Merry Christmas

December 27, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Guys, it happened. You know when you have an idea; an expectation; a wish for how a particular day might pan out? You can just imagine it, and you dare to dream that it might actually happen exactly how you hope? But you remind yourself that life happens, and that even if things don’t quite go to plan, the earth will keep on spinning, and it will be okay.

Well I did it. I had a perfect Christmas day . Everything that I had hoped our Christmas day would be, eventuated. I don’t know if it was careful planning or just dumb luck, but I cannot think of anything I would change, given our exact circumstances.

Here’s how it went down, keeping in mind, this is exactly how I imagined it. I even shared my vision with Hubs a few days before, and we both kind of looked at each other, shrugged, and laughed, knowing that it couldn’t possibly happen, and that it would be okay nonetheless.

The night before Christmas
First of all, the kids slept all night long, in their own beds. This rarely happens people! I got seven (count them!) SEVEN hours of fairly solid sleep. Darby woke up around 5:45 but I brought him into our bed and he was content. Quinn joined us a few minutes later, and I dozed until Chance woke us up at 6:15am. We had agreed to open one present each and then head to the 7am church service.

Ooooh the anticipation!
The kids chose their presents to unwrap, and it was a bit of a gamble as they were from the neighbours so I had NO idea what to expect. Turns out they couldn’t have chosen better to start the day. Chance got a little tub of Lego, Quinn got a Christmas dress up skirt and Darby got two trucks. They were happy and didn’t ask to unwrap any more!

We headed to church and they kids were great for the service, and we got home around 8am. There were four more presents each to unwrap, and we took our time and shared the joy with each new gift.

The whole family getting excited for Darby’s new Octonauts toy
I have come to appreciate that less is definitely more. When they are presented with a dozen things to unwrap, the joy is fleeting, but when they get to savour each gift, they are much more grateful. After the unwrapping, we told them that we were going to start cooking brunch, and that they could go and play with their new toys.

Um, guys, they did. They actually did. Chance disappeared into the Lego room and set up a marble run (thanks K&K!) while Quinny and Darby did some scootering downstairs. Hubs pottered around the BBQ cooking up a mean brunch while I provided him with the food to cook. We were expecting a small group of people that turned into a very small group, which was absolutely fine by me as it meant plenty of Boxing Day leftovers.

Hubs in his natural environment
Chance started on his big Lego that we had bought him at around 11:30, and at around midday, I put Darby down for his nap. Of course there were the usual dishes to do, and mess from present unwrapping to clean up, but there was no way I was going to do that. I put the food away, and set up on the deck for some quiet time. Hubs collapsed into our new air chair, and I sat down with my book.

My view
I got the usual interruptions of requests for food (from Quinny) and requests for help with the Lego (from Chance) but for an hour or so, this is what we did.

Chance building his most challenging Lego to date. And he only asked for occasional help, then politely asked me to leave him to it.
At around 2pm, I had noticed that Quinn had disappeared. I found her fast asleep on our bed. Darby had been asleep for two hours by then, so I was expecting him up soon. I thought “I’ll just keep reading my book until he wakes up.” I did another hour of reading. By 3:15 Darby woke up, and I decided that it was time to wake Quinny up too. We had round two of present opening, as I had hidden some presents to surprise them in the afternoon.

I’m so glad we spaced out the present opening! It worked a treat!

The score of the day for Quinny
We then headed over to our friend’s place for an afternoon swim and more eating, and since there were around a dozen kids there, they all pretty much entertained each other so Hubs and I could sit down for an hour and actually chat to other adults. We got home around 6:30pm and Chance went straight back to his Lego, determined to finish building the plane that night. By 8pm, Quinn and Darby were in bed sound asleep, a couple of neighbours were over having a beer, and Chance was still at it.

I asked him if he wanted to leave it til the morning, but he was insistent. I didn’t argue. At 9pm he presented us with his creation.

