Just Randomly Found and Loved this....

I wonder if we could write something like this for anything we stumble across.



http://www.minimalistmommy.com/Blog/?p=185

The lady who made this didn't write it - another lady in her infertility support group wrote it, but the pictures are of the lady who blogged it, with her son, so it looks like it all worked out :)

2 Fabulous Follow-Ups + A Random Piece of 'Yay' News for Us

The first follow-up is from yesterday's post, 'What is Romance? Really.'.

I talked to James last night about it being our anniversary and what I wrote about yesterday, and he wholly agreed about the candles, but when I asked him what he would like to do, he said "Oh, I already have plans so you don't need to worry about it". LOVE it! :)

The second follow up is from a tragic post, called 'Dear Electricity Company'.

Yesterday I spent a few hours (with my poor babies screaming in the background) on the phone to the electricity company asking if they'd EVER give us the deal or if we should go somewhere else, and then he said he might be able to give us an o.k. deal (not as good as we had been promised), and I asked if we could back-date it to the last bill like it should have been, and he said he couldn't, but maybe someone could, but we had to sign up for a longer term contract than I want to be associated with the company for to even try, so I said I'd call him back. I then called other electricity providers and got quotes, then I called James and told him I thought we should just pay that awful bill and switch companies, but he wanted to call and talk to the current company himself, so I said 'Fine! - but I think we should just switch, I don't want anything else to do with them, EVER!' (I had actually been as 'tough' on the phone call with the electricity company as I've ever been. I actually told him that maybe they should look through their tapes of their phone calls which they record all of, and listen to our 20 calls over the last year, being promised different deals and told different contradicting things. Come to think of it he never really responded..I told him I wanted to talk to someone who could actually help me too, and...hm... I don't know why that didn't happen either...I'm not good at this maybe....)

ANYWAY,

James called back a while later, to tell me he'd signed up with our current company for another year at the discounted rate, and not to pay the bill, because they were adjusting it to the rate which they'd originally promised us, and re-issuing it to us...!!!! I was like 'HOW?!!!!' After a year of phone calls, someone could just magically do it!! It seemed impossible.

James told the guy his wife was determined to switch but he wanted to stay with us, but we only would if they backdated everything and gave us a new deal. Apparently the guy was running to his manager every 2 seconds to check everything and they were officially sorry for all the weird stuff their 'colleagues' had put us through over the year, and all that jazz. James told them 'I don't want to have to call you guys back in the next year that we're signed up to you - I just want to pay our discounted bills, and get my electricity provided'. He assured him there would be no need for communication, whatsoever. The only downside to this phone call is that James didn't get the guys name and extension number. I think I would PAY for it after all the people I've talked to in the last year who had no idea possibly where they were even working. Last week a girl I spoke to assured me that the company had never offered the rate that we'd been promised originally, but yesterday they all knew what I was talking about. But no more about that - it's ALL GOOD!!!!! :)

And our other piece of random 'Yay!' news - not a follow up to an old post, so it gets 'random' status - is that....hm...short story: James got a job across the road he can WALK to (his last official job was a 40 minute $10 toll round trip), that is casual full-time, so he might be able to work on the days he doesn't have uni next semester, etc. And he started today :) Off he walked :) He hasn't been working for a long time because he was on prac, so it's a much-needed blessing. Also a blessing because due to a ... uh .... clerical .. oversight by his otherwise fabulous wife, he may have lost his license... :S So to get a job he can walk to?! Amazing! :)

I LOVE it when you see the sun come out again!! :)

What is Romance? Really.

It’s our anniversary tomorrow! 4 Years of wedded bliss!! In some cultures (like Hollywood), that’s actually quite impressive, but please don't all contact me at once for marriage advice.

So what to do to celebrate?! Every other year we've gone up the coast for a weekend or so for our anniversary, last year with Maggie too, which was fun! This year we decided to go to Adelaide for my Aunty's wedding back in September instead, so what to do tomorow to mark the fact that once again, it'll be the 23rd of November, and we're intact! - And happy!! :)

I have often, in the past for special occasions done a really nice dinner. I decorate the table and put candles out, and we eat in the 'flickering candlelight'. I was contemplating what to cook for our special dinner tomorow night, when I suddenly wondered what was with the candles anyway? They're pretty around the place and I love seeing a bunch of them lit at parties or weddings, but when I light the candles for a 'romantic' dinner at home, it just seems weird. And we sit there discussing our days (because who really participates in weird romantic talk at the dinner table) in the semi dark, and miss seeing half the mess Maggie's made until it's stuck on like glue. After dinner there's lots of extra cleaning up to do, by which time we're exhausted (this sometimes happens after just a little bit of mess too!), and plans for a board game or movie go out the window. AND it's not really fun, at all.

