Jackie from England, over at Hedgerow Fireside is having a giveaway, with a lovely little book, Food From The Kitchen Garden, with a month by month guide on what the garden is offering with recipes as well. Pop over and check it out!
Anyone who commented on my blog in the last week goes into the draw for my giveaway of my children's book and this teatowel (dishtowel) that I got in Queenstown. It's a souvenir towel with a map of New Zealand and a kiwi (our national bird) on it.
And here is the book,
Just leave a comment today if you want to be entered, and I'll add your name to the rest. I had fun this past week being the featured blogger.
I'll do the draw tonight (NZ time), and let you all know tomorrow.
I'm now 4 days over my due date. I'm getting quite sore - everything is stretched to the max and the baby is at -3. I spoke with my midwife this morning and because of the stress with everything going on with Teddy, we're starting to wonder if I'm going to go into spontaneous labour anyway. I have very weird hormones - I've actually never had a normal labour where everything has worked the way it's supposed to. I was hoping this one was going to be different, especially with the baby engaging before labour, but....
I was ready to go nearly 3 weeks ago when all this drama happened and I think it's holding off labour. The midwife has suggested a herbal tincture for me (without castor oil, thankfully), so I am getting that today.
In the meantime we are biding our time. We feel restless, impatient, can't settle to anything - every day it's getting harder to move around. Meredith wanted me to play dolls with her this morning which I did, but they all ended up in stitches laughing at me trying to get around on the floor. I'm constantly on edge with Teddy too - we just found out it's going to be 3 weeks before we have a follow-up appointment over the EEG - oh the joys of a publically-funded hospital system.
So, I'm going from one thing to the next, not really accomplishing much. I did spend the weekend organizing the children's school curriculum for the year - that was fun! We are doing Sonlight again this year - I love Sonlight! It really appeals to my love of being organized! I photocopied all the maps for their history/geography, read alouds and readers and sorted them into clear files - all colour coordinated. It's great what you can do when time is heavy on your hands! I feel good about getting it all sorted though - and we'll be ready to jump into the school year when things settle down here again.
Here is Hugh's map folder, with the list of books for him for the year.
Here is his shelf - with some of the books he'll be using.
The other little project I've been working on in the evenings is this:
I haven't quite finished them yet, but these dear little shoes are called Bitty Booties and the pattern is free and comes from here. We don't know what we're having, but I can't really see me putting these on a boy! They're quite easy and inexpensive and fun to put together. They don't have to be lined, but I thought I'd try putting some lining in with these.
Today I might try and clean some windows and the bathrooms. My neighbour is coming over tomorrow night to cut my hair (bless her heart), and I'm sure she'd rather do it in a clean bathroom!
We kiwis are lovers of light and we have many, many windows and glass doors in our house, but the downside of that is little fingermarks everywhere. Time to get out the glass cleaner I think - that will make me feel better anyway.
I've also been making yummy bacon, cranberry and creamcheese panini's for lunch - they're sooooo good, but my husband also has orders to bring me salmon sushi as soon as the baby is born - I've been craving it for 10 months!! The other fun news is that our builder's wife is due around the same time as me and is booked into the same hospital - it would be nice to be in there together. I have written about them before - they gave us Poppy the puppy a year ago.
The children (and me too) roared with laughter when we made this today. For a musical Christmas greeting from us, press play above. Don't forget to turn off my player down the bottom of my side bar first though!
I don't think I could perform some of those moves just now in my condition, however I do like the nice thin body I have!
Today was supposed to be my day to get Christmas presents worked on and things done around the house. So much for that!
We woke to find our brand new fridge that was only installed yesterday was not working, and we have lost everything that was in the freezer, including the dairy products in the fridge. We have had ongoing problems with the company we bought our fridge/freezer from a year ago. The first fridge didn't work properly and after a year they finally agreed to replace it for us. The replacement arrived yesterday.
