The Party That Never Quits

1. Beth suddenly ended up in hospital with a potentially serious condition nearly two weeks ago, and we were there for 4 days.  I am so thankful for antibiotics... even if after 4 days her poor vein gave up the ghost and collapsed at the last minute.

2. My iPhone took a dip in the toilet. I had it in my back pocket and completely forgot about it. Hence, I was phoneless while in the hospital. I nearly lost my mind through boredom.  And missed out on sending through some awesome tweets.

3. On the upside, I finally got Ann's book finished. I loved it. Will need to go through it again, once I get it back from the ladies I've loaned it out to already.

4. Turns out, I now need to use my glasses to read as well... could not figure out why recently I could never focus on a book properly. Apparently, even the slightest bit of out of focus-ness (my own word, isn't it special?) makes it difficult to concentrate on the text.

5. Adam and I are dieting again... although the hospital thing and Easter kind of interrupted.

6. I was all set to exersise for the first time in forever the other day.  The house was clean, the kids were in front of a movie... and the dang thing wouldn't work. Pretty sure that a chord has been pulled loose during the move. Yeah... the one 4 months ago. Ahem.

7. Adam has so far gotten both his assignments in on time. Just. Nothing like urgency to help time management.

8. I have started planning and shopping for Amy's 5th birthday party which isn't too far away.  Even Adam's getting excited about this one.  Nothing quite like throwing a tea party :)

9. My lap top is all but expired. One of the kids half pulled the plug out of the wall, and I think it fried itself trying to stay connected.  It's a definite now that we'll be getting a new one at tax time, and paying some smart person to transfer all our stuff over.

10. Since we are grown ups and all, with responsibilities and a little bit of debt left, we've had to concede that our America trip won't be happening this year. Saaaaaad.  With the things that have happened early on in this year that required immediate monetary attention, we have not been able to keep up with our planned payment/saving budget.  Boo hiss.  Perhaps the same time next year, though.

Happy New Year, every one! I hope you all had a lovely Christmas, and awake to a bright sparkly twenty-eleven.

Adam and I (and the kids... apparently it's frowned upon to move and leave them behind) have moved, and we are now in a bigger place with more room than we know what to do with, and it's been great.  The kids are still feeling it out, but that's to be expected. There are new boundaries out here, and a whole new way of interacting that they will need to sort out between themselves.

Adam and I are hopeful this year will be much less stress free... not only at home, but within our ministry as well. The year ended pretty badly, with us losing our bassist and our pianist/our day off leader, so we are left pretty well by ourselves again. But, January usually brings an influx of people to the Territory, usually with Army postings and people beginning new jobs, so we are praying (fervently) for an influx of musicians and leaders. 

Personally, I made the resolution to *gulp* give up coke.

Most people laughed.

It's a running joke that I'm a coke addict, and it's uh... true. But the thought came to me quite easily, so I thought... why not? Way to being healthy and all that, right? It's not exactly something that requires chronicling, but every now and then I'll probably let you know how I'm going.

I'm also hoping to read the remaining 75 books on that list over there. We do have some of them as e-books... but I don't know about you... but I much prefer proper books. The feel, the smell... Looks like I'll be hitting the used book stores. I prefer old books anyways, so that's no big arm twist.

Here, I'm going to be participating in a few fun bloggy things... such as...


I've finally settled on a my word for the year, and I'll talk about that tomorrow. I'll  probably give an update on Sundays as to how I'm going with it. For some, it may seem a strange word, but I've been using the opposite of it for so long... mainly because I'm lazy. This word will cause me to be more pro-active in many areas of my life, and in a way, it will also incorporate a number of the other words I was debating on using.




I began this sort of kind of not really twice last year, but I fully intend on doing it properly every Thursday this year. I have the space now, and with my "one word" I kind of also don't have an excuse not to.


I've done something similar to this in the past, which you can read here. This.. this I need to do for my life. To slow down, to find the beautiful in the mundane. The miracles in the ordinary.

So. What are your plans/hopes/dreams for this brand new year? I'd love to hear them.

Thank you all for your lovely comments! I had a lovely time making them :)

The next two weeks are term break for us here. I'm going to attempt to get them to help me pack up the house, but I also prefer to remain sane.

I've been looking at the posts in my drafts folder, and was wondering if perhaps a "Draft Dump" week long bloggy festival might be in order... would you be interested?

Started dieting and working out again this week. It needed to happen.

I've started planning Eli's birthday party. It's going to be so much fun... Jungle theme with a bunch of little kids running around in fancy dress.

My pastor has been preaching on Servants v Stewards. It's a great series. I have thoughts.

