MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE!!!

Can you believe it is December 23 already!!!!

Gee this year has just flown by and with all the craziness of the festive season, I thought I had better get my Christmas wishes done before time escaped me altogether lol.

It is crazy in this house. Excited kids, frazzled parents and animal mayhem, put all this together and you can get some idea of what my house is like right now lol.

I have resigned myself to the fact that although I am still very disorganised this year time is going to pass whether I like it or not so I should just keep plodding and at the end of the day it will all come together somehow.....may be not quite the way I would have liked but I know the kids will have fun anyway!!

My eldest boy turns 16 tomorrow (yes Christmas Eve!) and I can't believe where the time has gone.  He has gone from this cute little bundle.....

to this gorgeous teenager with a heart of gold.

Time goes by too darn fast, it truly does.  In the blink of an eye they are all grown up and beginning to make decisions for their future lives.

So to everyone, from my family to yours, we hope you have a wonderful and safe Christmas and a fantastic new year!!!

Here are some wishes from our hopes for next year (we are hoping to become Greyhound Foster carers to help save and give forever homes to some very special greyhounds.  We will let you all know how that goes.

MERRY CHRISTMAS

Ho Ho Ho...lets find the christmas cheer shall we.......

Well school holidays are here and this year finds me in a very, shall we say, unfestive mood.  I am feeling very tense and stressed and not at all like I normally do this close to christmas.  This year just feel like everything is happening and I don't have time to stop and smell the roses.

3 weeks ago our cat had his tail amputated,,,,,,he is fine but our bank balance took a real hammering.  Yesterday our older dog needed surgery to remove grass seeds from his ear and his paw, once again the bank balance got hammered and very nearly emptied.  On top of all this school holidays have started and my eldest son turns 16 on Christmas Eve and is having a birthday party next Tuesday night.  He isn't having anything flash, just a few friends over for a pizza dinner, followed by a trip to the movies and then a sleepover back here, but sadly all the expenses add up.

We are also hosting christmas lunch for my brother this year, so it will be 12 here for lunch and then of course since we have a blended family I have my kids for the morning until about 4pm and then we have hubby's kids for the night.  I feel that I will miss out on spending quality time with my guys during the day because we have so much to get ready for lunch and we also need to fit in a visit to my mum who is in a nursing home before lunch.


Does anyone else feel intense pressure to have christmas day just perfect for everyone and you always feel like you haven't achieved that?????

Hump Day Musings........

Can you believe it.......only 2 days left of the school year!!!!!

I am SOOOOOOO NOT ORGANISED this year!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  AAAGGGGGHHHHHHHH

I'm not ready for the kids to be home for 7 weeks straight and I'm certainly no where near organised for Christmas day.

Seriously I have never in my life been so disorganised as this year and it is stressing me out.

I haven't even started wrapping and laybys are still at the shops.  Normally everything is wrapped and stashed away by now and I have all the food for the day and my son's birthday on christmas eve,,,,this year nothing.

I had better pull my finger out and start moving!

More scrapbooking......

 

These were a few of the older photos I have in my albums which I kept from my Mum's collection when she went into a nursing home last year.  I scanned most of her family pictures before dividing them up between my brothers and I.

I had a little trouble scanning these old black and white photos successfully but thank fully the actual printed version which I have printed up for my albums are much clearer than they appear on here.

I love digital scrapbooking but get very little time lately to get to my crafting.  Still, I guess I should be grateful for the little bits I do achieve lol.

 

The end of another school year

Here we are with just under three weeks left of the school term!  Where has this year gone????  I truly thought it was just me getting older but even the kids are commenting at how fast this year has gone by.

With Christmas Pageants done and the christmas tree put up, we are now faced with our traditional hanging of the christmas lights.  I have boxes of lights sitting here waiting for the weather to cool a little for us to hang our outside lights.  It seems like such a lot of hard work each year but to me it is a little piece of happiness that we can give to our community.  We don't have lots of lights but I think our house looks quite pretty each christmas with what we do have.  This year my hubby has just bought a 3 metre tall inflatable santa with lights inside which will take up our driveway (I think this one was a bit of overkill on his part but I guess at least people will be able to find our house lol).

Christmas is a magical time and I won't let anyone destroy that.  I think we all need a little bit of magic in our lives the way the world is now.  Just to see a smile on a person's face is worth all the effort we go to.

As the end of the year draws to a close, I feel sad also that there are kids at school that have been reading to me every week of the school year that I won't see much of any more.  I have volunteered to hear reading for both my primary school boys so have had 50 year 2, 3 and 4 students chatting to me each week.  It has been wonderful getting to know each of them and watching them get more chatty with me as the year has gone by as they have grown more comfortable around me.  Some of them, sadly, it is obvious that they don't get to read at home, so have been their parent figure in a way and they have flourished with just that little bit of attention.  I love getting to know the kids and it is so nice to be able to know exactly who it is my children are talking about at the end of the day.  It is so much nicer than the high school kids coming home and telling me all about such and such at school and this multitude of names spring up and I have no idea of who they are.

I am so grateful to be a stay at home mum and be able to take part in these areas of my children's lives.  I get to attend their school christmas parties and help out on excursions and listen to them read.  I wouldn't change that for anything.

I urge all of you to stay connected with your children as much as you can.  If you can volunteer a little of your time to help at the school, please do it.  It not only makes your children feel loved and special, but it also makes other children, who may not receive much love and attention at home, to feel special too.

More scrapbooking to show off :-)

These are some of my earlier creations......

This one is my hubby's school photo from 1978,,,,,he is the one in the beige jumper second row up on the left hand side.  (He will hate that I have posted this one lol!!)

These two are my eldest boy when he was aged about 20 months,,,,,,,I used to love those little overalls!!!

This one is my stepdaughter's 5th birthday......before I knew her but I love the little hat she is wearing.

These last two show all the kids.  All these were taken just before/after hubby and I got together.  His kids are in the top one and my boys are the bottom one.  Some days its hard to remember when they were so small, they are growing up way to fast!!

Digital Scrapbooking - No Mess No Fuss Scrapbooking

Because my stepson is autistic, I try as hard as I can to limit the amount of things that are left laying around the house.  I desperately wanted to start scrapbooking but knew that it is a hobby that tends to take over quite a bit of money and space if you let it.  I love all the little embellishments that you can buy and I knew that I would be forever buying cute little bits and pieces for my creations.  I also knew that I would like to display my works and not keep them hidden away, but knowing my boy as I do I knew that he would be pulling my pages apart very quickly if he got a chance to.  I didn't want to be forever having to put my works away out of sight every time he came over, so I decided that digital scrapbooking would be the way to go for me.