This took a total of 5-6 hours to build

I was so proud of him. He dragged his feet off to bed and was asleep 5 minutes later I’d say. Hubs and I sat on our deck and marveled at our day. We’d pulled it off and we were just so content. Everyone had had a wonderful day, and we just felt to grateful for everything that we had in our lives. We went to bed happily exhausted at around 10pm with our hearts and bellies full.

Merry Christmas, dear friends and family. I trust your days were as wonderful as ours.

Nice deck

December 20, 2016 / Renae / 1 Comment

Let me cast your minds back to a time no so long ago, where I would sit on our tiny balcony with my coffee, enjoying my view, and dreaming of a deck.

Behold! This is me sitting on our new desk enjoying my coffee!

And it’s a big deck, I gotta tell you.

Oh how sweet it is. Another angle? Sure thing.

Um yeah we really need to get some furniture sorted. And here’s the side deck.

The new doors have made a huge difference as well. This is what we had before:

And now:

The breeze! Oh that marvelous breeze that rarely takes a break.

Before and after? Of course! This is day one of construction for the whole project:

And this is pretty much the end stage:

To be honest, I’m almost as excited about the slab as I am about the huge deck. The kids have a great time scooting around in the afternoons.

There is, of course, still so much more to do, but at this stage, I’m really focusing on enjoying our amazing view, and sharing it with whomever wishes to join us.

10 things on the 10th

December 10, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

10 things to keep you in the loop

1. Darby’s cake – I actually considered not making him an actual birthday cake (I made cupcakes for him to take to kindy) but then I realised that I was setting him up for “third child forgotton-about syndrome” (it’s a thing) so I consulted the cake bible and came up with this:

Which was a blend of these two:

And he liked it 🙂

2. Chance finished prep with not one case of headlice! (But wouldn’t let me get a photo of his last day 🙁 )

3. Bought a Christmas tree and got a free frog

4. Decorated said Christmas tree

5. Posted Christmas cards (that’s a third of the total bundle)

6. I’m sure it’s been done before but I came up with a way of sending pikelets with jam on them to Prep without making a mess with jam on top! Winner! You could even add cream but I wasn’t sure of the refrigeration situation once it got there.

7. We need a bigger bathtub. Actually we just need a new bathroom…

8. We got stuck in a cow jam on the way to picking up the Christmas tree. There was a large herd of cattle being moved from one paddock to another, and the cows were spread across about 500m of a stretch of road. Chance’s comment: “We’re going to be stuck in this cow jam for ages!”

9. Speaking of Chance, he wanted to write Christmas cards to all of his classmates. And he did. All 25 of them plus 2 teachers. I gave him the class photo so he could tick the kids off (putting Lego figures on them) as he went. He even remembered the 2 kids who had joined his class after the photo was taken. I was very impressed by his persistence!

10. My accidental/incidental fringe thanks to the regrowth following my postpartum hair loss after Darby. I’d never noticed it with the other kids as I’ve always had short hair but it’s rather obvious this time around!

Of course it’s not limited to my fringe area. Some days this is just how I roll:

Talk about fly-aways!

So that’s all for now folks! That pretty much gets you up to date with our goings-on. And now that the Christmas cards have been sent, I can get back to all the things I’ve been neglecting over the last 5 weeks while they’ve been taking up my evenings!

Happy Birthday Darby

December 7, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Life! Sometimes it’s just too amazing for words and other times, like this morning, there are no words. More about that later. So Darby turned 2 today. Hard to believe yes?

2 years ago:

And today:

What a kid. Seriously. This guy makes us laugh every day. And even though I’m convinced that he has hit the “terrific twos” overnight, we wouldn’t have it any other way.

Back to this morning. You know how you have those lovely serene mornings where everything runs smoothly and all is calm and you just win at parenting? I’m sure you can guess that this was not one of those mornings.

