Happy New Year.

I went through all the photos I have taken this year and uploaded all my favourites.

At the water tower on the first day of the school holidays.

Out for tea for my birthday.
Daniel, Amelia, Joseph, Abbey, Tom, Christopher.

At the pool.

Tom and Joseph.

Joseph

Brigette's confirmation.

Brigette with Bishop O'Kelly.

At home.

Brigette rocked Joseph off to sleep.

The first taste of spaghetti. YUM!!!!!!

Joseph eating the rosary. Maybe this year he will learn to pray it.

I really love this one of Joseph snuggled into Steve.

I choose this one for Abbey. She is a crows supporter. So are the rest of us except Daniel.

Thumb sucking is such a great pastime.

Joseph in his swing.

Home school. Everyone helping each other out.

Having fun with Lise.

Bottom: Brigette and Lise.

Middle: Tom

Top: Christopher.

Daniel and Abbey.

My mother.

Tom and Joseph.

messy chocolate face.

Joseph being bathed in the bathroom sink. He actually preferred the sink when he was smaller.

Christopher loved doing this jigsaw.

He became quite good at it and started asking us to time him doing it.

I really should have kept a record of the best time for him.

Joseph sleeping peacefully.

I hope 2011 is a great year for you all. Happy New Year.

Love Therese, Steve and family.

New years resolution.

I have been thinking about new years resolutions for a few days here. Being in holiday mode really doesn't help me feel too motivated to make one. I am just enjoying so much sitting around and doing what I want for a lot of the day. I love having the break from home school and just spending time with our children doing fun activities.

I was thinking the other day that there are many things I would like to happen in 2011 but there is nothing I can do to bring them about.

Things like a cure for type one diabetes. I would just love there to be a cure but it isn't something I can do myself. I can support research that looks promising and pray for one but the cure really is out of my hands.

Thinking along these lines, I decided that maybe instead of writing a list of things I want myself to do this year, maybe it would be good to have a list of what I hope will happen. So these are the things I hope for in 2011:

1) A cure for type 1 diabetes.

2) People that support abortion will see the evil that it is.

3) To become closer to God through prayer, reading the bible, attending mass and reconciliation.

4) To spend more time playing with my children.

Do you have any hopes for the new year?

Joseph in his walker.

This is the walker we gave Joseph for Christmas. He loves walking (or should I say crawling) with it.

Break Through.

A while ago, Joseph went through a phase where he was not sleeping well at all. He was grumpy all day and just never seemed to get enough sleep.

I knew I had to bite a bullet and leave him a bit more to learn how to get to sleep on his own. I found the book Solve your childs sleep problem by Dr. Richard Ferber on Fishpond and bought it.

Dr. Ferber has an approach called progressive waiting. You put a child to bed and they cry. After 3 minutes or so, you go and and reassure them but leave them in their beds. You leave them for longer and longer periods until they put themselves to sleep. I started Dr. Ferber's system 3 weeks and 4 days ago. It has been a long 3 and a half weeks but today was our break through day. It is the first day that Joseph has been put into bed and not cried. He knows that he needs to put himself to sleep. I am still feeding him before each nap and before going to bed at night but he doesn't expect me to carry him around or rock him off to sleep anymore. Even though today was the first day that he didn't cry when I put him to bed, I had seen other improvements in him since starting it.

Firstly, he is a happier baby when he is awake. He use to be unhappy a lot and would cry a lot each day. I also decided right from the start that I wasn't going to feed him through the night anymore. He is over 10 months and doesn't need night time feeding. Since stopping the night time feed, his appetite has improved greatly and he wants to eat at meal times. There is also no more snacking at the breast. He feeds really well 4/5 times a day now.

Going through with leaving him was a hard thing to do but I am so glad we have a happier baby and that I don't feel so drained anymore.

Abba's Little Girl: When Catholics Come To Know Him

Last night I was looking through my google reader and had read everything that was new. I was looking at some of the other features of it and found that there was a place I could click on and see what posts I had shared with other bloggers. I don't remember actually sharing any posts but they were there so maybe I did it without even realising.

