Categories
#Springinyourstep

Taking it easy… kinda

Today marks the first Monday of Spring 2012. Weekdays for me are normally rush, rush, rush, go, go, go- but this #Springinyourstep concept is challenging me to take things slower and actually APPRECIATE the world, and the people, around me. It’s Spring! It’s not just another Monday, but it’s the first Monday in Spring!!!
So my first #Springinyourstep tweet today was about snuggling with Mr3 pre -6am. He was being very cute. Lucky, because last night was rather a sleep-deprived one, courtesy Miss 4. But the tweet got me thinking… although it was indeed a tweet showing positivity, showing appreciation, it wasn’t really a tweet about Spring!
That, and a tweet this morning from @DramaGirl suggesting that she was torn between gardening and working, and the beauty of the weather today, changed my plans today. Today, I gardened. (Well, until lunchtime.) and I enjoyed it! (This is normal for me though, I *do* enjoy gardening… One of the reasons why we’re on acreage in the first place!)
So I gardened, with the help of Mr3. It was wonderful. And later, when I sat outside with my laptop and worked, looking out was just SO heavenly!

20120903-183909.jpg
It was still work, my muscles are definitely noticing it now, but it was a different kind of work, and all the more enjoyable for being outside on such a gorgeous day.
So now, I’m again outside. It’s 6.40pm and quite mild. And I’m heading out tonight. Not to a meeting (yay) but to catch up with one of my closest friends. SOOOOOO stoked!!!
So, have a lovely evening, dear readers, (I plan to!) and I shall see you all tomorrow!

Categories
#Springinyourstep family anecdotes

Father’s Day

Today I surprised my father. After church, we dropped in and took my parents out for lunch. His favourite: Club Kawana. It was great!

20120902-191831.jpg

20120902-191852.jpg

20120902-191903.jpg
All photos taken by Miss 7 on my iPad… which she’d never used before. How proud does she look!!!
Happy Father’s Day, dear readers!

Categories
#Springinyourstep

#Springinyourstep

Yesterday afternoon, two online friends @fionawb and @jobeaz were discussing having ‘positivity in your PLN’, and they came up with the idea of sharing a daily “What made your day”, tweeting about it with the hashtag #Springinyourstep. And not to shy away from a blogging challenge, I asked to join in. So here ’tis! Day 1 of September, and what made my day today?

This morning, I snuggled with my three cherubs on my new lounge.

20120902-060835.jpg
Hubby and I have been married since November 1995, and this Wednesday just gone, we finally got our first lounge. LOL! New furniture (and snuggling three gorgeous little people) certainly puts a #Springinyourstep!!!

It was a beautiful day. Hubby had to study (CPA, third unit, poor love) so aforementioned kids and I spent the day outside. And for part of that time, I got to use my hammock YAY!!! Definitely a #Springinyourstep experience!

20120902-061337.jpg

And finally, I cooked myself some mushrooms… a rare luxury for me. Omnomnomnomnomnom!

20120902-061558.jpg

Overall, it was a wonderful first day of Spring. And I’m also very happy to be joining in this #Springinyourstep daily blogging challenge. I’ve been envying my friend Catherine Buntrock’s Facebook updates with her daily dose of gratitude, and my pathetic drawing ability unfortunately meant that I’m unable to join in with #drawmeSeptember starting today with another friend @bbeingcool, so this is a perfect fit, methinks. Join in, dear readers, if you’d like! And see you tomorrow!

Categories
Bloxham Marketing Life

Good times!

Today I am over the moon to be spending a goodly part of my day with the amazing, the brilliant, the irreplaceable Mrs Jenny Venier, making a virtual tour of the fantastic St Paul’s Lutheran Primary School. Roll on, happiness!!!

Categories
Random thoughts

So what are *you* watching?

I own the first 5 seasons of “House M.D.” on DVD. Being a “Becker” fan (yeh, okay, a while back now) I enjoyed the taciturn-doctor-who-actually-did-care-about-his-patient-in-spite-of-pretending-not-to character, and I really felt as though Hugh Laurie embodied this far more than he did the father in “Stuart Little”!!! But that being said, life got busy, the episodes started getting far too similar for my liking, the House -Cuddy relationship got too soapy, and so I lost track of it for a while. But I noticed that it was back on a couple of weeks ago, so thought I’d start watching it again. And then it finished! As in, for good!
Oh well, I guess all things need to come to an end. And when I think about it, I wasn’t the most impressed of people at the ending they chose. House “dying” in a building fire, and then spending the remainder of Wilson’s life riding around on Harleys (of course, with the stereotypical ‘ride into the sunset’), with no ability to then reclaim his life because he’d faked his own death… I found it all a little trite, to tell the truth.
Not so the ending of Season One of “Once Upon a Time”. Now *that* was an intriguing ending to a brilliant first season, and I’ll confess it now, I’m addicted. I was extremely impressed with the cleverness of the script, the cast choices (yes, I also liked that Jennifer Morrison was a main character; I had missed her after her exit from “House”) the locations, and the entwining of the fantasy world with the ‘real’ one. So much so, watching this on TV meant that when Hubby took me to the “Snow White and the Huntsman” I found it extremely disappointing. Even more so, that I’d spent money for the privilege of being disappointed! (Lucky I’d passed on the Julia Roberts version of the fairy tale, a few weeks earlier!) But yes, I really liked this first season, and am looking forward to the next. And if Hubby doesn’t take my “I want you to buy this for me for Christmas” hint, then, dear readers, feel free to oblige! LOL!

