I have a birthday

I am not usually a person to discuss the fact that I am getting older but I have been thinking about getting older and life in general.

Just sometimes when life is going faster than me, do I feel way down low. Why? Who knows but what I do know is that in those moments I sense this deep down feeling of grief and loneliness. Maybe it is my inner self telling me I need to I need to stop, take a breath, find a space and time for myself and reflect. So this year as my birthday nears, yes just a couple of days away, and I become another year older and hopefully wiser, I want to make a list. This list is the way that I intend on make a positive difference in my life. So when I hit low points I can reflect positively upon all my achievements.

The List

1. Take time for myself every week. Just a little to gather my thoughts and reflect upon how lucky I am.

2. Look after myself by exercising even if it is only just half an hour each time I go out.

3. Have fun and laugh more. See how inventive I can be when it comes to this.

4. Go out and enjoy life.

Okay this list is not very comprehensive but it is something I can build on.

Here is a page I made showing this sentiment.




The credits for this page are here at Nuts4Digi

P365 week 25 and 26

Here are the next lot of pages.

week 25



The credits can be found here at Nuts4Digi

week 26



The credits for this page can be found here at Nuts4Digi

Mum the Taxi

I have to say that I have never been curious about what it would be like to be a taxi driver. But being a mother puts me in the position that I am sure many of you are family with, being a taxi driver to the family.



Yes the last of the winter terms and winter sport has started up again. We are back into full swing in our house. Every night there is something going on and when DH is away at work the tribe of three come everywhere.

Yes this is Mum's Taxi. Fingers crossed it does not break down while we are out and about.



But every now and again the time spent sitting in the car with the none participants of the night is nothing but perfect and the scenery matches the tone. We watched this magnificent sun set fill the night sky while waiting for Monday nights hockey to finish. My camera has not really done it justice.



Hmmm long may these peaceful and calm evenings in the car last.

Monday's Menu 27 July

Here I am again. Yes I am keeping to the plan but this week will be the test. DH will be away and I will be doing the solo parent come taxi service.

Monday Fahitah's

Tuesday Chicken, vege and noodles

Wednesday Hearty Beef Casserole WW magazine July 2009 Pg 71 (freeze meal)

Friday Pizza

Saturday French Onion Soup WW magazine June 2009 pg 64

Sunday Toasted Sandwiches

Project 365 weeks 22 , 23 and 24

I have got behind with these pages so here are two weeks

week 22



You can find the credits here at Nuts4Digi


week 23




You can find the credits here at Nuts4Digi

Finally week 24




You can find the credits here at Nuts4Digi

Why it is great to go to work.

With term 3 just begun here in New Zealand I am busy working at primary schools on a day by day basis. I have been thinking today about why I actually work and what about work makes happy. Yes I did use the word happy and work together in one sentence. So I made a list.

1. Most importantly it gives me a life outside of the home. This is really important for me.

2. My brain gets stimulated. Yes the good old grey matter needs a work out and mine gets that from going to work. No two days as a teacher are the same, thank goodness. The old addage rings true, variety is the spice of life.

3. I get to meet a huge range of people as a teacher.

4. I am challenged to see life through different lenses. Life is never boring.

5. Of course this one needs to be on the list. Gives us a little more financial freedom. (This year a new to us car.)

I would like to be able to add to this that I inspire children to learn but as a relief teacher the opportunity to do this is limited. I do hope that in every class I go into that at least one child will learn something.

So here I am after a day at work looking terrible but work recording.



The credits can be found here at Nuts4Digi

Mondays Menu

Here is my Mondays Menu. Last week worked a treat.

Monday Tortilla Source Weight Watchers Magazine June 2009 pg 66

Tuesday Chicken and Pumpkin Risotto Source Weight Watchers Magazine May 2009 pg 65

Wednesday Ginger Chicken Stirfry

Thursday Bolar Roast in Crock pot with veges

Friday Pizza

Sat Pumpkin Soup

Sunday Hamburgers

I hope this week works well as everyone is back at school

The Whirlwind is Home

Yes DS1 has been on residential respite care for week. This enables him to have a holiday and us to catch up on sleep and energy, do things that ordinary families do without the unusual constraints that come with DS1 and in general achieve things that we probably others can do.

He usually cant wait to get there and we trust in the process of him being well cared for and happy.

