Birthdays, Marathons and New curtains

I really shouldn't leave it too long between blogs because they end up as novels. I have a lot to say and need to get it down before we leave for Oz tomorrow. Right now I really should be washing floors and doing the last of the packing but I am a great procrastinator!

Heaps has happened in the last week! My big boy turned 9 yesterday. We had a small party on Saturday. Tobyn invited 4 friends and they came here for pizza and a couple of games before we took them to the swimmimg pool and bought them slide passes. They seemed to all have a great time! And 4 hours flew by! A few snaps follow.





NEW CURTAINS!!!
I am so excited because we finally got our curtains and it makes such a difference to keeping the house warm. We have had blinds since we moved in last August but there were gaps around the edges. We are SOOOO happy with how the curtains turned out. I absolutely LOVE the boys curtains. And I am happy with the richness of the others.

What do you think?

Isaacs room



Tobyns room



Our room




The kitchen



And finally the family room





OK I am going to finish this post here before I lose everything. I will do another post with Steves HUGE achievement on the weekend.

Friends

I have had some lovely get togethers with some good friends over the past week and I am so grateful! I find it hard to ring friends and say lets get together. In my head I think that they wouldn't have time for me. Because of this I think I have pushed people away. Anyway I have made a concerted effort to get together with friends over the past couple of weeks. Last week I visited Adele and her 3 kiddies. Her oldest was a preemie and her twins were slightly early as twins often are. The twins are just a couple of months older than Isaac and I am seeing how important it is to get Isaac out socialising now he is getting older. Adele also likes to scrapbook and make cards so she came over by herself on Sunday afternoon. She spent most of the time looking through my stash and I was so embarressed at how anally retentive I am! My stash is ultra organised and it wasn't until she went through that I realised. My cardstock and ribbons are sorted by colour, my patterned paper is sorted by manufacturer, and my adhesives are sorted by type, there is more but you get the picture. All that aside Adele would love to get together for a crop and she has a couple of friends that would too so after the holidays I will organise one.

Today I visited Kaila and little Vivienne. Kaila is an incredibly special person. Her husband works for the University and they are here from the States so it is nice to have someone that understands the differences. Vivi is almost a year older than Isaac and wanted him to play with her, Isaac didn't quite understand what that entailed. But he had a ball with the toys animals and cars and 'let' Vivi brush his hair. Kaila and I could have talked for ages! And she is like me finds it hard to phone someone and organise time together, so we both have to work on this one. Kaila spends ALOT of time doing things for the young people ion our Church and I worry that she does too much sometimes, because I understand. I will never, well at least try to never, do that to myself again and I need to help Kaila to do less. She has such a big heart but it really can take its toll on your health.

Bad news: My brother in law was in a head on crash on Monday. He is OK but has multiple fractures and needs an operation next week to pin ankles and elbows. He is incredibly lucky to have come away with only this. There was a photo in the paper last night and my sister didn 't know it was going to be in there, that makes me mad, she doesn't want to kids to see it! She should have been asked, well at least in my opinion! Apparently today he is on Oxygen, cold and very sleepy. My sister has many worries regarding all the things he has taken care of like bills etc, let alone caring for 3 little boys one of which had a developmental disability. I will do what I can.

Well I guess that is all for now, ttfn

Congratulations Jane and Gus

Jane, Steves' younger sister and her husband Gus had their first baby on Monday June 11th. They had a little girl, Olivia. We don't have any photos yet, can't wait though! But I did have a play and altered a wooden letter for her. This is my 1st attempt at using my scrapbooking on something other than paper. I enjoyed playing with paint and like the finished result, even if it is very simple! I hope Jane likes it. I now have plans to do a couple more, and they are for girls! I don't oftne get to do girly things and that showed when I was looking through my stash I didn't have much to use on the letter, I see a shopping spree for some girly stuff coming up LOL

What do you do when it is raining?

Scrap!!! I have been having withdrawl symptoms from scrapbooking so today I HAD to do some. I finished one layout and completed another. That makes 3 layouts from the April kit and I still have plenty of paper left. This is the first layout I have done of Steve on his own and when i was looking for a recent photo of him the only one I could come up with is from 2 years ago, going to have to rectify that!



Last night Steve decided that Isaac needed a hair cut. We took him about 2 months ago and he was too interested in looking at what Gemma was doing. Our friends mentioned that April cuts Samuels hair so Steve thought we could do the same. Well Steve is cack handed he can't even cut a loaf of bread straight. So after watching him for a while I suggested I have a go. I was doing ok and then Steve wanted another go, by this time Isaac had had enough and was moving quite a bit. Well poor Steve snipped his ear :( He felt awful! So no more cutting hair ourselves, which I am pleased about, I didn't really want to do it anyway. Fortunately Isaac has forgotten, I was able to straighten it up while he sat on my knee watching TV this morning.

