Oh The Places You'll Go!

After yesterday's post on one of the most awful days I've had in a while, I have been searching all my experience and knowledge of myself and of the world, trying to find where I am going wrong.  Because surely life should not be like this.  And then, thanks to a friend, I found this little gift on youtube - a magical and unique telling of my family's absolute favourite Dr Seuss book "Oh The Places You'll Go".  I do believe I could watch this every morning of the year and still be inspired by it.

It reminds me that life can be great, that amazing things can happen and just as importantly, that we all go through slumps and that, as the great man says "When you're in a slump you're not in for much fun and unslumping yourself is not easily done".  So self -forgiveness is all important and therefore I am turning down the volume on that voice in my head that is telling me I am doing things wrong and I am tuning out, for a while, to a whole heap of voices from the media, the internet and from the fickle world of facebook that purport to provide self-help advice, when in fact self-promotion may better describe their motivation, and I am tuning in to my family, my self, (the one that really does know what is best for me) and letting in a big dose of self-forgiveness for messing up today and an even bigger dose of self-love so I can be more on track to getting things right tomorrow.

Full credit to 'Spirit Tokens of the Ling Qi Jing.  It has never let me down in times of need.

Where did it all come from

I think I had what would be called a panic attack today.  Shaking, wanting to throw up, wanting to scream and yell all the words that are saved for my darkest times, crying at the feeling of disgust I felt welling up in my stomach.  The cause?  Well, we have a room at the back of the house which is generally the children's toy room but also serves as a lovely warm sunroom in cooler weather.  I have a beautiful old miners couch against one wall so I can sit with a cup of tea and some knitting and look out into the back garden.  It's a quiet place to rest sometimes when the children are having an afternoon sleep.  Being a toy room it also, as one would expect, has toys in it, along with a bookshelf and cupboards to store our home-ed materials - workbooks, drawing books, art supplies, all that sort of thing.  It is a small room and tends to get messy quite often which is annoying (to put it mildly) but I usually manage to organise a team effort to tidy up, sometimes it seems easier to do it by myself or some days it seems to work best if I just close the door and walk away.

Today though, the three older children were having a sleep while the youngest one stayed up with me.  I haven't put my head in the back room lately.  Mainly because there is something behind the door that means I can't open it fully - a fair indicator that things are not going to be good  if I do go inside.  I've managed to avoid going in there or thinking too much about how bad it might be.  Today though, it was really the only room Marta and I could be in since it was raining outside, the sewing room was not a room I wanted to be in with an inquisitive 13 month old at that particular time (read: when I didn't want to have to bother about what she was getting into and stopping her from ripping my beautiful and much treasured craft books) and David was asleep on the couch in the loungeroom.  So off to the back room we went.

Well, I couldn't get to the miners couch, and even if I could have, there was no room on it to sit down.  The floor was covered in cushions, more cushions, toys, toys, toys and an odd assortment of ....well......, rubbish.  Plastic containers that the boys had purloined from the kitchen to hold collections of boy treasures were strewn about, most of them empty (the contents, it seemed, were mostly on the floor) along with papers, bits of Lego(even though the Lego has supposedly been packed away for four weeks because it was still not packed up after repeated (like, ten) requests last time it was out), wooden blocks, cast off clothes, a special handmade cloth doll I had bought Marta for her first birthday only a month ago..... Actually, that is when the panic attack started to kick in.  Seeing Marta's beautiful doll that I had given her to be her 'particular' doll, left on the floor by her big sister who had been playing with it, under a pile of cushions was like a smack in the face.  The whole scene just screamed at me that my children do not value what they have.  And that was another smack in the face because it means that I have failed somewhere in teaching them this.  I know that I am often saying to them that we must look after what we have but that message is very clearly not being taken in.  I am obviously not modelling that behaviour well enough myself.

So I began to pick up more cushions to make a clear space on the floor so I could see the level of damage.  And that is when the second wave of  panic overtook me.  Toys, bits of toys, things they had really, really wanted at one time or another, pencils, textas with lids off, a 300 piece jigsaw puzzle started but scattered across the floor after maybe 20 pieces were joined.  All of it just left there, with absolutely no thought for looking after what they have, and indeed, all piled over with cushions.  It was this obvious excess that filled me with disgust and literally had me wanting to throw up.  When it is all packed away it doesn't seem like so much but having it spread all over the floor made it clear just how much stuff we have in that small room.