CC Image courtesy Koramchad at http://www.flickr.com/photos/alvarogan/115912693/

Categories
More about me Random thoughts

Me & caffiene

So at the moment, I’m not a big coffee drinker. So much so, that caffeine really quite affects me. It keeps me awake equal to the amount that I consume. One full cup of coffee? About 48 hours. One can of coke? About 36. Tea? I wouldn’t know… I hate the stuff.
But that being said, the effects are cancelled out by the amount of sleep I’ve had. As in, if I’ve pulled an all-nighter (my definition, where I work from when everyone else goes to bed until everyone gets up again the next morning) then generally a coffee the next morning will help to keep me awake until about 10 or 11 that night. If it’s just an all-nighter by Hubby’s definition, where I work between 4 to 8 hours (between when the the kids go to bed at 7 and when they get up at 5.30ish) then a can of coke will keep me up the whole following night… Depending, of course, on how many nights in a row it has been since my ‘normal’ night’s sleep of 11pm to 5am.
So I don’t drink caffeine that regularly. I run on adrenalin instead, and need the sleep that I can get. The trouble is, I really quite like the taste of a very sweet, hot, black coffee. Not particularly keen on coke… I’ll drink it if I need to… And I haven’t had a tea in well over a decade. But coffee? That, I like.
It didn’t used to be this way. When I was a teenager, I started drinking tea like my mum. Warm, not hot, lots of milk, and a ton of sugar… looking back, it was probably more hot milk with a touch of tea more than anything else! Then I hit senior school and tried coffee. Didn’t like it much, but then by the time I joined a cult in third year uni, was up to several cups per day. Hot, black, sweet… sometimes even a cappuccino or two. But I gave up the habit after marriage (Hubby doesn’t drink the stuff) so haven’t had much caffeine until the last few years or so.
This morning, I’m enjoying half a cup. That should keep me awake, both physically and cognitively, until about 10pm. Because today, I am exhausted. Last week was a full-on one of very little sleep; on Saturday night Mr 3 wormed his way into my bed and kicked my ribs for several hours (and I was too tired to wake up properly, get up, and move him back into his own bed) and last night I was up with him again at 10.30ish and again at 1am, when he decided that he wanted dinner. Seeing as he had slept right through it yesterday, falling asleep in the car at 3.30 and in spite of my best efforts, not waking up for dinner, and seeing as he asked – using words!!! – so nicely for milk, and then a peanut butter sandwich, I just could not refuse.
So, I’m exhausted. And I feel the need for coffee. So I’m indulging this morning. And enjoying it! Plus I’m blogging too, first thing this morning, which I’m rather enjoying too. Maybe I’m set for a very good week?!!! Here’s hoping! (And I hope the same for you, dear readers… have an awesome week!!!)

20120827-070522.jpg
My favourite coffee mug. Given by an appreciative student when I was Head of Middle School. Seeing as I wasn’t a coffee drinker at the time, it was rather a funny gift! But much appreciated now. Cos it’s so big! LOL

Categories
Random thoughts

Playgrounds and relaxation

It’s Saturday morning again. This time last week, Hubby and I were with our kids at Pioneer Park. Today it’s just me – Hubby’s catching up on his CPA studies – and I promised my kids a while ago that we’d go to Skidaddle, a kids indoor playground at Caloundra. So here we are, and I feel as though I’m actually getting to ‘sit down’ for the first time this week. It’s been a week of rush rush rush, non-stop intensity, and go-go-go every day. I think I slept the least I’ve slept in *quite* some time, and that didn’t particularly add to my patience levels. But on the up-side, the illness that basically incapacitated me Sunday, Monday and Tuesday morning started responding to the antibiotics, and my tweeps ensured that I bought some yoghurt to help with the side effects, so by the ‘I need to start on Miss 7’s Octonaut costume’ of Tuesday evening, I could sew ‘boots’ and create a hat and collar without stopping every two seconds to blow my nose!
Now that hat was difficult. There is NO way I ever want to be a milliner (that’s a hat-maker, right?) because that was one of the most tricky things I’ve ever made! (Now to just convince both Miss 4 and Mr 3, that they will also each need to be an Octonaut in a future Book Week Parade…!)
So the costume was done by Wednesday, and then it was Book Fair, ad creation, story writing, Book Parade, and then Miss 7 winning a ‘Student of the Week’ award meant that I also spent every single day driving in between home and Caboolture, at least once a day. Thursday night I didn’t sleep, trying to make story and ad deadlines, with the final artwork submitted at 4.58pm Friday. Phew!
So now it’s Saturday again. Time to breathe. Maybe even relax. And to blog. Because I’ve missed it! And I’m going to endeavour to take things a little easier this week -if I can!

