Category: family anecdotes

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#blogjune Blogging challenges family anecdotes

Once Upon A…

I’ve managed to get Miss12 and Miss9 hooked on the TV series Once Upon A Time.

Yeah, I feel a little bit guilty about that.

But only a little. Deep down, I really like how they want to watch the story unfold, along with me. We talk through character motivations, discuss plot twists, and to tell you the truth, they’re better at finding plot holes than I am!

For Mother’s Day, *they* bought me Seasons 2 to 5 of the series. We’re just gone halfway through Season 4 now. Frankly, that’s a lot of episodes. A lot of time, snuggled on the lounge, with my girls.

And I love that.

Have a great day, dear Reader!

— KRidwyn

Categories
#blogjune family anecdotes teaching

touching wood…

#blogJune, for me, meant that it was vomiting bug season. Weird, I know, but last year was the first year since 2011 – when I started #bloggingJune – wherein I was *not* dealing with my cherubs deciding to catch said bug. I held my breath (metaphorically) throughout the whole month, and was glad that not once did I need to clean up after a child.

This year, we’re now almost halfway through the month, and again it would seem that we may not *touch wood* have the ‘pleasure’ of a vomiting bug visit.

I’m okay with that.

I *was* at home with a sick Miss9 today, however her racking coughs and running nose seemed to clear significantly from the good food, bed rest, and Mummy company, so I’m hopeful she’ll mend quickly. She’s my healthiest, strongest kid, so it wouldn’t surprise me if she’s up and running around as per normal by tomorrow.

Which is good. What with the amount of plates I’m juggling in the new job at the moment, it’s kinda needed that I be there, rather than at home, at the moment!

Anyway, that’s where I’m at, at the moment.

Have a great day, dear Reader!

— KRidwyn

 

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#blogjune family anecdotes teaching

Data woes…

So Mr8 discovered the game Diep.io several weeks back. He loved it, and got Miss12 and Miss9 also hooked on the game. I don’t get the appeal, but they like it and it seems harmless enough – a very non-graphic shoot-em-up game, from what I can tell.

The trouble is, the game can only be played over the internet. And I didn’t realize exactly how much data it was using. Cue cries of frustration when suddenly I was out of data – with over two weeks before my data allocation was renewed! [To be fair, I don’t think the game uses *that* much data. But playing it kept Mr8 busy while the girls and I watched ‘Once Upon A Time’… so, in retrospect, it *may* have been the sheer amount of time he was playing the game which may have been the issue here…]

I’ve been out of data before. Generally, it’s not too much of an issue.

But this time, I was in a pickle. I’d gone ahead and changed the assessment items for the Year Eight English classes, you see – made it all blog-based. Which meant to mark my kids’ work, I needed to view it over the net… and, of course, this is rather difficult to do when you’re out of data!

Whoops.

But I get my monthly quota renewed tomorrow. And then it’ll be all guns blazing – because my reports are due tomorrow as well! Arrggh!!!

Have a great day, dear Reader. And wish me luck with speedy marking!

— KRidwyn

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#AtoZchallenge Blogging challenges family anecdotes

K is for ‘kitten’

I’ve always preferred cats to dogs – or so I thought, until falling in love with my first dog when Hubby and I, newlyweds, visited a German Shepherd breeder.

I fell, hard. We bought one, and drove him home, naming him ‘Smudge’ just before he decided to vomit on my lap. (Lucky the towel he was wrapped in caught the majority of it!) At home, we introduced him to our Ragdoll kitten, ‘Rascal’, and there we were – married just a few short months, and a ‘family’ of four already!

The years passed, and pets came and went. After Rascal though, there were just dogs. Even now, we have Aksel (another German Shepherd) and Rocky (Australian Cattle Dog, and the best snake-killer you’ve ever seen…) but no cats.

And I’ve decided I miss them. So once the renovations are completed, we’ll be getting another one. I must admit – I’m looking forward to that day more than I realised!

So let’s hear it for the kitten 🙂

And have a great day, dear Reader!

— KRidwyn

Categories
#AtoZchallenge Blogging challenges family anecdotes

H is for ‘hammer’

Which is what I used for a goodly part of the day.

After my early morning gym session, my time spent gardening, and then ensuring that my three cherubs *were* in fact up and had broken their fasts, our friend Charlie arrived – he of the building and installing our lovely kitchen a few years ago. He arrived laden with cabinets and toe kicks, ready to install the internal shelves of the cherubs’ bedroom wardrobes.