The Hubsand and I were blessed with two nights free of the kids over the weekend. Friday afternoon until Sunday at church. It. Was. BLISS. We went to friends place for dinner and board games o Friday night, on Saturday we slept in until 11:30, went to lunch, window shopped some new furniture, went and had a barbie and watched my footy team win their semi (GRAND FINAL BABY!!) at my brothers and ended up staying over the night. It was so nice to just decide that at the last minute :) Can't remember the last time we've done that.

I feel renewed. Which is just as well, becasue it's only 8:30 on day one of holidays, and I'm ready to gaffer tape them all to their walls.

I absolutely LOVE it when people have no idea what they are giving away.

I love it even more when people have no idea what they are selling.

Yes, I'm an opportunist.

I did a quick circuit of a local op-shop on Wednesday while I was there dropping off some stuff, and there, lying out in the open on a table, was a rag doll.

A Kate Finn rag-doll.

In fact, one very similar to this Kate Finn Rag doll.

Please note the price.

I love these dolls. So beautifully and well made. We purchased a doll for Bethany when she went into hospital to have surgery, and we have another on layby for Amy for Christmas. I'll be ordering one to put aside for Cora when she's older.

I don't think I have ever moved so fast, or litterally snatched something off a table at an op-shop before.

I went to the counter, and heard angels sing.

I had another, good quality dolly (who's dress is easily washed) to give to my girls...

For a dollar.

I have no idea what was up with Blogger yesterday, but every time I tried to fix the spacing it got worse. Hopefully today will be better.

I was wondering... you know how over there on the left under that dapper and debonair photo of The Hubsand are external links to my Xanga from when I wrote out the A Thousand Times thingie I did?

Well, what would you say to me transferring it all over to here, much the same way? Once a month, there'd bee 100 things listed. I'd do it all in one hit, but for some reason, I can't copy/paste here, and it takes a.long.time. to write them all out :)

Just a thought. Would you be interested?

Also, I'm going to start a Aussie-ism Thesaurus type thing up, if I can decide which is the best way to do it. Should I, once a week cover a word, a phrase and a behaviour and put them under a category, or should I just keep adding to a single page in alphabetical order? What do you think?

I pick my camera up in a fortnight (two weeks, for the un-colonial) so I'll be able to take UP TO DATE!! pictures of The Multitude, and even show you a little of where I live. I love where I live. It's prettiful, in a rugged sort of way.

Adam began his new diet/workout It's-Time-To-Get-Skinny regime today. He's attempted this many times in the past, but this time, I truly believe he's serious about it. He's excited. He sat down with my brother, who is a P.T for the Navy and worked out (ha! get it?!) an exercise plan that will not only produce results quickly, but not over do it and cause problems which will set him back. Stress fractures are a high possibility for Adam at the moment if he does too much all at once, so I'm glad Rob is taking that into consideration. The last thing we need is for Adam to lose heart this time.

I've been having fun buying up new t-shirts for Adam to wear once he has lost his weight. He likes the cartoon ones, so it's been so fun trying to find ones that suit his personality, and in-joke status for us. So far, I've found Monty Python, Seseme Street, The Muppets, Transformers... all I need is Astro Boy and Smurfs.

Ummm.... this is just a brain dump post, can you tell?

My baby is adorable.

My twoandahalf year old is seriously pushing boundaries.

My oh-so-nearly 4 year old is beautiful... but becoming increasingly shrill in direct response to the twoandahalf year old.

My 7.2 year old is recovering well from surgery, even if it does sound like someone is pinching her nose when she talks.

My 7.1 year old is AT.I.TUDE.

My just-about 10 year old is hormonal and everything that goes along with it.

I need to tidy bedrooms and clean the bathroom.

I'll be more interesting tomorrow.

I got some photos of the kids. That's the good news.

Eli is now walking around the furniture. That's.... ok news.

Amy did a faceplant off the top bunk, split her bottom lip from end to end and all the way through and knocked out her top front left tooth.

That's the BAD news.

Did you know that the human head bleeds profusely when broken?

Also, I've been mad busy trying to squeeze all our possessions into this tiny house without it looking like we live in a thrift store, Adam is studying like a crazed person to get his diplomas (yes, plural) finished in two weeks, so we agreed I'd be a 'single parent' for a fortnight or so, and to top it all off, I went away for the weekend with the ladies from church for a retreat.

Oh! But I finished Adam's next hundred off. The link is to the side. Also, because I don't have the time to post pictures here on Blogger at the moment, here are the ones I posted on Xanga

*sigh* I promise, really, to put more of an effort into here. And thank you all, for your comments so far... and please accept my apologies for being rude and not responding to the last few.