This way I can create everything and store them on the computer.  I get them printed up just as a 5x7 photo and put them in an album.  This way everyone can still see my creations but at least there is nothing for him to pick off the pictures and if he does destroy them, I can at least just get another one printed off.  It seemed the perfect solution for my life at least.  I do miss out on the cutting and gluing and general creativeness but I think you will agree that you can achieve decent results digitally :-)

COCONUT CAKE......YUMMO!!

This cake is so easy and it is just so moist it will disappear very fast!!  I love nice simple recipes and this one really fits the bill!!!

COCONUT CAKE

Ingredients

1C Self Raising Flour
1C Dessicated Coconut
1C Sugar
1/2 C Milk
2 eggs
3T butter or margarine, melted
1t Vanilla Essence

Mix together the Flour, Coconut and Sugar.
Beat the eggs and Vanilla Essence into the Milk then add to the dry ingredients and mix.
Add the melted butter and beat well.
Pour into a greased and lined cake tin and bake in a moderate oven for approx 30-35 minutes until golden and cooked in the centre.
Ice with plain icing and top with sprinkles of coconut.

I'm sure it won't last long but gee it is so good while it lasts!!!!

Drowning in "STUFF"....the disease of the present time

I live in Australia, the so called "Lucky Country".  Yes, we are lucky in so many ways compared to many countries in the world, yet so many of us struggle with our day to day lives, just etching out a living along the path of life, forgetting to take a step back and appreciate the little things in life.

I'm guilty of this too.  Some days I feel like I forget to breathe, forget that there is a whole world out there full of beauty and simple pleasures.

My Hubby is going through a rough patch with work right now.  Trying to deal with a boss who likes to play God and is a constant lyer.  My hubby has been lied to so many times from this Bossman it is just ridiculous.  Unless you get something in writing from the guy you honestly don't have a leg to stand on as he will change his mind in the space of 10 minutes or even less and then say that he never said whatever it is that he did in fact say.  He is cunning and manipulative, the sort of person that I cannot stand.  The sort of person who just uses everyone to better himself and then lays the blame on everyone else when things don't go right, even though it was he himself who stuffed up!!

I have done a lot of thinking over the last couple of days.  Taking a long hard look at our lives, our home and our future.  I know I have talked about my clutter before but it is now that I am feeling it.  As I sit here and look around the room I am in (my kitchen/dine/computer nook) I see way too much clutter.  Sure alot of it can be easily cleaned up but lately it feel like I clean and when I turn around again the clutter has just grown up out of the cupboards to poke its tongue out at me again as if to tease me that I can't get rid of it.

On the weekend we went through the bedrooms of the youngest four kids.  This is something we do every year at this time in the lead up to Christmas.  We tossed alot of broken bits and damaged toys and general rubbish.  Then we also went through their clothes and handed down and boxed up the stuff that is suitable for selling online.  The problem with this is that I already have boxes and boxes of stuff waiting to be sold online.  Now after the weekend cull, I have another 4 boxes and 2 large bags of stuff to list and hopefully sell.  Part of me says that I should just get rid of it to the Op Shop and that way it is just gone.  But then I think that we paid good money for this stuff and I should at least try to recoup some of it especially since it is stuff that has only been lightly used.

That therein lies the problem of this Century.  The problem of so many of us who live in the "Lucky Country".  WE ARE DROWNING IN STUFF!!!  Stuff that doesn't get appreciated or used to its full capacity before being tossed aside.  Why do we keep buying our kids those much longed for toys that they then play with for five minutes and then shove under their beds and don't look at again until you do the big clean out and they say "I don't want that any more".

This year for Christmas I have enforced the "I'm not buying anything for the kids that won't definitely get used".  They will all receive Xbox and/or Wii games as they are items that definitely get used and they also get shared around amongst all the kids.  These things are worth the outlay because they get used by the whole family.  But I will not be buying Bakugan balls, Hannah Montana toys, remote control ants or any of those type of things.  The kids will get their much needed lamps for their rooms, a couple will get a new quilt cover as they have now outgrown their present ones.  They will get clothing and generally things that will be used continually.  They won't miss out, in any way, but they will receive things that they will appreciate the gifts they do get as they will be using them daily.

I will be listing continually until I get to the bottom of our mountain of boxes.  Once our house is really decluttered we will be able to breathe again, and never again will things come into our lives and our home that will not be appreciated by the whole family.

I'm pretty sure if everyone in Australia took a long hard look at their homes, the majority of us would all be in the same boat.  We are a country of consumers, of materialistic people who need to change for our own good and the good of the planet.  Lets all declutter our lives, give the frugal life a go and spend time with our children out in the fresh air planting veggies and fruit and teach them life skills that will enable them to leave home when the time is right, knowing how to be more self sufficient.

Lets all take that first step towards self sustainability.  It doesn't matter where you start as long as you start!!


So where ever you are in the world, lets all purge our lives of clutter and chaos and maybe then we can all begin to breathe easier and smile a little more......IT'S A BEAUTIFUL WORLD OUT THERE YOU KNOW AND WE ALL DESERVE TO ENJOY IT!!!!

Roses in bloom.....my other beautiful blooms

Well over the weekend these little beauties decided to open up their buds and bloom beautifully.  THe photos don't do them justice!

With a gloomy grey sky above me on Saturday morning I thought that to truly enjoy these little beauties I had better bring them inside or else they would be rain and wind damage.....as it turned out we didn't get strong wind or even rain lol, but at least my house smells really nice and I get to enjoy my flowers while doing my daily chores!!

It's the simple things in life......

 I love spring.  It breathes new life into everyone and everything.   Even the worst garden springs forth with beauty even if it is just soursobs showing off their small yellow heads in the morning breeze.

My garden is hardly a masterpiece, I definitely don't have a green thumb but my rose bushes are full of buds.  I went outside this morning to find these two little beauties, just begging to come inside.  The bush next to this one is an orange-yellow colour with a red rim and I can't wait to see it show off it's beauty too.

But for now on this warm spring morning, please enjoy a little bit of my garden with me.....

WHEATGERM MUFFINS..........YUMMY!!!

My Mr8 and I were bored yesterday afternoon so I decided we would whip up a batch of muffins.  I didn't feel like cooking but Mr8 was eager so I dragged out one of my trusty old recipes that I haven't made in a few years and whipped them up.  The result.....Mr8 was happy as it was a nice simple recipe that he could do mostly himself and all the family enjoyed them even the ones that don't like sultanas since I only had a handful of sultanas left to add lol.

