Sunday Snapshot

It's been a busy week and there's lots from our family to blog but I've got a little post started with that stuff but it's slow going getting blogging time lately so here and now, in a little snapshot, our week was filled with joy and sorrow.

On Monday night Mary C from our church (who I posted about way back here) went to be with her Lord.  She longed for the day she could stand in Heaven, free from her health problems, free from the embarrassment that her memory loss caused her, free from this earth.  Her funeral is tomorrow and her family would value your prayers as they grieve their loss and rejoice that she is now home, healed and with her Lord.

Then on Friday something wonderful happened.  My sweet friend Stuss had a little baby boy!

JMac is a BIG BROTHER!

He's a little bit proud of his little brother... who is also a JMac so I'm not sure what to do about that one...

He's just so sweet and tiny and cute and I can't wait for a cuddle.

I cannot believe it's Sunday night and I haven't managed to visit him yet.  Stuss gets out of hospital as quick as possible (and it sounds like it was a good idea when the other mother in the room was on her phone all night!) and we had a church event on yesterday and today was a busy write off and I WANT TO SEE HIM!

So, praise God with us for little-J's safe arrival. And that I get to visit him really soon.

A quick spot of randomness

Tomorrow is Australia Day.  Lamb and Lamingtons were on special... it was a very happy shopping trip for me.

That is going to sound totally weird if you don't know the lamb and lamington connection to January 26th... which is basically that on Australia Day you chuck lamb on the barbie and scoff down a couple of lamingtons.  And I really like lamb and lamingtons.

Monkey is really not sleeping well lately, I think I may need to cut out milk again, even my good milk that has been okay, now that he doesn't have the medicine to help it might be too much.  I like the odd latte.

Dragon was at kindy again today.  Not a drama at all.  Miss S was about to read a book to another little boy and asked if Dragon would like to join in and he sat up next to her on the couch and I gave him a cuddle and a kiss and left.

Lion starts prep in less than 48 hours.  It's exciting.  It's scary.  This is me I'm talking about here, if Lion is scared at all anymore he's not showing it.  Meanwhile my heart skips a beat anytime I see an ad on TV with kids in school uniforms.

I met a lady today who had panic in her eyes.  She had been sitting with her husband at the hospital but she needed to leave him to go and get some groceries for home and in her hurry hadn't gone to the loo before she started shopping.  She had a trolley full of groceries and needed to use the loo!  She had called her daughter on the off chance that she was shopping in the same centre or was near by because she just couldn't think what to do with her groceries while she relieved herself.  Her daughter suggested she go to the parents room because they have a stall big enough to get a pram into so she could take the trolley in with her.  She was very embarrassed to be in there without a child, and worse still she had to wait.  I chatted with her for a minute and could see the panic rising as we talked... "Why don't you leave your trolley here, take your handbag and see if there's a stall free in the ladies" I suggested... I didn't have to say it twice, she gave me a relieved (hahahaha) look and took off.  When she got back she told me I was the most wonderful thing that has happened to her in her life... now, I doubt it was true, desperation can make your world seem rather skewey... but she was sweet and I hope her husband gets to go home soon.

We bought Lion a school hat today.  He should have one with the school emblem on the front and his sports house colour trim around the edge of the brim.  "You can purchase them from the tuckshop during the student-free days" we were told.  So off we go today, Lion and I, to the school office to find out which house he is in and what colour trim we need to get.  "You can purchase it from the tuckshop once school starts" the office ladies tell me.  WHAT?  I doubt there will be any sun on his first day of school with all these tropical lows and rain depressions hanging around but he should have a hat to start school.  So they can stick their school hat (the uniform is just a navy hat with a full brim and you can purchase a "school hat" if you wish) I went and bought him a nice broad brimmed navy hat.  He loved it and I had to pull the tags off it for the chick to scan them because it was on his head for keeps once I said we were buying it.

The rain has been crazy with ex-Tropical Cyclone Olga and ex-Tropical Cyclone Neville messing with things.  Olga was above us and Neville below us... the rain was right on us.  But then it wasn't.  It was pouring.  Then it was blue sky.  It was raining so hard I couldn't see through the windscreen for a bit each time the wipers passed.  Then it was spitting just enough to be annoying.  AAAARRRRGGGGGGHHHHHH!

I am a realist.  This summer anyway.  I spent nearly $20 on an underbrella (Lion's word) last summer that was compact when folded and big enough to fit me and two kids under, it died the second time I used it.  This summer... I spent $5 at the junk shop on a sweet purple kids underbrella just for Monkey and I to use.  If my underbrella doesn't make it to the end of the wet season I wont cry.

