I am still recovering from all our family festivities last week - would it horrify you if I was to say I am still in my pyjama's at 12.30pm??? :) Its school holidays - I figure I'm allowed :) :) :)

I'm not quite ready to do a full write up, but thought I would share some of my favourite photos from the week...

I'll be back to hopefully share some photo's of the Cowboy Party we had - my younger sister painted this AMAZING photo booth with Woody and Jessie which was the highlight of the night, but unfortunately our camera was awhol and all the photo's from the night are on my older sister's point and shoot which is now in NSW. So - I will be back with those! :)



Hopefully my Dad had a really great time, and felt all the love we were trying to show through our efforts - we do love you lots and lots and lots Dad, and hope you had a wonderful wonderful birthday! xxx

Now to start thinking about Mum's 60th next year? sigh. Tired already! hehehehhee

Sicko's

What a week! We've ALL been sick at some point over the past week - Madson started it with chills and fevers on Monday and then Ystyn came home from school on Tuesday and went straight to bed and didn't leave it till Friday morning when he forced himself to go back to work, and I came down with it Wednesday and am still in bed, and West and McKinley have alternated between temperatures and coughing and even a little of the vomits. Its been a trying week. We've never had the experience of both Ystyn and I being sick at the same time - usually its one or the other and there's always someone around to attend to the kids, but not this week. This week Ystyn and I have lain side by side in bed, coughing and spluttering and trying as best we can to ignore the bickering or complaining coming from the lounge room of wherever the kids have congregated.

A yuck week. One I hope we don't ever have to repeat. We've been so blessed though with such kind people dropping off meals and medecines - I'm so embarrased to admit that my medicine cupboard consists of Panadol (adult and childrens) and some Benedryl at the moment for coughs. That's it. No Vicks. No Vitamin C. Not even any Savlon cream or something similar. How bad is that!?!?!?! Thanks to our lovely home teachers it is now a little more extensive :).

Anyway, I don't have time to be sick this coming week. Its my dad's 60th birthday, and my sister and her family are driving up from NSW (have I mentioned this before???) and we've got some really fun family things planned and I DO NOT HAVE TIME TO BE SICK!

I just had to post these photo's of Ystyn's eye though - he played in a large soccer competition last weekend and took an elbow to the eye and this is how it looked yesterday (Saturday) a whole 6 days after it had occured, so you can imagine how pretty it looked the day after...

How pretty does that look!!!!!! It looks like make-up, but I promise it IS not! I've quite proud of this black eye - its pretty awesome and has looked so gruesome all week - add to that a hang-dog, sick-as expression and I've had one good looking face to look at all week. :) Love him lots and lots and lots.

And here's a couple of action shots from the weekend - he LOVES his soccer. I'm glad (most times) he has something he is sooooooo passionate about (believe me, I don't know anyone else who is as committed and insanely in love with something - if he could marry it he would!).

And lastly a photo of Madson from the same day - this is when he started getting sick, poor thing. Look at that face - so so sad. He just lay on the picnic rug or sat on my lap the whole time and shivered. Now that I've had the same thing I feel so bad for making him stay to watch his dad play, he really should have been home in bed.

Hope you're all well and healthy - seriously - being sick is HORRID! I will definitley have some fun fun photo's to share at the end of the week...I can't WAIT to be together with my family - I MUST be sick, that is not a sentiment I feel too frequently???? :) 

PS: All that excitement about cleaning to a new routine from last post???? Zip, nada, zilch has been done this week of course. I will have to get back on track next week after family have left - there's always a spanner to be thrown when you've just got a new routine down pat hey. Oh well, try, try again as they say! :)

Lessons I'm Learning

I've learnt a few lessons this week - or at least had a few thought provoking moments. There's a couple of things I struggle mammothly with - housekeeping and mothering! How ironic that all I have to do is add 'wife' to that list of things and it pretty much defines who I am at this time of my life. So feeling like I am FAILING at 2 out of 3 of my job descriptions has left me feeling pretty blah, to put it mildly.

Anyway - I've found a new blog that I am LOVING - I have started at the very beginning of her blog and am reading my way forward - check her out if you like - she has over 5000 followers so its safe to say she'd a pretty awesome read :) iammommahearmeroar.blogspot.com. She has a mix of crafty and thoughtful stuff as well as a blog of parts of her life, and its pretty awesome to read certain sentences that indicate she's a member of the same church too...I always love finding other members out there.

