About this and that

I can't even remember the last time in my life that I had an infectious disease... flu and colds yes, but you know, a typically child's disease...??? Must have been at least 20 years... or more... Well, I do have the great "privilege" to have a kid's disease with 31 years, who would have thought that. I guess I hadn't even heard of hand-mouth-foot-disease before coming to Australia, and me being a paediatric nurse and all. And now I have those lovely blisters inside my mouth and one ore two on my feet and a couple on my hands. Thankfully it is only a mild case, but still, I need to keep the family going... I hate being sick, at least I hate being sick when you can't just curl up in bed and sleep, and sleep and read and sleep some more... I did some of that yesterday, but today two little ones didn't tolerate mum being lazy in bed... sigh... why again did I sign up for this job????

I think I do have an allergy against TANTRUMS!!! I'm sure of it... but can you believe that such a cute little flower-picker would do something like "tantrums"?????

Nor could you believe that this other little flower-picker (or better flower-eater) would be a cheeky rascal, who also happens to be a drama queen in the making??? He also seems to have a passion for my shoes... he loves eating them on or off my feet, love carrying them around, hiding them or whatever else might enter his little mind.

We started planting our vegie garden. I'm not much of a gardener and I'm a bit... uhm... reluctant to believe that after the planting there will be a harvest at one point, but hopefully I will be proofed wrong and we'll be able to gather our crops of apples, pears, lemons, strawberries, parsnips, carrots, herbs... and the like at one, hopefully not too distant point in the future.

(those sticks in the dirt are actually 2 apple trees, 2 pear trees and one lemon tree, and not just plain sticks Ned picked up on the roadside... just for your information)

(can you see that one strawberry which is a tiny bit red??? Hopwfully we'll be faster than the slugs who ate the last red strawberry we had, grrr)

I should go to bed like a good girl (painkillers are marvellous, you don't really realise how sick you are... until their "power" runs out because you've forgotten to take some more), so I'll finish off with a rather random photo:

(just for you people who know Ned from the good old Doulos-times: he still loves giraffes, and the giraffes seem to like the door stopper)

Settling in

It still doesn't feel like we're living in our house. I still feel like we are house-sitting yet one more house (which is actually kind of true, because this is God's house, and we are house-sitting for Him). Though every time I drive up to the house and see that lovely red front door I am SO grateful that this is home now. I don't know how long it'll be home, we want to go back into missions, but for now it is and I am grateful. There is still a lot to be done to make a house into a home, but we're slowly getting there.

Lots of other things are happening as well... Cedric finally started walking... seems like he wanted to wait until he lived in this new home to show this new party trick. Which comes in quite handy as we're having a house-warming party tomorrow night with an international theme. We told people to dress "internationally" and bring some "international" food item... I wonder what will happen... will most people just come as "Australian"?????? How many people will actually come???? And how shall we manage the logistics??? We need to pray for nice weather, so that we can over flow into the garden.

Ned uses his words more and more, English as well as German, but he mixes it quite a lot... I hope he won't have "language confusion". We have less and less poo-in-undies-accidents again, and I am VERY grateful for it. But something's wrong with my little boy... he wanted to go to bed at 7pm... maybe yet another cold/flu is coming our way... I lost count of how many colds we've had since arriving in Australia.

The boys share a bedroom and it works out really well, they like it too (I think), the only problem is that sometimes they seem to wake up each other, grumps!!!

I think my camera lens died on me... sigh.... I don't have money to repair it... so it'll have to wait... sigh...!!!

I cut off part of my finger tip the other day. Not very advice-able. Don't do it. It HURTS... A LOT!!! And I always seem to stub that particular finger again and again, so it starts bleeding again and hurts even more. But I did express the wish to possess sharp knives and hubby got some for me, now I have to learn to use them on meat and vegetable instead on myself.

Do you know that song: "Glumph went the little green frog one day!"?????? Well, we sang it in play group the other day and now it is stuck in my head. And even worse, there is this little reserve next to our house with all sort of frogs and other living things and there is this one frog who does "Glumph" instead of a normal, decent frog noise.

I cleaned the house today... it IS quite a big house.

I'm SO happy with our 10$ garage sale, ancient cloth dryer (which works like a champion thanks to my father-in-laws tender love and care, working for over an hour cleaning all the dust and fluff out of it). Albany rain can equal the amount of rain which must have come down at Noah's times ( you know, that dude with the ark in the bible) although today was a glorious day.

