We treed.

You may remember we were trying to decide whether or not to put our Christmas tree up early… Well we decided yes. I’ve never put a Christmas tree up this early, but I wanted to get a chance to enjoy it before we go on our Big Trip.

We’re off tomorrow to the Coast for two weeks for Pete to do prac, so decided to do our Christmas decorating today and come home to a beautiful Christmasy house.

Pete always puts our tree together. It’s such a great tree. We got given it for our first Christmas together the year we got married. We originally had this tiny little poxy second-hand one that was only big enough to set up on a table or something. Anyway, I was so excited about Christmas – we were having it at our house – and some friends from church heard me going on about it. My mum told them about my little sad pathetic tree, and next thing I know they drop around this gorgeous great big brand-new one! Mind you it took up nearly half of our little granny-flat back then, but we loved it. Still do. 

I have always decorated the TV unit since our first Christmas. It’s my little tradition. Pete thinks I’m funny, sticking dress-makers pins into the cabinet to hang my little Christmas bears, but I think they’re cute.

This wall decal is my newest decoration. I bought it at the cheap shop in Mundubbera for around $4.00! Cute huh?

We have a plastic pink el-cheapo star on our tree. I’m going to invest in a new and gorgeous one at the post-Christmas sales for next year.

Ta-daaa!!! Pretty huh?? We have a kind of pink and green theme. Can’t imagine who would have chosen those colours, can you? It’s a bit pink heavy at the bottom, as they’re our plastic baubles, which we thought it would be safest to have at Mayana-height. I’m really happy with our tree this year! I think it looks great. Pete wants to get some more lights for it though, so once that’s done I’ll take a piccie at night.

 

These are some of our special decorations. We each have a bauble with our names (I have a purple one to make up with Mayana’s name). The spiky bauble is one I made myself. They’re so easy to do, and look really great on the tree. And our ‘Just Married’ bauble, which I made for our first Christmas.

We put the tree up while Mayana was having her morning nap. She was so excited when she saw it. She kept saying, “Dere!” (There) and pointing at it, and “Dat!” (That) as she touched various decorations.  We are able to block of the area where it is, so hopefully we won’t have too many runaway decorations!

Ah I love Christmas!!!!

I just finished reading…

Abraham’s Well, by Sharon Ewell Foster. Fantastic book. I honestly couldn’t put it down, and read it from start to finish in less than 24 hours!

It follows the story of Armentia, a young Cherokee Indian girl, through her life of hardship and tragedy. Armentia and her family are slaves (owned by other Indians). They live a happy life, until the government announces its decision to relocate all Indian people across the country ‘for their own good’. They, along with thousands of others make the journey, over 1000 miles on the ‘trail of tears’. Later, Armentia is sold (as a slave), on two separate occasions. Throughout this time she also suffers the loss of her beloved brother, father and later, mother. She lives through the American civil war (losing even more people dear to her), and eventually becomes a free woman.

It’s an incredibly sad tale, based on true events. I was completely unaware of a lot of what is told in this book. I was very interested in the history of the Indian people, and the similarities between what happened to them and what took place here with Indigenous Australians. It’s truly unimaginable and inconceivable.

I really enjoyed the book, and would highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of historical fiction. My only ‘con’, is that the last quarter or so of the book seemed far too rushed, too much happened in too short of a space, which made it feel a bit contrived.

But overall, a great read. Good story, believable characters, and I learned some really interesting stuff!

the me that he knows...

he being Pete. My husband. I pinched this idea from Talia, who pinched it from Leila.
So sit back, relax and enjoy a guest post from my gorgeous husby !

1. What is something your wife always says to you?

Foo... can you please get me/do/go and [insert instruction here]......... <---- Okay, I'm allowed to comment on these answers because it's my blog and I make the rules. Foo is a weird pet-name that I have for Pete and I'm not entirely sure where it came from. But it's stuck. And yes, I might be sometimes just a teensy widdle bit bossy *blush*.