So why do I do it?! I've seen it on movies. I've read about it.... I've just realised, maybe it's not actually our kinda romance. I know, I'm a little slow. Thank goodness I have eternity to figure everything else out!

If you LOVE the beautiful ambiance created by candles and little heart confetti all over the table, and LOVE sitting at the dinner table in said flickering candlelight whispering sweet nothings to each other, that's awesome! - For starters, you totally don't have my dilemma. But if you'd like to do something cool...and cheap...and at home with the kids, and you've just realised candlelight and a fancy dinner doesn't do it for you, what to do?

So I tried to think of what I enjoy the most. It's sad, but it's true. As much as I am the driving force behind 'We should sit up at the table every night and eat dinner together as a family!' - And I really believe in doing that, especially as children get older and it's the main time in a day that you spend together and bond together as a family, and I could go on but it wouldn't be very romantic.. - my dream evening with James would have to be eating food that was not prepared

1) by me,

2) in my kitchen, making extra mess for me to clean up later.

My favourite times are going out to dinner, or getting fish & chips or fasta pasta and eating it on the couch in front of a movie. I don't particularly enjoy putting the house back together, so I would refrain from moving it out of place in the beginning.

And as for anniversary gifts? Well maybe it's because we're on a budget and can't just go out and buy whatever we want most of the time, but something on my 'list of things I need to buy in turn when the budget allows' would be awesome, IF we were to get presents. James mentioned this morning that he needed to get to the shops quickly to get something for *cough* our anniversary *cough* (he can't drive at the moment so he HAD to tell me so he could get a ride lol), and I feel like I've already had the gift, cause I know he was planning on getting me something, so now he can save his money, not get me a lovely piece of anniversary jewellery that would be absolutely beautiful, and make me feel special, but more great if we had money growing on trees on our little back veranda, and know that I am very grateful that he was planning on getting me something. Having grown up in a home where Dad bought Mum home flowers every other day because she loves them so much, and he loves her so much, I DO kind of have a weakness for flowers - it's like the just mean 'love', so a $6 bunch of bright blooms from Woolies really float my boat. I guess all I need to know is that James cared enough to want to put in an effort and I'm done. So I guess I've already been gifted.

I guess I'll have a chat with James and find out if the candlelit dinners are what have been keeping him around for the last 4 years, but since he's the big advocate of couch eating, I have a feeling that he's been enjoying our fabulous romantic dinners as much as me!

So what's YOUR romance? Any ideas for me?!

Spring Detox...

Yesterday I pulled the vacuum cleaner out and started the vacuuming in Ana's room.

As I started vacuuming, I thought about how Ana's dummy and socks keep ending up on the side of the cot - which always seems messy - next to the wall - which was getting a bit dusty in the corner! - and how annoying it is to move it all the time to get to them, past the rocking chair, the seat of which which I noticed has totally cracked down the middle!!!

So I decided to immediately redo the nursery, and make it more 'user friendly' and easier to keep clean.

A couple of hours, plenty of dusting and scrubbing and vacuuming and rearranging and sorting and washing and drying and pressing 'play' on Winnie the Pooh for poor neglected Maggie again, the nursery looked, and 'felt' fabulous. The cot no longer wears its cute valance, or flat sheet, because they were just always a bit messy. The rocking chair is gone :( I loved that rocking chair. I guess I loved the look of it more than anything else, but still. The cot and chest of drawers I switched around, which means the cot's in the middle of the floor, which seemed a little odd looking (although very practical) at first, but now I'm totally in love with it! It's just simpler. It seems bigger, because the space behind the cot is pretty clear. I cleaned off the top shelf, added more books, got rid of the mess, did the skirtings, scrubbed the walls, etc. Washed all the sheets and blankets, redid the change table, etc. I vacuumed the rest of the house and it was so tempting to spring clean everything right then, but our little family wouldn't have had any dinner to eat in their lovely clean environment.

Yesterday also happened to be the first day of a return to the healthy lifestyle I was participating in during the fitness challenge (yes Mum - and most of my childhood!). I had put 1kg back on with a junk food fest and exercise break which consumed the entire month of October, involving my birthday and party and Tammy's birthday and party, and leftovers and cooking from both. So in the evening after I cleaned up from dinner I was back on my treadmill.

This morning I feel great. My children are nice and bathed, their rooms look fabulous (yesterday I also managed to rearrange Maggie's bookcase and wash all of her sheets and everything so it's nice and fresh for now anyway), I feel better health/fitness wise already, and I have big plans for the continuance of this house and body detox! :)

Bless Spring!! :)

Gripped with Excitement

I'm bouncing off the walls with excitement.