The company are going to reimburse all the food we lost, but I have to send them an itemized list - with prices (not a 5 minute job). So I was going through all the spoiled food this morning writing it all down and put a chicken dinner I had frozen in a casserole dish up on the bench. Somehow, I don't even know how it happened it slipped onto the floor and shattered! Butter chicken and casserole dish chips all over the tiles!
The children have been great and willingly helped me tidy it up. Fortunately the rubbish collector hadn't been today so my son ran down to the gate with the 'remains'.
At lunchtime we all jumped in the car and ran down to town for donuts! That was nice.
I still haven't heard from the company about what they're going to do about our fridge. It's a New Zealand company and I can tell you this.... we won't be buying from them again! There's a local tv programme here called Fair Go in which consumers can write in about problems they've experienced with products or services and Fair Go will investigate it and find a resolution. It's a very popular show here and I'm tempted...... yes, I'm very tempted. I threatened to do it in my last letter of complaint and they jumped on the problem immediately. This company is quite big and well-known here. They've just recently shipped their manufacturing overseas to East Asia somewhere and the quality of their product has deteriorated considerably.
Even just a courtesy phone call this afternoon to let me know what was going on would have helped.
Now, to put the icing on the cake of today I'm losing my voice and have a horrible, nagging cough starting, and I'm feeling a little feverish. I called the midwife and she said there's nothing I can take for my throat or the cough, and that if I start to get coloured phlegm (lovely subject) I need to go to the doctor for antibiotics as chest infections can develop quickly in pregnancy.
I had a little nap this afternoon and am not feeling any better, so I rang a doctor and got in to see one in an hour. He's a nice old-fashioned doctor who used to be an obstetrician in the old days when there weren't midwives. Hopefully he'll be sympathetic, but I hate to go on antibiotics. The last time I had to go on antibiotics was when I was pregnant with Theodore which was 4 years ago.
Oh well, I'm trying to stay positive - at least I don't have to do the grocery shopping today - Robin is doing it on his way home from work which is sooooo nice. :o)
This is the taste of America to me! This and A & W's Root Beer. You may laugh, but this was the very first 'foreign' drink I tasted when I went to America for the first time back in 1991. I was in Hawaii on a hot day, drinking iced tea for the first time with my classmates at the university, and it was this exact same brand.
I have since gone on to try making my own sun tea, (not with much success I might add), and it never quite came up to the taste of this one with the lemon flavour. This is the first time I have seen Lipton's Ice Tea in New Zealand and I'm thrilled! That makes it quite a long time since I last had a glass of this and today is stifling hot, and I have no energy due to a late night last night, hayfever and the baby pushing all my ribs, stomach and lungs up into my throat.
My glass was bliss, but my husband screwed up his nose at it and said it tasted ''artificial', but I'm enjoying every mouthful! See how much I have had to drink in only a few hours. It tastes of Hawaii to me - I know that's sad (aren't pineapples, Kona coffee and frangipani's supposed to remind you of Hawaii), but that's what Lipton's Ice Tea does for me!
Traditionally, New Zealand does not celebrate Halloween, but it is starting to creep in a little bit, but up until this point it hasn't effected me or my family at all.
However, this morning I was talking to one of my dear neighbours, and she said that she's organizing a group of the neighbourhood children to go around the homes on Halloween and would our kids want to join. Well, I had to tell her that no, we wouldn't, as we don't celebrate Halloween. That was all I said, but she told me that her husband who is Irish has always had it as part of his culture. I said, "oh, that's interesting - just like the Americans'. But apparently, according to my neighbour, Halloween originated in Ireland. I did not know that - but that's beside the point.
My dilemma and question is that while we don't want to be a part of it, I don't know what to do without offending the neighbours. I don't want to alienate myself from them or come across as self-righteous. We want to live peaceably together with them.