2. What makes your wife happy?

Our daughter's smiles and cuddles... or me coming home with a bunch of flowers. <--- awww... so true. Though I think I forget what it feels like to have you come home with a bunch of flowers!

3. What makes your wife sad?

When she doesn't get to see her family for ages. As in more than three weeks. :P <--- that's meant to be a little 'tongue pokie-outie thing', in case you're wondering.

4. How does your wife make you laugh?

By being silly and mucking around with me.

5. What was your wife like as a child?

A genius. Cos she could talk (like in sentences) when she was one and read (chapter books) by the time she was five.

6. What is her favourite thing to do?

Anything related to craft work. At the moment crocheting. Beading. Sewing. Scrapbooking. Cross-stitch. <--- yes, we have a LOT of my 'stuff' everywhere in this house. Thank the Lord for my supportive husband.

7. What does your wife do when you’re not around?

the same things she does when I am around..... I think. <---- hmmm... are you sure?? hehe.

8. If your wife becomes famous, what will it be for?

Designing baby clothes and accessories. Or one or other of her craft ventures.

9. What is your wife really good at?

See question 8, and 6. And blogging.

10. What is your wife not very good at?

Sport. Or anything sport related, like playing tennis on the wii, or watching sport on TV. She can't do it. <--- Sport?? What's that???

11. What does your wife do for her job?

University student. And is the best mother she can be. <--- plus I look after my husband.

12. What is your wife’s favourite food?

spaghetti, butter chicken, thai food.

13. What makes you proud of your wife?

I'm proud of everything she does.

14. If your wife were a cartoon character, who would she be?

I can't think of any that matches up to her...

15. What do you and your wife do together?

Everything. <---- This is pretty much true. We spend almost all our time together and really do everything together.

16. How are you and your wife the same?

we have lots of similar interests, enjoy the same TV shows, movies, foods, people...

17. How are you and your wife different?

I do like sport.

18. How do you know your wife loves you?

When she comes up and gives me big cuddles at random times, or snuggles up to me when we watch TV, or gives me kisses.

19. Where is your wife’s favourite place to go?

Ravensbourne National Park. Or wherever her family is.

Awww... isn't he a sweetie-pie. No wonder I love him to bits.

I Blame My Mother…

For that rising dread and adrenalin rush that overtakes as I open the letter from the real estate and see the words “Routine Inspection”.

It conjures up mental images of me running about like a headless chook, ensuring the house is adequately scrubbed, polished, vacuumed, tidied and washed so that when the mean old property manager comes along with her white glove and clipboard folder so she can come up with reasons that I shouldn’t rent my home anymore.

Of course, our property manager isn’t actually mean, and she doesn’t wear a white glove. And as far as I know she doesn’t want me to move.

It’s just that when my mum got one of those letters when we were kids, we knew that’s what was coming. We knew mum held her breath until after the property manager walked back out the door. And everything had to be S.P.O.T.L.E.S.S. Including the insides of our cupboard. I now know that they’re aren’t actually allowed to look inside your cupboards, but I’m sure that little tidbit was handy for mum to keep from us at the time.

Yes. Today was our house inspection. And we did the scrubbing and cleaning. I can’t help it. The property manager turned up while Pete was trying to vacuum under our bed (hehe). And it was a he this time. A new guy. He didn’t even know about the front-door entrance of our house (it’s on another street from our roller door and the entries of the other units). So he knocked on our bedroom window. I like to think he giggled when he saw Pete’s legs sticking out from under the bed.

Anyway, he came through, and left within about 2 minutes. Possibly less. He didn’t look at anything apart from the major leak in our bathroom ceiling, and to tick off that we had a smoke alarm.

*sigh* all that scrubbing!

I’m consoling myself with the thought of how nice it will be to come home to a spic and span and shiny house next week!

Thanks mum, hehe.

