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.

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.