Good manners matter

We have put so much time and energy into getting our eldest boy to use good manners. Now most of the time he has pretty good manners but we often have to remind him. It is so frustrating that an almost 9 year old doesn't use good manners all the time and especially when you put so much effort into teaching the importance of good manners. Now fast forward to our little 19month old.....he already has lovely manners and the only thing we have been doing is using good manners ourselves. This little guy has obviously observed what we say and when we say it. About a week ago he had a bottom burp and he said 'parn me' I thought this was a fluke and maybe he didn't actually say what I thought he had and then the next morning he burped and he said it again. Since that first one he has used it regularly in context since, even pardoning his Dad this morning, soo cute. He is also very good with 'peese' and 'hank oo' So he has beautiful manners, he also has a terrible temper!!! Lately he has been having lots of temper tantrums, he hits things and says 'ow, ow, ow' or will flop down on the ground and squeal. And he likes to scream when he doesn't get his way. This child deffinately has a mind of his own! And even though it is hard to hear the screaming and see the tantrums I love it. I love that he is doing so well considering where he started. He is an adorable little guy that loves to give hugs and kisses and I can forgive the tantrums knowing that this is his way of expressing his independance. This little guy that started life at 2lb is making the most of it.



Lately I have not been able to do any scrapping. I am trying to clear out a whole of stuff taking up storage space. I have been trying to get things on trade me firstly to clear it out and secondly to get a little bit of spending money for our trip to Oz. So far I have earnt $150 Yay me.

Steve had his last LONG run yesterday. The marathon is 2 weeks from yesterday and I can tell you I will be glad when it is over!!! These 3-4hr runs on the weekend take too much time out of our time with the family. But he did also spend alot of time on Sat cleaning out the garage, still a lot more to do but at least it is already looking alot better. Sunday afternoon we also played chinese checkers with Tobyn. For ages I have been wanting to have a games evening or afternoon with Steve and Tobyn and we never seem to get around to it. Now the frustrating thing was that Tobyn got bored I think. Tobyn is a very bright little boy whose mind is often somewhere else. So firstly we had to keep reminding him to watch the game and secondly we had to keep asking him to not make silly noises when moving his pieces. Now that I have written that it seems silly that it concerned us so much. I do think that if we played games more often it would be better so hopefully I can make this a regular weekend event.

'til next time, ciao

All about My Dad

Bad, bad blogger. I have been procrastinating about writing on my blog and now I don't really know where to start....

The biggest thing that has happened this past week would be my Dad phoning and saying he was in town could he come and stay the night. This was a HUGE shock and not the most welcome one!

My Dad has been somewhat distant for the past 7 years and my brother, sister and I have a very strained relationship with him. He hurt our Mum terribly and did some pretty thoughtless things. Early 2006 he had a heart attack and was very ill and told he only had a short time left to live. I think he got very depressed and upset at the things he was missing out on. He has 5 grandsons and really doesn't 'know' any of them. I think that my children deserve to know their Poppa so when we went to Christchurch last year and had a thanlsgiving service for Isaac we invited him to celebrate with us. It was so nice to see Tobyn get on so well with him.

So fast forward to last Thursday afternoon. A phone call at 4pm and shock, horror the person says 'hi it's Dad' oh my goodness! He said he was in town and could he come and stay the night. As it turned out he was hitchhiking up to Auckland to go to a Benny Hinn evening. According to him Benny Hinn is a faith healer, so obviuously Dad hopes to be healed! CRAZY man!!! He has a bad back, heart condition and diabetes. So we gave him dinner and a bed and he was then planning on continuing hitching up to Auckland. My conscience couldn't let him hitch up to Auckland and then all the way back down to Chch. So I offered to drive him to Taihape, figured he could get a ride from there better than from Palmy. I also looked into getting him back to Chch and could get a very good plane fare. He seemed very appreciative and I hope he got what he wanted from the trip! It is now Sunday evening and I hope he is back in Chch, haven't had any news.

On the good side of all this my sister and I talked a whole lot about our feelings. It was good to be able to say some positive things about him. For all his faults and the bad memories we have we do know that he has a big heart and this is why he has got into so much financial trouble. Everyone that knows him that aren't family say he is a wonderful man. I told Tobyn that I find my Dad hard to be around and I don't know what to say to him. My darling boy didn't want to tell me that he liked his Poppa. I had to explain to him that it is wonderful that he loves Poppa. He asked me if I loved him and I said yes I will always love him I don't really like some of the things he has done but he is my Dad and I will always love him!!!

I am now pleased that I have a photo of Dad with Isaac, I missed getting one last year.



A question for my readers, what does my Dad remind you of? It is sad but I think my dad looks like a homeless person. He doesn't look after himself and I find that very sad.

Ok, that's all for now, 'til next time XXX