I'm not sure that I like the whole candy-wrapped in Bible verses idea that I read somewhere else once, nor do I want to hand out candy, nor do I particularly want to go out of the house either (although it may come to this). Is there any other option? I thought that you seasoned American Halloween-handlers might have some ideas.
Here's a little secret - well, probably not much of a secret actually, but I love Anne of Green Gables and Lucy Maud Montgomery's writing. And my dream holiday destination is Prince Edward Island, Canada. I prefer the books to the movies, and I have all the unabridged books on audio. I love to escape into that olde-world when the new one gets too wicked. I love LM Montgomery's characterization and I love the innocence of Anne of Green Gables. I'm 36 years old and unsophisticated enough to still love a children's story and naive enough to believe that such a world did once exist, and idealistic enough to believe it still could.
So how absolutely green with envy was I when my husband's younger brother told us he was going on a business trip to Prince Edward Island. And he was arriving on the very day that the centenary celebrations of Anne of Green Gables was beginning (although I had to tell him that). My brother in law Nic, has one daughter who has read the books, but in spite of that I don't think Anne of Green Gables and her island and her house and her shop was high on his priority list of places to visit. I tried not to bombard him with requests. He told me he'd go and take a photo outside the Anne of Green Gables house for me (I actually really wanted him to go into the shop). I sent him an email with all these lovely Anne of Green Gables things he could do - like the barn dance they were holding with dressed-up characters there such as Marilla, Matthew, Mrs. Lynde, Anne and Diana and Gilbert. Or there was the LM Montgomery lecture and display of previously undisclosed journals and scrapbooks (I drooled over this), or the garden party with sack races and home-made candy and buggy rides and of course, the musical Anne of Green Gables at the theatre. But strangely, Nic seemed impervious to all these temptations. Nic is a potato-growing expert and he was going to PEI to talk to the farmers about potatoes. Potatoes! Pffftttt!!!!
This weekend he and his family came over to visit and it's the first time we've seen them since Nic got back from my dream holiday destination, and actually being a nice, kind brother-in-law really, he did more than just take a photo of the Anne of Green Gables house. He got me something that I can enjoy all year round. A 2009 PEI calendar.
Drool, drool, drool, drool!
And some postcards (I collect postcards) of the Anne of Green Gables house.
And a thick book of special things to do, see, maps, places to stay, walks to take, restaurants to visit, shows to see of Anne of Green Gables and Prince Edward Island. I was in bliss-land last night reading through it.
He may be going again and next time I'll ask him to get me the Anne of Green Gables recipe book.
This is just a test, because my homeschool memoir that I just wrote didn't show up on the last 100 postings list on the main page. Not sure why - it has appeared on my page ok. So, lets see if this works.
Here is a picture of him and his fiance, Tessa - on the night they got engaged. My brother lives in the north island, but he chose this romantic city of Christchurch to propose to Tessa. I had not met Tessa before this night as she had been living in Australia working as a nurse, although she is a kiwi. As my parents were asleep in England at the moment they got engaged, I was the first one in the family to know about it. Yippee!!! (I'm usually the last)!
My brother Roy, is the last of my siblings to get married (I only have one brother and one sister), and as most of my cousins are married as well, it will probably be the last big family wedding for awhile. My brother is about 5 years younger than me, and I remember the day my mother told my sister and I she was expecting a baby, and I remember the day he was born and Dad taking us into the hospital to see the wee baby boy. I remember playing 'cops and robbers' with him as we screamed around the house with the neighbours on our bikes. He had this really annoying, ear-splitting battery operated toy that had three sirens on it - police, ambulance and fire-engine that fitted on the front of his bike. Lots of cricket games in the yard, and bribes to get someone to come out and throw the ball to him so he could practice his batting skills. He was sports mad, and we his sisters..... well, we weren't! Just the sound of cricket commentation on tv sends me senseless - even to this day!
