Think about this.

A Friend of mine opened his wife's underwear drawer and picked up a silk paper wrapped package:
'This, - he said - isn't any ordinary package.'
He unwrapped the box and stared at both the silk paper and the box.
'She got this the first time we went to New York , 8 or 9 years ago.
She has never put it on , was saving it for a special occasion. Well, I guess this is it.'
He got near the bed and placed the gift box next to the other clothing
he was taking to the funeral house, his wife had just died.
He turned to me and said:
'Never save something for a special occasion.
Every day in your life is a special occasion'.

I still think those words changed my life.
Now I read more and clean less.
I sit on the porch without worrying about anything.
I spend more time with my family, and less at work.
I understood that life should be a source of experience to be lived up to, not survived through.
I no longer keep anything.
I use crystal glasses every day...
I'll wear new clothes to go to the supermarket, if I feel like it.
I don't save my special perfume for special occasions, I use it whenever I want to.
The words 'Someday...' and 'One Day...' are fading away from my dictionary.
If it's worth seeing, listening or doing, I want to see, listen or do it now...
I don't know what my friend's wife would have done if she knew she wouldn't be there the next morning, this nobody can tell.
I think she might have called her relatives and closest friends.
She might call old friends to make peace over past quarrels.
I'd like to think she would go out for Chinese, her favourite food.
It's these small things that I would regret not doing, if I knew my time had come..
Each day, each hour, each minute, is special.
Live for today, for tomorrow is promised to no-one.
If you got this, it's because someone cares for you and because, probably, there's someone you care about.
If you're too busy to send this out to other people and you say to yourself that you will send it
'One of these days', remember that 'One day' is far away... or might never come...
No matter if you're superstitious or not, spend some time reading it.
It holds useful messages for the soul.

our new floor!!!!!!!!!!!

The hard board going down.


The new floor covering.


Tom and Joseph think it looks great and are both very happy.

Our weekend.

Friday:

Joseph crawling around.



Saturday:

Every Saturday morning we have a big cleanup around the house. Every child has a job to do and Steve and I run around making sure they have done them.

In the afternoon, the girls and I went food shopping. Madeline came home and coloured her hair. Daniel came over in the late afternoon and we spent the evening sitting around.



Sunday:

The weather was absolutely brilliant. We took Tom, Amelia, Christopher and Joseph to the park with a couple of Amelia's friends.

We also cleaned out the family room/home school room for our new lino to be laid tomorrow. Here is the room all cleared out. Tomorrow when the lino has been laid and we have everything back in there, I will take more photos.

My three favourite Catholic prayers.

A while ago, Therese from The musings of a mom and Epsilon from All the little epsilons tagged me for a meme.

This year, I haven't done many of the meme's or passed on many awards that others have given me simply because I am not blogging nearly as much and I have forgotten to post them. I wanted to post this first and apologise. I really hope that no one has been offended at my lack of passing on or posting of memes. I really do enjoy doing them most of the time.

I think I have also come across a way to remember to post them on. I am simply subscribing to the comments and keeping them in my inbox till I do them.

So now onto the meme.

My first favourite Catholic prayer is:



The Divine Mercy Chaplet.

2) The St. Michael the Archangel prayer.

3) The Holy Rosary.

I tag the following bloggers:

Paramedic Girl from Salve Regina.

Honey from Mile to Go.

Erin from Seven Little Australians.

Angie from Gaza Clan.

Christie from Garden of Holiness.

Friday Flashback

I couldn't miss Friday Flashback this week. It was my 4th blogiversary this week. On the 23rd of August, 2006, I started this blog with this post. It has been such a wonderful way to make new friends and let others stay in touch with what is happening in our lives.

Thanks so much for following along with this blog and for all the support you have given me. Without my followers and friends, I don't think I would be blogging still.

I'm back!!!!!!!!!!!

I have missed blogging so much but my family has to take priority. I am hoping we are organised enough now that I will be able to blog regularly.

So it is over two weeks since I last blogged. I looked back through photos to update you all.