I needed to buy new raincoaters (Lion's word also) for the kids anyway.  The one (yes, only one) that we had was a hand me down from Cheetah, I don't know how old it was but towards the end of last summer it started getting holes.  That's fine for playing in the yard (when you have to do a time share deal with your brother anyway so one of you is getting soaked at all times) but for actual rain protection it's pretty useless.

Have I mentioned that Lion is starting school and I am not ready for it?

It's 11pm and Monkey is awake and playing.  He does this a bit lately.  He goes to sleep for an hour or so and then he wakes up sometime when I am thinking sleepy thoughts and is uncomfortable and cranky and kicks and plays and complains until he a) burps b) pops c) poops d) all three.  I have no idea how to break this cycle.  I am hoping going back off the milk might help that too.

Yep, my boy is going to school.  I don't think I'll cry, but I will be nervous for him... and for me.  Nervous for him as he meets his new classmates and will he get a teacher that will understand his special little personality.  Nervous for me for the new parenting challenges this will bring... Remembering to pick him up each day... The delightful new words that will come home... Will I have to deal with problems from the "wrong sort of friends"?  I know we'll be fine, heaps of parents have done it before and survived and their kids have turned out to be model citizens.  Heaps of people have totally screwed up their kids too... but I'm not completely convinced that had anything to do with school in a lot of cases.

We did find out his teachers name today, Miss P... and his class, Prep A.  We went looking for which room that was but they didn't have their room names anywhere that I could find and we were told that  from today they would have class lists on the room doors so that if you wanted to familiarise your child with where to go before school starts you could.  I figured it seemed like a good idea and since we were there to buy a hat (yeah, great!) we might as well find out which room he was in.  Well it was like their promise that the tuckshop would be open for us to buy a hat... NOTHING.  We'll just be surprised along with everyone else on Wednesday.

I love to listen to my kids sing.  Two particular times they have brought a smile to me recently.  Yesterday at church Lion was giving it his all singing "Trust and obey, for there's no other way, to be joyful in Jeeeeesus than to trust and obey".  Then today in the car we had the most wonderful rock/opera version of the Hallelujah Chorus.  I love the way they pronounce 'omnipotent' different every time they sing it!

So, yeah, Lion starts Prep on Wednesday...

Sunday Snapshot

You know your week just isn't complete without a Sunday Snapshot from 'Casa McTavish'... So sit back, kick off your shoes and enjoy the excitement that was our week.

This photo was from last week, or the week before or something like that but it's what the boys have started in the little kids playground at church.


They tip the plastic playground on its side and turn it into a rocket ship! They get quite creative using all the bits and pieces available in the playground.




Lion likes to draw pictures of things and ask me what they are (just like most kids do I think) this one had me laughing because after a few guesses (where I was hardly looking at it because I was cleaning space for delivery men to get through) I said "oh, I'm no good at this, just tell me"... "It's a cow dancing, Mummy"...


Well, yes it is Lion, I should have looked a bit closer!

This is what the delivery men were bringing us...

I GOT A NEW FRIDGE!!!! No creeping ice stealing our chocolates and stuff in the fridge, freezer drawers that I can open easily and close without sitting on the floor, bracing my back against the cupboards opposite and forcing them closed with the bottoms of my feet. No more pieces of fridge falling off in my hands. I LOVE IT!

I did drool over the beautiful french doors, the ice and water machines... all too big for the space it had to fit :-(

If I design a kitchen one day I will not allocate a specific size hole for a fridge. We could have had a bigger fridge, with ice and water thing, for cheaper, if we had a bigger space... didn't understand that.

That's it for our snapshot. Feel free to keep your shoes off and stick around just chillin' for a while, we don't kick our friends out here... just turn off the lights and lock the door behind you, I'm going to bed :-)

What did he say?

Dragon made up a little song in church yesterday.

It consisted of one word he heard from the sermon repeated over and over and over.

That word was...

NUDIE.

Well, it wasn't actually in the sermon, he just thought he heard it. What was actually said was "moody". So daddy tried to explain what was said and what it means... obviously Dragon still didn't get it because he then turns to me and says...

"Mummy, you get nudie and then you cry"

Well, it still made sense, but any woman with a post baby body can be excused for that reaction.

Sunday School Picnic '09

What's more exciting than a Sunday School Picnic??? SKIPPING YOUR NAP to go to the Sunday School Picnic!!!!!!!!