I should go to bed, I waffle, sorry about that, night night

Home

You know those advertisements don't really tell you the truth. I mean I knew that beforehand, but welllll... I mean those advertisements where an attractive looking blonde and a tall, dark, handsome guy rush into their new home with a little cardboard box under their arms and all is happiness and joy. They have these huge smiles plastered on their faces and everything is easy-pie. They don't tell you about the stress that is actually involved, nor about your three-year-old who doesn't seem to cope with yet another move and started pooping into his undies again... they also don't tell you about overwhelming feelings of doubt: "How will I ever be able to turn this house into a comfortable, unique, "me" home with little funds ??"

Don't get me wrong, I am VERY excited about our new house... but right now I just feel so drained. Ned pooped in his undies 3 times today as well as yesterday and the day before, both boys are a bit whingy and I was up all day to clean and tidy up the last place we lived in. Ben's been busy painting the kids rooms (we really don't need a pink room) and yeah... tomorrow, we're back to our normal weekly routine... we shall see how normal it'll turn out to be. Ned has his swimming classes again, it's on every Monday. I don't know how much he learned last week but at least he stayed with the teacher and didn't throw a tantrum or anything.

But I still can't believe that this is home now. I finally started unpacking our boxes from Germany and parts of me wants to keep the empty boxes just in case we have to have boxes to pack things in again. But no, I WILL NOT keep them. They shall go to the dump ASAP!!! The place still looks quite empty though... we just don't have so much (yet). I guess once we have some couches it'll make a huge difference.... gash, I'm sooo tired and exhausted... I should stop waffling and go to bed....

It is almost my most favourite time again...

... time to PACK!!!!!

We're moving house one last time (hopefully for the next 4 or 5 years or so) on Friday... that is THIS Friday, that is the Friday only 5 days away. YAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!!!!!!

It just does not feel real though... and yes, I did start with some packing, I'm also not really geared up yet... what IS wrong with me, I mean we'll be moving in our own home... I'll be painting the office green and the guest room grey and the boys room green as well... I should be hopping up and down like a hyperactive 2 year old and have all my stuff ready to go... but somehow it still hasn't klicked in my mind, I'm still tuned on living here in this house for ever and ever... and Ben's just left me.. no, not for good, but until Wednesday. He's doing some course up in Perth for his chaplain-ing. It isn't the best of times for him to go away, Ned's been a bit.. uhm.. difficult the last couple days and I pray that we won't have too many screaming concerts while Ben's away.

Why is it that he can switch from being adorably cute to screaming meltdown within nano seconds??? I'm not coping very well with it and I feel a bit like a failure as a patient and loving parent...

Cooking

I like cooking. It wasn't always this way. I used to hate it in fact. Until I got married. Then I faced the decision either to cook and like what I'm eating or to cook and not like what I'm eating. That settled it quite quickly. I'm by far no fancy cook or anything but it tastes alright most of the times, unless it doesn't. Husband thinks it's great most of the time and the rest of the time he's too nice to comment about it... he often even likes the things I think turned out BAD. Ou well... lately I got a bit bored with my usual meals so I added another little challenge to my live: cook one new meal a week. It's nice to experience with new ideas, adopt them a little bit and be surprised with the result.

The other day I tried a new cake called a Japanese Cotton Cheesecake. And I have to make a confession right here and now: I ate half of the cake. Literally. I did!! I felt horrible. I could not stop myself. If you ever try this cake, you will understand. It's somehow a mixture between a cheesecake and victoria sponge cake and oh so good, fluffy and melt-away-on-your-tongue-ish. I am struggling a bit with keeping my healthy life style at present, I guess the honeymoon phase has gone and really healthy life has started... so here I was eating half a cake all by myself... Ben ate the other half though (okay, Ned had one piece as well).. sigh...

Well, and as it is "me" I'm talking about, cooking wouldn't be cooking without little... uhm... "incidents". Like a couple days ago... I didn't really know what to cook for dinner. Ben re-formated our computer so I wasn't able to check on my weekly meal plan what I'd planed for the day (I am quite faithful in creating this weekly meal plan, but so far I changed things around every single week since starting it), and I could not remember without the computer. So I was procrastinating a bit reading a new novel. Then I got a call from a friend from church if I was able to prepare a meal for someone in church who are struggling. Our church does that, and I think it is an excellent idea. So I said I'd make some pizza sometime this weekend and put it in the freezer in church for those people. That made me think pizza.. hmmm... I was laso thinking about the meal for the next day. For that day we planed to have those people over whose house we are buying, we thought we'd like to get to know them a bit better and they said yes, they'd come. But what do you cook for people you don't really know at all??? Then I thought of Raclette. I love Raclette. People here don't seem to know Raclette at all. So I thought I'd give it a go, it's something fun do to (if you don't have a clue what Raclette is check here). As Raclette is basically unknown on Australian shores I can't find genuine Raclette cheese but any old cheese will do.

