My Daybook: 13th March, 2017

Outside my window…

it’s dark even though it’s after 6am. Autumn has begun strongly and the days are already much shorter

I am thankful…

for our two new Parish priests, they arrived in late last year full of ideas and enthusiasm which are now being enacted upon. Lots of energy is being focused on our Parish’s Youth Group which is now meeting weekly with a much bigger component on spiritual and knowledge and less on just fun. Construction on re-constructing our Church Sanctuary is to begin at the end of the month, essentially the altar will go back up to the central position of the church and the tabernacle will be moved back to the centre of the church. Apparently under the carpet is marble, so carpet goes and marble will be exposed, meanwhile for the next four months the church will be closed and Masses will be held in the other parish Church across the River

I am thinking…

about gut healing and nutrition, I know bits and pieces but I really need to devote more study and focus on ensuring this is incorporated into our lifestyle, time and energy….

Learning all the time…

a couple of weeks ago we participated in a Pick-a-Read Challenge wherein the children only read all week long, we used a bingo style approach to keep them all motivated and focused. The week was a huge success and resulted in seeing permanent reading skill/interest changes for our new reader, our teetering reader, our disinterested reader and nearly blossoming reader. Inspired by the success of our reading challenge we have turned our focus towards a couple of other areas, maths and spelling. Similarly to the reading challenge I have devised a number of maths and spelling related activities and the enthusiasm has been high and the children are delving deep, so exciting! Check back at the end of this week for full details

Celebrating the liturgical year……

a couple of weeks into Lent now and heartened to see the self-discipline practiced by the children, they individually have settled on their Lenten sacrifices and they’re rather strict with themselves. Lent has three practices; Praying, Fasting and Almsgiving and all are important yet I’m noticing a bit of a trend this Lent in the ‘wider world’ of minimising to the point of even dismissing the sacrificial component of Lent. Practicing self-denial in little things creates a spiritual muscle that assists us in saying no to sin, it’s practical as well as spiritual. For a thought provoking post I suggest you head over to Mary’s to read Psst…it’s still okay to give up chocolate, too

From the kitchen…

re-committing to more salads whilst the weather is still warm enough to suit. A few more carb and potato meals crept in over the last fortnight and created instant bloating for me.  Bread, cereal, pasta, all wheat products which convert to sugar, and potatoes which are full of starch, none of these are my friends, my waistline instantly reflects when I consume any of these

I am creating…

a journal of our family read alouds for the past 23 years! I’m combing back through old blog posts and written records prior to blogging to coalesce as many titles together as possible. I’m certain I didn’t record many of the books we read together but I’ll give it my best shot. At present I’m condensing into an excel spreadsheet with columns for; date begun, date completed, title, author, who read (mum, dad, older sibling), genre, comments from children/reader, which children and what was their age who listened. I’m focusing on novels and audio books, I’m not recording picture books. After I gather all the titles I’m uncertain whether to continue our journal online or in a book, what do you think? have you ever kept a family reading journal?

I am working on…

laminating all of our All About Reading & Spelling cards, an extremely time consuming task but worthwhile as they will preserve the cards for years to come. Whilst I’ve been focusing on laminating, Jelly Bean (12) has been demonstrating her amazing organisation skills once again, this time she has been turning her efforts towards cleaning out our huge board cupboard, bringing order out of mess. For some reason our children are tough on board game boxes, it’s a major source of irritation to me that inevitably someone will stand/lean on a box and break the edges. Over the years I’ve tried various methods of repair, duct tape, clear packing tape… yesterday JB solved the problem, she hot glued the boxes back together!! Brilliant, they’re like new!!

I am going…

with PC to an meeting about being ‘Safe on Social Media’ at our local Catholic highschool tonight. Whilst neither of our ‘at home’ teens are on social media; facebook, snapchat and instagram and their gaming friends only include family and irl friends, it pays to be aware and alert. Knowledge is power and the pitfalls of social media is something that affects our society as a whole, it takes a community. On a side note, whilst our policy for a host of reasons has been no facebook until 18, the majority of our adult children simply aren’t interested in social media and haven’t rushed to sign up for facebook

I am hoping…

for great things from our new Bishop, he is a Carmelite and at his inauguration Mass were many, many Carmelite priests and most exciting was that the Carmelite nuns were present!!! The Carmelites is an enclosed order so the majority of the nuns had not left the Convent grounds for decades, can you imagine how they must have felt!!! Personally I think they must have been on huge sensorial overload by the end of the night. If you fast forward the video to 2:14:38 you’ll see Mother Superior and another Sister come forward to welcome the new Bishop, they cry, I did too, beautiful

