Sam's birthday cake.

Sam had trick candles on his birthday cake. He kept trying to blow them out and they kept relighting.

Therese.

Deluge in Port Augusta

Tonight I was taking the girls to mass and Brigette recorded this on the way. Water was all over the road. I haven't ever seen it so flooded here.

It is almost like winter.

This weekends forecast is for cold wet weather.

It is going to be a good weekend to sit and do some sewing.

First, we have bought some new lounges for our lounge/dining room. I will be making some curtains to match it. This is the fabric I have chosen for it. The roses match our lounges perfectly.


Next, we are recovering the lounge chair cushions and moving one of the old lounges into the family/home school room. I measured up the covers today and made the pattern. This is the fabric I will be using for it:


Finally, if I get sick of sewing or want to have a break, I also have recently bought some cotton ease to make a wrap for Joseph. I am going to use this pattern.

This is the wool I have. It is a lighter colour than I thought it was on the website but it should look nice.

Hope you all have a good weekend and keep warm.

Sammy Joe.

17 years ago today I gave birth to Sam, our second child.

You can read about Sam's
14th Birthday,
15th birthday and
16 birthday.

Here is Sam on his 14th birthday.


Here he is today, 17 years old.

Happy Birthday Sam.

Tasty Tuesday: Home made mayonnaise.

I think one of the delights of summer is having salad with mayonnaise. I love mayonnaise on salad rolls, chicken schnitzels and just to make some lettuce more appetizing.

I decided this weekend to try and make some myself. I looked for a recipe on the net and found this one.

I got all my ingredients out and realised we had no vegetable oil. I decided to use all olive oil. What a big mistake. The mayonnaise was awful. It had such a strong oil taste that I was gagging as I was eating it.

I then went surfing the net and found this little video:



I decided that I couldn't make myself or the children eat it so the chickens had a big feed of the olive oil mayonnaise.
I bought some vegetable oil last night. I haven't tried the recipe yet but I think I will try it tomorrow and see what it tastes like. Maybe Tom and Amelia will have a lesson on emulsifying.

Little Athletics.

I have signed Tom, Amelia and Christopher up for Little Athletics for summer.

They go each Sunday morning at 8.30. It is hard to get them all up, organised and to the oval by that time but I think when we get really hot days, we will be glad it is over so early.

Here are some photos I took of them all yesterday at the end of some of their races.

Christopher finishing off the 70 m.

And the 300 metre.

Amelia finishing the 100 metre.

Tom finishing 100 metre.

]Joseph cheering everyone on. Well, he was suppose to but spent more time looking in the grass and looking after my handbag.

My new friend.

Recently, I meet another mum at the kindy that Christopher was attending. Eleanor is interested in home schooling her children so we got together and chatted about home school, nappies and children.

She writes a blog called The learning of motherhood.

Go and say hi to my new friend.

Therese.

Mary MacKillop.

I have been mulling over in my mind what to say about Australia's first saint since she was canonised last week.

The Sisters of St. Joseph have been very influential in my life over the years.

I was educated by Josephites at St. Josephs Hectorville in my primary years.

Our children attended the same school when we lived in Adelaide.

My Great Aunt was looked after by Josephite sisters at Flora McDonald nursing home. Because she was the only living relative from that generation when Steve and I were married, we went there to have photos taken. One of my treasured photos is the photo with Auntie Ella at our wedding. It was only a couple of years after our marriage that I was back at Flora McDonald for Auntie Ella's funeral mass.

My father was also looked after by Josephite sisters at Tapeiner Court.

Even though the Sisters have been a big part of my life, I didn't really know much about their history or beginnings until this year when I started learning about it to teach Tom and Amelia in preparation for the canonisation.

The best resource I found was this one.

It has letters that Mary wrote and little excepts from the Movie "Mary" by Ronin Films.

Learning about Mary this year has been wonderful. I have seen a women that was committed to her dream of educating the poor and a women that was willing to stand up for what she believed as true. Because of her willingness to stand up for truth, she bore many crosses especially when she was excommunicated.

I have come to realise this year that if Mary hadn't had the determination to live the life that God had chosen for her, there would have been a big hole in my life. I wonder if Catholic Education would have been the influence it was in my brother, sisters and my life or who would have looked after Auntie Ella and my dad when they needed the extra care they needed. The Josephites have served us and helped us to know God in a deeper way.