There was racing and cream-buns and friends and lollyman and sitting in the shade and pesky Cockatoos... what a day!

We turned up and ate lunch and chilled (parents, not kids, they just ran wild from the start) ate our first helping of cream-buns and then the races started. For the pre-school kids it was a simple running race. With the simple organising of the kids being a shamozzle Aunty Cool and I decided that standing at the opposite end to give the kids something to aim for would probably be best... but we couldn't hear anything from that end so when kids started running towards us we started cheering! Turns out it was a false start...

But look at my boys go! (both in black "security" shirts) So we sent them back for the real race...

They didn't quite sweep the field this time which upset Lion a little and I'm not sure Dragon's concentration held long enough to cross the finish line the second time but they had fun and got a chocolate and a lollipop for their "trouble".

Then some other races... I didn't think it was such a good idea to go in the adults three legged race and I was told "but L went in it" by Wolf... L is also pregnant, 10 weeks behind me... "L is not having her baby in 4 weeks" was my reply.

The father and son (code for parent and child of any description) wheelbarrow race... Wolf and Lion went in that one AND WON!!! They may have bent the rules slightly with Wolf holding Lion by the hips and Lion's hands barely hitting the ground. They ran two races because there were so many people and the winners of the second heat copied the McTavish winning form.

Wolf was then in the tug-of-war for the first round... until they realised that it was incredibly uneven because they were doing guys vs girls and so they kicked half the guys off the rope (he's 4th from the back).

It was coming back to sit down after this that I felt bits of bark hitting me on the head and shoulders... WHAT???? I figured it was one of the kids in the trees but when I got back to my seat and looked up to see who it was I saw this pesky little guy...

Can you see him??? Right in the middle of the picture... it's a Sulphur Crested Cockatoo! It was destroying the branch and throwing bark down on anyone underneath.

All the games and races finished.... BRING ON THE LOLLY MAN!!!!! Dragon needs some serious help with his coordination! He kept grabbing and grabbing but missing any of the gazillion lollies sewn on Uncool's clothes. Even once he stopped running it took three or four grabs to get one! I think he was too frenzied at the thought of Uncool covered in lollies that he couldn't see straight.

Dragon decided it was time for a second helping of cream-bun and went and helped himself! J-mac's grandma had organised them so he thought she was pretty top stuff!

The day almost over, nap time well and truly skipped, dosed up on sugar of many different descriptions the tears were bound to happen... someone told poor Dragon to go away and he was a bit sensitive so the tears were flowing...

Can you tell that Mummy is trying to keep the cream bun and any remnants that may be still attached to Dragon WELL away from her while still offering sympathy and cuddles?

Soon we went to head home and found we had been parked in... I considered leaning on the car breathing heavily and screaming to Wolf that he needed to hurry because I was in labor in the hope it would bring out the owner of one of the three cars responsible but decided that just trying to find the owner of the car with it's windows down would be easiest since they had likely not gone far. They were on the basketball court nearby and came and moved their car and we trundled home with our tired, hyped up boys to pass the time until we could reasonably put them into bed for the night.

Christians Ain't Perfect

Just get 70+ of them together, add in their children and make them live together deprived of sleep for a few days... It's called church camp it proves the point but it's great fun.

We survived our weekend away and will consider camping again. Everyone started to get colds while we were away but upon returning to civilisation and having a shower to wash all that nasty nature off me it turns out mine wasn't a cold, I'm just allergic to nature... another stellar genetic hand-me down from my parents... I did have a bit of a clue when after a few hours there I was all red and blotchy with some random rash and the fact that any other time I have ventured into nature I have had issues. The other 3 however have just get snifflier and snufflier as the days go on.

There was a fire the first night we were there to roast "mammows" which uncharacteristically bored the boys quite quickly so we decided to lose Lion for a bit more excitement to the evening... the kids afraid of the dark but wanders off all by himself... I just don't understand.

The tent was GREAT. We had room to move, play, hide, make a mess. I can recommend the Kookaburra Chalet 500 or whatever it is called... we took to calling it "Chalet McTavish" after realising that it was called a Chalet on the side of the tent.

Dragon goes exploring amongst the river rocks.

The first night was quite warm... until 3am... then it was FREEZING! The second night was just plain FREEZING. A pregnant friend had a camping trip at Easter and found that a slightly under inflated airbed is wonderful for sleeping on (she is actually sleeping on an air bed at home until her baby arrives any day), I didn't believe her but was willing to try it. Ours was under inflated at the start of the night and was so comfy, no wiggling around to get hips in the right spot, no pillows needing to be re-arranged any time I moved, it was just comfy. Problem was as the night wore on it became less and less comfortable as it became more and more under inflated.

