christmas tree

our first christmas after we got married i bought decorations for our house, planning that the following year i would buy decorations in one more colour and so on each year until i could have any colour combination i wanted. well five years on and we are still on the original white and gold cos i can't find another i like as much! this is our tree for this year, which sadly is not real. this is the first time we have had a fake tree, and while i am quite sad about that, i still think it looks ok. it will look much better after santa has been and there are presents under it.......

how to get a mohican

this week we discovered how to get the perfect mohican and it involved a vacuum cleaner....

my beautiful kids

so we had some fun with the camera today and here are some of the results.

i got woken up by adam at 2.30 this morning asking if i wanted the goodnews or the bad news first. well the good news is that he's off work until next thursday. the bad news is that he has broken his thumb and we have to fit in a hospital appointment on a really busy day. poor adz, its hurting him a lot, but on a completely selfish note, its a great injury to have. minimum damage, maximum impact. he can't work cos he can't grip anything or use his hand properly, but he's fine and we get to spend some time together. love it!!!
tomorrow is our primary christmas party, and after that we are nearly done with the stressful stuff. can't wait to relax!!!!!!

so i was right, today has been a good day. i thought my heart would burst with pride as i watched liv at her christmas concert. she did really well, sang her heart out and knew all the words. it was adorable to watch all the little ones (liv is in the oldest group, she's not quite five yet) doing their bit. i love it, what a highlight of christmas.
this afternoon i did the card class. i did end up spending more time helping others than doing my own, but it was fun and i enjoyed myself immensely. tomorrow i have managed to get myself an invite to the sure start volunteer christmas party. we are going off by coach, having dancing lessons, yummy lunch and santa! so that should be fun too. of course, on saturday i am running the primary christmas party, so round all the fun stuff i am trying to fit in things like buying and preparing all the food, getting games ready, setting up the santas grotto etc. i think the party will be fun, but preparing for it is not, esecially when it comes only six days after the presentation. thankfully, after that it is mostly over for a while and i can turn my attention to finishing hand made presents, wrapping all the stupidly large boxes that the kids presents are in, writing christmas cards, the carol concert i'm singing in etc etc. still, after today i am feeling considerably more festive and ready for all the chaos of the next three weeks!

the primary presentation is over!!! thank goodness. i think it went alright too. the kids did really well, although they still were not watching me when i was trying to get them stood up all co-ordinated so they looked like a ragtag band. but thats it now until next year, except for the christmas party on saturday, leadership next tuesday, the nativity on the 21st......
liv is in her school christmas concert on thursday, which i am greatly looking forward to. she is a star. she knows all the songs that everyone is singing and i think i do too, she has sung them that much. i can't wait to just sit back and enjoy the performance, playing proud mum.
thursday afternoon i have signed up to do a card making class at sure start, which sounds great except that somewhere along the line i have managed to get myself into running said class. the advantage of that is that i get to do my favourite pastime - craft shopping - with someone else's money! i'm actually quite looking forward to that too, so thursday should be a good day.
i'm finding it hard to feel christmassy this year. even though we had snow this morning, its felling more and more every year as though its just hard work. there just isn't enough time in the day to do everything that needs doing. i'm trying hard to feel the spirit of the real reason for the season. maybe we should cancel the commercial annoyance that christmas has become so we can return to celebrating the birth of our Saviour and Redeemer.

yesterday i had a phone call from social services to kickstart our application to become foster parents. we now have to go through a process to ensure we are suitable people to place children in need with. it was adam's idea to do this, he regularly sees children in situations where he would like to help in the course of his job and thought we had something to offer. i have taken quite a while to decide whether i think i could do it. there are many things to think about. am i patient enough? have we got room? how will our kids react? could i love someone else child enough and could i say goodbye to someone i've cared for when it comes time for them to leave? i'm still not 100% sure, but i think with the number of blessings i have in my life, that i would be very ungrateful to not try to offer help to children who are not as fortunate. so i hope that within a few months we will be welcoming a new addition to our family.
last night adam came home form work and announced that he had taken today off work. his brother peter and his wife jenni were down to visit and he wanted to spend time with them. so today we have hung out with family. we have not done anything special. this morning we helped his sister get rid of her sofas inpreperation for her new ones arriving. then we all went to costco for a christmas shopping trip. i love hanging out with them and i'm eternally grateful that i married into such an amazing family.
i have spent this evening playing on the computer, which is bad because i have a huge to do list that i should be working on instead. there are not enough hours in the day....
so that is a day in the very boring life of me.

