided I wanted a change. I even did some research! I didn’t start with google though, I pinterest....ed? it first (or is that “googled on pinterest”?). In my 'medium hair styles' search I saw some beautiful swipey side fringes (bangs) and perfectly styled locks and each picture appealed more as my search progressed. I felt smug as, striving to be wise, gave myself a reality check knowing that these were picture perfect styles, posted on the internet very purposefully, hence, my hair may would not look this way first thing in the morning, second thing in the morning or even at 4pm in the afternoon with an entire can of hair spray. Nevertheless I took some sample pictures along to the hairdressers.

(side note: One was Charlize Theron - I knew her face but had to ask Lyle who it was....and was consequently reminded that I have two small children and am a stay at home mum!)

I don’t know what I was thinking. This stay at home mum wanting a hair change had a great idea that took a wrong turn. As I mentioned, the swipey side fringe was very appealing....but for a mum?! This is my day: I look down at little people . . .a lot. And when I’m not looking down at them I’m looking down at the ironing board, the sink, the vacuum, the broom, dustpan and brush, food, dirty floors, unmade beds . . .I think you get the drift. In fact literally the only thing I look up at is my husband (and occasionally a plane or helicopter my little ones see). A stylish sweeping side fringe and looking down all day a perfect match doth maketh not!!

It’s been 6 hours and it’s bugging me. Of course I’m going to ‘deal with it’ - as I said to Lyle before the cut, worst case scenario is that I don’t like it and it grows out. Two other alternatives is to pin it back and look like I’m trying to be a cutesy 16-year-old or shave it (I shall do neither). I may invest in a hair product company.

It does however, look Great! (Yes that is Great with a capital G)

A Smattering of June

I realised today that the reason I haven't blogged much lately is because I use my phone to take photos - so they don't end up on my computer as frequently and hence, they aren't here on the blog!

Here's a smattering of our June...

 Such a boy, loving dirt . . .I caught him with a stick in his mouth just before taking this photo. Gross!!!

 I have acquired a sewing machine and this was my first effort (the skirt)

(the pose was her own creation)

 and my second attempt! I quite like my new table cloth, however I take it off when we eat to avoid the children's messes!

 Waiting for art class to begin

 We often go to a local zoo (yay for the season pass!) for a morning.

Here Will is looking at the sheep dog herding.

 And of course, kangaroo feeding.

I'd love to know what a 1.5 year old would be thinking in a moment like this . . .

 Daddy horsing around - unfortunately for him, this has become a 'must do' after bath time now, they LOVE being wrapped up and carried. I must confess I can see why though, doesn't this just look like fun?! I mean, when was the last time you were suspended in mid air in a bath towel?

 Emma: (clockwise) taking a photo of a bush turkey; in the back of daddy's truck; wearing daddy's jumper; posing with her new skirt.

We went to an art gallery that offered some special children's activities during school holidays - including cupcake decorating, yum.

 AND face painting. She was so precious, I couldn't believe how still she sat while her face was done.

 I'm not sure what we did on this morning, but whatever it was, it was exhausting! He fell asleep a good hour before his usual nap time.

A visit to the ER...before the age of 2 he now has a chipped tooth (that happened last year) and a scar on the back of his little hand (which thankfully will shrink as he grows). Here's hoping he makes it to 2 without any broken bones . . .

 Friends

As you can see, life has been chugging along. It's amazing how my days sometimes feel intolerably slow and yet the weeks and months go by so quickly. Too quickly as it happens. We've taken to telling Emma to stop growing, a request with which she refuses to comply! If I could have a day off each week I think I would choose to have the children stay at their current ages. This, being impossible however, I'm content to remind myself to enjoy the laughter of an Emma 'schnickle' (tickle) and Will's whiney "UP!" at the most inconvenient moments of those intolerably long days. He certainly won't be asking for that when he's taller than me (or too cool for me, whichever comes first I suppose) so I'm trying to enjoy it now while he's still my baby.