So - I read a post last night that totally spoke to me - the topic for her blog readers to comment on was how they balance keeping house and caring for their children. I don't feel like I do either of these things well. At all. The first one - I hate housework. With a passion. I very rarely feel that sense of accomplishment that you're meant to feel at the end of a job well done. Why you might ask? Because, as soon as I complete one job I turn around and see the SEA of other jobs to be done. I feel OVERWHELMED almost all of the time. I cannot believe the amount of mess 3 little bodies are able to make in the shortest space of time. Sometimes I think we just have too much stuff and need to throw it all out. Sometimes I do throw it out. No matter what I do, I feel like I live in a dump. And the thought of cleaning it just makes me want to cry/sleep/run away/anything BUT clean it. And the thought of adding a 4th little body to all of this existing chaos is starting to really freak me out.

We actually had a really funny conversation at our kitchen table the other morning - Madson was talking about when we have the next baby (after this baby) and I was quick to say to him 'Oh honey, we won't be having another baby - this will be the last one'. Well, he wanted to know why we wouldn't be having any more babies, and I answered him 'because mummy finds it really hard to keep the house clean with our little family now and its going to get harder with more babies', and Ystyn piped into the conversation with 'don't worry Madson, mummy hasn't been able to keep the house clean with 1 baby, 2 babies or 3 babies, so it doesn't matter how many babies we have'. I burst into tears. He didn't mean it the way it sounded. Ystyn is THE kindest and most understanding husband when it comes to what does/doesn't get done around here. But it really hurt BECAUSE ITS TRUE!

So finding this post was just what I needed.

Reading some of the ideas given on this blog were really really good. I have tried a few of the ideas before, but the one that is really giving me some hope at the moment is to take one room/job a day and concentrate on doing that. So today I set myself the task of kitchen and laundery. And I did it. And I feel awesome! The bedrooms are still a pigstye, but that's tomorrow's job, and I know the bathroom and vacuuming and mopping are all going to get done before the week is out. And it means that I don't feel the usual guilt today that I normally feel or the same feeling of overwhemling hopelessness. So I'm really looking forward to seeing how the rest of the week pans out.

The second thing that really struck me from this post and subsequent comments was in answer to the 'how do you know if you're doing a good enough job as a parent'.

Seriously, I feel like I am one of the worst parents/mothers ever. I am always sending my kids away to play/entertain themselves and a hundred and one other things that I don't have the strength to admit to you. But one commentor said something like  she realised she needed to treat her children with more kindness. She realised that she was doing all the other things she needed to do as a mum - feed, clothe, bathe, read to, play with, but that sometimes she forgets to implement kindness. This really struck a cord. I guess I kind of come from the old school of 'tough love'. But I need to use more kindness. As much as I might feel overwhelmed and out of my depth, I love these little people more than anything else EVER and I need to work so much harder to be KIND to them. I tell them I love them all the time, but I also need to work harder at being KIND to them. Everyone deserves KINDNESS. And I can do better.  And that's an exciting thought - I can do better.

Thanks for bareing with me through such a long post - I just had to get some of my thoughts out of my head and down on 'paper'. Check out Cheri on i am momma hear me roar - she is serioulsy amazing! I'm so grateful for such inspiring people out there - I feel like I'm surrounded by so many amazing women who I learn so much from.
And you're one of them.

Booger-Pickers

WARNING: Following post may contain slightly weird and highly disturbing content...read on at your own risk!

So - we're driving along to church this morning and I overhear a conversation Madson and West are having and tune in because I was sure I wasn't hearing right - but Madson was telling West that he couldn't breathe properly because something was stuck in his nose and he need the 'booger-pickers' to get it out. !?!?!?!?!?!?!?!??! So I asked Madson what the 'booger-pickers' were and he says 'you know mum, those things you use to get the boogers out of our noses'. Ahhh - the penny drops, and it is I - his mother - who has taught him the need/use/existence of such dreadful things as 'booger-pickers'!

See - I have a real thing for little kids and crusty boogers - especially in their tiny little noses where I and a tissue can't reach. So I may have been known on occassion, in the privacy of our own home, to get out a pair of tweesers and use them to clear out the offending items. I don't remember doing this for a very very long time now - the two boys at least are pretty good at being to blow hard enough to dislodge any gross stuff, and McKinley always seems to have a runny nose rather than a crusty one, or maybe with 3 I just don't notice such things any more, but I swear I haven't used the 'booger-pickers' for a LOOOONG time - hence the confusion when Madson used the term. Funny what things they remember and make names for (I have NEVER called tweesers 'booger-pickers'!!!!).

Needless to say when we got home after church today the 'tweesers' were employed in their secondary role and Madson can now breathe clearly again. :) Too much information????? I DID warn you!!!!! hehehehehhehe.
Just one of those funny moments we get to share with these little cherubs of ours...go on now, share an embarassing one of you own....hehehehhehehe.