At my fathers funeral my brother said the following about the care dad had received from the Sisters at Tappeiner Court:
I want to offer my heartfelt thanks to the staff at Tappeiner Court. Dad spent the last 5 years of his life in this marvellous nursing home. It was a great comfort to dad and his family that he was so well cared for. Being able to regularly receive the sacraments was a great blessing. I do recall his requests early on, "could you loan me a bus fare?" which spoke of how he missed mum and the family home. That dad lived this long is testament to his great appetite, the great care he received and the strength of his spirit.

I thank God for the Josephite sisters and especially their founder Mary of the Cross.

An inspirational guy.

My fil sent us a video about this guy and I did a search on youtube for him.

He has no arms or legs but will not let that get in the way of having a great life. We can always focus on what we don't have when really the best way to be happy is to focus on what we do have.

Check out his website here.

Changes.

Things seem to be changing a bit in our house this term.

Joseph is starting to be happier without been held by me for long periods. I have two spare hands much more often now than I have in the past. He is also crawling around a lot and exploring the house more.

The day seems to run more smoothly since we don't have a middle of the day kindy pick up to do. I feel like we have more time to get things done.

These two little changes have made my life much easier. I am feeling more relaxed and getting a lot more done than I was for the past 7 months or so since Joseph was born.

We have started getting meals in the freezer again and I have started making summer sewing plans and Christmas plans.

I think I should be able to update my blog more often too.

I have lots of ideas for blog posts and what I want to share on here.

I am hoping the children's blogs will be updated more often too. Last term when I felt like there was too many things to do, I had to reassess and prioritise what was really important for the children's learning. Blog posting didn't make the list but I think this term we should be able to get them updated more.

Here is a cute photo of Joseph after a feed of my home made spaghetti which he really really loved.

pump change time.

This is a video of Tom getting his pump ready for a site change We don't show the needle going in because he has to drop his pants for that and didn't want that on video. Here is a photo though of the site once we put it in.

Googling your name.

Over the weekend, the children were entering their names into google to see what came up. There were many links that we knew about but also a couple that were a surprise.

Today I decided it would be fun to google my maiden name. From it, I came across an old class photo and some old girlfriends from my high school. I have added them on facebook. It was a trip down memory lane for me.

I also found someone that has the same name and lives in Australia. This was a huge surprise since my maiden name isn't all that popular. The person that has the same name as me is a Sr. of St. Joseph. Yet another surprise.

I am thinking of emailing her and seeing if we are related.

Burra and the end of the holidays.

We started this week in Burra.

We meet my good friend Di and her family there. It was a great holiday. We went to many of the mines and saw many historical sites. We came home on Thursday and have been relaxing since.

I can highly recommend the Paxton Square Cottages to stay if you are interested in going to Burra. We were very happy with the price and facilities. It can be difficult to find accommodation for more than 4 people generally but we fitted very comfortably into their cottages.

I took a few photos on Monday when we went to the Miners dugout but wasn't able to take more since I left my battery charger home in Port Augusta and the battery went flat. Here are some of the photos I took.

Here I am carrying Joseph in front of the Miners Dugout.
I carried Joseph all around Burra.

Amelia in front of the Miners Dugout.

Miners dugout.

Brigette, Georgia, Madeline, Nicole, Amelia in front of the Miners dugout.

Tomorrow is the last day in our holidays.

4th term has only 9 weeks. My plan is to spend 8 weeks doing our usual curriculum and then in the last week make Christmas treats and gifts.

I am looking forward to this term. I will have Christopher home full time since he isn't going to kindy anymore and this should help our day be a bit less busy.

Dr. Faustman's work.

Dr. Faustman is in the second stage of clinical trials to find a cure for type one diabetes. Many big companies and JDRF will not support Dr. Faustman so she has to rely on the donations of you and me. I have added a link to Dr. Faustman's lab in the sidebar. Any help you can give to Dr. Faustman would be great.

Our home school and family room.

The cupboards are all finished.

This is the base.

The cupboards go in.

The whole wall of cupboards.

On goes the top.

On goes the bookshelf.

Edit to add this one.

44 today.

I have had a wonderful day. This morning I meet some girlfriends at Wadlata Outback Centre for morning tea and this evening we went out for tea to Cafe Primo.

Here are some photos from our day.