January Garden

This is our January garden. The lettuce and peas all gone and the last of the cherry Tomatoes being harvested. Sunflowers abound. And we discovered there is a variety of Rhubarb that only ever has green stalks.... which we think explains why ours never gets 'ripe'! :-)

 

 Look at his feet!

 

 

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Tiny Tales Week 1 2013

We started our year with a swim at the local pools. We shared the change room with this guy until one of the other bathers freaked out and had the staff remove him... I was more scared of the other bather than the lizard, he was just minding his own business.

You'd think looking at these photos that we only have two boys.... the big kids were doing some sort of teenage thing whereby you stay glued to a screen or holed up in your teen-cave. Not really all that exciting to photograph.

Reading and singing with actions. My son. :-)

Persistence...

Success.

Celebration!

Raccoon Love.

Will's baby is called Sec as in Dalek Sec, nice.

Musical teamwork.

Goal!

I went out for the day on the Saturday and Les needed to come up with a solution to getting him to sleep sans boobs... so Tama politely obliged by just falling asleep on the couch at the appropriate time!

Homeboy!

 

 Crazy boy!

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Lemon Cheesecake

This kid LOVES his power tools!

I made this one at All recipes topped with the Curd on this one from Coles Online

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365 2013 Week 3

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Story Chapter 4 - the (not always true) story in my head

Graphic from Anecdote.

Here I go again back dating posts! It's ok though- I know because the story I'm telling myself says so.

Oh there are so many stories in my head. Old stories based on fact now most likely fiction that impact the way I live my life today. Furture stories- made up tales in daydreaming moments many of which I would never even want to come to fruition. Big stories with huge impact and smaller stories that niggle and bite like a mosquito, seemingly small but powerfully annoying.

There are the stories I tell myself both consciously and sub-consciously. And the stories I want to tell- the experiences I want to put into words on a page- so I can remember them and so I can clarify the in my mind.

The stories in my head impact my relationships with one half of the worlds population.
The stories in my head impact the relationship I have with my body.
The stories in my head impact the relationship I have with my creativity.
The stories in my head impact the relationship I have with my husband.
The stories in my head impact the relationship I have with my daughter.
The stories in my head impact the relationship I have with my mother. (Either one).

Huge. Massive. Crazy.

Parts of those stories, maybe the whole of the stories are untruths, lies my mind has created. Words, gestures, actions- twisted. Twisted sometimes beyond recognition.

The recollection and the rehashing of these stories can blatantly, negatively, impact my whole day if I am caught off guard.

They do impact my whole life. They shape the me I am.

There are good stories too. Not so many.

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Single Photo Saturday

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Flora on Friday

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Tama 19 Months

 I had to bribe him with chocolates to cooperate. No prizes for guess what colour it was. :-)

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365 2013 Week 2

 

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Will 61 Months

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365 2013 Week 1

This year I've decided to mix it up a bit. Sometimes I'll do double pages and some times single and also mix up the LO of the photos. Running from Tuesday to Monday is weird so I expect these will get posted late relatively often as my work flow is used to putting them together on a Sunday.

 

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Story- Chapter 3- planning

 

“Of all the tasks which are set before man in life, the education and management of his character is the most important, and, in order that it should be successfully pursued, it is necessary that he should make a calm and careful survey of his own tendencies, unblinded either by the self-deception which conceals errors and magnifies excellences, or by the indiscriminate pessimism which refuses to recognize his powers for good. He must avoid the fatalism which would persuade him that he has no power over his nature, and he must also clearly recognize that this power is not unlimited.”
- The Map of Life, William Edward Hartpole Lecky

Even though this is posting with a January date I didn't actually get around to writing it until March 10th. Thing is I like stuff to be in order and the way I planned it to be... and seeing as blogger allows me to back date my posts I can do that. Is it cheating? Yeah probably, but it's my blog and I can therefore do pretty much what I like with it! :-)
But in saying that it makes the quote above which I chose back in January quite pertinent. If I am surveying my own tendencies as the quote recommends there's a bit of self-deception in this. The fact that I am writing this also tells me a lot about how I work my life. In blocks. I tend to need to work at things in chunks- I'll set up a bunch of blog posts to publish over a course of weeks and then go off and do something else all but forgetting the blog till the time when I know it'll run out of posts ready to go. Then hopefully I'll have the time to get back to it. And it's not just blog posts. I've just caught up 6 weeks worth of my 365 project. And recently completed another job that I have had on my to do list for almost 5 years. I had worked on it in chunks over those years and always waited to find a block of time in which I could reasonably expect to finish the job. It never came. In the end it made it to the top 5 items on my 'Guilt list' and I shelved everything else to get it done.
So how does this contribute to my story? Are there positives? Are there negatives?
One of the positives is that I think I am more efficient if I work in blocks like that- I am on the same task for a decent period of time and so am more likely to be focussed and also to remember all the aspects of the task I need to do and all the ideas that I have had around the task- so long as I can get it completed.
One of the negatives is that with 4 children including one still at home during the day large blocks of time are few and far between in my life without a lot of late nights- and therefore lost sleep- something that also negatively impacts my story and that of those around me.
Another negative about doing memory keeping in blocks- which is what blogging most often is for me- is that I lose details and the smaller stories that make up the whole. These stories within my story are often the ones that bring the most feeling to my life. Excitement, laughter, joy... these things in my life are delivered in small moments. From a funny thing someone has said to quite simply a look exchanged between Les and I when one of the kids has done something that only the two of us would really find remarkable.
What's the answer? I think maybe my story needs an outline- an idea of how I want my plot to develop. I need to plan. And follow the plan too. This is no better illustrated to me at the end of the weekend. I spend the week not being able to complete or even start some tasks. I think to myself that Les will be home on the weekend and I can do it then. But with no plan I spend the weekend dithering about Les' need for time out, the children's needs that I should meet and seem never to be able to get much done because 'taking' the time for 'myself' (and it isn't always or necessarily for me) creates guilt. For our story and my story to be balanced and satisfying we need to plan. I need to schedule in the routine- so that it become so much like habit that they almost seem to disappear into the setting of my story- and then the delicious details can stand out from the mire.
The other thing I need to remember is not to start another big project till the last one is finished.

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Single Photo Saturday

 

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Flora on Friday

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Wills Rainbow Art Party The Event- Finale

The party finale was the cake....

We served it with ice cream and jelly and the kids served their own sprinkles....

 

As the guests left we grabbed a photo of Will with all but the shyest one. We should have done it sooner because Will looked pretty glum in most of the pics as the realisation that his friends were going and the party was over.
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