With assistance from Marta (she found all the lidless textas for me!) I started sorting through it all, throwing a lot of things I would normally have just put away, into rubbish bags.  Every time I find myself on my knees tidying up this room I tell myself "I am not going to do this again". But of course I do.  Today, when I said it, I meant it.  This stuff was going.  I ended up with four shopping bags that went straight into the bin before prying eyes could inspect them.  A lot more things went into a big box destined for the op-shop. At some point I put Marta to bed, made myself a cup of tea and sat down to review the situation.  There had been several waves of panic throughout the time it took to sort out everything into rubbish bags, op-shop boxes and a smaller pile of things that would be kept and put back in the shelves, or packed away for awhile.  It was such an incredibly uncomfortable feeling, so much so that even now, some time later, when the panic has subsided, I still feel close to tears.  Why do we have so much stuff?  And they are constantly asking for the new this or that which, of course they seldom get, but still, we have SO MUCH!!!!

Then there is the nagging thought that Christmas is very near and well intentioned aunts and uncles will give the children more toys, more stuff that will end up in pieces on the toy room floor.  I even started composing a letter to them all explaining that really, the children have enough toys and could they please not buy more this Christmas as it is quite overwhelming.  I don't know how well that letter would be received.  And in truth, I would have to send the letter to myself as well since I am just as guilty of buying Lego kits and similar sorts of things around this time of year and at birthdays.

So what is the answer?  Allow the children fewer things?  Impose stricter discipline about how much they may have out at any given time and watch them like a hawk to make sure they pack up each thing as they finish with it?  Ugh, that second option just sounds miserable.  I have read a few articles about a movement called "Simple Living".  This is one I thought was particularly good, from a couple of years ago.  It sounds funny to call it a movement but there you have it.  These are the times we live in.  Perhaps I need to read about some more experiences of it - about people just living with a whole lot less stuff.  The stories I have read have mainly been about people without children.  How do we raise children in this age of consumerism, in a way that teaches them to honour what they have and to actually want less stuff?  It's one thing to impose that kind of rule on them but to teach them to want less is another thing altogether.  Maybe it comes back to modelling the behaviour, which is where I seem to have gone wrong.  Agggghhhhh, it all seems like there is so much thinking to be done about how I want us to live, what values I want the children to grow up with and model all of that more consciously.  Otherwise I'm just adding to the problems of overconsumption that we, in the Western world are so guilty of.  I'll let you know how we get on.

Too Many Recipes! And so we begin.

Long, long ago, many lifetimes ago it seems, there was a girl growing up in the Mallee in the north-west of Victoria.  She lived with her father and two older brothers and spent her days going to school, spending time with friends, making things, going for walks through the bushland that surrounded her home and dreaming of one day making a home of her own, with a good man and five children to care for and love.  The girl imagined sewing and knitting clothes for her children, just as her own mother had done and baking all sorts of good smelling delights for their afternoon teas.  In these ways, she would show them how much they were loved.

So, she bought an exercise book, decorated the outside of it and began collecting recipes, just as her own mother had done many years before.  Soon after, the first book was given the company of two more books.  The first was for cakes and biscuits, the second for savoury dishes and the third for desserts.  Each recipe added was another layer to the dream life the girl imagined for her future self.  Images of aprons, dustings of flour, bountiful casseroles laid out on a checkered tablecloth and around the table, happy, healthy, well-fed children who glowed in their mother's love.

It has to be said though, that there was a degree of duality to the girl's recipe collecting.  Along with the wholesome casseroles and nut-loaves that would nourish her children's growing bodies, there were recipes that spoke to the girl of a different lifestyle; a lifestyle of sophistication and glamour, of dinner parties with interesting guests and of menus with a hint of continental influence.  All a far cry from the meat and three veg that she was used to cooking for her father and brothers each night, or the scones, anzac biscuits and tea-cakes she baked on weekends.  So into the girl's recipe books they all went, the wholesome one-pot cook ups and the fruit cakes feeling a little dowdy and colloquial next to the French Quiche Lorraine,  the grand Sacher-Torte and the Italian Cappucino.

