Cousins and Chocolate Cake

It has been cousins, cousins, cousins! We are enjoying the company of my little sister, Evonne and her hubby and two precious little ones for a couple of weeks. They are up from Canberra, taking some time to defrost and to join our noisy family hive!

Joshua and Julia baked a chocky cake together...

We made quick work of it...

Was able to mind Samuel so that Mummy and Daddy could duck out together for a bit. This is the look I got from poor Samuel... I guess I am still somewhat of an unfamiliar face!

He did eventually warm up to the idea of this funny lady who looks a tad like Mummy...

And some other recent cousin moments... Owen tickling Sarah's toes. She let out a hearty giggle which encouraged Owen and the two were having a cute tickly precious moment... And ah that Sarah giggle!

Boy cousins...

It has been great fun watching them grow, change, learn new things, laugh together and even hear them say funny things their Mum or Dad's say...

I have many precious memories of cousin fun. I hope these days and memories are precious for them....

I hope they encourage eachother as they grow...

Children are so precious!

After the delicious indulgence in black, juicy mulberries I decided to make the most of the warm weather and bring out the wading pool. Well this is something we have not done for a long time and it was met with delighted squeals, kazillion questions about what it was doing there on the front lawn ;) and then shouts of glee and jubilation!

Did Mum ACTUALLY say...

She walked about in the cool of the garden. From the corner of her eye she spotted something... something dark, delicious and pleasing to the eye.

When she saw that it was good for food and pleasing to the eye ... she took and ate.


and ate again

and again

When questioned, she answered, "my brother, he gave to me and I ate!"

Letters and poems

I have recently come across a letter from a friend. A letter I kept because it was precious to us. It was written after Owen was born and was a real encouragement to us. We were in the Czech Republic and our friend who wrote it, Marcus, had come to serve in the summer camp team. He later married another girl, Amy, from the team who served in the summer camp team there too. In the letter he wrote to David as a Dad - embarking on the challenge and joy of raising a child with a disability. Along with some personal words of encouragement was this poem. I think he enjoyed writing the poem as he adds a few cute humerous bits.

While I was sleeping,
Your wife was bequeathing to you a jewel.
Indeed a holy tool,
Used in the Lord's hand to manifest his power in ALL his creation,
Yes in every tongue and tribe and nation
And with my wife did show elation that as the cattle were lowin'
The Lord, by his hand hath brought forth Owen,
Ah, that Owen with a big O
For little did you know
That your amount of arrows were low...
So Owen was sent tither,
To increase your quiver!!
To convinue on,
He (Owen) has conquered his first dawn,
And many others since that day.
Yet darkness dines in a dim lit world unless the Son of man cometh swirl away
Over dark depravity
To give us joyous gravity
In heaven.
So my pen returns to write of my new friend Owen,
That your eyes might see the light of Christ glowin'
For though the world is dark and dim
Christ shines his light before all men.
So though you hunger and cry for milk
May it too become a loss
Compared to Him hung on a cross
Who rose again to glory on high
To soon appear to every eye!

When writing a letter to a friend - a letter to encourage or just to show you care, why not write a poem, little limerick or ditty -

We really enjoyed ours.

In case you were wondering

Just in case you were wondering - my cheeky hubby snuck onto my blog and posted that last one!

Improving home decor

Have you struggled with finding the right pictures to fit your home decor?

Like me, you may have around the house a number of pictures on walls that really lack a bit of oomph. I mean like this one here.



Well, with a bit of blu-tack, this difficult issue that cause so much personal stress can be easily fixed. I feel so much more satisfied, and it lightens up my day.

Here you can see what I mean... what an improvement!!!





Perhaps you could try this yourself?

Lumpy green stuff disguised

My sweet hubby often goes to the fruit markets for me on a Saturday. He is very good at spotting bargains and is often a lot quicker. But what do you do when your hubby accidentally brings home a stack of silverbeet instead of spinach? Well, at first... panic... not really so keen on the old silverbeet... but I put technology to good use and looked up a recipe... Must say if you need to use silverbeet in a disguised sort of way this just might do it.. Silverbeet and Potato Torte - Have now made it twice. OK it still has silverbeet in it, but the cheese kind of hides that sort of lumpy green texture;)

And here are my three little chefs (thanks Aunty for making and posting the lovely kits to make these hats - kids loved them)

And what a good-looking bunch of cooks in my kitchen!

