Ladies retreat

I'm off to our mission's ladies retreat tomorrow for a night. I'm looking forward to some time without children, time with other like-minded women and time with God. Time away from the computer(s) will be good for me too! See you when I get back!

Juggling

I know that every mum juggles. Indeed most people do. It just seems that I am juggling more than the usual amount at present. Seems a good time for one of my favourite things - a list! I am juggling:

• Homeschooling
• Care of three lively boys and one husband (he's pretty easy)
• Writing our personal prayer/newsletter letter
• Editing/desk top publishing a mission letter
• Switching computers and operating systems (read PC to Mac)
• Keeping up with email in the meantime
• Preparing for a two day retreat, including choosing five songs and practising them.
• Organising the care of fore mentioned children during the day tomorrow.
• Preparation for home assignment (flying in 8 weeks)

Is that enough? It is for me! Actually I am very thankful for the retreat at this point. It seems like an intrusion, but it will probably be very refreshing to my spirit and just might give me the boost I need to get over the hump of the next eight weeks. I am incredibly thankful for the two friends who are covering the care of our two youngest boys from 8.30 till 3.45 tomorrow!

Four-year-old's Birthday

Despite the headache I had all day, we managed to give our boy a memorable birthday. He walked around all day muttering comments like, "I'm so glad it's my birthday." and "I've got two spidermen, one Lego car, a firemans' hat and coat and something else I can't remember..." To top it all off we had a family plus one party. Of course the highlight of the party was this much anticipated cake. He chose it months ago and has been drooling over the picture in the cookbook ever since. The only indication that it might not have lived up to expectations was that he didn't actually finish his slice of cake - the tip of the sword, of course. But I can kind of understand. By the time we'd eaten the food he'd selected for his birthday tea: sausages, sausages-in-bread and chips (I slipped in some salad for our artery's sake), we'd all overdosed on salt and fat. Then the cake was about 60% cake and 40% icing (and about 80% of the icing was butter), actually the tip of the cake was only about 25% cake. However, it is much easier to shape icing than sunken cake, so I don't apologise for the ratios! Nevertheless, he went to bed a happy boy. And us, tired, but happy parents.

The beauty of a simple worm

This morning has been a bit more chaotic than usual in our house. Our 3 y.o. turns 4 today, so the morning began with presents before breakfast, as is our custom. We managed to get them calm enough to eat breakfast and then after our eldest reluctantly went to school with his Dad, the other two played with Lego, Spiderman and the new Fireman costume. Needless to say, they were difficult to pin down for homeschooling this morning. I think it took our 6 y.o. about 45 minutes to copy three sentences we made yesterday with a silly sentence game. Concentration - closer to none! After persevering a while, I decided that outside was the key, but the catch - our middle son didn't want to go but the birthday boy did. Not a problem if you have a backyard, but here, unless you play in the 1.2 m strip at the back of our house or on the (quiet) road, you have to walk to a park and I wasn't about to leave a 6 y.0. home alone, so the backyard strip was IT. Thankfully birthday boys loves to dig holes, so we pulled out the big spade and he dug some holes while (amazingly) our 6 y.o. did another workbook page for homeschooling, while I supervised from the otherside of the fly screen door. Until birthday boy found a worm! Mentioned that wriggly creature out loud and our 6 y.o. was suddenly finished all his inside work and play and heading outside to play with worms :-) and mud. Hopefully I won't have to bath them when they return (this is a presently ongoing scene). Also amazingly, the worm they found has managed to disappear. It must have moved fast. I can do with some down-time. Up late last night to finish the sword cake, all the excitement of the morning and still a party and a guest (adult) this afternoon/evening. I wonder if I'll get to go to the gym? Depends. If I don't I'll only get there twice this week. Tomorrow is a public holiday and I am away Friday/Saturday at a retreat. I also have a prayer/newsletter to write. So much to do...