Anyway, one post that I had shared from back in 2009 grabbed my attention.

Here is a link to the post.

Abba's Little Girl: When Catholics Come To Know Him

Jumping castle.

Daniel hired a jumping castle for everyone for Christmas. We have it here till Tuesday and the children have loved it.

We got a phone call on Friday telling us what time they would get here so I took all the children over to hungry jacks for an icecream. We came home and could see the castle from our driveway. The children all got very excited and jumped straight out of the car and ran through the gate. There have been a few accidents but overall it has been lots of fun.

The Catholicism Project.

H/T to Esther.

Merry Christmas.

Merry Christmas.

May the joy of the newborn Jesus be with everyone this Christmas season.

Trip to Adelaide.

On Sunday we went to Adelaide to see our families and friends for Christmas. It was great to catch up with everyone. We had Tea on Sunday night with Steve's parents, brother in law and nephews.

On Monday we meet my mother, my brother, sister in law and their three daughters at a park for lunch. The children all had fun playing and we had plenty of good food and conversation.

Here is a video of our children playing on the roundabout before their cousins arived.

We are looking forward to our Christmas party this Saturday.

4th Week of Advent.

I just found this site.

Wish I had found it at the beginning of Advent. At least I have it for next year and we can do the prayers this week.

Enjoy the last week of Advent. Come Lord Jesus.

7 Quick Takes.

-1-

Presents.

We are getting lots of presents ready for family and friends. This year I feel more organised than I have most other years. I have a few more to get but have 95% organised. It feels great.

-2-

Movies.

Yesterday Steve took Tom and Amelia to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader. I would love to see this movie but after the disaster with Joseph at Toy Story 3, I just cannot go to the movies with him.

-3-

Megamind.

Christopher wanted to see Voyage of the Dawn Treader too but I had heard that it was a bit too scary for younger children and didn't want him to see it on the large screen. Instead, next week I will take him to Whyalla and Daniel is going to take him to see Megamind.

-4-

Christmas dinner.

This year for Christmas dinner we are going to have a roast pork cooked in the weber bbq. We will have roast potatoes, honey carrots and lots of salads with this. I am also going to buy a leg of ham.

For sweets we will have Christmas pudding with ice cream, cream or custard.

-5-

YCS.

This week Madeline and Brigette went to a YCS camp at Point Lowly. They were gone on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It sure was quiet here without them.

-6-

Joseph.

On Thursday morning I noticed Joseph crawling around the house going into each room and looking around. I think he was looking for his two big sisters that were on camp. I picked him up when he came out of Madeline's room and said, are you looking for your sisters? They will be back today.

-7-

Parcels.

I love getting parcels in the post. This week we have had a parcel nearly every day. There have been lots of presents and a few books for Steve. Most of the parcels are going straight into our store room to wait for wrapping.

Don't forget to pop over to Jen's for more 7 quick takes.

Little Star.

I bought this book a while ago when a couple of bloggers recommended it. I just found tonight Pat Boone reading the story. It is a wonderful story all about love for Jesus.

If you have the time, watch the video here:

The story of the Candy Cane.

I got this from GrandmaK blog, A Bit of the Blarney.

The Candy Cane Legend.

Enjoy. I really did enjoy this.

Holidays.

We are all on holidays now. Steve finished work on Friday. He was the last one to finish for the year.

Now we have till the end of January to enjoy everyones company and refresh ourselves.

I have some curtains to sew and some summer clothes for the boys over the next few weeks. The girls will be going to a YCS camp this week so things will be a bit quieter without them here. I am hoping to get a lot of the sewing done while they are gone. I hope that Joseph will be settled and happily play while I sew.

I am hoping that Joseph will bond a bit more with Steve while he is on holidays. He only wants to be with me at the moment and his seperation anxiety is huge. It does tend to get a bit draining so hopefully by spending a bit more time with Steve he will give me a bit of a break.