These muffins come in at approx 1974 calories for the entire batch.  We got 12 decent sized muffins out of the batch which makes them approx 162 calories each (this was calculated minues the sultanas as I didn't measure the amount I put in lol).

This was the result......

They are really soft and moist in the middle while having a delightful little crust on the outside.  These truly are foolproof.  I used to make them all the time when I worked and took them as part of my lunch every couple of days.  Going by the way they disappeared, it looks like they will become a regular feature on my baking list from now on!!

Here is the recipe:

WHEATGERM MUFFINS

INGREDIENTS

3/4 cup Plain Flour

3 teaspoons Baking Powder

1/3 teaspoon Bicarb Soda

1 1/4 cups Wheatgerm

1/2 cup Raw Sugar

1 egg

3/4 cup Milk

1/4 cup oil

Dried Fruit (whatever you have on hand or like)

METHOD

Simply mix in order given

Bake in moderate oven for approx 15 minutes

ENJOY!!

Garden planting, escaping children and dying cars.......what a week!!!

Well I think the good news is the best to start with in this line of events lol.  I am basically working backwards in the chain of events, but geez after the other two events, garden planting is major good news in this house!!!

This weekend we planted out our veggies in our new little veggie patch, to discover that our "little" veggie patch is a tad too small!!  So we now have pots and pots of seedlings and also we have pumpkins planted in the front garden because they had no where else to go.

In our garden we now have......
Pumpkin
Celery
Broccoli
Zucchini
Silverbeet
Cucumber - 2 varieties
Lettuce
Tomato - 3 varieties
Cherry Tomato
Blueberry
Raspberry
Strawberry

as well as
Feijoa trees
Mulberry tree
Necartine tree
Peacharine tree
Plum tree
Orange tree and
Tangello tree

As this is our first real year at planting a decent amount of "food" plants, I'm not expecting miracles but I do hope for a reasonable amount of produce at least to help with our budget.  A few of these things won't fruit this year but heres hoping we do succeed with the lettuce, tomato and cucumbers at least because we sure do eat alot to those lol.

 

Escaping children......oh boy this one scared the bejeezers out of me I tell you!!!  As regular readers would know my stepson, is autistic.  Well last week we had him and his sister for the first week of school holidays.  Now this child is very bright, although he isn't toilet trained and cannot talk.  He is 10 years old and one of the most cunning kids I have ever met.  He waits until we are distracted even slightly to get into the things he know he isn't allowed to have.

Last Friday morning our alarm went off at 7am and as usual we couldn't be bothered moving as we had had yet another late night and MrAutism had woken us at about 4am.  (He wakes up at ridiciulous hours of the morning and then refuses to go back to sleep and we are up and down continuously because he will get out of bed and get into things in the house).  Anyway we didn't here him moving and thought "yay, finally he is sleeping in past 6am".  We dozed off again and then the alarm went off again ten minutes later and we also heard a crashing noise from the front of the house.  We thought "great, what has he gotten into this time?", Hubby jumped out of bed and headed towards the front of the house.  I lay there and was surprised when I didn't here him telling MrAustism off.  I decided to get up and investigate only to bump into Hubby just outside our bedroom saying "MrAutism has got out of the house and I can't find him".  I raced out the front while Hubby quickly got dressed.  I looked up and down the street but couldn't see him.  Hubby came back out and told me to get the car keys while he walked up the road.

I got the keys and jumped in the car, prepared to go patrolling the local area to see if we could find him.  As I pulled out the driveway Hubby (accompanied by MrAutism) cam walking up the street.  He had gotten 5 doors down (which is just around a slight bend in the road, hence the reason we hadn't spotted him).  Hubby found him standing next to a car which was fitted with a dvd player.  He had also taken my son's "This Is It" dvd which he keeps trying to steal.  Obviously he decided that since we block all chances of him being able to play DVDs in the middle of the night that he would leave and go elsewhere to find a dvd player.  Our house is locked up securely but now we are going to have to hide keys as well.  He managed to get through a deadlocked door and had moved a chair to remove the screen door key from the hook where it sits which is up high on the door frame out of his reach.

I just don't know what to do at this point.  He is back with us on Friday and I already know that I won't be able to sleep because I will just be listening out for him all the time.  Every time he comes we are having to hide or disconnect just about everything in the house to prevent it from being destroyed by him.  It is just getting near impossible to keep both the other children's possessions safe and even more worrying is the fact that even keeping him safe is becoming impossible it seems.  Does our home need to turn into a prison cell even more than it already is just to keep him safe?????  I just don't know right now.

The Dying Car.......last week my Hubby's work car was in for a factory recall.  I took him and dropped him off to pick it up only to have my car (tarago) begin to bubble and overheat as soon as I pulled up.  We cooled it down and drove it to the mechanic as it had done this before a couple of months ago and we had the thermostat changed and the radiator flushed as they said this was the problem.  The mechanic has now found that it is getting water into the cylinder and we will need a new head gasket or possibly the whole motor reconditioned.........coming up to a grand total bill of up to approx $3000!!!!  We don't have the money and I refuse to pull it back out of the mortgage.  The mortgage has been ransacked enough over the last couple of years with other disasters that have occurred.  We dont' know what to do.  This will mean that we can't go anywhere as a family unless we either walk or take the bus etc.  As far as getting the kids to school goes, it looks like we will be walking or bike riding, not ideal when it is a 2.5km one way trip when the weather is about to start heating up.  On a good note I guess I will at least get fit and lose some weight if I am walking 10kms a day lol.  I went and picked it up from the mechanic's today and it ran fine until I got to the other end of my street and it began overheating really fast.  I pulled into my driveway just as it started bubbling and boiling.

Why is it just as we are about to start a new attempt at a budget and savings plan, everything is going to go wrong and the money will be wiped out before it barely has had a chance to accrue????

This post is now way too long, I'm so sorry!!!!

What to do when the Simple Life becomes hard to Accomplish???

Well finally after years,,,,yes thats right YEARS of procrastination and excuses, we are finally making a start on the "lets make this house a home" thing.  When my Ex Husband and I bought this place almost 9 years ago, I hated the walls and the carpet in the loungeroom.  The walls were all a grotty beige colour and the carpet in the lounge was pretty grotty but no amount of carpet cleaning really ever made it look better.  Now finally after my new Hubby and I being married for almost 3 years already we are finally making a start.  We have come to the decision that this house is where we will be staying for probably the next 10 years at least and we want to make it more "us".