 Years passed.  The girl left the Mallee and eventually found herself living in one of Melbourne's cool inner suburbs. The books had long been filled and were added to with more notebooks and folders, and the ultimate, real shop-bought cookbooks by the likes of Stephanie Alexander, Jamie Oliver, Stephano di Pieri, Nigella Lawson and Charmaine Solomon; books on baking, preserving, and the ultimate chocolate cookbook, Marcel Desaulinaire's 'Death By Chocolate'.  Friends gave her a subscription to Gourmet Traveller and she read about all manner of exotic ingredients, cooking methods she had never imagined and kitchen gadgetry that would ensure she looked like a serious home cook.  She read about restaurants and dinner party menus that made her girlhood imaginings of sophistication look as dowdy and colloquial as the casseroles and fruit cakes had previously.  She scorned the supermarkets in favour of South Melbourne's fresh vegetable markets, the Asian markets lining Richmond's busy Bridge Road, bustling Prahran market, bought only fresh, handmade pasta and eventually made the rather expensive shift to organic produce.  She was on her way to becoming a food snob.

More years passed and the girl (for she still felt quite young on the inside, despite the lines at the edges of her eyes and the beginnings of grey in her hair) left the big smoke to raise her soon-to-be-born babe closer to her sisters in the regional city of Geelong.  In the blink of an eye (or so the intervening nine years seemed) she was mother to four and wife to none.  As her babies grew up, she found that they didn't like a lot of the foods she had become accustomed to eating.  Singapore Hawker Stall Noodles were refused, Chicken Butter Masala caused noses to be turned upwards, Pad Thai was sent packing.  It seemed these children of hers wanted (horror of horrors), meat and three veg; the very thing the girl had been running away from since she had left home.  So she reaquainted herself with the dishes of her childhood, the dishes her mother had cooked for her when she was little, the dishes she had cooked for her father and brothers.  But, as she so often did in life, she did them her own way.  Familiar recipes were tweaked (although there were some she wouldn't dream of changing),  menus were adapted to suit the tastes of her growing family, she learned to make her own pasta with fresh eggs laid by her brood of hens, and her children grew.  Strong, healthy and happy just as she had dreamed of all those years ago.

The funny thing is, that the very first recipe book she started, way back then, had hardly ever been used except for a few absolute favourites.  The Hungarian Chocolate Pancake Cake, the Petite Roulades and even the good old Sacher Torte sat quietly unnoticed as the girl whipped up batches of Anzac Biscuits, Butter Biscuits and Dutch Orange Cakes from her high school cookery book, banana cakes, rock buns and cinnamon teacakes for her hungry children.

One day the girl wondered to herself, and then to her sister, "What if I cooked every recipe in that first book?  One recipe a week. Just to see if they're any good."  After all it seemed a shame to have all those lovely sounding recipes sitting there untried.  They both agreed that it was a fine idea indeed although, at that rate it would take about three years to get through just that one book and a lifetime to get through the whole collection, even if she stopped collecting recipes that very day, which I can assure you, she will not.

 Inspired by the film 'Julie and Julia' but with no such expectations of fame, the girl decided to record her baking triumphs and failures in her blog.  So she made herself a cup of tea, opened the book to recipe no. 1, dated May 1984, a Viennese Chocolate Cake, written out in her best teenage handwriting and made a shopping list, written out in her scrawling grown-up handwriting.  Then, when time permitted, she put on her apron, and began creaming the butter and sugar, losing herself in the familiarity of the motion.

What I learned today.

It was a toss up today, whether to join in with the 'this moment' action over at soulemama or to write something more.  I decided that today, I have too much to say, to say nothing, because today I learnt something worth sharing.

In the past when something which should be relatively easy, like undoing a knot or disengaging a couple of pieces of lego has turned out to be annoyingly not easy, I have, more often than not, found that muttering "come on" to myself or, more precisely, to the object in hand, to be very effective.  I have taught David this little trick and I often see him putting it to good use.  Ari, for some reason, does not seem to have need of it.  Things fall into place for him.  He is charmed it would appear.  And Jovanka, as you will soon learn, has her own device.

