Month: August 2011

Part of the Gang

Jos is never to be outdone by his brother or sister.  He loves to join in everything.  So when Elisha was practising his bike riding with no training wheels, and Cayley also rode…

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… he had to ride too, and with his helmet!!!  He loves this digger.  It was a birthday present from Gran and Opa at the beginning of the year.  He even rides it to school some days.  He is very good at sharing most of his toys, but this particular item is his only.

Shooting Hoops

This particular Saturday, (11/6) we had  a free afternoon, and we headed over to the school so Elisha could practise his riding (without training wheels) and Brett could shoot some hoops.
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Brett has been in his basketball team (Go Blackadders!) since he was in Year 12; so quite a while.  There has been quite a bit of a break from actually playing due to silly things like anterior cruciate ligaments and knee surgery and the like.
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But he’s back into it now, and a bit of practise doesn’t ever go astray.
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Beauty

You know that saying, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”

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It’s true.

Or, “Don’t judge a book by it’s cover?”

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Sometimes you can.

In actual fact, I really don’t mind snails all that much. I just don’t love them like Cayley does.

And when you get a whole lot of them together as pets… well, the closer you look at them the worse it gets!

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What’s Wrong In This Picture?

Take a moment to try and figure out what is wrong in this picture…

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I have to confess that these last few posts have been from quite some time ago.  Today’s photo is from the 11th of June!

But I am catching up albeit slowly.

Back to the photo.  Did you work out what was wrong?

How about a more obvious visual for you?

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Ooops!

Although, when I told him, he didn’t want to fix it.

Play and Chat Date

Motherhood is something that I always dreamed of. And the real thing is so much more beyond what I ever hoped for.

It is better, deeper, lovlier and more amazing.

It is also worse.

And in our day and age of so much social media, it can be, I have found, strangely enough very lonely and isolated.

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We see so many images around us in marketing, on the television, movies, the computer, books – everywhere – of what motherhood is like… and a lot of the time these pictures created for us are perfect. When both we and our children are anything but.

We sit at school (insert your place of hanging out with other parents here – playgroup, church, the park etc.) and a lot of the time we wear masks. It is easy to pretend that our lives, family, kids, husband and on and on, meet all the social expectations.

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But it’s not real. I know that because I’m not perfect, and my family is not perfect, and I know that no one is perfect.

So why do we pretend? It’s so lonely. And fake.

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Once a month I get together with a couple of mums and we meet to talk ‘real’ and to be open and honest, and to edify and encourage one another in our most important mission field – our families.

It is so good to do this. No, we don’t sit and complain about our lives – but we share our hardships, and talk it through, looking to God – and each other- for guidance. It’s good to let that mask slip a bit. And it’s a lot less lonely.

And after, we can go away knowing how to pray for each other over the coming months.

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And there’s no pressure – we missed last month, and looks like this month is a no go too… we don’t need another thing to make us feel guilty when we can’t make it. When we can we do, and when we can’t we don’t.

Love you girls!

And the kids have such fun playing (and eating) while we chat.

(Blog post written 15/12/2011)