Of course in doing this though, our "simple life" ambition of spending less and recycling as much as possible and trying to become more self sufficient has kind of gone AWOL.  We have so many things that we want to do that we just can't find the time to get any of them achieved lol,,,,and as for spending less....geez that goes out the window when we make a list of all the things that need fixing!!!

I plan on decorating on a shoestring and only replacing what is in need of replacement, but even so the price of paint and floor coverings can be pretty horrendous by themselves!!

The following is my To Do List in no particular order (these are the main big things that I want to get done)
Paint the house room by room (this applies to ceilings as well as walls, doors and door frames and skirting boards)
Decorate room by room as we paint
Declutter yet again
Get our boxes and boxes of items for Ebay/Oztion listed and out of the house
Get our gardens (front and back) looking presentable
Get our veggie gardens growing productively (at the moment we are mainly growing in pots)
Paint the outside of the house
Get our outdoor area turned into an entertainment area rather than just a doggie haven
Finish making my stepson's quilt
Finish my knitting (I have about 6 things waiting to be knitted up that are meant to be towards kids xmas gifts)
Get better at crocheting and make a rug (am currently learning)
Paper Scrapbook the 1000 or so photos I got printed out of my hubby and I's trip to NZ back in 2007
Digital scrapbook the 1000s of photos that I have stored on my computer of photos going back to the 1050s and all of my children's photos from birth to now.
Finish collating my recipes into files on my computer
Work through my recipe file, making each individual recipe, starting at the beginning of the file and working my way through.....currently I have approx 800 savoury meals and approx 1000 sweet dishes with a lot more still to add.

Well that is just a quick run down of the most important things I want to get done.........looking at it written down I can see why I feel stressed about it lol.

Does anyone have any ideas on the best way to tackle my to do list?????  I am normally a pretty systematic type of person, but lately I feel constantly overwhelmed by my list, there just aren't enough hours in the day to get to any of the things listed above as well as keep the house in some kind of clean and tidy order and care for the 6 kids and hubby and the pets.  I think I need to clone myself!!!!! AAAGGHHHHHHHHH

PICTURES found in domesticali.typepad.com and The Simple Dollar

Homemade Liquid Hand Soap - So easy and best of all its really cheap

After reading Cluttercut's blog the other day, I found her recipe for Liquid Soap and I decided I just had to give it a try.  You can read about it here and get this brilliant recipe which will definitely help you to save and also supply your family with a nice basic soap that is very gentle to skin and is great when you have family members with sensitive skin.

http://cluttercut.blogspot.com/2010/08/really-really-easy-liquid-soap-recipe.html

I had a little bit of trouble finding the Glycerine but finally tracked it down in a Woolworths supermarket!!  It is only a 200ml bottle but it will last a while considering you only need to use 1T of it per batch.

Here is my first attempt at making the soap.  I produced this full jar plus approx 250ml which is happily sitting on my kitchen bench being used now.

I really like it.  It doesn't leave you with a scent on your hands, so if you like to have that fresh just washed hands smell you may like to add a little essential oil, but I find that it is fine without it.  I have one boy who gets dermatitis and he has found it great to use, it doesn't aggravate him at all and another boy who tends to sneeze at any strong scents so once again it is perfect just as it is for our household.

I have noticed that it has solidified a bit in this glass jar but that will be solved with a quick jab with the stick mixer when it is time to use it.  The bit that is sitting in our soap dispenser is fine, it hasn't solidified at all.  I think if it did, I would just add a little water and give it a shake and it would be back to perfection again lol.

I figure that it will save me quite a bit.  I was only buying the homebrand liquid soap which was costing me approx $1.40 for a 500ml bottle.  Even at that cheap price it would still have cost me approx $4.80 for the same amount I have just made for less than $2.00.  So this to me is a bargain.  It took very little time to make and very little effort on my part.  We are trying to save money wherever we can so this will be a great help, it may not seem like alot but it all adds up.

On the subject of saving money, we were amazed when we counted our spare change that we have been accumulating in our piggy money box.  All year we have been putting our spare change into our pig to save up for a trip to the Royal Adelaide Show.  This always costs a considerable amount when you have 4 children in tow especially when the rides are $10 a pop (we take my boys one year and then Hubby's two children the next year).  This year upon counting our Piggy we were amazed that we had managed to save $457.65.  Add that to the $82.00 worth of empty bottles we took to the recyclers and there is the show paid for and hopefully change at the end to put back in the jar!!

Okay I am off to enjoy the sunshine while we have it,,,,it has been a wild weekend and apparently more bad weather is on the way.

Another weekend bites the dust....

Well here we are, its Monday again.  Today I have my poor little Mr10 home from school sick.  He isn't full on sick but was up last night feeling ill and then vomited just the once.  Today he is keeping down toast and water so I think he is going to be fine.  He has packed himself off to bed now for a little nap.

This weekend wasn't as productive as I had hoped it would be but I did get the toilet ceiling painted,,,,,YAY!!!  Now I know to most people that doesn't sound all that impressive, after all it is only a tiny little room, but for me it is a real achievement.  I have lived in this house for almost 9 years and from the day I moved in I wanted to start painting.  That freshly painted white ceiling spells new beginnings and a brighter future to me.  I am now itching to get started on the walls, but hubby wants to redo the roof first lol.  Our roller wasn't in very good condition so I had to use a paintbrush instead hence the reason hubby wants to redo it lol.  But hey at least it looks a heck of a lot nicer than it did!!

We also got a stack of photographing done of the kids old PS2 games that they want me to sell online for them.  They all saved up and bought themselves their own xbox so I now have a mountain of games that no one wants.  They have just kept their absolute favourites to play on the PS2 in the lounge and the rest I will list on Oztion to make them a little bit of money.

Best I start listing them then!!!

Blogging Pause on the Pathway of Life

Well it has been a while since I posted anything.  Life threw in a curveball and I have been flat out dealing with it.  Now when life should be getting back to normal, yet another curveball gets thrown....when does the crap end?????