Laws of Parenting

I know my Dad is fond of the Good, Clean Funnies website, and in search of a short 'funny' for a newsletter I'm writing, I stumbled upon it again. I found these parenting gems: Laws of Parenting

1. The later you stay up, the earlier your child will wake up the next morning. 2. For a child to become clean, something else must become dirty. 3. Toys multiply to fill any space available. 4. The longer it takes you to make a meal, the less your child will like it. 5. Yours is always the only child who doesn't behave. 6. If the shoe fits...it's expensive. 7. The surest way to get something done is to tell a child not to do it. 8. The gooier the food, the more likely it is to end up on the carpet. 9. Backing the car out of the driveway causes your child to have to go to the bathroom. 10. The more challenging the child, the more rewarding it is to be a parent...sometimes

No self-pity party

I haven't mentioned on this blog that my husband has been away since Thursday. He's been at a conference in Hong Kong...learning I don't know what. But thankfully he's on his way back home today. Some people may choose to be sole parents (many don't, I know), but not me. It is horrible. We've had good moments and yesterday was mostly good, but I'd rather share the stress of raising three strong-willed, spirited boys (in a foreign land) with a partner. I've been spared the joy of throwing a self-pity party by a friend on Facebook who shared the other day that not only had she just given birth to her third child in three years (in her mid 30s), but her military husband was about to go away for six months! How can one happily throw a self-pity party with knowledge like that in one's possession? My mind boggles. She assures me that she has heaps of help, but I, for one, don't believe that any amount of help will replace the one who loves you. Especially if that one person is willing to help in the middle of the night when you have one child to feed, another to take to the toilet and a third to calm back to sleep. I'm past that stage, most nights anyway. But I sure could have used some help in those awful hours of 5.30-7.30pm, especially with baths. I hate supervising baths/showers. Don't know why, but I do and the ugly me usually comes out. I guess I am tired anxious to get them in bed so I can finish everything and take a bit of recreation time myself (or get more work done). In any case, my husband does bath-time with so much more grace than I. We really miss him when he is gone. On a more positive front, my nights recently have been taken up with preparation for a birthday. Yes, our three y.o. turns, you guessed it, four tomorrow! In line with the good Aussie tradition, he has chosen a cake from the AWW cake book (apart from our Bible, the most read book in the house) and I am trying to replicate the "sword" cake. It hasn't gone quite as planned, but hopefully I'll have a decent enough photo to post on Wednesday! Back to work, now...

How flexible are you?

The other night at Curves (my gym) one of the trainers was giving out slips of paper detailing some changes during the next month in opening times. Just a simple slip of white paper, covered in black type, all in Japanese. They are very kind to me at the gym and knowing my reading isn't so good, so she attempted to convey to me verbally the essence of the message, to be sure that I understood it. She then apologised for any inconvenience, but I replied trying to say that my schedule is a bit flexible. Unfortunately I couldn't remember the word for "flexible". So I did what any foreigner with a bit of Japanese knowledge will do, and I Japanized the English word. To understand this you have to know that Japanese is a syllabic language. That means that they don't construct words with single letters like in English, they construct words with syllables. This works fine, it really does, until they try to import foreign words. Just like when we try to read Welsh words which have not enough vowels, the Japanese panic a little when they see two consonants together. Then they insert vowels in the middle and on the end in most cases! So McDonalds becomes an unweildy "Macudonarudo". An easier example would be "beetle" becomes "beetoru". They also have only five vowel sounds and some English consonants don't have an equivalent (for example "r" and "l" come out the same). However, once you put a word through this filter, they can actually pronounce it and remember it. Many, many English (and other language) words appear in Japanese and make foreigners' lives easier. They are even so kind as to use a different alphabet to distinguish between Japanese words and foreign-originated words. The problem comes when you cannot remember which words have been adopted and which have not. Occasionally you get a surprise when you use the Japanese word and they come out with an English-type equivalent. A long explanation, I'm sorry. I guess this story is not so easy to understand, after all! Anyway, they didn't know what "furekishiburu" was - and neither would you, unless you read the above or have a knowledge of Japanese. After some explanation and gestures, they figured out what I meant and someone immediately said, "ahh, furekishiburu taimu". Can you translate? Yes - "flexible time". They had a phrase including the word, but not the adjective itself! Ah, the fun time we have living in a non-English speaking country. It sure makes you "furekishiburu"!