Two weekends ago, we went to Bill and Linda's for Daniels 16th birthday. Here is Daniel with his cake that tasted just as good as it looks.


While we were there, we meet Mr and Mrs Adept. It is great to put a face to a name.

On the way home, the rain started and we saw this over on the horizon.

Joseph is going really well. He commando crawls around the floor all the time now. I cannot put him down and come back and find him in the same position.

I have a DVD of the Priests. I got this when I was pregnant with Joseph and listened to it a lot. I have started to listen to it more because I have found it is very soothing for him. He likes to listen to it and be in my sling. I am sure it remind's him of being in the womb.

My favourite song from the DVD is Benedictus. Here it is for your enjoyment.


Oh and here is a photo of him that we recently took. This was just after his bath. He loves crawling around in his birthday suit.



Home school is going really well too now. I have had to have a good look at our program because I was feeling so burnt out by all that was going on with having a baby and lesson plans to do. I asked some good friends to pray for us because I was feeling so overwhelmed by it all and everything has seemed to fall into place since. I have changed our schedule around a bit and bought some new curriculum aids that have made teaching a bit easier. I think it will only get better now. Joseph is becoming more and more independent of me and doesn't need to be held all the time now.

time for a break.

I am going to be off the internet for another short time. Life is just too demanding for me at the moment and I don't have the time to devote to my blog or to read other blogs. I am missing everyone but our family needs come first. I will be checking email each morning if anyone wants to contact me or ask for prayers for anything.

Before I go, here is a video of Joseph for you all:




I also have this link to share with everyone. Steve has made a catechism game called Mario Catechism. He is looking for children to test it and give him feedback on what they think of it. It is still in the testing stage but if anyone is interested in playing it you can go here to download it. Please let us know in the comment box if you have downloaded the game and what you think of it.

Tom and Amelia. Week 3 links.

Go here for Amelia's journal writing.

Go here to hear about the play Tom wants to do.

A good nights sleep.

Thanks so much to everyone that has offered prayers for Joseph. I am pretty sure he has turned the corner and i s on the road to complete recovery. He had a great nights sleep and is still in bed. Hopefully today I will be able to get some photos taken of our new home school/family room.

Therese.

Joseph.

Joseph has been pretty sick.

Last week he was a bit off and then he got a new tooth. On Sunday night he was pretty unsettled and I spent a lot of time trying to settle him to sleep. Yesterday, I couldn't put him down at all without him crying. We went to the doctor in the afternoon and he could see something in his ear. At first he thought it was an insect. He wanted another doctor to look and this doctor seemed to think it was a black hair. They decided that maybe he should have some ear drops to get it out.

We came home and Joseph had two lots of ear drops before bed. I was up with him a lot over night because he just couldn't settle without me. He wouldn't eat and seemed worse than he had during the day.

Today Steve took the day off since I had such a wakeful night. We went back to the doctor since Joseph was seeming worse. The "hair" isn't there anymore but he certainly is still feeling very off so the doctor decided to start a course of antibiotics. I really hope this helps and that he will be much better in the next couple of days.

New room.

Steve has worked so hard finishing off the family room/home school room. Today we will have our first day working in there. We are still waiting for the lino to be laid but it is organised enough that we can work from there.

Photos to follow tonight as long as Joseph is co-operative and lets mum sit on the computer.

Hopefully I won't be like this tonight.

Why I am a Catholic.

I think most Catholics would have seen this video. It is one of my favourite ones on youtube.

Over the weekend one of my friends on facebook left a status update saying that the Pope is the Antichrist.

I am not the only Catholic friend that this friend has so quite a few of us challenged the statement.

This status update ended up becoming a discussion about the Catholic church and their beliefs especially about the bible alone vs. the bible and oral tradition.

At the end of the discussion, I offered to send two people that were asking questions a copy of the book, surprised by truth. I asked them both to pm their addresses to me so that I can send it out to them.