our primary presentation is in two weeks, and i'm starting to get really worried. today we went through all the songs together and i think only the teachers were singing. now i've heard the kids sing them, so i know they can do it, but what if they don't sing on the day?! i haven't been involved in a presentation since i was last IN one - yes, about 18 years ago! this is so stressful! i have great teachers who will do all they can for the kids and seem to know what they are doing. at least someone does!
this is the time of year where the days all seem to run together and i find myself wondering if i really need sleep, i could really use those hours... of course, that has definitely not been helped by starting this, as it is using some of that precious time i do have. so on that note i'm off. now where's that to do list....

last night i went to a stampin' up party. it was fun, i made a couple of nice cards. i could happily have bought half the catalogue, but decided i didn't need to start any new obsessions!
we've been doing the dreaded christmas shopping today. it was stupidly busy and i wondered within half an hour why i hadn't stayed at home and bought it all online, especially when we discovered it had cost £8.50 just to park for four hours!

todays prompts are: how many brothers and sisters do you have, where do you fit in?
and did you ever wish you had more brothers and sisters, and why?

i am the youngest in my family. i have three older sisters - Karen, Sara and Fiona. Fiona died within an hour of being born, so i have never known her. she was 14 months older than me, and i've often wondered what it would have been like to have a sister so close to me in age. my other sisters are 8 and 10 years older than me, so for most of my teenage years it often felt like i was an only child, as it was just me, mum and dad at home. it took until i was an adult to feel like my sisters were my friends and that i had something in common with them. before that i just had three mums!
i have never wanted more brothers or sisters, but i did spend most of my childhood wishing my oldest sister was my brother instead. it was only when i was old enough to be friends with her that i began to appreciate her as a girl!! this longing for an older brother was so strong that when i discovered i was expecting my first child, i wanted it to be a boy so that any future children could have the older brother i had always wanted! of course, olivia was not a boy but i still love her with all my heart. now it makes sense to me that it was her first, she is the perfect big sister.
now my family has grown considerably, and i have lots of brothers and sisters - 13 to be precise! thats if you include all the in-laws. i love it, and them, all! it feels natural, like it was always this way, and was meant to be. my kids have 7 uncles and 6 aunts, and its brilliant. i am extremely blessed to have both the family i was born into, and the family i married into. i love them all.

right now i'm watching cbeebies in my living room surrounded by 7 children ages 1-9. its pretty cool. i would never have considered myself to be a children sort of person, but i'm slowly discovering that they are really not that scary after all, even when they are tired and grumpy. its a revelation! of course, i've always loved my own children, but other peoples? not so keen. i've had a slow warm up though, as i now have 17 nieces and nephews, with more on the way. then i got called as the primary president (shock, horror - and thats just what the kids think!) now i have realised kids are great!
if i get time before i go out (yes really!) i might do another prompt from my class later.

i'm not sure why i'm doing a blog. i'm not sure anyone will read it. but never mind, i'm writing just for me. i'm doing a course online at the moment about writing your stories (thanks jessica sprague!) and i think this may become my forum for telling my tales. we have been given prompts on almost every part of our lives and history to tell the stories. so i'm going to start with them.

so here we go with the first prompt:
what colour was your hair as a child and then as an adult?
i have always had what i call poohy brown hair. i like to think it has natural red in it - my grandfather and cousins all have naturally red hair - and i've always wanted mine to be that way. so once i got old enough i started trying to make it that way, not so naturally! i have been ginger, red, plum and almost every shade of red you can think of. then i decided i'd had enough of that, so i let it grow out and went back to poohy brown. it was then i discovered, to my horror, that at the tender age of 19 i was going grey!!!!! suffice it to say, it has never been its natural colour since! i have been very blonde, and had blonde highlights. then i went red again. finally i got fed up and started dying it poohy brown, so you couldn't see the roots so bad. so now i actually pay to have it a colour i don't even partictularly like. and that is the saga of my hair - i'll keep you posted. ;o)

everyone else is doing it.......
so i've decided to do a blog for posterity (?!!) since i'm starting you better know something about me. i am a stay at home mum of two children and i'm married to adam, a policeman. i love scrapbooking, reading, painting wood stuff, singing and family history.