leaving things to fester...

This yucky mould is on the back of a photo frame containing some of my beautiful wedding photos.

It was also inside the frame and on the photos, there were 3 like this and they all went in the bin. Thankfully we have our wedding photos on a disc and they are easily replaced. So how did this happen?

Can you see the small gap in the background of this photo between the wardrobe and the wall, that's where the frames were. When we had more kids and therefore had more pics to put on the hooks on the walls some of the wedding ones got taken down and this seemed like a good spot to put them at the time. But if you have a look at the back of the chest of drawers in this photo you will see warped and discoloured chipboard, because it was damp. The bottom part that is damaged is the part that was against the wall underneath our bedroom window, the same wall the photo frames were leaning against.

I spent a couple of hours on the weekend scrubbing mould off walls (I don't have pics of the walls, hubby took some on his phone but they're not on the computer) and throwing things out, and we have to now move our clothes out of these drawers and get rid of them too, they were driving me nuts anyway because the drawers keep getting stuck and not moving, now I know why! So why am I telling you all this?

I noticed a few weeks ago that our room smelt damp, but I was busy and didn't check where it was coming from. It wasn't until I moved something and saw mould taking over the place that I realised the extent of the problem and by then the damage was done. I'm not sure of the cause, we had a few rainy weeks so maybe damp is gathering under the house, the owner is getting someone around to check things out. But whatever the cause, it most certainly would not have been that bad if I had dealt with it sooner and that got me thinking.

There has been some yucky mould festering in my heart too. When I dropped Jaden at his first scouts meeting last week I walked in and the first person I saw was another parent and I recognised her. She works at the real estate we used to rent though and she is the one who said blatant lies about me when we moved out of our previous house. My blood boiled as soon as I saw her and I sent Brett a text message saying that she was there and I didn't use a very nice word to describe her. I then saw her this weekend when I dropped Jaden off at his camp, and again when I picked him up (he had a great time on the camp by the way, yay!). Each time I could feel myself getting agitated. She smiled at me and I just looked away, I couldn't smile at this woman. Yep i'm representing Jesus beautifully right now aren't I??? oh dear :-(

The incident that involved this woman happened more than 2 years ago, the truth came out and I was shown to be right, so why am I still so angry? She probably doesn't even recognise or remember me, I was just another renter to her, but her mere presence stirs me all up inside. It appears I have let some damp and mould fester in my heart, time to do some more scrubbing, this is not the kind of person I want to be, I want to show Jesus love to people, I want to be able to return a smile to someone whether they have ever made me cranky or not, I don't wany yucky mould destroying anything else anytime soon in my home or in my heart!!!

And so it begins...our week!

This past week we started back with school work after 4 weeks off. We never intended to have that long a break, but life happened. Between funerals, crying, dealing with life, I just couldn't deal with school and so we waited until I was ready, until I had leaned in enough to God and His strength to be able to do it, and so this week I was ready to start our first full term of home schooling. And what did we learn this week?

Well in art we learnt about the history of paper and Jaden made a paper mache bowl.

in Bible lessons we learnt about the tower of Babel and that God likes us to listen to Him and put Him first. In maths we practiced times tables and did lessons on adding large numbers. In history we finished off reading though 'Mr Hornbeam's Treasure Hunt' and talked about life on the gold fields. There was also spelling, reading, science revision on the Earth's crust... plenty to keep us busy!

But guess what we learnt this week that was far more important than all of that?
In devotions one morning we talked about the power of prayer and Jaden prayed 'for nanny to feel happy again' and my heart was warmed.

One day our history lesson ran longer than I planned and so I decided to skip the Bible lesson that day and do it the next day and Jaden said 'but shouldn't we have done the Bible lesson first then beacuse isn't that the most important thing' and I was challenged.

I got cranky a few times when kids were grumpy and things weren't going to plan, and I had to apologise to my kids for my attitude and pray for God's help, I was humbled and my kids saw me relying on God in my daily life.