It is always great to see him home but when he is away it brings into focus how demanding his needs are on our lives.

We love him none the less.

Here he is on his first day home playing with bubbles.

The bathroom

Sometimes all the renovating we have been doing just doesn't seem worth it. Today was just one of those days. The worst part of it is that this room is the last one of the house that needs the plastering done, the priming/ sealing painted on, the painting and not to mention a new bath in and this time I will have to learn how to tile in the splash zone.

Then the finishing touches, extractor and light will need to go in and a towel rowel hung and that is it. The basic and mirror are in great condition.

Who knows how long it will take us to finish this but maybe in a month we will be well and truly just tying up the loosing ends in each bedroom.

So thanks to my own little troupe of home handymen, my father and husband, for taking up to 3 days to work out how to build a frame for the new bath...(without laughing too much I must comment here that the bath did come with instructions for building a frame but they were not discovered until half a days thinking had gone into)



I will back into the plastering tomorrow.

Injury

It has all been drama in our house. DD and DS2 were playing outside with something that was in our inorganic collection. I was an old heater that had wheels. Now it was a dangerous thing to play with as it was not stable, but fun none the less because of the wheels and a bit of imagination FUN is the key word. Now the common sense side of me had to make comment about safety and 'someone will get hurt'.

Hmmm the temptation to play was too great and before too long there was the very loud scream and one DD with a cut about 2cm long and 1cm deep. Blood everywhere. So a trip to our nearest medical centre was made and 1 hour later with 3 stitches and one very sorry and hobbling daughter later. I am not sure whether she is sorry that she didn't heed my gentle warning or for the fact that she was told that she wasn't allowed to play hockey.

One sorry and hobbling daughter just after stitches


So I guess today a lesson just might have been learned in our house the very hard way.

Here are the 3 stitches 2 days later.

Monday's Menu

I thought it might make life just a little easier, especially when school goes back and I am working, to make more of a menu plan. So I came across this blog...I'm an Organizing Junkie...to get inspired. I was thinking that I would mean that DH would be in the menu loop too when it was he turn to prepare diner.

Now I know that I am two days late but I thought that I would post it anyway to see how things go.

Monday.......blank for this week

Tuesday......blank for this week

Wednesday Roast Chicken with vege and salad (bbq)

Thursday Hearty Beef Casserole source Weight Watchers Magazine July 2009 pg 71

Friday Pizza This week I am testing to see if I can freeze my home made base.

Saturday French Onion Soup source Weight Watchers Magazine June 2009 pg 64

Sunday Toasted sandwiches and leftovers.

Fingers crossed that this works for me because it would make life easier I think.

Holidays

The school holidays are coming to an end here in New Zealand. This break from school is just two weeks long and in the middle of winter. I feel sorry that my children are not getting to go away but that is how life goes in our house this break. We are renovating the last bathroom in the house, yes we have 3, and then the house is about ready to put on the market to sell. I hope that this is all ready to sell in about 6 weeks.

So the renovational challenge is putting in a new bath. I think easy and I can get the new plaster board in etc etc. How wrong could I have been. It will be a saga that I will be able to blog about for some time. Firstly the old yellow, think of a babies nappy, bath was glued in and needed to be smashed to get it out. Then the bath required a cradle to be build to rest it in. My DH and father thought that they would tackle that task. Hmmm all morning they tried to sort out the cradle and then just before lunch DH comes to me laughing saying that they have just discovered the instructions for building one. Well I had to laugh too, a whole morning spent trying to work out something that was on a bit of paper that came with the bath.

Here is the bath. Oh the room had paint over wallpaper which has to come out too. Finally you might wonder why a bath rather than a shower. The house already has two showers. No need for any more I think.



Bath out.



Now to get the bath level and fitted close enough to the bath so that we can, I mean....I can, tile two rows of tiles as a splash board. I guess that is for another blog as novices can take some time to work these things out.

Watch out for those photos.

I Ache

Did I tell you after all that gardening I ache all over. Oh I ache. Thank goodness it is all finished.

Why is it that something that is very satisfying to finish gives me pain.

Hmmm. Off to relax now.