As my Mamma always used to say (she has a huge repertoire of sayings and wisdom!)..... "what's cooking, good-looking?

Bridal Mission

My brother, Sam recently went to the USA to visit some relatives. There he met up with many cousins, Aunts and Uncles he has never met. As a family we spent a year or so in the USA when I was about 4. I have a faint memory of my cousins and some fun get-togethers. Sam wasn't born at that stage so he didn't get to meet his American cousins.

But we thought there might be other reasons for his trip to the USA. Maybe he was doing the same pilgrimage Dad had done many years earlier - visiting the USA to find a wife! Ah, poor Sam has taken just a wee bit of teasing.

So what did he get up to anyway? According to my cousin, Jason, these photos may reveal it all...

Don't look too closely... this bride has quite the square shoulder look.

The husband here seems quite amused... don't you think??

Well Sam, what is your bride's name?

I hope you enjoyed my sharing of this secret with the world of blog readers out there... hee hee

Art Lessons

Art Lessons. I think most Mum's either hate teaching art or love it. I happen to love it. I think I owe my love of art and craft to my Mum who always let us draw, cut out pictures, make things (lots of mess) cook, sew, etc. etc. And make mess we did... I know because I still make mess (and lots of it)...

Problem is - now it is my time to put up with some mess and let my kids have a go... not my favourite thing to do but it is so exciting when they come up with a masterpiece of their own.

Here are some things we have done for art - drawing particularly. I started Josh off with some basic pattern copying found in library book Drawing with Children by Mona Brookes :

As you can see by the thick texta patterns - things are a bit rough to start off. Over time I would get Josh to repeat the pattern - nice when even he can see his own improvement in time.

Patterns get increasingly more difficult. Their aim is to help children to be able to draw some basic shapes and patterns - so they can break down a subject matter into parts. And, dare I say helps teach some basic copying skills (a real No No when I was at Uni).

Here is a book we moved on to. There is a gap inbetween these basic patterns and this book. I did quite a bit of talking about what shapes we could use in drawing different things - like a long rectangle with two circles underneath and another shorter rectangle above is a basic car shape... I also did some stenciling activities - so Josh could get the 'feel' of an oval, circle, following lines, etc.

Then I found this book helpful (was put onto this by a very resourceful friend of mine). Unfortunately you have to get it from US. Costs about US $8 plus postage

It breaks drawing up into some basic principals:

Each lesson is about a page and could be broken up into smaller lessons. We repeat the lessons over a few times (doing other type of art, painting or craft on other weeks). They are not lessons you would rush through (particularly at Josh's age). We are only on lesson 4 but I think Josh is beginning to learn a few tricks to drawing and is gaining some confidence.

Joshua's part 1 of Lesson 4

Joshua's coloured version of one part of the lesson:

Art hasn't been my Josh's favourite - would much prefer to be chatting to the neighbour, catching lizards or .... a list of other things. Nice to hear him begin to enjoy it just a smidgen. He declared the other day that he might be an artist when he grows up ;)

Nearly fell over backwards as this is not what I usually hear!

Do you have any favourite art programs/ideas? Would love to hear.

Always looking for more inspiration...

Friends

We enjoyed an afternoon visiting friends today. Thoroughly enjoyed our visit, I enjoyed chatting with another Mum, letting the children enjoy some "country" treats - handling chooks (and finding 3 eggs) pulling eachother around in a wagon, trying to avoid the lick of a huge dog, playing with a cockatiel on finger or shoulder and even taking home some 'couldn't get fresher than that' eggs!

Best of all we enjoyed the company of these new, sweet and hospitable friends.

Kept bumping into this lovely family. Josh apparently played with their little girl at a creation excursion trip. Some time later we 'bump' into them on the Doulos.

What a treat!

Daddy

Thankyou Lord for Daddy. We just love him.


Thanks for his cheerful disposition.

Thanks for his willingness to chat to JW's who are absolutely convinced of their view - who just come back again and again with the same arguments. He sees them as lost souls.


Thanks that he enjoys the children when they come with their "hello Daddy" throughout the day. They are so excited to see him.