It started out well enough with exciting present opening

and then they all moved to the toyroom to check out the goodies together. Hubs and I had 10 minutes of peace which was just lovely and then it was time to get up. I let the kids help me decorate the cupcakes for kindy today and I think I made a mistake by letting them lick the beaters.

A bit of sugar in the morning is clearly all they need to send them batshit crazy.

There was wailing and gnashing of teeth and tears and fights and accusations. Give me strength! I mostly kept my cool until towards the end when I’d had enough. And of course I yelled at the kids to stop yelling at each other. Because that always works.

And just when things couldn’t get more exciting, as we were leaving I grabbed Quinn’s hat that was sitting innocently on the deck railing, only to discover a half finished glass of rum and coke underneath that I promptly pulled onto my dress. So now I smell particularly “Queenslandy” today cos there was no way I was going back inside to change!

I asked Hubs about it and he said he didn’t put the hat over it yesterday but he didn’t wonder where it had gotten to!

I’d say it was the work of the noodle.

Just look at the grin.

Anyway all’s well that ends well . Darby is at kindy for a few hours so I can get a few things done, the first of which was to blog and have a coffee in peace.

Done and done.

Happy birthday Darby-doo. You are such a treasure and I wonder what we ever did without you in our lives.

My Chance

November 26, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Parenting is a hard slog, isn’t it? You try your hardest every day (well, most days) to teach your kids how to be nice human beings; to be kind, compassionate, caring. Or you know, just to not be horrible to other human beings.

You can often go days or weeks without seeing any evidence of your hard work, and then one day, you realise you’re doing an okay job, and you know all the frustration and effort is worth it.

We had a little party with Chance’s prep friends at the local playground after school yesterday which was just lovely. They kids had a great time running around and stuffing their faces with party food. Including the world’s easiest cake to decorate:

Chance was trying to light the candles, and keep them lit and I noticed he was a bit distracted. “Where’s Ashleigh?” he said “I can’t see her.” And with that, he jumped up and ran back to the playground to look for one of his friends whom he noticed was missing, so she wouldn’t miss out on the cake cutting. I just thought that was the sweetest thing. There were over 20 people around him, including parents, yet he noticed one person missing, and he didn’t want her to miss out.

He is learning.

As the party was winding down, I had shown Chance earlier where the party bags were so he could make sure we remembered to give them out, as I often forget (and I know I’m not the only one!) He made sure everyone received their loot, and when everyone had left, there were a few leftover, so he asked me if he could give them out to other kids in the playground.

He is learning.

Once we got home, Chance was going through all of his presents (people are so generous!) and he came across the three pull-back cars he had been given. He was excited about this, as he told me he could give one to Quinny and one to Darby, so he wasn’t the only person receiving presents on his birthday.

He is learning.

After our big long day, he was having a bath, and just before he was going to get out, I asked if I could put my feet in the bath with him to give them a bit of a soak. He asked if I could put my feet on tippy-toes and when I asked why, he said “so I can wash your feet for you, Mama.” Oh my heart. My initial response was “that’s okay sweetheart. I can wash them myself” but he said he really wanted to and I wondered why I would ever refuse such an offer. So I gave him the soap and scrubber and he gently washed my feet for me. My sore, tired, grubby, worn-out feet that have seen better days.

He is teaching.

I think I can put that up there with one of the sweetest moments between us in my life. It filled me with such joy and humility, and reminded me to sometimes let other people take care of me.

My little boy is growing up.

Uninstall

November 19, 2016 / Renae / 1 Comment

I’ve uninstalled facebook on my phone. And I already feel a little better.

I have become such a slave to my phone and I honestly and truly hate it, but I lack the willpower to just put it down and walk away from it. This is the only way, and it is good. The funny thing is, I did without fb for years and years and survived, but now that I’m on it, the thought of it being taken away makes me nervous.

What if I miss something?

What if people don’t read my blog and they miss something?

WHAT IF IT DOESN’T MATTER!??????