The last two months have given me plenty of time to think about this blog.  My Hubby did his back in at work and has spent the last 6 weeks on pain killers, having physio etc and I have been the taxi driver as the drugs he was on made him unable to drive.  He was off work for the initial two weeks, with 4 days spent in hospital pretty much unable to move due to the pain.  He then began to work from home, then I became the chauffeur and took him into work, sat around for an hour or two while he did stuff he couldn't do at home, then took him out to see some of his customers, then bought him home for a rest and to allow him to work from home.  My days were pretty much filled for those 6 hours when the kids were at school.  The house got left sadly in last place as by the time you do all the basic stuff the nitty gritty of the housework never got done.  Today Workcover has said he is back at work under "modified" duties, which is a whole different story in itself and it has left Hubby feeling pretty bad and disappointed with the whole Workcover system which he had never had to use before.  He now swears he will never make a claim under it again either lol.  They have basically twisted everything his doctor said and have issued him with these orders to return to work in a capacity which severely limits his job and breaches everything the doctor/physio have said.  We now have to fight to get the correct things to be done.  On top of this his main boss has blown his gasket and is now saying that Hubby isn't doing his job properly YADA YADA YADA, regardless of the fact that for the last 6 weeks he has barely been able to do his job anyway due to health issues!!  I could just scream right now.  It is all so ridiculous.

So anyway, away from my frustrations, and back to the blog.  In the last 6 weeks I have read quite a few blogs, just haven't had the energy to put pen to paper, or rather fingers to keyboard.  Reading other people's blogs has got me thinking.  I want to totally revamp my life and in doing that revamp this blog.  I have been wanting to be more self sufficient, less wasteful etc for quite a while now.  And while I have made little changes, I feel that I need to do more.  I have been feeling like I am just drowning in life with all the things I want to do.

My hubby and I have decided that we will stay in this house and make it our home.  We have been wanting to move to the country, preferably interstate but we both know that at this point in our lives, with exwives/husbands and kids involved that we just can't do it without upsetting everyone and causing yet more headaches, both for us and the kids.  At the end of the day we love our kids to bits and don't want to force them to make a choice between their parents, that just wouldn't be fair to them.  So for now we will stay put, we will make this house our home.  It will never be quite what we want but we think if we put the effort in it will be at least semi-functional for what we are after.  We want to turn our yard into a large veggie/fruit garden.  I still want a nice outdoor area but I think between the front and the back I can strike a balance between pretty garden and productive garden.  My front yard will homefully become a mix of flowering plants and shrubs interspersed with vegetables and a couple of fruit trees.  The back yard fence line will become home to a couple of grape vines, kiwi fruit, blueberry, raspberry and possibly blackberry.  We already have a tangerine, peacharine and orange tree so they will all be planted and we will also get a couple of apple and possibly pears.

We are finally about to start painting the house.  My aim is to fully complete one room at a time.  So to me that means to get the new curtains that we desperately need room by room and also some of the rooms need new floor coverings so we will do that too.  It is going to take quite a long tiime for us to save up to do these things but we figure if we do it slowly we will get there.  I want a house my children are proud to call home, not the dumping ground that I feel it has turned into over the last year or two.  Not that my house is by any means a total pigsty, I just feel that it is far from being something that I am proud to have people come into.  Any time there is a knock on the door, I quickly scan the house and think "oh geez, do I have to answer the door right now??".  It really is a house of excess, we have decluttered so much and yet we still have so much too.  When two families become one it is only natural that the "stuff" within the walls blows out of proportion.  We have donated so much to charity, we have binned so much too.  We have a tool shed and a huge shelf in the carport and an alcove full of stuff that is to be listed online for sale.  This alone is overwhelming.

Anyway I have gotten off topic yet again,,,this is going to be one long post!!  I'm so sorry for that.  Verbal diahorrea at its best lol.

My point was that I want this blog to become something more.  I want to use it to show off the things we do, my cooking, my house, my craft things.  Do I start a new blog or just convert this one?  I did start a new blog but I need people to look at it lol.  I kinda feel like it just sits in the blogosphere and I'm the only one that goes into it when I want to show a friend my latest scrapbooking lol.  I want to be a successful blogger lol......I know get the violins out....

I will now shut up and actually go and have a think about this blog and work out what to do with it......See ya soon!!!

An uplifting song for the weekend.......

 While reading through various blogs I came across a few references to the "West Girls" and "Homesteading dvds".  I searched YouTube and found this beautiful and uplifting song sung by the beautiful girls from the West Family.  It put a smile on my face and it is such a catchy tune that I have played it over and over.  I thought others might enjoy it too.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQ3CPlD9YD8



Have a lovely weekend everyone!....."cuz there's green beans in the garden and clothes on the line......"

My boy is 10 and now has 3 new little friends

Monday saw one of my boys have his 10th birthday.  I can't believe it has been ten years since I welcomed this little guy into the world.  He has gone from this.....

to this.....

so darn fast!!!!

Here he is pictured with one of his new little friends,,,,Harry the Rat.  He had two rats a few years ago and when they ran over the Rainbow Bridge he didn't want to get any more.  Well a friend of his at school changed all that when he bought his pet rat Casper into school for sharing day.  So one of his presents was a nice new rat cage and three little munchkins to go in  it.  As well as Harry we also have Patches....

and Freddy.......

They are so awesomely cute!!!  Even I am in love with them.  Unfortunately it is a juggling act since we also have two cats that live inside too.  Lol the cats have to spend time in the bathroom while the 3 musketeers have their cuddle and play times.  But it is so worth the inconveniences to see the smile on the kids faces and listen to their giggles as the rats tickle the backs of their necks as they try and find a nice cosy spot.

This would have to be just another of the joys of motherhood I think.  I certainly wouldn't have bought rats as a pet for us, but now we have them, I can't really imagine life without them.

Busy Busy Busy....

I have been just so flat out the last couple of weeks it is ridiculous.

Between parent teacher meetings at school, sick kids, kids birthdays to organise, school projects to help with, presents to organise aggghhhhhhh I feel like I haven't stopped.

We have now moved from gastro bugs to colds.....great!  Mr8 tends to get quite chesty with colds and ends up throwing up, so for the last two nights he has been sick.  Thankfully only the once each night but man oh man I am just over it all I tell ya lol.

I have also been busy searching out a rat cage for Mr9's birthday in two weeks time.  We had rats back when he was 5 and I thought that he was over the rat thing but one of his mates at school bought his pet rat in for sharing day and the obsession resurfaced.  So for his birthday he is getting a nice new rat cage and two little boy rats.  We took him down to the breeder to meet them last week and they are just sooooo cute!!  I have even decided we will get three (Mr9 doesn't know this bit yet).  I fell in love with a little black and white one and I figured that Mr9 and Mr8 will both want to hold one and then when my stepdaughter is over she will argue that she doesn't have one and all hell will more than likely break loose.  So number 3 will be coming to live with us and then the only thing they can argue about is which one they are holding lol.

Here are our previous little rats,,,Stripes and Peanut

On Monday I spent the day making some little ratty tunnels, and hammocks and pouches.  They turned out pretty good for someone that just made it up as she went along lol.....will see how long they stay in one piece!!!