To give you an idea of the tone required, in case you should wish to employ the "come on", the best I can think of is this.  Think of Lleyton Hewitt, if you follow tennis (which I don't) and the aggression of his now famous yell "COME ON!!!"  Well, that's not it.  In fact I find that this can exacerbate the problem.  In my case, it just makes me more angry.  It's more like Eliza Doolittle in My Fair Lady, when she's at the Ascot Race Day and her horse is racing.  It's that quiet, hopeful "come on" that she utters shortly before letting fly at the top of her voice with "Come on Dover!!!  Move yer bloomin' arse!!!!!"

But today, whatever tone I was going to use, it was not going to open the door on my front loading washing machine.  The one that had just finished washing a load of sheets.  You see, the catch has been broken for some time and had been temporarily fixed by a very resourceful friend who knows how to fix just about anything, although never in quite the way you might expect, and certainly never in an orthodox fashion.  His solution was to wind a bit of nylon string around the catch and then through to the front of the door so that pulling the string released the catch.  It was meant to be temporary but it has been working so well that I don't generally think much about it and had not had it properly repaired.  So yesterday Ari thought he would help out by filling the machine with some washing from the basket and, in the process of trying to close the door, pulled the string out, couldn't work out how to fix it and wandered off.  Before I loaded the sheets in this morning, I fixed the string back in place (feeling quite proud of myself for being able to fix the problem relatively easily), closed the door and left the machine to do its job.  When I came back to unload my clean sheets, the door would not budge, no matter if I pulled on that loop of nylon string until it cut into my fingers.  I suppose the saying "Pride comes before a fall" exists for a reason.  Because it's jolly well true.  I did the obvious thing and went to the kitchen for a knife - one of my often-used 'handymama' tools, to see if I could weedle away at the catch from the outside and release it.  Nope and I was getting worried that the blade could snap so I went for a screwdriver but still no luck.  And my very resourceful friend was off being resourceful in a distant town, with his mobile  phone turned off.  (Could it be that he sensed something?)

The man at the electrical repairs shop probably heard the frustration in my voice when I rang to see if they could send someone around to fix the problem.  I wasn't expecting immediate service - some time today would be okay.  But no.  He answered calmly that they couldn't possibly have anyone here before next week sometime - mornings would be preferable.  This man has maybe never smelt a load of wet sheets that has been locked up in a machine for four days.  No sympathy what-so-ever.  I returned to the laundry, wielding the screwdriver menacingly, aware that I should probably step away from the situation and come back when I was a little calmer. Ha!!!!  After several more attempts which, in retrospect may have done more damage to the machine than actually fixing anything, I was getting pretty cross with myself for being so complacent about the 'temporary' fix and was muttering all sorts of things to myself about my own stupidity.  Soon after that I was kneeling in front of the washing machine in tears, giving in to the anger. 

That's when it dawned on me.  When Jovanka, my three year old daughter is feeling really frustrated, she lets out a very vocal,  but thankfully brief, scream of rage.  It seems to work for her.  "Why not?" I thought.  So I let rip.  Loud, brief and venting all the rage I felt at myself and at this 'stupid' washing machine.  In that moment, I pulled on the string and blow me down if the door didn't swing open, freeing my washing from the threat of everlasting stinkification.  I would have laughed victoriously, had my washing not been sitting in a pool of water at the bottom of the machine because it had not drained properly, meaning that I would still have to ask the repairman to come and fix it - probably "next week sometime - preferably mornings".  So I fixed the string again, taking care to do it right this time and to TEST IT before closing the door once again, setting the dial to spin and walking outside to reassure the children that Mama was okay.  They received the explaination for my outburst with good humour and at least attempted to laugh with me as I explained that I had got the idea from Jovanka and that it had worked amazingly well.  Our neighbours may have been a little more concerned.

After all that, I was free to go and prepare our morning tea and sit out in the Spring sunshine, making a daisy chain to adorn Jovanka's wrist.  My thankyou gift to her for a most valuable lesson learnt.

Loving these days

What do you do after two weeks of runny noses, coughs and fever?  Head to the beach of course!!!  Winter is finally coming to a close and, just to prove it, Mother Nature has sent us a week of the most beautiful Spring weather.  Sunshine all day and barely a cloud in sight.