I don’t know. There must be a happy medium with it all. But I’m not exactly what you would call good at moderation. I know it takes practice and persistence and motivation, and quite frankly, with three kids and a bunch of renos going on, I’m lucky to remember to put on pants in the morning, so I just don’t have the energy to add to my workload for now.

I believe that’s a fair call.

I just did a really long blink that lasted a solid minute. Lucky I’m not driving.

Better hit the sack. And I don’t care if I miss anything tonight.

10 things on the 10th

November 10, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Everybody needs good neighbours.

This is a post that’s been on my mind for a long time, so what better time to share than on the 10th of the month. So I give you

10 reasons we have the best neighbours in town.

1. They help with the kids. From occasional babysitting, to putting on a movie for them so Hubs and I can enjoy dinner and wine and catching up, to so much in between. Oh, and they also actually like our kids which is always a bonus! But I mean, why wouldn’t they!? They’re awesome!

2. They come to our BBQs. No matter how late notice we give, if they are free, they are there.

3. They opened their house to my parents. We have a couple who live across the road and a few houses down who are my parents age, and when I asked if my parents could stay at their house while visiting us (our house is tiny) they were more than happy to take them in. And of course they all got on beautifully.

4. They opened their house to us. All five of us. When we needed to be out of our house for two weeks at the start of this renovating business, these same neighbours welcomed us with open arms, and have since told us how much they miss having us around. They loved having the kids running around (they have grandchildren around the same ages who live in the US) and the kids loved having sleepovers at their house.

5. We regularly have “combined dinners” with our across the road neighbours. Usually on a Tuesday or Wednesday, and most Friday nights, we will be at either their house or ours, enjoying a combined feast. Last night it was spag bol. And I didn’t have to cook 🙂

6. I know they will say no if they can’t help. Do you know what’s even better than people always saying yes to favours? People who will say no if they can’t help out. I will always remember, in the early days of our friendship with TomBec & Ben, I asked Bec if she could mind Darby for me for an hour and she said “I can’t this time but please ask me again next time.” That always gave me confidence to ask again, knowing that if they said yes, they meant yes. I’m finding that friends who can say no to me are more and more valuable as the years go by.

7. We share stuff. Whether it’s eggs, wine, tools or car spaces. And once this deck is complete, we shall be sharing that as well. A lot. And we certainly benefit from their fresh produce, including herbs, cherry tomatoes, spring onions and bananas, to name a few.

8. They are all just damn good company. Even after seeing them daily for the last nearly-two years, we are always keen for the next gathering. It’s easy and nice and it’s wonderful to live in such a great community.

9. They look out for our house. Even when the resident busy-body drives me crazy with his nosiness, I appreciate that people are looking out for us and our house. That is good to know, especially this year when we’ve gone away a fair bit.

10. They put our bins out when we go away. Enough said.

My Super Powers

October 28, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

I entered a competition a few months ago and the prize was a DC Super Hero Girls cape. All you had to do was leave a comment about what super power you would choose to possess.

My response went like this:

I’d love to have to power to wake up each morning in a good mood, regardless of the lack of sleep, jump out of bed enthusiastically, and start my day with a smile.
Maybe it would be easier to fly…. ?

And would you believe, I won a cape! Quinny loves putting it on and being my little super hero.

Funnily enough, I’ve thought a bit about my response since then. Not long after this competition, we started our new morning routine, and it was so great. We did that for a few months, between trips to Brisbane, and I actually never minded getting up. I wouldn’t exactly say I jumped out of bed full of energy and eager to start the day, but I certainly wasn’t as cranky as I used to be, and was happier in our new routine.

Then we spent 6 weeks away from home and things kind of went out the window a bit. Mum got up with the kids most mornings while I stayed at Woody Pt, and Hubs got up with the kids most days on our holiday. Since we got back to home sweet home, the sun has been getting up much earlier, as have the kids.

