Long time, no see...

Wow, I opened my emails this morning to find one about this here blog so I thought I should open it up and low and behold I find out that I haven't posted a single thing on it in over 18 months! And hasn't life changed a lot in those 18 months.

The biggest change would be that we are now a family of SEVEN as we welcomed baby number 5 into our family in November 2017.

But honestly, I never meant for the blog to sit unused for so long, life just got really really busy and I guess it just slipped away from my list of priorities.

But I think 2018 will be the year when I get back into it all. It will be a year of big change for us all and I can't wait to share it with you all.

So it's February already

Just because he's cute

It's February and I have neglected this little blog for about a month now. I didn't plan for that to happen, but with school holidays and then the whole back to school business, it did.

We spent most of January in Perth for various appointments and our yearly 'buy all the things that we haven't been able to buy because we live in the middle of nowhere' trip.

And then life hasn't stopped since we got home.  Mahli turned 8 (EIGHT! How did that happen?), school started for the year and I'd love to be able to say that it's been smooth sailing but it hasn't, I've been busy with some behind the scenes planning for things happening at ASWC this year. And I've also signed up to be a Wellness Advocate with doTERRA (I'm pretty excited about that).

Anyway, I'm not sure what this blog post is for exactly, I guess I just felt bad for neglecting this space...

Hopefully I'll be back next week with something a little more interesting to share.

Right Now

Right now life is busy, but nice. The kids have just gone back to school after two weeks holidays, most of which they spent playing outside together with minimal arguing.

Don't get me wrong, my kids do argue, sometimes more than I like, but most of the time they WANT to play together and do so pretty well. I'm not fooling myself thinking that this trend WILL continue without effort, but I hope with some nurturing of their relationship with each other they will continue to get along AND like each other.

Darcy is noticing the quiet at home today. He has wanted to be held for most of the day so far which is unusual for him. He is usually pretty happy to just lay around and watch the world go by. He is probably my easiest baby so far *touch wood* and I have joked to B that it's time for another. I wont repeat the words he uttered, but lets just say they weren't pleasant.

Darcy is now 7 months old and sitting for short periods. He has changed so much since his birth. He was born with a head full of dark hair but has gradually lost it and is now left with light wispy hair just like his biggest brother. C actually seen a few of his baby pictures last week and commented on how much Darcy looks like him and I have to agree.

Like I said, life is busy but good.

How's your life at the moment?

I'm Still Here!

Just popping in to say I'm still alive, I'm just slowly plodding along and struggling to fit everything into my days. So needless to say the blog is getting a little neglected and I'm completely okay with that at the moment.

Darcy is going great, we have sort off fallen into some sort of routine and he is doing really well.

The other three have been a bit out of sorts but are slowly coming around and settling in to our new normal. It has been a bit of a rough transition since I was sick for 3 weeks after Darcy's birth but I am on the mend now so I should be able to give each of them the attention they deserve.

Hopefully in the next few weeks I'll have some time to share Darcy's birth story too. It was an eventful one!

Until then,

Week In Review

Wow, last week was a busy one. It was the last week of school holidays, Mahli's birthday and various appointments thrown in too.

I was always on the move and even though the kids go back to school tomorrow I don't think life is going to slow down just yet.

But since I have been neglecting this here blog since last Monday I thought I would sit down and document that week that was in photo's even if some of them are blurry because the kids took them...

How was your week? 

5 Good Things

1. My new Christmas Mug:

2. The pool that Target lost finally arrived:

3. I no longer have to craft in the outside storage room or the dining table because I moved my stuff back inside to a corner of our living area...

4. The kids had a ball at their end of year concerts even if we had to have two goes at it after the first one was cancelled due to getting rained out 5 minutes before start time!

5. We have been enjoying discovering new Christmas books and reading them together every night:

What are 5 good things from your week? 

Getting to know our new home town: Karijini National Park

One of the things we want to do while living over here is seeing as much of WA as we can. It will kind of be like one great big holiday for a while as we cross off places on our to see list.  And we haven't wasted anytime, today we ventured out to Karijini National Park.