My mother homeschooled him from the age of 13, and Tessa was the same too, I believe. I had left home by then to go to do my DTS with YWAM, but I know he gave up quite a bit of popularity and prestige at school to be homeschooled, and he was willing. At third form he was already tipped to be head boy in the seventh form year, and he was popular not only with the principal and teachers, but his classmates as well. But he has done really well with being homeschooled, and is now a bank manager of a city bank.
Is it really possible that little boy has grown up enough to fall in love and get engaged and get married? Do older sisters ever really get reconciled to the idea?
The big question for me now is what to wear to the wedding. It's in November and I am going to be about 7 months pregnant and probably quite huge out the front. I have one black dress that might stretch over my belly, but I really didn't want to wear black to my brother's wedding.
And please don't notice the messy kitchen behind them in the photo!
If you are an animal lover, and full of pregnancy hormones like me... then this short clip will make you cry.
It's an incredible, apparently true, tale of two men in London in 1969 who bought a lion cub from Harrods and raised it until it got too big to keep, so they relocated 'Christian the lion' to an African wild-life park.
After a year they travelled to Africa to be reunited with Christian, though they were warned that the lion may not recognize them.
I watched this on a current events programme last night on tv and thought some of you ladies here might be interested in it. It's an old natural remedy book that a lady in England apparently swore by her entire life. I think it dates back to the late 1800's. Her great niece found it in an attic I think while cleaning out and is now offering it for sale as an ebook. I think it costs 8 Pound something to buy. From what I gather it is mostly herbal and has instructions on how to mix and apply the herbs and remedies. Here is the link for the short interview I watched last night which explains what the book is about and has excerpts from the book as well.
We felt the full force of winter this weekend. On Friday night Robin took Hugh and Meredith into town. Hugh had his tennis coaching and Meredith was going to play with her friend Suzy. Hugh's tennis lesson goes for an hour and it finishes at 4.30pm when it's starting to get dark here in wintertime. I think it's an odd time to have a lesson for little boys, but I don't have much say in that.
Ever since we moved out to the country Hugh has not had a problem with his asthma. When we lived in the city he used to get it very bad, especially last year when we were renting an older-type house and Christchurch city is not known for its clean air in winter. We are situated in a valley and sometimes in winter there is no wind or sea breezes and the smoke from fires just hangs over the city for days. Hugh got really bad with his asthma on Saturday and we think it is from having to go into town on Friday evening. Robin said the smoke was almost tangible and he could see it hanging over the city as he drove in. It's a good reminder for us not to take Hugh into tennis when the weather is like this. The poor boy has been bad over the weekend. I called the doctor's office and the nurse told me to give him 2 puffs with one minute spaces in between, three times. She said that is all they'd do if I took him in to the emergency rooms. It does work really well.
On Saturday it snowed most of the day, but it didn't settle on the ground, but it was very nice to sit by the fire with the children and the dogs and watch videos and knit. I ate something for dinner (I think it was the sausage) that didn't agree with me, and I've had a bit of a tummy ache all weekend. Nothing too bad, but I always worry about the baby.
We had some good friends call in yesterday afternoon with sugar buns and coffee and a chat. It was a bit warmer yesterday, but this weekend has been very wintery and bitter, bitter cold outside. I love winter though and I love storms. The children were a little bit scared on Friday night when the wind was howling around the house (think Wuthering Heights). I remember being scared of the wind when I was little too and lying in bed and trying not to think of the big glass window that might shatter all over me (I have always had a very active imagination), so I was sympathetic and told them how I love the wind and the sound it makes. It didn't take them long to fall off to sleep.
It is raining again this morning as I lie in bed hoping the morning sickness is going to improve so I can get up for a shower. I've pulled back the curtains and am watching the rain fall in my orchard and the clouds sweeping across the sky. It's lovely.
In the ten years that we have been married, my husband and I have lived in 8 homes. The longest, so far, that we've stayed in one house is two and a half years. I guess we just like trying out different houses. However, this last house, that we built, is the one we hope to stay in forever. We love it - it suits us, and we have a wonderful, friendly neighbourhood.