Cue the hammer. And my part in today’s labour (because no, the gym session and the gardening weren’t enough) which involved the demolition work of the old shelving.

Whoa. The lovely gentleman who built our house, built it GOOD. As in, I swear he had shares in the glue company. Shelves were coming off ATTACHED to their shelf supports (quick flashback to the demo of our original kitchen, where we just decided, rather than chipping off the tiles glued to the gyprock, to just cut out the whole section of gyprock and replace it with new stuff).

So, several hours and an equivalent number of knots in my back muscles later, the cherubs all have new wardrobe internals. They’re happy. I’m happy. And sore. And a little more broke than I was yesterday.

Oh! Note to self: go pay Charlie!

Have a great day, dear Reader 🙂

KRidwyn

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#AtoZchallenge Blogging challenges family anecdotes

D is for ‘determination’

When I was a teenager, my mother regularly talked about ‘Grit and Determination’. They could get a person anywhere, she said. Perhaps her constant reminders were indicative of my ‘lazy, good-for-nothing’ character at the time, but be that as it may, they certainly made a lasting impression on me.

And my mother would know. Born somewhere in the latter half of nine siblings, she was the only child to win a scholarship at her village’s Primary School, allowing her to attend the English speaking secondary school in her country’s capital. That’s where she started to learn English. And she learned it well enough, studied hard enough, that by her matriculation, she was the only student in her country to win a scholarship to attend University – in New Zealand!

I’m glad she went. That’s where she met my Dad – and the rest, as they say, is history…

albeit, interesting history. After having three children, Mum raised us then went back to full-time work, as a teacher, while we were in primary school. After a few years, she decided to study Japanese, and became a LOTE teacher. At one of her schools, she had a overwhelming number of visually impaired students: so my Mum decided to learn braille. And yes, not just English braille. Japanese braille, to teach to Australian students.

Fast forward another twenty-something years. She’s retired, however her determination to not be confined by past achievements still defines her. Not only has she mastered Japanese, Chinese and Hindi, she’s well on her way to mastering Latin – and receiving an iPad for Christmas last year has inspired her yet further, with the language apps she now has easy access to.

‘Grit and determination’ can get a person anywhere. She’s living proof.

Me? I find her an inspiration. Now that I’ve given up trying to keep up. My determination tends to be time specific. As in, it’s 7.20pm and I’ve been up since just before 4am, but only now am I finding the time to sit in front of my computer and write this blogpost. I *had* hoped to have these ‘A to Z challenge’ posts published at 9am each day. Obviously that didn’t happen today – but in spite of yawning profusely for the past hour and a half, I was *determined* to not let my head hit the pillow before I wrote this post. I know, I know. Piddling, in comparison to my Mum. But that’s my story on determination today. What’s yours?

And have a great day, dear reader!

KRidwyn

Categories
family anecdotes teaching University studies Work

One week in…

I posted late last year about my new job for 2017. Well, I’ve been in it a week now. And what an INCREDIBLE week it’s been!

You see, the position I’ve just started, Head of Middle School at Caloundra Christian College, is the position I held nine years ago. I absolutely loved it; of all my teaching jobs over the years, it was my absolute favourite. I resigned from it at the end of 2007 because I was heavily pregnant with she-who-is-now-Miss8. Yes, I *could* have just taken maternity leave, and resumed work after a period of time, but I didn’t know how many more children Hubby and I would have (he-who-is-now-Mr7 arrived just 14 months later) and I felt it wouldn’t be fair on either the school or the Middle School students, to have an on-again-off-again Head of School. Not with 11 to 14 year olds. At that time of life, they need stability, not more uncertainty and inconsistency!

So I resigned, had Miss8, and later Mr7, and started my Masters. Ran a business. Taught contracts. Raised kids. Finished my Masters, closed my business. Scored permanent part-time work.

And then I saw the position advertised. *My* position!

Went for it.

Got it.

And am LOVING it!!!

Plus, now that the child-bearing thing is done and dusted for me, this position is what I’m planning on being in for a very, very long time. I’m smiling broadly about that one. Feel free to smile along with me!

And have a great week, dear reader 😀

-KRidwyn

 

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family anecdotes Random thoughts Reading

On New Year’s resolutions…

I posted a few weeks back about one of my 2016 resolutions: to read through the Bible throughout the course of the year.