The cool kids playing with the cars in the dirt (clockwise from Dragon with his back to the camera... Dragon, S, B, J-Mac, Lion).

The kids spent the three days playing in the dirt with their matchbox cars. Straight from the shower... yep, that's okay, in the dirt. About to eat dinner... yep, that's fine too, in the dirt. The problem was that there was 5 of them who regularly played together in the dirt and we didn't bring along 5 identical matchbox cars... we had about 20 that were all different and 2 matching. There were a whole bunch of few squabbles over who had which van or jeep or dune buggy or whatever, I am pretty sure however that they are all still friends after the weekend. We all swapped children around and watched each others kids. It was kinda tiring when it was your tent they all wanted to be closest to but you knew that your turn would come when it was someone else tent they were closest to and they were watching them all.

Dragon with the coveted "van with the flames"

We were camped backing onto an access to the creek, the camp organiser had put orange safety fencing across the access so that it would be a visual deterrent to the kids and they couldn't accidentally run down the slope into the water but it was still just a deterrent, if they wanted to get to the water it was easy enough. That gave me the heebie jeebies to say the least. Especially when Lion went missing after only being there a few hours and we were up the top of the camp site a long way from the water and he was nowhere to be seen up there. Turned out he had taken his friend to go and see our tent (and leave it hanging open to fill up with mozzies and creepy crawly bugs) but he got a stern talking to about not wandering off and always telling mummy or daddy where he was. He repeated this offence (wandering off) quite a few more times over the camp but we did manage to bring him home in one piece and alive.

Lion searching for skipping stones (for lion that meant anything smaller than his head that he could throw in the water for a great splash).

Further down the camp grounds there was another shallower access to the creek with a bit of bush to walk through and rocks to navigate before the water and that is where the boys went swimming. Dragon never actually made it into the water fully but Lion went in on both Saturday and Sunday. Dragon preferred to pass the time by trying to contract giardia by lapping up the water and spitting it out in a fountain.

"Separate those who lap the water with their tongues like a dog from those from those who kneel down to drink"... it just popped into my head while I watched him do this over and over again... it was a church camp after all.

He thought he was the funniest little thing... you can see it on his face.

He also spent a fair bit of time just looking cute :) I took SO MANY photos of him in all his cuteness.

I couldn't decide which pose was cutest from this little series so I put them all together... solved that problem. I'm not sure what was going through his head but BOY IS HE CUTE.

We did have one little incident down at the creek where the local wildlife took a liking to Lion... Wolf was trying to remove a little bug from him and Lion was freaking out about it... or so Wolf thought... Lion was actually freaking out about a MUCH bigger FREAKIER looking bug that was on him that Wolf hadn't seen yet. Of course I had to take photos of the freaky bug.

He gives me the heebie jeebies just looking at him... I would have freaked too if he had been on my bare skin... or my clothes... or on something I was touching... I used the long lens to take this.

We enjoyed spending time with friends and got to know some folk from church a lot better. The teaching was great and the big kids (Lion's age up) were taken care of with a kids program and the little ones (Dragon and 3 of his mates) were taken care of by a few of us skipping a session each to watch them play with playdough, fight over cars, colour in and read stories. This year the teaching was focused on church planting because our church is looking at a plant in the near future and it was very helpful to be able to bring a lot of the information together and look at scripture as our reference for which way to go.

Probably our favourite photo from camp. He is so cute isn't he???

My gripes (well the ones that I can share publicly, because there are some things you don't want to know about) about the camp... the three families with the youngest kids were left with little other space to camp in other than right next to the creek access... we all arrived on the first morning and most other families had gone up the night before so we took what was left... the kitchen facilities were a LONG way from the camping area (there were dorms up top) so it was butane stove or a long walk only to realise you had forgotten something essential to your meal... thankfully there was a fridge down in the camping area... but it was in the ladies toilets... I spend my days reminding my kids to NOT take food into the toilet and the first thing I did when we got there was go and put our milk and sausages in the toilets which I found kinda gross... the more kids you have the more you need to pack but the less room you have in the car... 3 days clothes at home equals about one load in the washing machine but three days camping equals about 7 loads of washing when we get home of clothes, bedding, towels, EVERYTHING... oh there's other things but the overall feeling is that we had fun.

