Happy birthday to me!

January 18, 2017 / Renae / Leave a comment

This was Darby’s “ta-da!” These kids are just the best.

It’s been such a lovely day. I had a little sleep in but I wanted to hit the shops before meeting my friend at 11. I got to Chermside Westfield around 9.45 and already it was busy! That place is so crazy. It’s huge and it’s just getting bigger! Or maybe I’m just used to small towns now.

Anyway, it was nice to get an eyebrow wax and buy some clothes without being tugged on and whinged to. Had a lovely brunch and catch up with my friend before heading back to the kids. Then it was off to the Lagoon at Redcliffe for a nice dip in the tepid waters with another friend and her two kids.

I put the kids to bed, or so I thought, and headed out for dinner with the girls. I have known these lovely ladies for between 24 and 34 years. There’s a lot of history here, as can be seen in the photos I found last night!

So it turns out the kids heard me drive away and were none too impressed that I hadn’t said goodbye to them. I can never decide between telling them I’m leaving and trying to settle them or just sneaking out. Both work at different times. I’m heading out tomorrow night and have decided to tell them and say goodbye and hope for the best!!

So thank you everyone for the lovely messages and cards and prezzies. Apart from Hubs not being around, it’s been a top notch birthday and I have felt very loved and spoilt. Night-night from a very content 37-year-old.

Gold Coast trip

January 16, 2017 / Renae / Leave a comment

As we always do when we are visiting south east Queensland, we headed down the coast for the day to visit Hubs’ Dad and Nanna.

Road trip with a full car!

Lots of happy campers in the car.

Nanna is now 98, turning 99 in April! What a trooper! I didn’t take as many photos as I would have liked but we did have a lovely day.

It was too hot to go to the beach when we arrived at 10.30 so instead we hung out for a bit, drank coffee and milkshakes and beer (not all at once) and then headed out for playground and fish and chips around midday.

If there is one thing I will never understand in Queensland, it’s unshaded playgrounds. I mean, I get that shade sales are expensive, but what the heck is the point of going to all the trouble and expense of building a playground, only to leave it in full sun from midday onwards?? Or worse, no shade from trees and full sun all day. Honestly it baffles me. So when we got to this playground, I just shook my head. But we were there and the kids were keen.

Brotherly love. They were discussing age in hexa decimal, and how this year it’s J’s f-teeth birthday and he’s looking forward to his 20th birthday next year. I know, right?

After a while it was time to head back to Nanna for an ice cream cone and a cheeky nap. Not that I got my nap, but the kids sure got their ice cream!

I told Quinny she looked like a pirate so she pulled this face.

We headed home via the airport and said goodbye to Hubs. He has to work tomorrow so he’s on his way back now. Boo. We will be road tripping home with Aunty Jess on Friday and we’re pretty much all booked up between now and then! With a sleep in for me on Wednesday of course! (It’s in the schedule!)

As is the way, I won’t be able to catch up with everyone I wanted to but it’s been great so far with lots more to come.

The start of the birthday week

January 11, 2017 / Renae / Leave a comment

So I hadn’t officially planned to start my birthday week until this weekend, but my lovely neighbour kicked it off tonight with dinner at their house followed by a birthday cake! Winning all round! No dishes for me and chocolate cake to boot.

On my birthday last year, another one of our wonderful neighbours made me a birthday cake as well (“because you have to have cake on your birthday!”) I agreed whole heartedly.

I know I’ve said it before, and I know I bang on about it, but we really do have the best neighbours around.

I guess my birthday week might be lasting a bit longer this year!

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.

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.

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.

We are here

October 4, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Over croissants and coffee way back in February, in a house in Balwyn, a plan was hatched for a combined family holiday. And here we are. We are holidaying with two families who we met back in 2008 through Hubs’ medical degree in Melbourne. Back then between us, there had only been two weddings and a baby. A third wedding was added (my first as a celebrant) and six more children, and all of a sudden there are 13 of us in a house at the Sunny Coast.

There have been sandy trips to the beach, games of noughts and crosses, a baking adventure (and another to come shortly), Lego building galour, late nights of wine and Survivor, and lots of laughing kiddies.

I’m already feeling more relaxed. I’m really looking to some beach walks, trips to the local op-shops, and more good food and yummy drinks to come. Photos will be here soon…

When was the last time you felt elated?

August 11, 2016 / Renae / Leave a comment

Like, seriously explosively delighted?

I’m feeling that way right now, and I just want to tell the world. I want Hubs to come home right now so I can plant a huge kiss on his face and give him the biggest cuddle. I can’t wait to pick Chanbe and Quindy up from school/kindy and look at them and tell them how much I love them. I have just given Darby a lovely big squeeze when I transferred him from the car to the cot. This. This is such a nice feeling. And it’s been a while.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m happy. Day-to-day, life is going well. But I’ve been pretty stressed out lately due to some renovation work on the house that we were hoping would start on Monday but has been delayed another week, which means having to find somewhere for us to live for two weeks, and all the organisation that goes along with that. Plus I have a few weddings coming up which is exciting but I’m not finding the time to put the ceremonies together and I hate leaving it too late to work on them.

But amongst all of that, I decided that I would take Darby out to Yeppoon to catch up with our dear friend, and his Godmum, and not think about all this stuff, if only for a few hours. The drive to Yeppoon is about 40 minutes, and with only one kid in the car who I knew would sleep the whole way, (which meant no being yelled at about being hungry/thirsty/needing to wee/dropped something and can’t reach it) I put some tunes on and sung my way to the coast. Already I was feeling better. Sonia and I took Darby-doo out for a coffee (he had a chocolate milkshake that he didn’t have to share!) and then to the playground, and just chatted and caught up and it was just so nice. Then we decided to grab some lunch and I had the most delicious pork belly sliders. Holy moly it was so amazing. This was after staring at the menu for 10 minutes trying to decide what to get.

This is what happens when I’m stressed; small decisions get really hard for me. What to wear; what to eat; where to sit in a cafe. I know I’m overloaded when I can’t make up my mind on things, but this was such a good choice. I honestly don’t think we stopped talking for the 4 hours we were together and it was absolutely what I needed to get my mind of things. I spoke to the builder half way through our time together, and found out that the work has been delayed another week which means more time to look for somewhere to stay, but also AAAAAAAAARRRRRRGH! I know I know. These things happen, and to be honest, it was probably good to hear that so I could relax a little about finding somewhere. For now anyway.

I just feel so rejuvenated! We talked about all lovely and wonderful things; about big plans and little plans and ideas and our boys (okay, men) and kids and the future and…. Ha ha it’s starting to sound like a date! And it totally was. There’s something about being around a young, optimistic, vivacious woman that is contagious, and I left with a feeling of innocent delight.

On the way home I chose to listen to Jewel’s 1995 (whaaaaaat??) album “Pieces of You” and sung my freaking heart out. I also had a little happy-sad teary in a few of the songs that hold some memories for me, and also some that mean so much more to me now, having been with Hubs for almost 10 years (double whaaaaaaat???) And now I have all this energy and can’t wait to put on my active wear to walk down to pick Chanbe then Quindy up, then come home and just play play play with my beautiful kids. If I could bottle this feeling, I would. But I know that it’s the stressy times and the challenges that make these moments even better.

I just hope I can rub some of it off on someone else to pay it forward, because I want to share this joy.