New Mayana You Tube Video

My mum and I went halves in buying Mayana this cute walker. She LOVES it. It’s taken her a week or so to get the hang of it, but now that she has, she can’t get enough of it! She has a little dolly that she takes for rides, and if it’s not in the pram when she goes for a walk she goes to find it and put it in. She’s growing up so much, it’s so cute! I’m loving this stage, she’s really starting to play with us, and understand what we are saying to her.

I could go on forever… I’ll do another post later with all the cutesie things she’s been doing lately, but for now, check out this gorgeous video I put together…

Mayana Walking

Enjoy!

to tree or not to tree

Today I had an overwhelming urge to put up our Christmas tree. Probably because I was looking at Christmas decorations in a catalogue.

I love Christmas. I love celebrating my Saviour’s birth. I love the time with family. I love giving people gifts that I have put a lot of thought into. I love decorating my house.

Last year, I didn’t get to. Because we went to the coast at the end of October so Pete could work, and he wouldn’t let me put the tree up before then. I helped put up my mum and dad’s tree and deck their house out instead.

On Christmas day, this is what my family always does: We wake up and have a scrummy big Dutch-inspired breakfast. We get one little present from ‘Sinterklaas’ on our plates. When we were little it was usually some kind of pretty hair thing to wear to church. After breakfast, we’d go off to church. Which is, afterall, the most important part of the day.

Then home. Mum piles the coffee table with loads of beautiful food that we’ve all spent the last week getting ready. Chocolate balls, apricot balls, lollies, chips, pretzels, chocolate spiders, cheeses, crackers, nuts… the table is laden. Papa makes everyone a cappuccino and we all settle in for present time. This takes up the next few hours or so. There are six of us, plus Pete, and in the last few years also my sister’s boyfriend. We do a secret santa, and we each draw two people. Apparently we’re supposed to keep it a secret, but my dad’s the only one who thinks it’s necessary. We’re not ‘supposed’ to, but everyone always buys everyone else a ‘love present’ as well. There’s always myriads of presents under the tree. We open one present at a time, and everyone watches as each present is open. I love this, as for me half the fun of it all is buying gifts for people – as I said before I put a lot of thought into it, and I get a lot of joy from watching people open what I chose. It takes forever. And I love it.

After all that, we have some incredible lunch. Mum always comes up with a theme of sorts. We have delicious salads with prawns and mangos and avocados. One year we had a beautiful five-course Thai extravaganza. I love Christmas food.

Then we hibernate. It’s kind of necessary. Because by then we’re kind of full.

Later in the afternoon, Pete and I skip over to the in-laws and do the Christmas thing all over again!

So anyway, that’s the long version of saying, I LOVE Christmas.

And today I wanted to put up the Christmas tree. And Pete nearly said yes. But then we remembered we have our house inspection tomorrow, and we don’t want to look too weird. So we’re going to wait until we get back from Nana and Pops, and put it up then. Before December. Hehe. I’ve never done that before. We always had to wait until after Mum’s birthday (3rd of December). We aren’t even going to be in the state for Christmas, but I don’t want to miss out on having the house all done up for Mayana’s first Christmas!

I’m also going to buy some new decorations after Christmas, at the big sales. For Christmas next year. Who knows where we’ll be then…. uni will be over, and the new phase of our life will have begun.

But I’m getting too far ahead of myself.

The point of this post, afterall, is just to let you all know that we’re going to put up our Christmas tree next week when we get back from Mundubbera town.

Woohoo!!

my crazy week

didn’t end up being quite so crazy after all.

My Thursday date was cancelled, because one of the girls got put on strict bed-rest because of high blood pressure.

My Friday Brisbane trip was cancelled because my friend got sick. Pete and I could have gone on our own, but decided that we might as well save our pennies for our Perth trip and make a date for it next year.

I hope your weekend was beautiful. I had a lazy-dazy one with my husband and daughter. We milled about the shops on Saturday… didn’t buy much except for my new handbag!! Today we had church, and then birthday lunch for our friend. It was great. One of those country pubs with incredibly massive meals for incredibly low prices. We are totally going back there.

