A birthday girl, a keyboard lesson and a case of Mastitis

Well our sweet little Rosa turns one today! Unbelievable. I have spent some time reflecting on my pregnancy and birth and ahh - it is so good to have our little one here with us. She is crawling everywhere at quite a pace. We put her on our bed, as is our tradition after her feed each morning so she can enjoy some time alone with Dad and Mum before the boys get up. She just soaks up this time and loves 'landing' on Dad and Mum and getting tummy blows. This morning the boys were just so keen to come and join us. We gave in a bit and let them gatecrash our bedroom so we could give Rosa her birthday cuddles all together! Joshua sometimes comments (usually after getting an elbow in his ribs) that Dad and Mum's bed just isn't big enough!

Joshua has a new keyboard teacher this year. I was initially a bit disappointed about this as he has had a few changes of teachers... Kristy is very sweet though and Joshua doesn't seem phased by the change.

I decided to give Rosa a late feed tonight as we ended up giving her an early night. After giving Rosa some 'mother's nectar' I ended up getting severe shakes and to cut a long story short Mastitis set in and poor Dave ended up calling up the hospital just to ask their advice. We decided to see how it went... (in retrospect should have dealt with it early on). Ugghhh - never quite had mastitis to that level before....

Lessons from the Garden

Today we took our school work along to another medical appointment at the Royal. I was quite pleased that it didn't take nearly as long as expected so that we could continue our day here at home.

We have had rain off and on but only in little drizzles. I am so thankful when I look outside to see how beautiful and green everything is becoming. We finished our art lesson (making aerodynamic /non aerodynamic planes by using foam shapes) and decided to try and fit in a little gardening while the sun was out. It was really lovely. Joshua's little garden is growing really well (as were the weeds:) We dug the weeds out together while Owen and Rosa had their afternoon naps. It took some encouragement to help Joshua persevere with those nasty weeds... We had a great discussion though on how our lives can become full of weeds and how the Lord wants us to come to Him so that he can help us remove those things that clutter and get in the way of His love for us. How easily I can get tangled in the weeds of worldly stuff and even the daily stuff of life rather than bathe in His love.

Josh and I began decorating our cubby house under the stairs. We made the cardboard wall there some months ago from bike boxes with trap doors to the boys specifications (ie. Dad and Mum can't easily climb in!). After we were given some nice big architectural paper from some friends we decided to glue them to the front and eventually decorate it. So today we did just that. We discussed what sort of a dwelling it should be and Joshua declared it a take-away shop. He thought we should call it "Take N' Go!" We looked up some children's books to get some ideas for decorating. The story page above was our inspiration. We decided to take a before and after photo too... So keep watching for updates!

To the World of Books

Having yesterday and today just with two has made for a fairly quiet day. Joshua did well on his spelling test and maths quiz, so after a bit more school work I decided we might venture to the library and borrow some books about aviation (much easier to manage with just two - still trying to work out where to put all our books when I take all three kids!?). Joshua was quite thrilled about that - and we came home with quite a pile.

Our friend, Krissy from Church came around this afternoon and so the kids had a great time running around. She stayed the night and spent most of Saturday here too. We had hoped to take her out when we went out shopping and then remembered we didn't have enough seats in the car...

Well it has been off to Prep. for Owen! We asked him if he was keen to go to ECIP again and he just kept repeating "Yeah" (in a real American accent too :) We all had lots of cuddles, admired Owen in his glasses and walked him off to Prep. He has just two days there each week where he gets a bit of extra help from a Speech Therapist and Physio. He seems to really enjoy going and often comes home singing and bouncing around. I have had Owen in my thoughts and prayers today as he starts a new year there. I sometimes wonder how much he interacts and I pray silently that he will be able to one day tell me in some simple way his thoughts and feelings. For now, our job is just to love him and pray for his speech to progress. But then he is so easy to love and enjoys a good cuddle!

At home we spent some afternoon time doing Science. Here is Joshua's glider experiment for you to enjoy:

Homeschooling at the Mater

Today we took along our books, quite a supply of food, toys, etc. and headed to the Mater hospital for Owen's ENT (ear, nose, throat) appointment. We are used to these appointments taking quite some time. Out came the books and Joshua began his English work... Owen kept many in the waiting room entertained by his cuddly antics. Joshua managed to make a few friends (very hard for him to keep his head in his books when there is someone to befriend nearby).

We met quite a few children with different disabilities - some much more noticable than others. Disability or none - I was surprised yet again just how easily Joshua made friends with children that probably find it hard to find a friend who doesn't want to stare and ask many questions first... I thank the Lord that he uses our Joshua to make friends with others. I pray that the Lord would use his friendliness for His glory!

Tuesday 29 January

Well it was our first day back for our homeschooling year 2008! We had a great start to the day with prayer a Bible reading and began reading our chapter book 'Jim Elliot' . The morning began rather uneventfully - even managed to have a little bit of time with Owen using shaving cream on a mirror to make circles! Rosa clambered around on the back patio and wore herself out.



We cancelled swimming lessons (Josh's toe infection still not completely healed) and headed off to keyboard lessons. It was pouring rain! When we arrived I decided to avoid taking the stroller as we might get saturated in the process. Joshua spent a while tying his shoes and then we made it just in time. During Joshua's lesson Rosa managed to throw up all over the floor so I humbly apologised to the new teacher for my rude interruption and proceeded to clean up the mess. She was very sweet about it all. We then did a bit of shopping and returned to our car to discover that our shoe-tying sweetie had accidentally locked the keys in the car. We waited for RACQ and managed to be on our way without to much of a wait. Well I must confess it wasn't quite the smooth, well-planned first day back into the swing of things for the year.... ah rejoice always! (hmm... think I failed on this one....)

Monday 28th January

Australia Day holiday - we headed off to Springbrook to make the most of Australia day. We took along our Czech friend, Martina, Jennifer and Matthias. It was a nice, somewhat muggy day and we enjoyed the georgeous view of Purlingbrook Falls. They haven't been flowing very much at all until the recent rains. Looking over at the falls makes me realise just how awesome our God is. The people at the bottom of the falls looked like tiny specks