20120825-201709.jpg
The Octonaut hat… Miss 7’s absolute favourite storybook character is Dashi Dog. Yay me.

Categories
Life Random thoughts

Self-diagnosis

There’s a small, hard bump under the skin on my eye-ridge, right near the bridge of my nose. There’s another, identical, lump, on the other eye-ridge. These are the points from which the pain radiates. Out across my forehead, and over my scalp, to meet in a large ball of pain at the base of my neck. Down across my cheekbones to throb incessantly.

And when I say ‘pain’, it’s manageable at the moment, now I’ve just woken up from yet another interrupted night’s sleep – but add three children and a Hubby into the mix in an hour or so, and I have a feeling that I’m not going to be the happiest of chappies. And Mr 3 will also be cranky, I expect – he joined me in our nighttime wakefulness. He louder than me (by about a billion decibels) so here’s hoping – but not expecting – that Hubby won’t be too cranky about that one!

I feel for Mr 3 though. If I feel this rotten, and if he has what I have, no wonder he’s so upset with life. I certainly haven’t relished the constant swings from freezing skin to sweating-through-my-clothes, nor the dizziness that comes with sudden movement, nor the sensitivity to noise. I don’t really like the tender ribs and diaphragm from the constant coughing, nor the rapidity at which I’m going through both tissue boxes and, so it seems, the skin under my nose, which in itself is now a rather unattractive deep pink hue.

So all in all, I think I’m going to call it. I’m infectious. LOL. As in, I’m going to self-diagnose a sinus infection, and probably a lung one as well. And yeh, I’ll probably give in and drag myself (with Miss 4 and Mr 3 of course) to the doctor for some antibiotics. Because (with the exception of that strange nausea day a couple of weeks ago) I haven’t been this sick in years. And I haven’t had antibiotics since Miss 7 was still in nappies. So hopefully they’re going to do the trick! At least, I’l be praying that they do, because I don’t know how much more of this I can take!

Categories
Life Random thoughts

Priorities

It’s a bit unfortunate, but sometimes the urgent takes priority over what it is I *want* to do. This week, I had hoped to blog a minimum of three times. And now it’s Saturday, just gone midday, and I have the feeling that I only blogged once. Whoops! And the worst bit of it is… I can’t actually remember where the week went to! But I’m not too overly stressed at the moment, and the mountainous workload that normally takes up residence in my brain-space seems to not be yelling at me insistently, so I’m going to take 15 minutes out and catch up with this blog.
And what a great place to do it! I’m sitting in dappled sunlight with my kids hard at play at the sand tables in their favourite playground. And, strangest of all, Hubby’s with us, instead of being at work or studying (he’s halfway through his CPA) so this is turning into a big highlight of the week to date.

20120818-124326.jpg

So yes, although I’m fully cognizant of the fact that when we get home there’s a kitchen full of dirty breakfast dishes, at least three loads of washing, and probably a dozen kids fights to arbitrate between now and dinner, I’m going to enjoy the moment. I’m here, I’m warm, I’m happy. And I wish the same for each of you, dear readers! Have a great day today!

Categories
family anecdotes momentous events

Passing the torch… um, I mean, violin…

So I play violin. I started learning way back in Year 3, which means I’ve now been playing for 31 years. (Man, I sound old when I put it like that! I don’t feel old! Or act it, either… I think?) and I’m pretty good at playing violin. Not being boastful, but I can hold my own. I teach it, and I play at church in one of the music teams.
I played last Sunday. My kids love it when I play, they dance along to the music, and Miss 7 hums or sings the tune if she knows it. Last Sunday, after church, I was telling her how she was very talented musically, and she decided that she wanted me to teach her violin. (A bit of history: she has her own violin that I bought for her when she was 5. I tried teaching her then, but we just butted heads non-stop, so we both lost interest very quickly!!!) so I said “sure”, and we started then and there.
She was SOOOOOOO super-keen!!! Perhaps it was because she was older too, but nonetheless, she was a lot more focused, a LOT more patient and willing to listen ( and I was probably a lot more of a patient teacher too!) But whatever it was, it worked. and it’s continued to… she’s been enthusiastically practicing every day. And making me so very very very proud!!!

20120816-004303.jpg