We've built two new homes and renovated 3. So we have had lots of tradesmen come into our lives over the last 10 years. And we always seem to make friends with them. Not all of them, of course - there have been one or two that were just plain grumpy - or strange. But most of them have been fantastic. And they're so interesting. I'm quite a shy person, but I love hearing about other people's lives. I guess that is why blogging has taken off - there are lots of other people out there who also like hearing about other people's lives. It's the detail I like too - the silly little moments or facts that make a person what he or she is. My favourite tradesman to date who I am absolutely in love with is Jimmy the painter. He's near on retirement age - a good guess would be 68 - but I love him! He painted our new house with his two sons in the family business. He's a real chatterer, is Jimmy. He advises me on the horse races (not that I would consider gambling at all), he helps me with my vegetable garden - he's a real encyclopaedia when it comes to gardening. He's white haired, whistles and sings while he works and is just a real cheerful person to have around. We love him! We worried all through his heart operation last year, and the updates on his son's wife's cancer treatment, and the trauma of their other son's divorce, and on the days he didn't turn up (all tradesmen have those days), we heard he was at the races - and forgave him.
Then there was Graham - the kitchen man who came to install our trouble-filled kitchen. A middle-aged bachelor. He wouldn't let me even peek at the kitchen or the laundry until it was complete. He said it 'had to be a surprise, so I got the 'wow' factor'. He cycles 5 hours a day - before work - and likes to make healthy smoothies for breakfast on his industrial smoothie machine. I used to like giving him my surplus vegetables to take home for dinner at night. He always appreciated them. And I heard all about his drunken first wife who left him not long after they got married when very young, and he vowed never to marry again.
Then there is our builder, Lance. We love Lance too - he's almost become part of the family. He and his wife gave us our dog, Poppy (the Jack Russel) after our children fell in love with his dog Briar who had puppies. Our littlest son, Teddy likes to pretend to be Lance the builder - and insisted once that his name was now Lance, not Teddy. We've been around to their house a few times, and shared nice little family moments with them. He is scrupulously honest, one of the nicest, cleanest, friendliest builders we've ever had. We're just looking for building projects just so we can have Lance.
And I'll never forget John the builder - who ripped us off a little - but did it in such a nice friendly way, that we still like him! He was fun to have around too when we were renovating. And he sub-contracted some of the work to Lance, so we'd never have met Lance if it wasn't for John. I used to play audio tapes while working in the kitchen, while they were working in there too. He is one of those rare builders who never had the radio blaring. One time I had Wuthering Heights playing. About two hours later when I turned it off, John calls out, "What's the name of that story?" He just about blew over when I said Wuthering Heights. He never knew the classics could be so interesting! And the next day asked if I could put it back on! The funny thing with John is that he is a member of one of NZ's wealthiest, snobbiest families and is in the inner circle of Christchurch's snobbery. (Of all the cities in NZ - Christchurch is the most English and the most snobbiest). But he was such a nice guy - great with the kids, loved our dog - whom he called 'Cricket the killer dog' because for some reason Cricket took a strong dislike to him. I used to love making him and his apprentice really yummy fattening things in the kitchen, because they really LOVED everything and raved about it and begged for more. We heard all about his elderly uncle who treated the entire family to a 5 day cruise on a private yacht around Fiji; and the troubles of his son at the extremely private, extremely exclusive, very expensive, (got cute uniforms though), very English private school in town. And we liked his lovely green Land Rover SUV. And if the winter day happened to be very sunny, he wouldn't turn up because he'd be going skiing up the mountain. (I told you tradesmen were like that)!
There are lots more tradesmen who have come into our lives who I want to write about too, but I'll have to leave it for another time. This is getting way too long already.
The next blog post is my 100th, and I've been planning a give-away in celebration.