Friday Funnies.

After getting all of Pope Benedict's luggage loaded into the limo, (and he doesn't travel light), the driver notices the Pope is still standing on the curb.

'Excuse me, Your Holiness,' says the driver, 'Would you please take your seat so we can leave?'

'Well, to tell you the truth,' says the Pope, 'they never let me drive at the Vatican when I was a cardinal, and I'd really like to drive today.'

'I'm sorry, Your Holiness, but I cannot let you do that. I'd lose my job! What if something should happen?' protests the driver, wishing he'd never gone to work that morning..

'Who's going to tell?' says the Pope with a smile.

Reluctantly, the driver gets in the back as the Pope climbs in behind the wheel. The driver quickly regrets his decision when, after exiting the airport, the Pontiff floors it, accelerating the limo to 205 kms.. (Remember, the Pope is German..)

'Please slow down, Your Holiness!' pleads the worried driver, but the Pope keeps the pedal to the metal until they hear sirens.

'Oh, dear God, I'm going to lose my license -- and my job!' moans the driver.

The Pope pulls over and rolls down the window as the cop approaches, but the cop takes one look at him, goes back to his motorcycle, and gets on the radio.

'I need to talk to the Chief,' he says to the dispatcher.

The Chief gets on the radio and the cop tells him that he's stopped a limo going 155 kph.

'So bust him,' says the Chief.

'I don't think we want to do that, he's really important,' said the cop.

The Chief exclaimed,' All the more reason!'

'No, I mean really important,' said the cop with a bit of persistence.

The Chief then asked, 'Who do you have there, the mayor?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'

Chief: ' A senator?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'

Chief: 'The Prime Minister?'
Cop: 'Bigger.'

'Well,' said the Chief, 'who is it?'

Cop: 'I think it's God!'

The Chief is even more puzzled and curious, 'What makes you think it's God?'

Cop: 'His chauffeur is the Pope!'

Our gifts.

Here are the pictures of the gifts we got from Honey.

Amelia has named all the dolls. I will have to post names tomorrow though since I cannot remember which ones has which name.

These two dolls are both very beautiful. They are handmade and have the finest clothes.

Beautiful red haired doll.

The little boy.

The lovely girl.

The three dolls all together.

God bless our Home.

Peace to All who Enter.

St. Joseph holding the infant Jesus.

St. Joseph.

The Immaculae conception.

Shell from Thinking Love, No Twaddle has a great post explaining the Immaculate conception.

You can go and read it here.

Some special gifts.

I have a great internet friend. Her name is Honey and she has been a great encouragement to me and my children.

I love reading Honey's blog. It is about a death in her family so it isn't a happy blog but it is a blog full of hope. I feel that hope everytime I visit it.

Honey read on my blog about my gift from Shelly and offered to send me her daughters statues.

Today we received the statues. Two statues of St. Joseph. St. Joseph has been such a special friend to us. We asked him to pray for us when Steve was at a crossroads with his job and when we were looking to buy a house here.

Both times our prayers were answered beyond our wildest dreams. Steve has a job that is well paid and has fantastic hours. Our house has been made perfect with all the renovations we have done over the last few years.

As well as the two statues, we also received three beautiful dolls for Amelia with a high chair for two of them to sit on. They have taken up residence in our home school room.

I wanted to post some photos of all the gifts but at the moment, my upload cord seems to have gone for a walk. Hopefully I will find it soon and upload them all.

Thanks so much Honey for your generosity.

Test Strips for Rwanda

I would be so lost if I couldn't test Tom and Christopher's bsl every day. The children in Rwanda do not have this luxury. They only test once a week. That would just frighten me a lot. Please share this video. Roche will donate a strip for every view up to 1000 views.

Do they know it is Christmas?

A giveaway.

My friend Kelly from The Handmaden is having a Christmas giveaway.

You can go and enter here.