I adopted an attitude of seeing my family as my ministry and doing the best job I could and it helped me get up and do things that I didn't feel like even when I was tired. The rabbit cage got cleaned, the house got cleaned, the fairy garden got weeded, and the mould that had been growing in my bedroom since all the rain a couple of weeks back got cleaned. If I am doing my best then procrastination is not an option!

This is what our fairy garden looks like when it is not completely overgrown with weeds and when the dead passionfruit vine is not covering the back fence. It just needs some more mulch now and maybe a couple of extra little flowers for spring.

I learnt this week that I can do this... not because I am amazing or superwoman or anything, but because it is what God has asked of me and He has equipped me with all I need, I just need to get over myself and rely on Him. I need to realise I simply cannot do it without Him and it is in that place of reliance, trust and humility that there is strength!

This week Bethany had her very first haircut, not a big one, just the fringe, but still a milestone!

This week I took Jaden to his swimming lesson and saw how much progress he has made, swimming with his face in the water, that's better than I can do! This week Jaden has also gone on his very first scout camp, I am looking forward to picking him up this afternoon and hearing all about it. My boy is trying new things and that is exciting!!!

This week I played with my kids, cuddled my kids and tried to enjoy spending time with them, even in the midst of the frazzling moments, because they are a gift to me and I love them. It's been a good week :-)

The gifts in grief.

Well I am still alive and kicking even though there have been days I didn't want to get out of bed. There have been some very hard days and some ok days, but grief is like that. The surprising thing I am finding is that through dealing with such emptiness and pain inside I have been able to embrace and enjoy more wholeheartedly the things that bring me joy, like my family, my friends, and even my home. It has given me reason to pause and ponder on what is important, what I am called to do in my life and what legacy I want to leave behind. I have taken stock and been overwhelmed at what a blessing my beautiful little family is, and that too often I see them as a burden. I have also realised that some things need to change in running our home right now, because even before my grandma died I was feeling exhausted and overwhelmed, and a lot of that was due to me attemtping to be superwoman without meaning to.

I remembered something my grandma said to me after I told her that i'd put my study on hold for a while when I found out I was having another baby after Bethany. She said, "you already have a job with your children". At the time I thought it was just something someone from her generation would say, they didn't have many other options really (I remember grandma talking to me about her learning home keeping skills in school cause it was assumed that was the future for the girls). But what she said was pure wisdom. God has been leading me gently on this journey of embracing and loving motherhood over the past couple of years, but something big has shifted in these past weeks. I have watched people at funerals who had regrets about time not spent with family or the way they treated them, and I have gone though my grandma's photos seeing once again that her greatest love and legacy after her passion for Jesus was her family. It challenged me.

I struggled to adjust back to home schooling this year because I was tyring to fit it around 'my' life and the things I wanted to do, but it's not working and I have grasped that in order to sucessfully pull off home based learning, then the simple fact is we need more time at home. So yesterday I sat down and worked out a weekly schedule. One that allows time for all the schoolwork we need to do to get done, one that allows for time to get my housework done (the house has been a big struggle point for me lately), one that allows for social time, but also one that is realistic and to do it I have had to make decisions to cut a couple of things out. And the funny thing is it didn't make me feel like I was going to miss out on anything, it made me feel more peaceful. To be the mum I wanna be I need to be able to stop rushing from thing to thing and actually invest the time I want to into my family and my home.

I also need a lot more one on one time with God and i've been doing that lately too, it's how I have survived, and I need that not just when I'm a grieving mess, but all the time. My passions haven't changed, I still very much care about poverty and desire to make a difference with my life, but from my base as a mum and we will do it as a family. We are even saving up for a family trip to Africa in the future.

So from grieving I have discovered some gifts... the gift of my family and how much I love them, the gift of enjoying and appreciating the simple things in life, and the gift of remembering my purpose and calling. My grandma would be proud :-)

Animals!