Like 5am early. This is not sitting well with me. Don’t make me do it. Don’t make me be that person who gets up at a time that begins with a 5. The people who do that are crazy. Okay, not crazy. Admirable. But I don’t want to be one of those people!! I just don’t! Hubs keeps saying “I guess we are those early to bed, early to rise people now.” I’ve been going to bed around 9-9:30pm and I hate going to bed that early, and missing out on “my time.” But I seriously cannot keep my eyes open after that!

5am. Seriously kids. Get your body clocks sorted, will you??

I feel robbed

October 27, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

You know, the longer you leave blogging, the harder it is to get back into it?

I guess that can be said for a lot of things; tidying up the house, exercise, etc.

The fact that we haven’t had internet at home for over a month is, well, it’s just an excuse really, isn’t it. I can always tether my mobile (which I’m doing now) but even that has seemed like a pain.

Life is cruising along nicely. Our renovations are progressing, albeit a bit slower than we’d like, but probably at about the speed we expected.

You might be wondering about the title of this post. Well, it has to do with the year 2016. I occurred to me a few weeks ago that it was October. I don’t want to fill the screen with cliches of “I can’t believe how this year has flown” because I hate stating the obvious. The problem is, I have lived this year in 2 week increments. Ever since February, when we started the loan process to get these renovations done, we kept being told “it’ll just be another couple of weeks.” So I have fundamentally wished this year away in 2 week blocks. I just kept looking forward to the “in 2 weeks time” instead of being in the now.

The loan ended up taking about 14 weeks to be approved thanks to the sheer incompetence and uselessness of the branch we went through. Everything kept getting hand-balled to other people and no one wanted to take any kind of responsibility for lost paperwork, (we had to sign a particular form three times), mishandled emails, (our case manager left the branch without handing our file over) and unreturned phone calls. I had honestly had enough when they finally sent out the final paperwork. Thankfully we had gone ahead with getting plans drawn up and a builder was secured.

Works were meant to start in June, but there was “just a couple of weeks delay” due to the timing of things, so then it was supposed to be in July while we were in Brisbane, but because of “a couple more weeks to finalise A, B & C”, things didn’t really kick off until September.

And woosh. There goes 7 months of “just a couple more weeks”.

Robbed I tell you. My year has been spent on the phone and computer, organising a hundred things that have to line up precisely before anything can a) start and b) progress. It’s been sad more than frustrating to be honest. I don’t like feeling the pressure of the end of the year without any kind of plan in place for November and December.

But onwards and upwards. What’s done is done, and what’s being done, ie our beautiful new deck and under the house slab, is a little dream come true. And I’m truly thankful there have been no major dramas. Touch wood. There’s still a bit to do…

Christmas this year will be a quiet affair at home, with friends who are passing through, and neighbours who will be enjoying the view with us. As much as I love a huge Christmas surrounded by dozens of friends and family members, there’s something to be said for a lazy day of playing with the kids, eating good food, and enjoying marvelous surrounds.

I promise to be a bit more vocal on the old blog as well, now that I’ve broken the seal, so to speak. See you round.

10 things on the 10th

October 10, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Holiday edition

We are just over a week into our holiday with less than five days to go until we head back home. It has been an absolute cracker. The kids have been having a great time, there has been plenty of beach action, games of Settlers of Catan and Cards Against Humanity, wine, cheese, beer and chocolate, and yummy food being devoured.

Here’s the week in review:

1. My little chef helpers making ginger bread men

2. This cards against humanity combo had us all in stitches. It was a tough choice between the two.

3. A sleep-in AND brekky in bed. It’s just what Hubs does 🙂

4. So much beach time!

5. More help in the kitchen! This time it was chocolate cupcakes.

6. Lots of snuggly cuddles on the couch.

7-10. For some reason I am unable to upload any photos over 2GB and there are some crackers so I’ll just share them on my fb link. It’s just been such a great week and I would seriously consider making this a biennial event. If everyone else is keen that is 😉