I am praying…

• for my children; their spiritual needs, for academic achievements, for their health, their relationships with one another and others, that they grow in Grace and always walk with Him
• for the unborn brother of our god-daughter who has Trisomy 18. Please join me in surrounding his parents in prayer so that they feel His consolation and love, that they know His strength as they deal with the reality of an anti-life society, please pray for Jonah Job as his parents and sisters prepare to welcome him briefly to this life, knowing he will rapidly depart to eternal life
• for my brother and sister-in-law who will welcome their first born in July. Praise God babe and mother are healthy and well
• for my newly married brother and sister-in-law who have just announced they are having a baby too! 🙂
• for PC’s boss’ daughter who has been in a coma all week critically ill with meningococcal, it’s been a harrowing week, however she has come out of the coma and we’re breathing a sigh of relief, though still continuing prayers
• for my dear friend who is now raising her small grand-daughters, she needs to be uplifted in prayer
• for our two nieces – sisters, who are getting married this year, one next month and one in August

I am pondering….

why there is such an emphasis in society today on how hard motherhood is, continual headlines shriek of  ‘the misery of being a mother’ ‘having kids ruined my body’ ‘women who regret motherhood’ ‘no one told me how hard motherhood would be’. I’m not saying motherhood isn’t tough, it is one of the most challenging undertakings you will ever do but it’s true love and love always necessitates a sacrifice, although I’m certainly not advocating we should behave as if our motherhood is our martyrdom, I’m focusing more on a need for women today to develop some fortitude…well I could say lots more on this topic, perhaps I need to write a post

*These thoughts do not refer to women dealing with extremely challenging situations such as, children with physical, mental and emotional disabilities, nor does it include women battling with depression

I am reading…

reading The Green Ember – S D Smith to the children and we’re all completely engrossed.  I was fortunate enough to ‘buy’ this when it was a Kindle freebie but will be happy to buy the sequel Ember Falls 

I am hearing…

silence the household is asleep and I’m enjoying being able to write uninterrupted, spoke to soon, I hear stirring they awake

I am struggling…

with time management regards meeting the needs of the older children vs the younger children, an ongoing issue. However as the younger children become more independent in their learning the juggle is less intense, it’s getting a little less tricky

Clicking around…

How to Plan an Elegant Kid Friendly Wedding Reception – this couple had 50 kids under ten at their Wedding! Reminded me of my brother and sister-in-law’s recent Wedding, they had 21 kids under 12. We had a ball 🙂

4 Easy Ways to Limit Screen Time: Practical Ideas That Work – this post really encouraged and motivated me to do something about our screen habits that had once again ‘become out of control’. Healthy screen habits are vital and yet they take continual effort to ensure, you can’t shift your attention for one moment

Around the house…

tackling the photo collection mess, for which I first needed to devise a system, I decided on beginning each album with a new baby 😉 Luckily I’ve been more organised over the years than I gave myself credit for, mostly it was a matter of transferring photos into matching albums and sorting a few random photos. Thankfully I had written names and dates on the back of the majority of our photos which made for easy sorting, this was a legacy of a task I tried to assist my Nanna with years ago. Nanna wanted help sorting a hatbox of photos, but with no names and dates, my lack of knowledge and her fading memory, the photos remained a jumble. The first eleven years of our married life are now neatly organised into their matching albums with a label on the spine marks to mark the years covered.

Two more albums arrived yesterday to hold the remaining photos, one album will be for miscellaneous photos taken after the purchase of our digital camera, the other will hold photos prior to our married life, of our individual lives, many photos no doubt will be culled. Then I’ll mail a few photos that I don’t want but others may appreciate, to friends and family.

Next task is to then tackle the thirteen years of digital photos that have not been printed!!! After much research I’ve decided to make photo books rather than photo albums, I still have to decide upon which company and begin, for some reason I’m really nervous about starting…

One of my favorite things…

my lifestyle, so grateful I get to ‘live the dream’; living rural, able to be home full time nurturing our children, married to my Prince Charming, really what more could I want. Sure life has it’s challenges, it’s not all ‘peaches and cream’, I certainly don’t divulge all here, like most we have heavy crosses but still I have so much to be grateful for, yeah I’m a glass half full girl

A few plans for this week…

nothing out of the ordinary, the usual living of running a household for ten, the driving and waiting involved with after school activities, the nurturing of several children of various ages, mostly though I’m enjoying our more delight directed learning approach this week, a fresh way of learning, the relaxed approach within guidelines is granting time to dig deeper

A little peek at my day…

Swimming lessons are coming to an end shortly and I confess to counting down along with the boys. It’s rather relaxing lazing by the pool and I could easily enjoy the afternoons there but I’m tired of the battle to get there, the whinging and drama of reluctant swimmers is tiring. It’s not the lessons so much that they object too, I think particularly for our youngest lad it’s the commitment of having to be somewhere, having to interupt his activities and leave the house