Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year

I've been meaning to do a post about our nativity set and I figured I'd better do it before Christmas, as opposed to doing it after Christmas when I'm packing it away, which would be normal for me.

I'd been looking for a good Nativity Set for numerous years. I would see one that I quite liked, but it just didn't seem to be what I wanted and I hesitated to spend good money on something that only comes out once a year, unless it was something extra special.

About three years ago (I think) I came across a set all of a sudden (I wasn't actually looking for one at the time) and knew that this was the one. So I arranged to purchase one then and there, and it took quite a few months for it to arrive, but it was well worth the wait.

The background story is that the nativity set was made by Christian Women in Poland, who sew the figures to support their families. Each piece was hand-sewn by a different woman. The nativity sets are a ministry of the Elim Christian Centre in Poland.

Please realise that my poor photography skills won't really do the set justice, it's a thousand times better in real life. Also please ignore the fire place in the background, I was too lazy to crop the photos down (and lack of time).

Here is the first photo of the complete set...



The figures are filled with rice (or sand) and this is done by the recipient (to make postage much cheaper). Even with my pathetic sewing skills I was able to put in some rice and sew the tiny hole together. The rice (or sand) means that each figure can be slightly posed, to lean forward or backward, however you like. This comes in handy when using them to illustrate the Christmas Story, as the shephards can lean back to look up at the angel or lean forward to worship Jesus. Here is a closer photo of Joseph, Mary, the manger and the sheep. Notice the cute donkey in the background. (I realise that the Bible does not actually say there were animals present, but a nativity set wouldn't be complete without them).

My favourite are the Wise Men and the Camels. To avoid confusion I'm considering placing the Wise Men and Camels in a seperate room of the house, or at least at the other end of the room, so they can be travelling to see the Saviour, rather then appearing to be present at His birth. Here is a photo of the Wise Men with the Camels...

The boys adore moving them around and playing with them. They are fairly child friendly, although Caleb is banned from touching them unless someone is with him!!

The final photo is of one of the shepherds (there are two). I forgot to take photos of the angel, which is placed on top of the fire place. But that will give you something to look forward to seeing next year!

Matthew 1:21

"And she will bring forth a Son, and you shall call His name JESUS, for He will save His people from their sins."

I'm an artist with an unusual canvas

It's not just me who is a sucker for punishment is it? Is there anyone else out there that always volunteers for things that seem really great at the time, then the day arrives and you wonder how you got yourself into this??!!

Well I volunteered to do the free face painting at the Carols by Candlelight last weekend.

Yes I know.

But I've done it before, a few years ago helping out a friend who was the sucker that volunteered that time, so I was fairly organised and knew what was involved. Or so I thought.

See, the last few times we did it for an hour or so, overlapping slightly with the carols while finishing off a few kids, then leisurely sat back and enjoyed the carols. Not this year. We face-painted for 2 and a half hours straight.

Fortunately for me I roped in two other suckers, so there were three of us, painting kid after kid after kid. People were packing up after the carols, and we were still there painting faces (or arms, or cheeks or hands). I was using my flashing-santa-heads headband for light in the end. Is this green? Or blue? Oh who cares, it's too dark for the kid to tell and he's going to go home and wash it off in ten minutes before going to bed anyway.

Here's a photo of me painting a red-back spider. I thought this one turned out pretty cool, in a comical, cutesy kind of way. Don't look at my hair, I haven't decided if I'm allowing my hair to go darker as it keeps trying to, or if I'm going back to blonde.

Overall, it went really well. We got all the kids done, and they all seemed happy enough. Probably the happiness was helped along with the free Freddo's we were handing out.

(A big THANK YOU to the two other suckers I roped into doing it with me - are we on for next year???!!)

The boys got into the act aswell, which is really strange because up to now they've been scared of face painting and wouldn't go near anyone who had their face painted. They've suddenly matured in that area, as these photo's will show you...

Isaac had the Christmas theme happening...



Jacob's was pretty cool, although it's wearing off in these pictures. It was about 11pm when we got home...


Just in case you can't tell, it's a dinosaur that opens it's mouth when Jacob opens his. Cool hey!

Jeremy had a half-mask spiderman face, but he was in the shower already when these photo's were taken.

Recent Events

Happy Birthday Isaac!!!!

He was SO excited to be turning four, the boys had been counting down dark sleeps from about 20 dark sleeps to go. On the morning of his birthday he said "Mummy, am I four NOW? .... Good, because I feel four."

We had a nice relaxing day, then had the requested Pizza (homemade) for dinner, followed by 'clock' cake, which of course pointed to Four O'Clock. Caleb might need some instructions in cake etiquette....

It's amazing how they just know how to do that!!??