We just figured out that our house inspection is on Tuesday not Monday. All that frantic cleaning for nothing. Ha. I’ve still got an assignment to finish off to submit tomorrow.

On Wednesday we’re leaving to visit my grandparents.. probably till Monday or Tuesday. See how we go. Then on Sunday week we’re off to the coast for two weeks, Pete’s doing prac. Then back home for three weeks… then PERTH!!!!! I’m so dang excited!

The rest of this year is going to fly by. It’s insane! My little Mayana Berry will be one before we know it!

She’s sick at the moment. It’s very sad. She has a terrible cough, I think caused by a runny nose that’s dripping down her throat. It’s the cold that doesn’t end! It’s just flared up badly again. Poor munchkin. She does cope with it well though, she’s been really happy today. It’s just at night. You know, when you’re lying down you always seem to cough worse. She keeps waking herself up… and us. *yawn*. And that darn sixth tooth is taking its sweet time in making an arrival! Definitely not helping matters. I’ve got her cot elevated, she’s got eukky-bear rub on her chest and back and feet… what else can I do? Poor chook. It hurts my heart-meat.

Zoey x

oh how i missed thee

I love handbags. I have a LOT of handbags. And I always want more. Even if my husband doesn’t understand it.

And aside from real bras, the one thing I have really missed since having Mayana is having a normal bag. I mean, I like my nappy bag, but it’s a nappy bag, and it looks like a nappy bag. It’s practical and it’s functional—but it’s not a handbag.

Except now… it is! Introducing my new handbag. A real bona fide handbag. It’s pretty. And it fits all my Mayana things in it, and all my things in it, and I LOVE it. It has made me very happy.

Thanks gorgeous husby. Love you trillions!

technology is being mean to me

On Tuesday, my beloved phone went stupid, and it wasn’t making any noise – so I couldn’t hear it ring etc. And the microphone wasn’t working either. So if I tried to ring someone, they couldn’t hear me and I couldn’t hear them. Luckily, I just turned it off and back on and it came back to life.

Yesterday, my computer went stupid. It totally froze while I was checking my emails, and wouldn’t come back to life. So I turned it off, and when I tried to turn it back on, it informed me that it couldn’t launch Windows. I went into a panic. My photos! All my photos and videos of Mayana that I haven’t backed up on the external hard-drive for at least two months! I can’t have my computer die just before my final year of uni. I can’t afford a new computer- I’m not even sure if I can afford to pay someone to fix this computer! You know, the whirl of panic when your head thinks up every worse case scenario all at once and your heart starts to race and your legs feel a little shaky.

It came up with an option to have it search for fixes for the problem. Um. Yes please! I decided to go have a shower while it did its thing. Better for the nerves than watching the little worm slowly progress across the screen.

It was still going after my shower. Then it asked me if I’d like to make it revert back to a time when my computer was working properly. Yes please. About half an hour later, it finally turned on. It’s been working fine since. Thank the Lord!

Today, I was deleting old photos of my camera. It has an option where you can select the photos you want to delete and then press a button and it deletes them all. So I’m trying to do this, and the stupid thing deletes all the things I DIDN’T select. Including some new videos of the Mayana Berry that I hadn’t put onto my computer yet. Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh.

Just now, I was doing some stuff on my puter while watching TV, and everything turns off. Except the lights. Something was flicking the safety switch. Peter runs around unplugging things and trying it again… and eventually works out that it’s the extension lead that the phone is plugged into. Why? Because water has dripped on it from our dish-rack and it is pretty much full of water. Hooley Dooley. Hands up those who are grateful for inventions like safety switches right now!?!?!? *ME!!!!*.

They say these things run in threes. Well I’ve had four, and I’m over it.

Puh-lease technology, let’s be friends again!?!?

New items at my made-it store… baby headbands!

Why not pop over and have a look!