There was so much pleasure in packing up a picnic basket and getting out of this house at last, leaving all thoughts of sickness behind us and just getting out there to enjoy ourselves.  Well, we were still cautious - more so than most it seems.  My lot did tend to stand out as they still had long sleeves, long pants and gumboots so they could go sploshing into the water and explore with warm, dry feet.  Around them, children were splashing about in bathers, shorts, t-shirts and (gasp) bare feet!  It did look lovely to enjoy such freedom but I am not prepared to risk going back to another two weeks of being house bound with four sick children.  Summer is coming and there will be plenty of time for bare feet.

It has also been a wonderful time in the garden with fruit trees beginning to blossom, promising crops of juicy plums, apricots and peaches.  Oh, yum!!!!  We also managed a trip to the plant nursery to choose a shade tree for the back garden.  At the moment it is still a rather tall and very bare twig but with time, will grow into a beautiful, frilly, white flowering Crepe Myrtle big enough for the children to climb and for those of us too old for tree-climbing, to sit beneath with a cool drink.  I am so looking forward to seeing it grow.

My Creative Space.......my what???!!!!!!!

Please....ahem......excuse me.......Just a moment while I  pick    myself     up.....humph....off the floor and dust myself off, which could take a while since the floors are so horribly....well, lets not mention the floors.  However, I was down there laughing mirthlessly at seeing the words "my" and "space" in the same sentence.  And as for the word "creative"?  Well!!  The only creative things going on around here lately have been finding 'creative' ways to ignore the gathering debris under the kitchen table and 'interesting and delightful' new ways to step over the mess everywhere else in the house because if I bent over to pick anything up I was rewarded with a massive pain ripping through my skull.

You see, a rascally flu virus took up residence in our house two weeks ago and settled in.  I could tell it was planning to stay for a while because it unpacked all its' bags, put everything neatly into the drawers and carefully placed a photo of its' family next to the bed.  So I have had to spend the better part of each day and night looking after the dratted thing, bringing it cups of chamomile tea / hot soup / cooling water / fresh juicy fruit, filling up the hot water bottle, soothing its'distressing cries when the nightmare inducing fevers hit, keeping a supply of clean hankies on hand.  It really has been the most ridiculously over-demanding house guest one could imagine and one we will not be sorry to say goodbye to. 

Some flues, in comparison, seem relatively meek and well behaved.  They settle gently over the household, lay you low for a day or two and then they are on their way.  If it were possible to choose ones flu virus, I would certainly be selecting one of these little numbers, perhaps in a nice shade of turquoise.  But our visitor has been nothing but greedy, violent and completely lacking in manners.   It landed suddenly (obviously uninvited), smacked us all about the head and neck, tied our shoe-laces together and roughly knocked us over, stuffed our heads with cotton wool and our noses with glue then applied tight torniques around our brains, lit bonfires in our throats and then sat back in our best chair, put its feet up on the table and demanded service.

You will understand then, why the idea of having had any "my space" in the last two weeks seems not only laughable but cryable (is there such a word?).  Throw the concept of creativity into the mix and I will be throwing myself on the floor once more, in a fit of sobbing this time for all of that lost opportunity.  Actually, I just had a quick look around me and there isn't really enough uncluttered floor space to throw myself on.  I could do myself an injury.  It would have to be a very well calculated throw, taking into account bits of furniture, baskets of wool, piles of paper, childrens toys that have snuck into what really is supposed to be "my space",  and a metal filing tray that doesn't know where it belongs.

Although it has been a tough two weeks, it hasn't been all bad.  I did make a sufficient recovery after one week to mow the disastrously overgrown back lawn and tidy up the yard which had become so bad I didn't like going out there anymore.  I'm pretty sure it set back a full recovery by a few days but I think it may have been worth it.  So nice to be able to walk outside and not feel like crying.  It has also given us time to watch...are you ready for it?......a Little House on the Prairie DVD set I bought months ago but haven't been able to sit long enough to watch.  The children are loving it, just as I did thirty odd years ago and join me in exclaiming at how nasty and horrible Nellie Olson is, not to mention her mother Harriet.  Oooohhhhh, just the thought of them...!!  I'm quietly hoping that some of Laura Ingles' work ethic will rub off on the children, along with some of Charles and Caroline's wholesome-ness. 