On a different topic, we've been spending every Monday afternoon down at the oval, with Jeremy and Isaac doing Little A's this season. (Why must it be held over Summer, why why???). They are both loving Little Athletics and are so enthusiastic....

I realise the above photo of the high jump is blurry, but that's what happens when daddy is trying to take a photo and Caleb is trying to get the camera at the same time.

I just love this photo of Isaac, ready to run... We had a discussion previously about being ready to race, instead of looking up at the clouds, fiddling with your shoes, etc. The next discussion will be on focussing on the finishing line instead of looking around at all the other runners or slowing down to wave to mummy. :)

Hebrews 12:1

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us.

Return of the Dirt Magnet.

We've had some great rain here over the last few days, but its meant the boys, especially Caleb, have been cooped up inside the house a little more then usual. Today was the day they had to be released, as the boy-energy inside the house was reaching unsafe levels.

Preparing for the worst, they were all packed up into old clothes and boots. This time it took Caleb five minutes to reach the point of no return. He's slipping.

Oh look mama, i've got some dirt on my hand.

Amazingly, he didn't cry at all when he fell flat on his face in a puddle. He just had a bit of a taste of the water dripping into his mouth, then resumed the business of exploring the world around him.

I could hear my washing machine groaning inside the house.

Do you think I'll need to give him a bath? Or can I just get away with a change of clothes, a quick swipe of a washer, and then the carpet will take care of the rest when he's wrestling his brothers?

Contrary to what you may have thought from the last couple of posts, there are 3 other boys living in our house. Isaac got in on the act too, but he's not as close to the ground as he used to be. He won't need a bath. Yet.

Jacob always stays clean no matter what he plays in. Here he is amongst the oats which we really carefully grew around the compost pile. This was after he played in the mud. He's the total opposite to Caleb. He's a dirt resistor.

Jeremy's the smart one. He stayed in the house.

I don't know how much longer my washing machine can take it.

After putting the boys outside to play this morning I went back inside to get their hats. I was gone for no more then, say, 3 minutes when I returned to find this:

In case you didn't get it the first time, here he is again a few minutes later:

There must be some kind of record I can claim - it took Caleb no more then 3 minutes to cover himself from head to toe in dirt. What is it with boys and dirt? Growing up with three sisters, I can't remember a time any of us got this dirty. Even my tomboy sister, who loved getting dirty, chewing bones and wanted to be a daddy when she grew up (but that's another story) didn't get this dirty. Of course it may also have to do with the fact that we grew up in England, where the grass was a wee bit greener then it is out here. We also didn't have a pile of dirt sitting in the back yard just asking to be climbed up and slid on (which, incase you're wondering, is the topsoil for our future lawn).

A few minutes later he was off and running amongst the burrs, attracting more dust with each step:

Surely there must be a limit to the amount of dust the clothes can hold. Maybe I should give the washing machine a break and try the Dyson.

Ahh, my little Dirt Magnet. What is it they say? A little dirt never hurt. I wouldn't have you any other way. :)

ps: it's not a black eye, just more dirt.

:)

Slowly getting back to a new normal

We're on the tail end of being in moving mode - it's been about a month, but we've been chaotically busy with more then just moving. More on those happenings in future posts, but for now here are some pot shots of our new normal...

Caleb had the first shower in the new house:

The lounge Lego room:

Making cookies on the kitchen counter:

The walk-in pantry and it's most frequent visitor:

First brekky after moving in:

Getting ready for the first dark sleep in the new house:

Guess what?

We're moving.

:)

Birthdays

The boys chose and decorated a cake for my birthday. PVT assembled the actual cake, but the boys did all the decorating by themselves, including all the icing. PVT is the cake decorator in our house, as evidenced here and here, so it seems they're following in his footsteps! If only I can figure out how to get them really excited about cooking dinner, they can do that each night too!

Update and Sewing

We've been away for a couple of weeks, here's the report and some other tidbits:

• we went on a fantastic Lake Dinner Cruise for my dad's 60th
• we took the boys up the 'rocket' tower in Canberra (Telstra Tower). Isaac was a bit worried it was going to take off.
• we bought a Dyson vaacuum cleaner (I've been coveting one for a while so this is exciting news)
• four out of six of us got sick. It could have been the swine flu?!?!
• we scraped and then painted the ceiling of a bedroom, whilst sick
• the boys spent hours collecting snails
• we were able to meet up with 2 friends who live far far away, seeing both for a very brief period of time (but definately worth it!)
• Isaac has learnt to write his name
• Caleb is learning to run and is becoming book-obsessed
• Jem is probably going to end up in the Guiness Book of Records for building then breaking up then building the same Lego Kit over and over again
• Jacob has begun adding numbers in the down-the-page format, which takes me back to my childhood.
• PVT is building the steps up to the verandah at our new house