I don't know if my reasons would justify this state of being for everyone, but they seem to be working for me. Here are some of them:

• Christmas. In 6 weeks and 5 days. YAY!!!!!!! This is more exciting because I am on top of the Christmas shopping, YAY!!! :) And we are going to NSW to spend Christmas with all James' family down there for the first time, so I get to have pre-Christmas with my family up here, yay!! :) (I'm totally going to pretend it's Christmas Day! And then I get 2 of them! :))
• I also get to visit Beth & Robbie in Sydney for a few days at the end of the trip, YAY!! :)
• And we are going to James' mission reunion in Sydney, yay!! (more for him, but, happy husband happy ... life? And wife... It'll be fun for both of us, anyway :))
• Elders Boliver in Japan are doing GREAT :)
• Maggie and Ana are soooooo cool :) I seem to have been out of the house so much lately, yesterday and today at home with these girls have been so wonderful!
  
• James is finishing a big prac, tomorow, his final exam on Thursday, and 1 more assignment next Wednesday. Then he is OURS again!!! He'll go back to work, but he won't have any school homework until FEBRUARY, YAY!!! :) It feels like Ana hasn't bonded with him at this age as much as Maggie was able to cause he's been so busy, so I'm excited for them to be able to spend more time together especially :)
• Ana's new Bumbo arrived this morning, yay! Maggie has been sitting in it all morning. She loves it. It's a little odd that she's still fitting into it easily at almost 2, and Ana will probably get to fat for it before she does!
• Ana is deliciously chubby - she's just so healthy and beautiful! :) And such a sweetheart, we love her. Cooking up a pot of potatoes to mash and freeze for her today, bring on SOLIDS!!!! :)
• Netball tonight - I love playing.
• Mum and Dad getting there with their house to put it on the market! This one's mixed excitement and 'you can't sell our house!!!!' :p
• We get our two absent sisters back early next year!!! - Beth's coming up from Sydney (with Robbie, and her baby belly), and Tammy will be DONE with EFY!!! After 2 years I never thought it would happen! Pray for not floods in January, yeah?! :)
• JACEY was born on Friday, and she's so sweet and beautiful!! - Yay for gorgeous nieces and nephew! Jessima does SUCH a good job :)
• Bethany finds out whether her little soon-to-be firstborn is a boy or a girl in 3 weeks! YAY!!! :) (think female thoughts! :))
• I'm making roast for dinner tonight - that means I won't have to cook for at least one night after tonight. Bless leftovers!!! :)
• Maggie's talking all day long. SHe's so sweet and fun, we LOVE her!!! :)
• I have been playing with my early Christmas present from James :) It's a Franklin/Covey planner. I have big goals and plans for next year to be a super efficient Mum/Housewife/Person, and this is part of my master plan. James has let me have it now cause the earlier I start the better the lead-in to my year of efficiency. I am LOVING it. I am so pumped! And the binder I got? Totally cute :) You'll hear more about this later.
• Next year James and I have tickets to all the Harvest Rain Shows - I won them, YAY!!! :)
• For my birthday, Tammy gave me tickets to go and see Tim McGraw & Faith Hill in concert with her next year, and Jessima is taking me to the Power of Mums retreat that's coming to Australia in March!! WOW!! 2 HUGE presents, and both happening in March! SO exciting to look forward too!!! :)
• For HER birthday, I'm taking Tammy to go and see 'Annie' in April!! By July I'm going to have been to like 7 or 8 shows/concerts!! So many fun outings!!! :)
• In January, Jessima's parents are going away and we're able to go up and house-sit for them if we'd like to. They live in Caloundra - one of my favourite places in the whole world!!! I hope we can sort it around James' work - it's a happy year that includes a good Caloundra visit!! :)
• I was thinking about houseboats the other day. I love them. I want to go on another houseboat holiday with our extended family, if we can find a fabulous big one. I can't wait! :)
• I just sent off 4 birthday cards - 3 belated :S But at least now I'm up to date! Hopefully we can stay this way!
• I just got the pictures from my fabulous surprise party and Tammy's fabulous Halloween party off her camera, yay!
• I have been to some sales recently. I LOVE sales.
• I made a new slow cooker recipe the other day, a chicken and potato curry. It was aMAZing, and gave us days of leftovers!! The best bit? I don't like curry at all!!! I just made it cause James likes it and I've never made it before... But I loved this one!!
• It's our Anniversary in 2 weeks and 1 day. I LOVE James! :) And we've nearly been married 4 years! SUCH old timers :) Every other year we've gone away for our Anniversary, but this year we managed to go to Aunty Leah's fabulous wedding in Adelaide instead. Maybe we'll go out to dinner or something. When the tax return came in I bought a few cheap nice meals at restaurants with Spreets, so maybe we'll use one of those :)
• Today I checked the mail, and we got the Bumbo, some little nappy covers I ordered for Ana a week or two ago, an engagement party invite, and a camera cord (I lost mum's :S But found a replacement well priced online thank goodness). End of mail. NO BILLS!!!! :) And nothing awful or unexpected. Lately I'm kind of nervous to check the mail, so that was exciting.
• James helped me run a weekly grocery shop last night. I don't have to run out to the shops anymore this week, yay!
• Maggie and I got up early this morning (definitely her idea!) and made pancakes for James! Yay :)
• Yesterday morning I woke up at 4:30am and realised Ana hadn't fed! So in my haste to make sure she was alive I woke her up and fed her. This morning I didn't feed her till Maggie and I got up just before 6. Awesome :)
• I borrowed some of Mum and Dad's CD's and talk tapes. I LOVE listening to them around the house.
• I am getting a tiny bit more up to date with my housework now that I'm home and focused on being efficient :) BIG yay!! :)
• I am not humongously pregnant!! I don't know how long it will take me to stop being excited about that one..
• Maggie's cold is finally clearing up, and none of the rest of us caught it, YAY!!! :)
• Mums & Bubs Christmas BBQ here Saturday - we have been so much less regular this year with all being pregnant and sick and having second babies, so it's nice to get together, and with our husbands too! Last week at Amy's house the toddlers were playing on Elijah's awesome new outdoor equipment. These ex-bubs are so big and wonderful! And we sat on the back veranda with the second babies :) It was nice. These girls have been such a wonderful and unexpected support base and friendship group since we started meeting. I'm so grateful for them! And Maggie loves them too :)
• I've been completely useless helping my parents with getting their house ready to sell (this isn't one of the things that's exciting.). We go over and I seem to make more mess with the girls than I'm cleaning up, and spend all my time worrying about them making mess and feeding them, etc. But I married James, who has been a MUCH bigger help. I'm so glad I married someone so willing to help and hard working!!! :) And who can' TOTALLY lift a fridge by himself (only single door though, right, Tammy?) lol.
• I am teaching a lesson at church on Sunday. I'm teaching Relief Society. I've never taught adults in my life, so it's kind of scary. But it's EXCITING because I have not taught for a loooong time outside the girls, and being a teacher, I've kind of been craving it. So it'll be fun to prepare a lesson. There'll be visual aids. - I don't think I'll ever let go of some of those primary school teaching bits inside of me.
• I have a treadmill. I know, I've had it for a long time, but I love it. I love using it. I love the results. I love my treadmill!
• Maggie's currently putting Elmo in the Bumbo. I keep walking in on her sitting at her little 4 seater table and chairs talking to the bears who she's placed on the 3 other chairs. I LOVE that she's becoming creative and imaginative and having so much fun playing alone as well as with other children.
• Speaking of which, Maggie and Jordan are AWESOME friends. They LOVE getting together. I don't know about Jordan, but for Maggie, I never see her play the way she plays with him, with anyone else. They just seem to 'work'. Like they read each other's little minds and know exactly what they're both going to do, and then they're off! They run around screaming, jump on and over things, into things, under things, with things, they run into each other, and they giggle the whole time. I love it :)