Mid Winter Gardening

I am not a keen garden but our house sits on a sit of a approximately 1100 m sq with garden surrounding three of the boundaries. Now when I say garden I really mean plenty of garden beds, dirt and weeds and not so many plants. We have been trying to put plants in place but with money restrictions it is a slow job. So in the last two days DH, the children and I have been outside dealing to the mess that winter has left us. The first task that had to be done was to perform so serious surgery on the old and rotting Kowhai tree that decided to fall down. See this post here. 3 hours later and a seriously attended to tree is looking much more stable. We are really sad that such a beautiful tree is really on its last legs but I guess that is nature.

Here is the final part of the tree to come down. (photo by DS2 5 years old)



and another shot by DS2




So today I attended to the flattened garden, when the tree fell down, and the copious leaves that are now smothering the lawns and garden beds. Thank goodness that DH got a mega leaf blower for his birthday because it sure has been useful today.

Here is the Kowhai tree (the next day.) DD 8 years took the photo.


I still have another days gardening to go and then it will be on to the next renovation task. That is for another blog entry. Weeding to be finished, de-weeding the pavers that line our driveway, spraying for all the moss that is everywhere and finally mowing the lawns. Phew I feel exhausted just thinking about it all.

I Customised my Blog

I have had a try at customising my blog. I hope you like it. I think there are a few other things that I would like to try and do but I have run out of time at the moment so I will leave it at that.

Having a play

I am having a play with my blog. It might take me a few days so if things look a little funny it will because I have got stuck with what to do next or I need a break and will be back.

Cars

Cars...we need them but sometimes I wish we did not have the ongoing issues we are having. Now to be honest our main family car was old when we bought it and did not cost very much money at all. We had no money to buy anything else but time has come to seriously commit to replacing it. We know that it is time to make this decision because the cost of frequently repairing the car so it will stay on the road is more than the value of the car itself.

So to put us in a position to have the cash I am going to have to work more than I do. Now at the moment I do supply teaching in primary schools when my husband is home from one of the long haul flights his job takes him on. Now after much organisation of after school care, I will be able to pick up more more and be more aggressive about finding work. There is always a dilemma when working more with a financial goal and that is how many days I need to work to make it worth my while. I have done the figures and that is 8 days every fortnight up until the end of the year. I hope I can manage this among everything else I need to do, without getting too difficult to live with.

Ultimately I guess that it is a small sacrifice to make to ensure that we have reliable transportation.

Fingers crossed that all my plans work out.

Books

In our house books are really integral in our lives. My DD has an incredible appetite for reading, and not just one type of book, but everything from fiction to non fiction, drama, fairies, ghosts, traditional and modern authors. At the moment I am reading to her The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless by Ahmet Zappa. Boy it is a story full of imagination and drama of the monster catching variety. She is reading everything and anything she can get her hands on. It doesn't matter if she has read it before, an easy read or one that will take days to finish.

So in honour of her love of books I have created a page.



The credits can be found here.

Then there is page made with Donna Duncombes A Mothers Love kit and Vaguely Repulsive font.



I feel that books can empower the reader in some way so I hope DD finds plenty to inspire and empower her.

More drama....tooth extraction required.

Baby son, okay if he was reading this, he would be objecting to that title after all he is 5 years old, damaged a front too when he was two. It killed the nerve but stayed in his gum.

Here you can see the blackened tooth.



Well the tooth came to a dramatic end today. To cut a long story short, his tooth had been sore for some time. We did visit the school dental nurse, nothing wrong.

How wrong could she have been. The gum above the tooth has been a problem since the visit and to be honest I thought think that son is a little bit of a softy and didn't pay too much attention. How wrong could I have been. Tuesday night I took much more notice as I thought that it had been sore for some time and there at the top of the gum above the tooth was a large abscess. By large I mean about 1cm wide and just short of 5mm high. Boy did I feel like a bad mother.

So the next morning I rang the doctors and I couldn't get hold of the school dental nurse. DH made the doctors visit as I was working, then of course the he was told the dentist was necessary as the tooth needed removal.

All drama for a little 5 year old and his Dad. When I got home from work baby son told me that he had a numb gum, teeth, lips and nose, with a big smile on his face. DH tells me he had to step out of the room as blood and other such this make him pass out.

Here he is with his sore mouth



Then a close up view. Just what you all wanted to see.



A look at the disintegrating tooth. There you can see the hole that caused the problem.



Of course he still wanted to go and play hockey and won player of the day.