The boys made some cards for my dad for his 60th birthday, using basic sewing. They turned out pretty cool:

Jacob's:

Jeremy's:

Isaac's:

Birthday Season has begun

Every family has a 'birthday season' part of the year, and for us it has well and truly begun, starting with Jem turning 5:



The boys get to request the cake they want from their third birthday onwards and for unknown reasons Jeremy wanted the shoe cake. It's possible he chose the cake according to the number of lollies shown on the picture in the book. But PVT did a brilliant job, yet again. This is possibly one of his best cakes yet:



Birthdays are alot of fun when you're five. :)

Here's a picture of the carpet, to prove things are progressing in the house:

The new wrestle mat has arrived.

When the carpet guy came and laid all the underlay, it sure didn't take long for it to become a wrestling mat...

Stay tuned for pictures of The New Carpet.

Nothing. Absolutely Nothing.

I've got absolutely nothing to say. The only reason I'm posting is that it's been two weeks since I last posted, which is getting a bit on the slack side. But really, this is a post about Nothing, since I have Nothing to post about. (name that tv show).

That's not to say we are doing nothing. We are too busy to be doing nothing, although doing nothing looks pretty good somedays - you know the days when you want to just curl up in bed and do nothing. I've had some of them lately. But four kids plus homeschooling plus housebuilding equals no time to do nothing.

I could discuss the weather. We've had a fair amount of decent rain lately, but that would be pretty lame discussing the weather on my blog. Especially seeing as when it comes to rain in these here parts, our annual average rainfall amounts to not much more then nothing anyways.

Nothing much has happened on our house. Nothing much worth posting about anyway. The fireplace is being put in by PVT as I type. The carpet is hopefully arriving tomorrow. I've been having visions of the wrong carpet being put in, so the plan is to rush out tomorrow to check it's the one we ordered. We had trouble deciding which carpet to choose, but then we pretty much had trouble choosing stuff every step of the way. Like the kitchen benchtops, the tiles, the paint etc. We're pretty good at procrastinating. The carpet colour we eventually chose is called 'bran'. A nice healthy choice.

There is really only one thing to post about that isn't nothing, and I still get heart palpatations thinking of it. After three years of house building, and three years where we have been very blessed with no major accidents, we had a major/minor accident last weekend involving the youngest member of our family. Without going into too many details, Caleb managed to drink a tin of turps, which had a paint brush in it being cleaned of enamel paint. So he managed to drink some turps mixed with enamel paint. Fortunately he hasn't yet mastered drinking from a cup so he spilt most of it down his front. Also fortunately was the fact that our paramedic friend arrived for dinner two minutes later. To cut a long story short, he's totally fine. He spent a fair bit of time that evening hiccuping and burping, and has a bad case of what looks like sunburn on his tummy where it got onto his skin, which is now peeling. He was over the whole experince the next morning, whereas I'm still recovering from the shock. So I guess that's not really nothing, but thankfully it turned out to be nothing.

This is where I post a cute picture of Caleb to prove he's okay after his experience (which turned out to be nothing) but I haven't got the camera here at the moment, so you'll have to wait till next time. Until then you can just look at nothing.

From zero to one

Happy Birthday Caleb!

One year has passed since little wingnut came into the world. A birthday is always an exciting thing in our house and the boys have been counting down to Caleb's first birthday for quite a while, with the big day finally arriving yesterday.

I'm not sure which brother was the most excited, but they all ensured Caleb had a great time. He quickly got the hang of taking the paper off the presents, insisting on tearing one tiny piece at a time, which he would then pass to his big brother...



He took the job of opening his presents very seriously, giving it a great effort...



We made him a number 1 cake. Do you think he liked it?...


Some things about Caleb at the age of 1:

• he is walking more then crawling (toddling being the correct word for it)
• he is determined to be a part of what his brothers are doing
• he loves to read books and turns pages with his cute little fingers
• he still looks like a wingnut, but of course a very cute one
• he loves his bath and will play for ages in the water
• he loves being outside
• he's not afraid to face up to his brothers and tell them off
• he can climb on all the furniture
• he loves his dummy, and mummy cuddles
• he is very determined and persistant

There isn't a cuter one-year-old out there. :)

Good or Bad

If you come to our place this week you'd better watch out.

You might get caught in the trap:

And if you do, we'll know you're a 'baddie', coz it's a 'baddie' trap. The chairs will fall on you and the 'bomb's' (flower pots and bricks) will go off. The broom will prevent you from escaping, if the flower pot's didn't finish you off.

Dad got caught. ;)