It is so cold here right now, sitting on about 12 degrees.  This house doesn't retain heat very well at all and we only have a gas heater in the lounge so the rest of the house doesn't really get any warmth.  Needless to say it is rather chilly!!!  I can see lots of coffee on the horizon for today lol, coffee and nice hot soup for lunch I think!!!

I got a few paint samples so that we can start painting in the bathrooms and laundry and I hate them all lol.  Nothing seems to look right.  I have white paint in the bathrooms now, one has blue tiles and the other has grey and it is stupid but none of the colours I have chosen seem to go.  I swear I have never had this much trouble trying to find a nice paint colour before lol.  I have decided I am going to use the paint samples and just mix them in with some white paint just to tone them down.  I think that will do the trick.  I will take some pics once it is done if it turns out reasonable!!!!

Ok off to sweep the floors, they are looking pretty grotty......I won't bother mopping today though since I doubt they will dry for ages!!

Will this crap never end??????????????????????????????????????

I am sooooooooooo over it all right now.

It all began on May 7 when my stepson came over with his sister for their usual access visit every second weekend.  Although this being Mothers Day weekend, it was only going to be for one night then we had to take them back on Saturday at 5pm so that they could spend Mothers Day with their Mum.  So it was for a whole 24 hour block of time, really not worth the two weeks of pure hell that I have endured since!!  I sound mean, I sound angry and yep I guess I am both but right now I just want to yell, scream, cry and kick something, really hard!!

You see, within 3 hours of being in our care, my stepson became ill.  You know the gastro type bug that has the vomiting and diahorrea and yeah well, I don't need to paint pictures, it is just horrid.  Anyway he was pretty sick, we were up and down every hour on the hour all night to him and because he is autistic he tends to react differently than you or I.  He has this charming habit of getting up, throwing up all over the floor and then lying in it,,,,,yep I know too graphic but that is what we were dealing with.  Not only were you cleaning the floor/walls whatever else, you then had to totally strip and shower him.  By the time you got it cleaned it was time to start over just about.  We found out that the step father had had gastro all week.....why did the mother not keep the kids there to stop it spreading you ask?  I have asked the same question many times and come up with nothing other than a few very descriptive words that I won't share here.  Why risk the health of another group of people with this bug when it was only for a 24 hour access period that could have easily been made up during the week or at the following access weekend.


Anyway, I did have a lovely Mothers Day, the one day in the two week block where I have not had to deal with sick people!  Monday Mr8 came down with it really bad, so bad that I ended up at the hospital with him Tuesday night as he became dehydrated as I just couldn't get enough fluids down into him before they came back up again.  He was discharged Wednesday afternoon but was still pretty sick Thursday and Friday as well.

My boys were due to go to their Dad's on Friday and Saturday night but as he was still sick, the other 3 went and Mr8 stayed behind.  Saturday thankfully, he perked right up and so I dropped him off at Dad's at about 4pm.

Hubby and I had been feeling slightly off all week, but it had'nt eventuated to anything.  Well I guess I was silly and allowed myself to relax and WHOOSH Sunday morning I woke to a freight train running through my head (literally it felt).  Mine began differently with a fever and aches and then progressed into a milder stomach bug, still with the vomiting and diahorrea but much less severe.  The boys came back Sunday night only to find that Mr13 had come down with it and he too had it like I did rather than like Mr8 had had it.

So Monday saw Mr13 and I both laid up feeling very ill.  Hubby was running around stocking up on easy meals for me to cook for the rest of the week as he was leaving for a work trip to Melbourne Tuesday morning and wouldn't be back till Friday night (lovely timing!).

Tuesday morning came and I felt like death warmed up.  Yes the vomiting had slowed and thanks to gastro stop the diahorrea had settled but I just wanted to curl into a ball and stay there.

Tuesday night Mr10 said he was feeling off.  Dread ran through me, and he had me up several times during the night feeling like he would be sick, but thankfully nothing eventuated.  Of course I thought I had best keep him home from school to be on the safe side, although within an hour I really began to doubt his illness altogether as he seemed very chirpy, definitely not how I felt!!

Wednesday night came and Mr13 and Mr10 both declared that they would be okay to go to school.  Yippee I thought a day where I can actually relax and not have to cater to anyone for that 6 hour school block......no such luck.  I was woken by Mr15 at 1.30am saying he had just been sick.

So here we are Thursday morning and I have Mr15 at home, he seems relatively ok, just a little off, and Mr13 who declared he just didn't have the energy and still felt blah.  Well I couldn't really argue as that is exactly how I am feeling as well.

I am so sick of being sick and being surrounded by sick people.  I want this darn bug out of my house and out of my life.  But I know what will happen.  Mr10 will come down with it for real in the next day or two.  Then hubby will come back tomorrow night and one of two things will happen.  He will either get sick on Saturday once he relaxes into the weekend and then be a "typical sick male" for me for the next week or he will hang out for the weekend (his kids will be back again) and get sick on Monday/Tuesday and I will have him home all next week.

Geez I don't eve know if all this actually makes sense lol, I am so tired and run down.  Why has this bug taken so darn long to pass from one to another????????????????

AAAAAAGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH,,(That is the scream that I am dying to let out right now.  I would really like to act like a spoilt little brat and throw a massive tantrum (you know the full on kicking and screaming toddler type lol) but for the sake of the kids I won't.

Here's to brighter days ahead...........please!

Dehydration Gastro and Severe Sleep Deprivation

What an absolutely horrible 48 hours I have just had.  My poor baby, Mr8 came down with the most horrific gastro type bug on Monday night which saw him and I up every 20 minutes to half hour throughout Monday night.  The poor little kid was so so sick!!  Not to be too graphic, but lets just say it both ends of his body joined the gastro party at the same time, every time.  He couldn't keep anything down.  Luckily he was eager to drink but all day we battled trying to come to some sort of balance between his intake and his body's output.  Tuesday night I called a locum out to see him and he said yes he was dehydrated and if, after giving him a table to help with nausea, it didn't make a difference within the hour, he was to go to hospital.  Sadly, after struggling to swallow the tablet, it revisited less than 2 minutes later.  Needless to say at 10pm on Tuesday night he and I were making our way to hospital.


  We arrived at the hospital where the triage nurse got him a bed to lie on and also gave him an iceblock and a glass of hydralyte.  He hadn't much enjoyed the hydralyte that I had been trying to force down his throat that day but he humoured her and drank a little at least.   He loved the iceblock so that was nice to see at least.  He lay down and had a little sleep as he was pretty tired from the previous night and hadn't had any sleep that day.  Twenty minutes later he sat up to talk to me and power chucked what seemed like a gallon of liquid, unbelievable!!!