Another positive to come out of it is that our visitor has shown the children that they can find within themselves the strength to fight.  Some took to the challenge more readily and with more strength than others.  Jovanka has amazed me with her resilience and quiet determination.  She didn't want medicine (which I keep on hand as a last resort) even when she was in the grip of fever and could barely walk.  She lay silently on the couch with her pillow, her blanket and her favourite soft toy and stared off into space while her body did what it needed to do.  The following day she was up and about, still tired, but ready to get on with things.  The boys were, well....let's just say, they needed rather more help but they have both found their way through and we have had a biology lesson along the way on viruses, antibodies, blood circulation etc, etc.

At this point in my (aiming for) regular "Creative Space" posts I usually zip off and link into the Our Creative Spaces site to share what I've done with other crafters there.  I think I'll spare them this one but it's always worth a visit there anyway to see what everyone else has been up to.  And now that we're on the mend, I'm feeling open to a little inspiration.  Care to join me?  Just click here and we'll be on our way.

Hope your house-guests are of the welcome variety.

The Birthday Countdown

Birthdays at our house are very much a family affair.  The children decide what they would like to do for the day and what they would like for dinner.  We might have one, or both of my sisters over for lunch or dinner, sometimes a friend or two who have similar aged children.  I have really never been a great "thrower of parties"


Davids' first birthday was one of the few exceptions.  You know how it is.  First child.  First birthday.  I was planning it for a good two months - the guest list, the presents and very importantly, the menu.  Risto cooked a goat on the spit.  I practically lived in the kitchen for three days making the biggest dish of moussaka I'd ever put together, all my fancy salads too fiddly for every day, baklava, lemon tart and a sacher torte birthday cake.  And we gathered together all of the people we loved best and who, we knew, genuinely and truly loved us.  The people who I had relied on throughout my life.  The people I wanted to share this joyful and special occasion with.


Even when it's a much smaller affair though, the menu planning is a very important part of the preparation.  It's a good excuse to get out the 'special' recipes.  No fast food parties for us.  There is some serious cooking to be done and other things must wait. 


Last year David desperately wanted me to make a Black Forest Cake he had seen on Masterchef.  Not for his birthday, mind you.  For Jovankas' second birthday.  It had been a four hour challenge on Masterchef.  The jolly thing took me three days to build and a shopping list of ingredients that looked foreign in my trolley.  This was no ordinary black forest cake.  There were cherries soaked in brandy, layers of chocolate ganache, chocolate hazelnut praline mousse, and multiple other layers of chocolate on chocolate on chocolate.  Recipe is here.  It all got put together late at night....the night of Jovankas' birthday, after a day climbing the You Yangs, the local mountain range.  Did I mention that I was 32 weeks pregnant with my fourth child at the time?....And had climbed all the way to the top - a feat I would not normally expect I could acheive when not pregnant.  So, 10 o'clock at night, we sang Happy Birthday, Jovanka blew out her candles, we ate cake amidst the wreckage still on the kitchen table (sorry to say that this wreckage is the reason I wouldn't let photos be taken of this glorious cake.....something I now regret) and we went, exhausted, to bed.  It was a very good day. 





It's a bit of a cheat, I know, but since I didn't take any photos of our cake, here is the official Masterchef version.  Ours looked almost as good.....really!!!



Next morning, David introduced the idea of a Macaron Tower with Kalamata Olive and Beetroot and Raspberry Macarons for Aristos' fourth birthday, two months ahead.  Keep in mind that I am, at that stage, 32 weeks pregnant....and I began to question the wisdom of allowing him to watch Masterchef.

This year David has taken over the cake operation for Jovankas' third birthday.  He has designed it himself, based on a recipe he made up almost twelve months ago.  After a couple of attempts to describe the structure that the cake should take, his poorly concentrating Mama asked him to diagram it so I could see what we were in for.  Once that was done and each of the 'elements' discussed (yes we watch WAY too much Masterchef) it was decided that a practice run might be a good idea.  Just to make sure it would work - no last minute surprises or disappointments for something so important as his little sisters' birthday cake.  Thank heavens we did that practice run.  Because now I know that the chocolate dome will work, we will need double the quantity of strawberries we first estimated (unfortunately they are not in season, unless we live somewhere else so I am cringing a little at the idea of including them) and I will be required to make triple, oh yes, triple the quantity of chocolate mousse that I made this time around. 