See wouldn't you TOTALLY be excited too?! So many reasons... :)

I'm off to clean up the traces of pancake evidence, put the roast on, and bounce off the walls a little more. Maggie'll probably participate. She loves to get excited just for the sake of it too. We'll probably have a dancing marathon while we work - we're good like that :)

Just turned around to see she's already started on the folding. What a helpful soul :)

xo

...waiting...

Just doing our thing, waiting to get 'that' phone call to tell us that Jessima's new baby is here!! I can't WAIT to find out whether it's a new little niece or nephew!! Jessima was being induced last night/this morning.

At about 10:30 Jonny called, and I yelled 'WHAT IS IT?!!!' into the phone. He said 'What's what?' and I yelled 'Don't mess with me! - Did you have a boy or a girl?!' and he said 'We didn't have anything yet' so I freaked out and yelled

'Is Jessima OK?!!!!!'

'yes'

'Then WHY are you calling me?!!!!'

'Jessima thought it would be funny'

(sigh)

:)

Nothing much was happening at that point, so they were about to put a drip in. That means that right now, Jessima's probably pretty busy! I hope it's as painless as labour can be!! Jessima had Jordan in 4 hours so I keep waiting for the news to come quickly, I hope this one's not a longer labour! Long labour is...upsetting :p

But we are so excited for the J's and the latest model! :) Sending fast, painless and safe thoughts their way xoxox