I'd love to have sleeping bags but we don't camp enough to make them worthwhile (even if they are cheap like they were last week (buy one get one half price) you still have to store them when you're not camping. Quilts don't pack down small enough to fit nicely in the car and are a pain in the butt to wash when we get home (but I had a new quilt and cover to go on our bed when we got home so I didn't mind taking ours camping). Thankfully I put in the boys small/thinner comforters and some polar fleece throws to put on them because that was less than the space one of their quilts would take in the car.

I would have taken more photos on camp if I didn't misplace a child every time I pointed the camera at something other than them. There was so much I wanted to take photos of but it was a bit impractical unfortunately.

The Cuteness

It's no secret that I think my kids are just the cutest around! I thought I would share the cuteness with you a bit more...

The front yard was REALLY overgrown before Wolf got to it last week. To the point where Lion and Dragon were walking from the front yard through to the back and I was keeping an eye on them to make sure they didn't run back to the path of the whipper-snipper and I took my eyes off them for a second and when I looked back Dragon was GONE! My mummy heart did that skip a beat thing and then his little head popped up from the grass. He had tripped over and had completely disappeared! Well with a job like that you need more than your average lawn mower... a chainsaw is more Dragon's style.

There was a beautiful sunset that evening. Not in a position that made it easy to take photos of it though. There was the clothes line, the fence, the trees, the cubby house... you get the idea. I took a few of the brilliant colours reflecting off the clouds though.

We also took some photos of our non-scary garden inhabitants. The boys were playing in the sandpit and started freaking out about a spider... I start thinking bird spider strolling through the sandpit to devour my boys type thing... They came running to get me and took me to see the spider THAT THEY HAD SEEN ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE YARD at least 10 metres away from them that was just a St Andrews Cross Spider. It was a mummy spider with it's fancy schmancy egg sac all trussed up in it's web. The boys were quite intrigued once I explained that it wont hurt them and we can look at it if we want and it's little baby spiders are in that big white bundle and we had a chat about how it stitches patterns in it's web and helps us by eating the bugs off the heliconias etc. We grabbed the camera to take a few photos but it was seeming to get a bit agitated by then so we tried to find other insects to take photos of but they kept running away from all our noise and our garden boots. So any photos we did take were pretty rubbish.

Dragon had me in stitches this morning in church, tears running out of my eyes kind of laughing, IN CHURCH. I know God has nothing against laughter, he has proved to me over and over again that he has a sense of humor, after all he gave me 2 little boys. But laugh-till-you're-in-tears type laughter is hard to hide during a quiet church service. Kids stay in for the service in our church. Early in the service they do a kids talk and then the kids all grab a folder to take back to their seats. Each folder has a pencil, some crayons and some multi-age worksheets with puzzles, colouring-in etc. Dragon grabbed his folder and brought it back, after a bit he opened it up... The absolute shock on his face when there were no papers in his folder, just crayons! I had a giggle and told him to duck to the front and grab another folder... he started to leave but I said he needed to take this folder back with him... off he goes and grabs a new folder returning to excitedly open it and find... ALL it has is paper, nothing to write with! His little face couldn't decide if he should cry or laugh about it, ahh, perhaps it was a "be there" thing because it's not sounding so funny now... He then gave me an accusing look to let me know that he knew best and he should have kept the other folder here! I told him to just share Lion's crayons.

Lion wanted to wear his dress shoes to church this morning and that was fine but I told him he had to be careful of other peoples toes because those shoes hurt if you stand on anyones toes. He said he would be careful no to stand on his friends toes. I let him know that he needed to watch out for grown up toes too because ladies wear sandals to church and their toes stick out and get stood on too! He assured me he would be careful (yes, these shoes are THAT dangerous, I almost lost a toe nail). Half way through church he gets right up close to me and points to the lady sitting next to us "hey mum, THAT GIRL ISN'T WEARING SANDALS!!!" oh the scandal! I then had to explain that not ALL ladies wore sandals to church.

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Please pray also for Mary C. She is one of the older ladies of our congregation and she has had a long list of things preventing her from attending church recently as her dementia and other medical problems have been having good days and bad days but the last few weeks she has been able to come along! It's been great to see her there and although she doesn't act so spritely anymore she has been doing better. This morning she had to be taken to hospital in an ambulance when she had some troubles towards the end of the service. Thankfully we seem to have medical type people all through the church and she was well cared for until the ambo's arrived. She is a grandma type figure to a bunch of the "kids" my age since her grandchildren didn't attend our church she loved to "grandma" all of us when we were growing up. Please pray for her today!