I was driving the kids to their French lesson today. It's a 30 minute drive for us, and I don't know how but we got on to the subject of rhymes. I told them that when I was five years old my first teacher was a lady called Mrs. White. She was grumpy as far as I can remember, with black hair. I may be doing her an injustice, because I was a very shy little girl and probaly scared, but the other kids had made up a little verse about her (as kids are generally want to do about their less well-liked teachers), so maybe I wasn't the only one.
I still remember it like it was yesterday - this was over 30 years ago, you understand!! It went like this:
"Mrs. White had a fright
in the middle of the night.
Saw a ghost eating toast
Halfway up the lamp-post."
(Really - pretty creative for 5 year olds, I think)!
Well, then we tried to think of other last names that could rhyme. Some of my family have Brown for their last name, so that's an easy one:
"Mrs. Brown went to town,
in her winter nightgown."
Then Meredith, who is 6, thought about our last name - and we had to start with a 'Mrs.', of course, which is me.
Let's just say that my last name rhymes with fleas, cheese, knees and....... wees.
Mmmmmm.... I love winter! Today was one of those days that don't come along often, and certainly for me at the moment, is a rare treat.
Last night we watched the fog creep in around the fields in our area and sure enough, this morning we were shrouded in mist and a little damp rain falling. When church was over and we came home, had lunch and put Teddy to bed for his afternoon nap, Robin, me and the other two children pulled up our chairs as close as we could to the fire. I had my knitting, and the children wrapped up with quilts and we watched a movie together.
When the movie finished the children went outside for some fresh air while I cleaned up and got ready for dinner. I put on the Ladies in Lavender soundtrack which is the most beautiful music - if you haven't heard it yet, I recommend it. It makes you want to dance - ballet dance that is - it just begs for twirls. It's calming and peaceful and beautiful.
After dinner I read the children chapter 2 of The Secret Island by Enid Blyton. This was one of my favourite stories when I was a child. I started reading it to them last night, and Hugh (8) said halfway through the chapter he realized he had had his mouth open for ages waiting to hear what happened next! He was engrossed in the story. (That was chapter 1)!!
I hope that next Sunday is foggy and rainy too. There's something about a day like this that makes you just want to put away any projects and jobs and just curl up in front of the fire. Yummy!!
Thank you to everyone who said they would be praying .. and continuing to pray for my friend's brother Jonathan. He is still in a coma, but the doctors do not think there is any brain damage and he will not be paralysed if they can keep his spinal injuries stabilised. He has fractured his neck and lower back. Both his arms are broken as well. It seems his face took the full force of the accident. Every bone except for his nose has been smashed. His sister told me his face looks like 'soup'. He underwent a 51/2 hour operation last night to begin to reconstruct the damage.
The doctors said that it is a miracle he survived at all - we are all just so grateful that whatever injuries he has, he has survived. The people who stopped to help at the scene did not know whether to risk putting him into the recovery position, but someone there said they should, and the doctor said that this is what probably saved his life, even though he had a back injury.
Thank you so much for praying for him. His family are strong believers in Christ and I know they will be so grateful and blessed when I tell them that you all prayed and continue to pray. His mother teaches our children in Sunday School and his father does occasional preaching and ministerial visits. I have known this family since I was little - I even remember when Jonathan was born.
This accident happened this morning to my best friend's younger brother. Please pray for him. His name is Jonathan. He is in a coma and the next 48 hours are critical. He is a lovely young man from a strong christian family.
Welcome to my blog. I'm glad you dropped in. I'm a wife and mum to 4 children. We are blessed to live in the beautiful South Sea islands of New Zealand, and I love to write about our life and the things we do on our homestead of 10 acres, our adventures with animals and homeschooling, and the little things that touch my life and those around me. I hope you'll enjoy visiting.
It's great what you can do when time is heavy on your hands! I feel good about getting it all sorted though - and we'll be ready to jump into the school year when things settle down here again. 