 Most importantly we know that the whole thing, when put together, tastes exquisite because we had to eat the practice run, complete with a rehearsal of us all singing Happy Birthday and Jovanka blowing out the candles.  Perhaps when we get to the real thing, I'll make sure the kitchen table is clean enough to take a photo, or maybe just let pride go to the four winds and take a photo amidst the wreckage.







At least I took some photos

Wow.  This last couple of weeks just seems to have been hectic.  But the weird thing is that we haven't really done anything out of the ordinary.  No big events, no grand outings, just the usual day to day really.  But for some reason it seems to have been more full on than usual.  I feel like I have been running non-stop for two weeks and would really just like to stop and put my feet up for a day. 

There is no doubt that having four little ones (well, three little and one medium - at 8, David feels a bit more grown up these days) at home all day, every day calls for a lot of energy and input.  And since their Tata (Dad) is not around most of the time it means I am pretty much on double duty. 

The only way I can really get a grip on what we have been doing is to look back over the photos.  They tell the story better than my scatter-brain memory at the moment.  So this is what has been happening at our place.....

David spotted the last of the seasons' dragonflies on the fernery wall and we managed to get this picture.  There were so many flitting around in the garden over Autumn.

Winter has set in.  The changing colours in the garden have been beautiful to watch although I am always sad to see the bounty of Autumn fade to the bare and baron winter branches.  Thankfully the apple trees are holding on to their leaves a little longer than the other fruit trees so we still have some lingering colour.

And how could you not love pomegranates, hiding their treasure of ruby red seeds.

The giant sunflowers are (very obviously) finished but I just love the sculptural lines of their dried remains and am lobbying to keep them in the garden for as long as possible.  David is champing at the bit to pull them out to add to the bonfire pile.

There have been plenty of rainy days when the children have had to occupy themselves inside.  They rearranged the furniture so there was a table long enough for all of them to have some workspace - even baby Marta had a place...

and of course there has been plenty of Lego building and photographing going on.  David and Ari are both becoming quite expert set designers and photographers thanks to the instant, not to mention erasable, attributes of the digital camera.

The solstice has been and gone, and with it the first anniversary of my fathers' death.  We lit a candle for Dad when we woke in the morning and blew it out when we went to bed.  Amazingly the children were able to restrain themselves from blowing it out a dozen times during the day.  The temptation must have been immense.  Perhaps they were distracted by their own candle making activities which saw them each with three candles to light as the sun set.  They lit our dinner table enough that we could turn off the electric lights and enjoy a candlelit dinner. 


Dads' candle


And then there was the writing to add to an updated family tree.  My great aunty Isobel (who is 100 years old this year) has been collaborating with her neice, my aunty Isobel, to update the family history books she wrote many years ago.  Amazingly, a lot of this collaboration has taken place online.  Great Aunty Isobel is a wizz on the computer - some of the funniest emails in my inbox come from her.  So I had to put together a brief piece about my twig of the family tree and what we are up to.  It took way longer than it should have to write.  I can only imagine the work that the two of them are putting in to get everything together.  I hope I have so much energy when my time comes to update the family history in years to come. 

With the writing done, I had to find a photo to add.  But I am usually the one behind the camera so no photos of me with all of the children.  A call was put in to my big sister and a few hours later she arrived, camera in hand and we had a little photo shoot.  The children decided it would be fun to try on Janies' glasses first...



Mr David



Mr Aristo



Madam Jovanka

 Unfortunately by the time we got everyone organised outside the light was getting too dim so we relocated to the bed.  Another couple of costume changes - Jovanka wanted to wear Aris' Batman outfit for a couple of shots and then she didn't want to but Ari did and then .........well, eventually we got a couple of pics to choose from.  By which time Marta was ready for a nap.  I wouldn't have been sorry to join her.

Oh, and I finally bought a card reader so now I can load my photos straight on to the computer which makes all of this so much easier.
So that is what we have been up to.  And not even a stitch of knitting to show for all the time passed.