Finally, at 11.30pm we were ushered into the Accident & Emergency section.  They took his obs again and said "a doctor will see you shortly"........4am in the morning a doctor finally came to see him.  Thankfully he had fallen asleep at about 12.30, so had at least got some much needed sleep and most of all, he hadn't chucked in over 4 hours.  They decided that he would need to be placed on a drip and this was finally hooked up in his right arm at about 5.30am.  Half an hour later they decided that he should be admitted, but they had no beds available so he would need to be taken by ambulance to the Womens and Childrens Hospital in the city.  This would be done ASAP but they wanted him to have the second bag of his drip first and therefore we should have another canula inserted into the other arm, a larger one, so that it would go faster.  My brave little boy, barely wimpered for the first one, and was pretty much asleep for the second, until the needle hit the skin, when he received a very rude awakening.  In went the second canula and the second drip started.  I was advised to rush my car which was still parked in the carpark back home and get hubby to bring me back so that I could accompany him in the ambulance.  This I did, only to discover I didn't need to rush so much after all, it was 45 after I returned that the ambulance finally arrived.

We got into the Womens and Childrens Hospital by 9am and started the whole process of describing what was wrong with him all over again.  They unplugged the third bag of fluid from his IV declaring that he had had enough, and he would just be given 80mls of hydralite every 20 minutes to drink and he managed to keep it down he could go home........we didn't even need a bed in a ward!!!!!  Why the first hospital couldn't have done the same thing I don't know!!!!  Needless to say my little soldier managed to keep it down and we were discharged at 12.30pm.  The whole thing made me so angry as that was a total waste of an ambulance trip.  Luckily we are covered but thats not the point!!!

I am over emotional, at the moment due sleep deprivation.  After enduring Monday nights constant interruptions with my Baby I got no sleep whatsoever last night as I simply cannot sleep sitting in a chair.  My eyes are hanging out of my head and I cannot wait until bed time tonight.  I have never looked forward to going to bed so much in my life lol!!!!

The best part of all is that my little boy is returning slowly.  The little sparkle is coming back into his eyes and his voice has lost the dull whiny sound, replaced by his bright bubbliness.

Keep your fingers crossed that he continues to improve for me!!!......and that no one else succumbs to that horrible bug!!!

Thinking and Pondering Life instead of blogging....

That's what I have been doing lol.

I have been doing plenty of blog reading, just no writing. Life has just been plodding along and I seem to be racing around at a million miles an hour but not achieving much.......do you know what I mean???

Last week Mr8 had swimming with his school and so I volunteered to help with the walk to the pool and the change room chaos that junior primary school kids create when they have their swimming lessons.....needless to say lol, it was a very long week.

This weekend was our weekend with all the kids and we had planned to go and visit my mum in the nursing home on the Saturday as my stepkids were only with us for the Saturday due to Mother's Day on Sunday. So we thought, well cool, we will go and see my mum with all the kids, she would like that. But that wasn't to be, Mr9 with Autism came down with a vomiting bug on Friday night and we spent all day Saturday cleaning up behind him. He has this horrible habit of when he throws up (which naturally is never in the toilet) to then proceed to lie down right next to it and sadly, often in it.......it was a very challenging day!!! I was so happy to send him back home on Saturday night much to his mother's horror. But I was so mad, when she then pointed the finger at our house for passing the bug on to him when as we found out from my step daughter, they had had a gastro bug in their house that week!! None of my kids have been sick!!! I really don't know how or why she does things like that. The child got picked up at 5.30pm Friday night and was sick at 9pm, seriously, how fast does she think bugs travel??? I was angry because she didn't even mention that her partner had been sick with the same type of bug since Monday!! Does she seriously think that her daughter wouldn't tell us (although having said that I suspect that she had been told not to tell us!). Grrrrr........

Anyway yesterday, Mother's Day was lovely. I got spoilt and although we ran out of time to actually go out and enjoy the Autumn weather like I would have liked to do, it was a lovely day. Due to early morning soccer game (which my Hubby took my son to) I got to stay in bed till 10am reading my new book that my Hubby got me for Mothers Day,,,,,Multiple Bles8ings (the book by Kate Gosselin from Jon and Kate Plus 8). I have been wanting that book for ages and my darling Hubby managed to get me one from America. I am half way through it already and I love it.

Hubby got home from soccer and then made pancakes for brunch. Yummo, he tried out a new recipe which had berries and ricotta cheese in them and they were quite nice!!

We then went up to visit my mum but sadly she was asleep and she is very hard to wake up so I let her sleep and had to promise the boys we would come up again in a couple of weeks.

I went up to see my mum today and I have come away feeling very depressed. She has dementia and I can see her slipping away a little more each week. I really feel (and I don't really know if it is possible but I believe it is) that putting her into the nursing home last year is what has pushed the dementia further along. Early last year she was only just beginning to get forgetful etc but within weeks of putting her into the nursing home, she slipped into a world of imagination. Now it is very hard to hold a conversation with her. I prattle on about what the kids have been doing etc and she does remember us all, but her sense of reality is gone. I asked her if she had seen the plant that we got her for Mother's Day and she had no idea what I was talking about. She kept going on about flowers my brother had sent her that were sitting on the mantel piece (she doesn't have a mantel piece) and she didn't want me to take her to see the plant and card we got her. Every time I leave her I have to get her to stay put, she keeps saying "I'll just get my bag and I'll be ready", I tell her no she has to stay there, morning tea will be coming soon......its just so hard and so so sad. I really don't want to get old, really I don't. I sincerely hope when I am 80 that I will still have all my faculties about me. Mum is almost totally blind and diabetic which doesn't help matters any.

Well this has turned into a depressing post hasn't it lol.

My real reason for posting today was to let everyone know that I will be starting up a new blog. I have decided that this will be my blog about our day to day lives (aka my ranting and raving space lol) and I will start a new blog which will feature my recipes and any craftwork I do (am hoping to get alot of crafting done soon!!!). It may take a while to get going but I hope for it to turn into something that people can go to for ideas and inspiration.

Hubby has started a new job (within the same company) and it will occupy a lot more of his headspace and most likely time, so I need to find something for myself to do so I don't go mad lol. I decided it may well be time to start trying out some different crafts that I never had time for before.

I hope everyone had a lovely day for Mother's Day and got well and truly spoilt by their children!!