It reached 47 degrees out there today so we didn't see much but what we did see was pretty special.

 
Do you know of any must see places for us in WA?? 

Finding our rhythm

rhythm   [rith-uhm] 

noun
 

movement or procedure with uniform or patterned recurrence of a beat, accent, or the like.

 

image source

Our home has none at the moment, I am grappling to complete tasks, I am struggling to manage the kids behaviour... They are only behaving this way because of me though. I know that if I just pulled my socks up and got my sh*t together everyone would be happier. 

 

Everything is in limbo at the moment, B's work, my work, my treatment plan for PCOS... I don't function well with to many unknowns in my life. 

 

I need rhythm and routine just as much as the kids do. 

 

So that is what is going to happen. I am going to be playing around with a few things over the next few weeks to try and figure out what works for us. But our morning routine needs a shake up. I think I am going to have to get up at 5am when B leaves and get my coffee and breakfast over and done with before the kids get up. 

 

Do you get up before the kids? I am up at 6am with Caden every morning, but I think I need a head start on him and the day. 

 

Do you have a family rhythm or routine? Or do you work best when winging it? 

 

 

noticing

This week has been busy with school, work, life and a misbehaving Labrador...

But I took some time out today to notice my surroundings.
 
Admiring Caden's peas that are coming along nicely

and look! My strawberry plant is blooming,

 I didn't expect to see that for a few months, but it has been pretty hot here lately.

Loving the we just had a sun shower...

And wishing that I had the life of this spoilt cat

What are you noticing today?

Sinking

This week has just been a long long week and I have felt like I have been chasing my tail the whole time. If you walked into my house at the moment you would probably declare it a bio-hazard and high tail it out of here quick smart.

I just can't seem to say on top of things at the moment and it has a flow on effect to my moods. Really the house looks how my head feels.  This week didn't start off well with my return to work discussions and then B ended up working some really long days which seen him come home and fall asleep pretty much instantly so I haven't been able to talk to him about any of the 'stuff' that is going on.

I am also almost at the end of my first 3 months of treatment for PCOS. Some things have improved, but some not so much. I am due to go back to the doctors in 2 weeks so we can re-asses some things, but again I want to talk to B about it all and we just haven't been able to get any down time to actually talk about it all.

Hopefully the weekend brings us all some rest and relaxation so I can start next week off with a better frame of mind.

How to cope when you fell like you just can't keep your head above water? (You do feel like that occasionally, right?! It is completely normal???)

{image source}

Living Simply, Living Deliberately

I wrote about my dreams for the future a little back here and here, but really I want to live a simple as possible now too and have recently started reading a wonderful book called Down to Earth by Rhonda Hetzel.

It is full of some wonderful resources and some great ideas on how everyone can live a little simpler in their everyday life.

Do you dream of a simple life?

P.S This isn't a sponsored post. I am just really enjoying this book.

D-Day

This image has nothing to do with this post, peonies just make me happy!

So tomorrow is D-Day for when I have to confirm with work my intentions once my maternity leave ends next month. I have been working a bit lately, but that has just been casual work whilst I have been on maternity leave, nothing over 14 hours a week, usually only doing 8-10 hours.

I went to work yesterday and worked from 730-530 and when I got home the kids told me I was in trouble for working so long. It seems I'm not the only one struggling with the fact that I will be returning to work permanently again soon. The two eldest have told me that they miss me too much when I am gone and that I am not allowed to work...

Good one kids, you sure do know how to pull on your Mothers heart strings now don't you?!

So, there seems to be two options that I need to choose from:

1. Do I want to not have to worry about and plan for bills and increase our savings faster? or
2. Do I want to continue to budget and plan down to the last cent of our income, whilst stay home and being accessible to the kids 100% of the time?

What would you choose? And don't worry, I know you can't answer it for me, I just needed to type these thoughts out in an effort to make them clearer in my mind...


{image via here}