Yesterday we went to Taronga Zoo. It was the first time for my girls and although they have seen pictures of lots of animals, there were many that they had never seen in person until yesterday. Bethany was so excited and did amazingly well walking around, especially considering the zoo is on a big hill and is quite a lot of walking! After we put the girls to bed last night I could hear Bethy talking to either herself or Elora about all the animals she saw.

This is Elora a bit puzzled by a giraffe!

Bethy was not impressed at being held, she wanted to get down and go find more animals!!

This is the very excited face of a little girl who just saw her first elephant "oooh".

I wanted to take this home as a pet, hubby assured me we didn't have room LOL.

A Great Wall of China in the rabbit pen in the 'backyard' area, made me actually laugh out loud. (If you're not from Australia you will miss the humour of this, it's from a TV ad here)

Loved these in the 'backyard' garden section on attracting creatures, these were metal but I have put in an order to my clever wood turner hubby for a wooden one. They had some great veggie patches set up which inspired me that we need to get ours going again!

This tiger came right up to the glass, much to both Bethy and hubby's delight as Brett likes tigers.

The kids all loved the sky safari, such a great view of the zoo and the city.

It was such a lovely family day, been way too long since we had one of those. It was drizzling in the morning but by the time we drove an hour to get to the zoo it was just a litle overcast and in the end the sun actually came out, so the weather was actually quite nice and because it had started out looking like rain there were not heaps of people there which was a bonus!

Moments with my precious ones!

Even though the last week has been one of the hardest and most emotional of my life, there have been some lovely moments with my precious family too. On Sunday afternoon, before I went to see grandma (I knew it was gonna be a hard afternoon!) we took the kids to maccas for lunch and then went to a local indoor playland. Bethy went to a similar place for the first time for a party a couple of weeks before and had such a great time. The one we went to is smaller and not as good as the one she had gone to but it was still plenty of fun, especially since Elora had never been to one before and Jaden hadn't been to one in years and had been pestering me about it for a while.

Can you tell my girls had a blast???!!!

Bethy was very excited by this 'cake pop', it's a little cake on a stick and they had night garden characters which was great news for my little night garden fan!!

Jaden had fun too, although getting more natural shots was hard cause he kept looking at me when he saw me with my phone up to take a pic LOL.

Elora wanted to get on the big bouncy castle with her brother and sister, but mean mummy thought it wasn't a good idea. She had a go on the smaller one but wasn't impressed.

Then on Tuesday I took the girls to playgroup. Jaden was visiting his nan on his dad's side for a couple of days so it was just us girls. I wasn't in a terribly social mood but decided a couple of hours out of the house would be good for the girls and would tire them out too so they'd have a long arvo nap for mummy!

They did finger painting and Bethy loved it.

Elora thought it looked fun too and had her very first go at painting. Even with the paintshirt on she had it all over her, so that top is now our playgroup top.

She also enjoyed exploring through tunnels.

My kids have been what has kept me sane this week. I have to admit I have not been the best mummy to them over the past few days. I have been crying so much that poor Bethy kept saying 'mummy sad' which broke my heart and she was waking up at night calling for me which is very unusual as she normally calls for her beloved daddy, so I could tell she was worried about mummy. Then on Friday I started the day ok but ended up on a cleaning frenzy and kept yelling at the kids for being in my way or making more mess. The house ended up the cleanest it's been for ages, but it was not my finest moment at all :-( Friday also happened to be my wedding anniversary, so I decided in the end that I wasn't gonna cook dinner and that we would go out instead. So I called Brett and said to meet us a Hog's Breath after work and we had a lovely family dinner. Then today we went to the zoo and had a really lovely day. I will do a full post on that in the next couple of days. We got some extra centrelink money last week and I had planned to put every cent of it in the savings account but decided that we would spend some on some fun family time together, saving for the future is great, but sometimes we need to enjoy the present as well and I really needed that balance and perspective right now.

I love my precious little family and am wanting to just absorb every beautiful minute with them right now!