4 Minute Cupcakes.........Kid and Adult Approved Recipe!!

Yesterday I decided to make some cupcakes. Rather than reaching for the packet mix that sat lurking in my pantry drawer I decided to try out one of my many recipes that I mentioned yesterday.

This recipe is definitely a "keeper" and will be used from now on in this house when the call for cupcakes arises.

So easy!!

4 MINUTE CUPCAKES

Ingredients:
2 Cups SR Flour
1 Cup Sugar
3/4 Cup Milk
125g Butter
2 eggs
1 tsp Vanilla Essence

Method:
Put all ingredients into mixing bowl and beat on high with electric mixer for 4 minutes.
If too thick add more milk, a tablespoon at a time, beating continuously.
Put into patty pans (lined or greased) and bake in a moderately hot oven for approximately 15 minutes.

Variations:
Replace the vanilla extract with other flavours – lemon, strawberry, coffee, orange, apricot etc
Chocolate cakes – add 3 tablespoons cocoa with the flour

Yesterday I just made vanilla ones but I am going to try strawberry ones next time I make them.

I iced them and they are all just about gone,,,,I have hidden two aside for Hubby and I to have with a coffee later this afternoon otherwise we may well miss out lol.

Busy times - School holidays are upon us again.....

I have been missing in action yet again. This time I have school holidays to blame lol.

Last week it was just my boys and I but this week sees the step kids with us and also extra friends sleeping over.

Sunday night and yesterday I had 8 kids here, today I have 6. Tomorrow I will have 7 and Thursday 7 then back to 6 on Friday and yayyyyyyy, 0 for Saturday and most of Sunday. Lol I am longing for that at the moment!!!! We have to go to my nephews wedding on Saturday so my ex is having my kids and Hubby's guys go back to their mum on Friday night.

Last week was my youngest baby's 8th birthday....where on earth has that time gone??? (Photos to follow.....

I long for little people. I am so proud of the people my kids are turning into but oh how I long for the little baby giggles and the trials and tribulations of having toddlers in the house. I actually miss Barney the purple Dinosaur and the Wiggles and Hi-5 lol. I do still get snippets of them as Mr9 with autism watches dvds over and over the only problem being he constantly rewinds so you never get to see a whole song or segment and he constantly changes the dvds.

Yesterday the kids were all occupied playing various games and I have been laid up with a bad cold so I felt like doing nothing so I spent most of the day at the computer going through all my recipes.

I have had a file sitting on the computer for the last 9 years which I have been adding recipes to when I find ones that sound yummy. I still have my mum's recipe collection to go through and scan the ones that I want from that, but finally I have sorted my recipes that are on here into Savoury and Sweet. From that I discovered I have 709 savoury recipes and 815 sweet recipes, all waiting to be tried out by me!!! I could write books with that amount of recipes lol.

My plan is to start at the top and slowly work my way through. I still haven't decided what to do with the double, triple etc ups that I have accrued along the way. I think I counted 8 different versions of Apricot Chicken and about 9 recipes for Anzac Biscuits lol. I'm not sure whether to try each of them or just find the most frugal one and stick with that, decisions decisions.

If they are successful recipes I will post them on my blog to share. I am pretty slack at taking photos of my creations and in the past I have tried recipes and forgotten to photograph the results so never bother to post them. From now on I will aim to improve. I don't think I will be doing the step by step pictures but I will definitely do the end results!!!

BLOG THIS CHALLENGE 38 - HOW I LEARNED.....Patience, Tolerance and Empathy for Others

This is a photo of my firstborn bub, Joshua, my precious little one who was too sweet for this world......



You see, Josh was born with a condition called "Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome". It is basically where the left side of the heart doesn't form properly. This condition wasn't discovered until he was 4 days old. It was never noticed on any of the 3 ultrasounds that I had when pregnant, twice the sonographers made comment that he had such a nice strong heart beat and looked so healthy....little did they know!

When Josh was born his oxygen levels were low and they put him in an incubator saying that he would come right within the next 24 hours. Well he didn't and on Day 2 they began to look for causes. They couldn't find any reason and just kept saying he would be okay. It wasn't until Day 4 when the head Paediatrician was listening to his heartbeat with his stethoscope that he heard a heart murmur, none of the others had picked it up because Josh used to scream every time they had checked his heart and so it had been missed. This doctor just heard it faintly in between the cries. On this day he got sent to the Children's Hospital for an Echocardiogram, it was there they discovered the terrible truth for his bad oxygen levels.

We were given the news that basically we could take him home to die. At the time the heart operations they do now weren't very successful at all in this country (even now way too many little lives are lost to this condition) and his only hope would have been a heart transplant which they said we had basically no chance of getting. We got told to treasure every moment and let nature take its course.

I wanted to scream and throw things around the room when they told me...how could this happen, had I been that bad during my life to deserve this??

Josh lived for 10 days. Those are 10 days that I will never forget. The first 4 were filled with wonder and hopes and dreams for our little man we had just created, the last 6 were filled with clutching at every moment, every glance he would give us, every little windy smile, knowing that we would never get to see a real smile on his beautiful face.

On day 9 we realised that his breathing had become gaspy and we went back to the hospital, already knowing what they were going to say. He had gone into heart failure and now it was just a matter of time.

He managed to fight on for another 24 hours for us, our brave little fighter. But while we were in the special room at the hospital where we could stay together as a family waiting for the inevitable, he gave us this little look, it made his Dad and I laugh and within the next couple of minutes he began to really gasp and started to turn a strange colour. We hit the emergency button and one of the nurses ran in and just said to me "Hold him, just hold him honey". Our dear sweet little guy passed away in my arms, gone from this world but remaining forever in my heart.

His short life taught me to never take anything for granted. To be patient with others as you never know how much your smile or encouragement may mean to them. I look at the world differently now. I went on to have 4 more healthy boys, sadly my marriage to their father didn't last but I have remarried a wonderful man who himself has a stepson, a daughter and a son of his own.

I value every minute that I spend with my family and miss them so much when they aren't around. I think that is why I struggle when my husband goes away for work, I desperately hate goodbyes.

My Dad died when I was 17, I thought that was difficult enough to come through but losing your child brought a whole new meaning to the word devastation.

As you go through your life, never forget how fragile life can be. What we have today, may not be there tomorrow. Treasure every moment. I know reading my blog sometimes,it may sound like I don't, but my blog is my venting area where my frustrations come out. I certainly don't love my family any less. Every single moment spent with them is worthwhile, be they good or bad moments, its all an adventure in the game of life!!

Hug your family tight and never let the sun set on an argument!!!