Well, I did that 😀

 

I must admit, it’s been a few years *cough decades* since I’ve actually kept a New Year’s resolution, so I shan’t be brave and recount my 2017 resolutions here for you now.

I’m just going to share one of my favourite images with you all: fireworks over the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

Every New Year’s Eve, I wake up the kids at 11.50pm and we watch Sydney’s fireworks on TV. We love it. I love the hope that comes with the new year, the thoughts of the journey ahead with all its innumerable possibilities. The world is our oyster, and all that jazz.

Here’s hoping that the resolutions you make are ones you can keep too, dear reader!

And Happy New Year 😀

KRidwyn

CC image courtesy miquitos on Flickr

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#blog12daysxmas Blogging challenges family anecdotes momentous events Writing

Six years on

It’s the beginning of a New Year. An auspicious time to make new resolutions and new commitments; to gently blow the burgeoning flame of new hopes until they become habits… well, that’s the general idea, anyway.

This time of year also reminds me of the time I started blogging.

December 25, 2010.

It was for a blogging challenge started by @FiFYI -#blog12daysxmas – and I’d thought, “Well, why not?!”

And that was that.

Day 1. I’d decided to be literal and write a post a day on the Christmas carol ‘The 12 days of Christmas’.

Day 2. Two turtle doves and questions of ‘devotion’…

Day 3. And I’m stumped as to why we have mundane hens on the list. French ones, at that.

Day 4. My humble thoughts on the differences between blackbirds and crows, and how many blackbirds might comfortably fit into a pie…

Day 5. And I bet you thought that the ‘five gold rings’ meant jewellery, didn’t you!

Day 6. Six geese a-laying. That’s a lot of eggs between now and the end of the song. And a lot of ankle-biting, too!

Day 7. Swimming swans are given by the True Love to the singer… and several hundred years later, the family and I escape floodwaters and arrive home to relish the feeling of dry clothes and mud-free sheets 😀

Day 8. The singer is given eight maids a-milking, and I ruminate on what it is that defines a person.

Day 9. Nine ladies dancing – and a quick tally of what the singer now has at her house. It’s getting crowded in there!

Day 10, and I’m in awe of the sheer organisational ability of this ‘True Love’. Honestly, it’s incredible!

Day 11. In which bagpipes enter the cacophony, and I speculate on what the ‘True Love’ may actually have been devoted to… and

Day 12. The inevitable conclusion to the challenge; and one in which I find my opinions of the carol quite at variance to what I thought I would be thinking!

I always find it fun, going back and re-reading stuff I’d written years before. Remembering what it was like: Hubby and I stranded in our caravan at 1770 with three very young ones, no bread, little milk, and no spare petrol, in the middle of the craziest floods so far this century. Remembering how my opinions of the song changed dramatically, but my desire to blog, and my love for writing, deepened.

Well, that was a look back. Now it’s January 2nd, 2017, and it’s time to look ahead. Here’s hoping that the coming week is a brilliant one, for you and me both, dear reader!

Yours,

KRidwyn

Categories
Christianity family anecdotes places to visit

The importance of air

Hubby took the kids and I camping on Fraser Island last week. Yes, in a tent. Yes, it’s barely just out of winter, and we all know how cold temperatures and I don’t see eye to eye.

But he wanted me to come (and lets’s face it, looking after three excited cherubs is always easier when there are two adults instead of one) and so I did.

screen-shot-2016-10-02-at-6-11-20-pmIt was a better holiday than I had expected it would be. It was warmer, for a start! I was mentally preparing for ‘freezing’ and so to not reach below zero was rather pleasant. Yes, the nights were chilly but only one of them was decidedly uncomfortable. One is manageable.

But the title of this post is ‘the importance of air’ and that’s exactly what we had too much of.

In the tyres, that is.

You see, driving up the western beach on high tide, on the world’s largest sand island, towing a VERY heavy trailer, isn’t easy at the best of times.

And Hubby decided to test how well our Pajero could do it with 30 PSI in the tyres.

Needless to say, the soft sand got the better of us. We bogged. Up to the axles, with the incoming tide lapping at the tyres.

There was LOTS of praying happening, let me tell you!

Within a minute, good Samaritans were there to help. Giving advice, helping lower the air pressure, and even snatch-strapping us out of the soft stuff before the tide could get us any more than it already was.

Praise God for answered prayer!

Moral of the story: don’t try running the beach at anything less than low tide, and if you have to (as we did) for goodness’ sake, LOWER THE TYRE PRESSURE TO 15 PSI!!!