I know that one of the two I have offered the book to reads my blog so I really hope she takes up my offer. I think the journey towards heaven is a long long road. We all make choices that hopefully lead us to God but we all stumble too. I know with the help of others through prayer, we can all become better Christians. I will be praying for both these friends and hope you will all join with me too. I also ask them for their prayers for me.

Therese.

Friday Flashback.

I have been wanting to do a flashback post with Therese from Musings of a Mom for a while but haven't ever got around to it.

My Friday flash back is to July 2007. Christopher (at age 2 years, 5 months) had his first hair cut.

You can see the before pictures here.

You can see the after pictures here.

Pop over to Therese's blog to see what other people are flashing back too.

bad things, good things.

The bad:

Last week our car was in an accident. A driver behind me ran into me when I stopped at an intersection.

The good:

We have all the details of the other driver and he has taken responsibility for the accident.

We have been into the crash repairers and they think the damage is pretty superficial.

No one was hurt.

The bad:

Christopher is getting very high blood sugars.

The good:

We had a good 15 months of him being in the honeymoon phase and he didn't get DKA.

The endocrinologist from WCH has been a great support and help.

Christopher is on the waiting list to start pumping.

The Bad;

This week Joseph has been very unsettled and we have had a lot of little extra things to do that has made our time table hard to follow.

The good:

I have sat down this morning and put more details into our time table. I printed it out so when we have a lot of extra things to do and get off track, I can just look at the timetable and get back on track.

The good:

I now have 150 followers. Nothing bad about this. Thanks so much to all my followers. I am so happy to have made so many friends online.

Tom and Amelia. Week two links.

Go here for Amelia's story writing.

Go here for Tom's fruit cake recipe.

Honeymoon coming to an end.

It is just about 14 months since we discovered that Christopher has type one diabetes. Since finding out he has been on insulin daily and his sugars have been pretty easy to manage. This past week, he has had very high sugars in spite of the insulin injections. I think his honeymoon phase is coming to an end.

Please pray for Christopher. He has been very unhappy over the last week or so. I am sure he feels revolting with the high sugars and doesn't really understand why this is happening.

He broke my heart when he asked me why he got diabetes. I really didn't know what to say to him. Tom gave him a hug and said I can help you and you can help me. I was very proud of Tom.

Need a laugh?

Head over to Katidids: Middle Wife post here.

Tom and Amelia. Week one links.

Go here for Tom's post.

Go here for Amelia's post.

Early morning.

It is 6.30 on Wednesday morning. I finally have a bit of time to do a post. Over this week, I have had plenty of ideas for posts but when I get on computer, I go to facebook or plurk or read other blogs so have run out of time to post here.

We have had a great start to the 3rd term. I won't tell you to much about what we are doing because Tom and Amelia will be writing on their blog about it. Amelia wants to start her own blog too so I am going to encourage writing each week for both of them. At this stage they will be updating each Wednesday. I will probably post a link here to their blogs when they have updated them.

Joseph is getting around all over the place now. He is much better than he was on the weekend but still has a runny nose and is finding it hard to breathe when feeding.

Here is a picture of Steve painting the family room. We thought it would be far enough along to start homeschooling in this term but we still have lay the lino and get things a bit more oragnised in there for this to happen. I think once the lino is laid, we can put all our boxes and tables in there so hopefully we will be working in there within the next couple of weeks. I am really looking forward to having this room done. I think it will make the lounge room much easier to keep tidy.

The end of the holidays

Today is the last day of school holidays. I have spent a lot of time this week getting our program for this term ready.

Joseph has been unwell this weekend and hasn't been sleeping all that well. On Friday night I was up a lot with him. Because I didn't get much sleep, we actually decided to cancel our trip to my nieces baptism. I didn't want to take Joseph on a long trip when he isn't feeling well so we are home today keeping warm by the fire.

Steve has finished painting the family room and we will start doing home school in there this week. In a couple of weeks the lino will be laid and then we will think about where to put our cupboards.

I will take some photos later to show the great job Steve has done.