All of a sudden those two thoughts (pizza and Raclette) melted into one (just like the cheese in a raclette or on a pizza). Is it possible to make mini-pizzas on the Raclette?? Well, I stopped procrastinating and got to work. I thought I'd give it a trial for dinner for ourselves before trying it on some people we didn't really know.

First I needed to make the pizza dough and lazy that I am at times I thought I'd just pop everything in our breadmaker. I still needed to measure the ingredients though (they really should invent a bread machine which does that for you as well), so I took the pan out of the machine, poured the water in and put in on the scales. Next came the flour. When I tried to put a teaspoon of sugar in... alas... I somehow knocked the whole thing of fthe scales and water and flour was everywhere on the other side of the kitchen counter... where, unluckily, we had our backpacks parked... sigh. Well, finally everything was kinda cleaned up and the machine was doing it's magic so I went to one of our boxes from Germany and went for the search of our Raclette grill. It was found... eventually.

And we discovered that it is an excellent idea to make mini pizzas with your Raclette grill... our guests had so much fun creating their own little pizzas as well as eating Raclette the more traditional way with potatoes. We learned that the lady is an architect and designed the house herself and that it was built by her dad.

And yesss.... dessert was that aweful cotton cheesecake... I shall not make it again in nearer future as I just cannot stop myself.. sigh.... ou well, healthy eating has been established again and now I need to get going an get dinner ready

Darling boys

This was my darling boys' display yesterday morning. They were stereo crying/screaming for at least half an hour. I thought I'd go MAD and was contemplating why we didn't get that cute puppy instead... but nonetheless I am reminded that at times I just behave like them to my heavenly Father, and He does not contemplate why He didn't get a puppy instead of me. He loves ME with all my faults and failings (aka sins) and just like He loves me so I just love my darling boys.

In general, Cedric has been such a little wincher and moaner... gone was my little sunshine boy... I suspected he was sick somehow... I mean, more sick than just a viral cold which he seemed to have had almost all the time in Australia so far... but you don't really go to the doc because of a tiny cold (okay, almost 3 months cold)... I hate going to the doc. He didn't show any symptoms of anything serious though... no rubbing of ears, no temperature, no nothing... just whining and crying and wanting to be carried... I mean it could have been teeth.

Yesterday then after lots of napping but still being miserable and my baby laying flat on his belly in the lounge just whining pitifully, I had enough and we went to the doc today... I was right. He had an ear infection... on both ears... those eardrum were little balloons... and that's quite painful, now I rather wonder that he didn't cry more. Now he's on antibiotics and I pump him full with painkillers (not REALLY pump full, but you know... in the allowed quantity) and man, what a change of baby.... uhm, toddler I mean. I have got my little sunshine boy back, what a difference. I wonder if Ned's hatching some sort of bug as well... he asked to go to bed before bed time... gash.

Darling boys

I seem to not be able to upload videos here on this blog... I wanted to show you this one of my boys display yesterday morning. They were stereo crying/screaming for at least half an hour. I thought I'd go MAD and was contemplating why we didn't get that cute puppy instead... but nonetheless I am reminded that at times I just behave like them to my heavenly Father, and He does not contemplate why He didn't get a puppy instead of me. He loves ME with all my faults and failings (aka sins) and just like He loves me so I just love my darling boys.

In general, Cedric has been such a little wincher and moaner... gone was my little sunshine boy... I suspected he was sick somehow... I mean, more sick than just a viral cold which he seemed to have had almost all the time in Australia so far... but you don't really go to the doc because of a tiny cold (okay, almost 3 months cold)... I hate going to the doc. He didn't show any symptoms of anything serious though... no rubbing of ears, no temperature, no nothing... just whining and crying and wanting to be carried... I mean it could have been teeth.

Yesterday then after lots of napping but still being miserable and my baby laying flat on his belly in the lounge just whining pitifully, I had enough and we went to the doc today... I was right. He had an ear infection... on both ears... those eardrum were little balloons... and that's quite painful, now I rather wonder that he didn't cry more. Now he's on antibiotics and I pump him full with painkillers (not REALLY pump full, but you know... in the allowed quantity) and man, what a change of baby.... uhm, toddler I mean. I have got my little sunshine boy back, what a difference. I wonder if Ned's hatching some sort of bug as well... he asked to go to bed before bed time... gash.