Thanks that he does the romping and wrestling around stuff. Mummies just aren't cut out for that (at least this one). They love a good old jump on Daddy.

Thank you Lord that Daddy reads Bible stories to the children, that he takes time to explain your Word with great patience and with a heart to see them really understand.

Thanks for the help he has been fixing up broken things, painting lattice for under the cubby house - with a passion to see the job done. Took me forever... what my speedy Dave did in a relatively short time.

Thanks for his love for praising - for putting on some music that has us all praising the Lord and enjoying ourselves immensly as a family.

Thank you that he prays for us - that he has those long soaks in the bath where he brings us to you in prayer.

Thanks that he does the hard stuff like making sure our little ones show respect to Mummy - that they get work done and that they help carry their share of jobs to help.

Thanks for Daddy.


You deserve this Daddy-sized strawberry!



And yes, it does call for a candle Josh!

Kon Tiki

Joshua and I have really enjoyed reading this book together.

It is a true story of six men who set out from Peru in 1947. They wanted to prove that the inhabitants of Polynesia could have possibly originated in Peru, having travelled there on rafts. So the craft they built was made from balsa wood - based on historic paintings they found of early rafts built by the Peruvians.

They built a little cabin on the raft - with bamboo and banana leaves.

On their journey, they saw flying fish, crabs, an octupus, dolphins. They had quite an encounter with a gempylus (snake like fish with nasty sharp teeth). The snake like fish actually ended up in one guy's sleeping bag and sent the men scurrying around trying to find the lantern in the dark. They ended up capturing it, preserving it and learning later that no one had ever seen a live gempylus before.

They also encountered whale sharks (absolutely huge) and one with quite some personality would hover underneath their raft and tap the bottom... It would have taken no effort at all for one to capsize the raft.

Can you imagine 6 guys all cramped into a cabin on a small raft for 101 days with no ability to steer their raft... just trying to follow currents... ? Near the end of their journey they came so close to two islands only to be washed out to sea again at the last minute. They only managed to make it to land, clinging to the logs on their raft as it was picked up and thrown over a nasty, sharp coral reef. Their mast broke and the raft was severely bashed and broken but they made it. By the grace of God, I say... but not sure they believed at all.

Truly a fasinating read.

Our Josh loved it.

Here is his drawing of some fish they encountered...

I was amazed at what enthusiasm he had to draw these pictures - not the usual response when I tell him we are going to draw something. He just seemed so engaged in the story that he was rearing to go... have to keep this trick in mind for our next art lesson...

hubby is hilarious

Here's what my hubby did the other night... Decided to take a photo of his wife through his ring... Not sure where he got the idea, maybe it came to him after recently attending one of those "guys only" Christian seminars...

Now it is all sweetness and mushyness until you notice the pile of dishes in the background.


Of course as Dave took the photo I said "loves, you might like to note what is in the background... please hide the mess" Ah I laugh as I type...


Like a true romantic he was so busy taking photos of his subject I guess he just didn't notice:)

mr cabinet himself

Now you really couldn't get cuter photos of my cabinet (if I do say so myself!). Daddy thought it was real fun to slot Owen right in while it was laying down ...

These photos just make me wanna give those cheeky little cheeks a kiss and the ribs a tickle!

good health

Ah - so good to be over the nasty flu, have a tad of energy and just do the normal things of life... The flu that has circulated our family (bar Josh - don't know how he missed this one) had us knocked out. I just couldn't venture far from bed at all. I spent a large part of three days mostly in bed. I set Joshua a list of work to go on with. Rosa played for quite some time in the port-a-cot down near David as he worked (poor hubby - trying to keep her happy) and Owen was in bed with me sniffling away while I went from hot to cold/cold to hot... Ah... not the way to homeschool - I can tell you! I don't think anyone really tells you how to deal with these days when you set out home schooling. Needless to say it feels like our homeschooling is all over the place, that I have a mountain to catch up on...

However...

What a blessing to be back in good health, I thank the Lord that this sickness was tempory, that my children are all on the mend and that the sun felt so good on my back. I sat with the younger two in our sunroom - back to the glass... the sun just soaking in after feeling too light-headed to even walk around the previous day. Oh it felt good!

Thank you Lord for your mercies. Thankyou for good health. Thankyou that you pour out your goodness like the warmth of the sun..