I, I, what to do with I....

I've been given the letter 'I' from MOF Lei. Thanks!

1. Ice creams - just got the Home Ice Cream brochure on friday. Yummo! Is there anything better then home delivered ice cream....by the boxful!! Unfortunately he only goes past my house once a fortnight, so i have to wait another 2 weeks...but that will give me plenty of time to make up my mind about what i want. And yes, its is almost winter and i'm still eating ice cream.

2. Icicle - going with the winter theme. Take a look at this cool pic i took last year on our trip to the snow:

Thats the side of a motel. I thought it was cool.

3. iPod - i don't have a' real' iPod like as in one from Apple but my dh got me a SanDisk MP3 player for Mothers Day. I love it! It plays music and audio books and has a radio. YAY! So when i join the gym at the end of the year i will have something to listen too as i stride it out on the treadmill.

4. Icky - Changing pooey nappies. Why, oh why aren't kids toilets trained when they are born??!!!

5. Imagination - we are just starting to see our sons imagination taking off. And its so cute and sweet! Though the fact that he thinks he's a dog is a bit odd.

6. Ideal - my ideal day would be one of relaxation and pampering. Its a nice dream!

7. Immaculate - what my house isn't. I love display homes because i love a house that is neat and tidy with no crap hanging around. My aim in life is to one day have an immaculate home. It will probably be when i am old and have no kids at home.

8. International - i hope one day to be able to travel overseas. Dh and I are planning a trip to New Zealand....when i say planning its more like 'yeah, for our next holiday we should go there'.

9. Ingest - what i've eaten today: 2 pieces of toast with vegemite, 2 cups of ovaltine and about 4 Milk arrowroot biscuits. You can all sleep well tonight know that. ;)

10. Idiot - how i felt on Sunday when i was corrected in how i spelt the name of the church on the newsletter(didn't put the hyphen in Latter-day) the shame!

No you haven't wandered onto some strange blog. I am just making some changes because i get bored easily and i was sick of my old colour...to be honest it was making my eyes hurt. lol. So i'm going with something less confronting, just like me :)

Blogging will continue as normal.....when i think of something useful to say ;)

Exciting news!

I had my ultrasound yesterday and we are having a BOY! Not sure of names yet. That's a whole other post! lol

I'm bored so here goes....

Two for togetherness tag

2 things you compliment your husband on while in his presence.
1. His nose, he has the most perfectly shaped nose i have ever seen!
2. HIs hands are pretty perfect too.

2 compliments you make about your spouse to your friends about your spouse.
1. pass....how bad am I?????
2.

2 traits you married him/her for.
1. He can make me feel special
2. He loved me

2 Days you cherished the most with your husband being together.
1. Our wedding day
2. The birth of our son

2 Material things you could give your husband if you just inherited a fortune.
1. Whatever camera he wants the most
2. A trip to NZ....of course i would benefit from that too ;)

2 things you would miss the most if he left for two weeks.
1. Him sleeping next to me
2. His help with our son...i'd probably be mental by the end of the 2 weeks

2 thoughts that crossed your mind when you first met/saw your spouse.
1. Thank goodness he's better looking then i thought he was going to be
2. His teeth are crooked

2 favorite dates
1. Our first date
2. Our second date...we didn't really date after that.

2 funny odd things you love.(ok i'm changing this slightly....because i don't love any odd things he does!!!)
1. He never wipes his back after he gets out of the shower so when he puts his clothes on they get wet!!!! It annoys me!
2. Cleans his ears in public

2 two places you have lived with your spouse.

1. Toowoomba, Australia
2. We've only lived in the one place so far.

2 favorite vacations

1. Canberra Trip
2. All of our little road trips....our 10 hour drive was a good one!!

And i thought i had it bad.....

Today i wanted to relate my birth story to you, of my son Ethan. Don't worry there is a point to this post other then that ;)

When i was pregnant with him i looked forward to labour. Other then the fact that i wanted my body back and by the time i was 7 mths pregnant i was sick of being pregnant, I was interested in how i would handle it. Other woman can tell you about birth and the pain etc but until you actually experience it you don't really get it. And i don't care how many books you read, nothing will prepare you for giving birth for the first time.
My sister had relatively easy births of her first 2 babies - short labours(5 and 3 hours) and since she is half the size of me i figured with my 'child bearing hips' maybe i would have a similar experience. She was pregnant at the same time as me with baby #3 but had to have a c/s and her dd was born 6 wks before Ethan. Fun times!

My first indication that something was going to happen was on the 8th of February 2004, when i was 38wks 3ds. I started having contractions at church and had them for 4 hours before they disappeared. I was pretty disappointed but at my next checkup my dr assured me that that was a good sign that i might go soon. On the 13th i had more contractions that continued through the night but they didn't hurt as much as the ones previously. On the 14th(39wks2ds) i had a 'show' but my contractions stopped. I had my usual checkup on Monday the 16th and was really really hoping i wouldn't have to see him again the next week. We did some shopping and lots of walking around that day and while we were out i started feeling very heavy and sore 'down there', probably the most uncomfortable i had ever been. At 10.30 pm that night the contractions started again but i was able to go to sleep because they weren't hurting, just there. At 1.30am i woke up to contractions that weren't going away. I started timing them for the next 2 hours and they were becoming more regular. My dh finally woke up and we started timing them together. By 4am they were coming every 5 minutes and we called the hospital and the midwife said to come in when i felt ready too. We drove up at about 5am when my contractions were 2 1/2 minutes apart. I was 4cm when we got there and by 10.30am i was 6cm. We decided to break my waters to see if that would hurry things up a little. It did....but only in the pain department!
My contractions were now 2 minutes apart and i was screaming so much i'm sure they would have heard me in China. Somewhere around 12.30 i got an epidural...ahhhh blessed relief! It was sometime between now and when i got to 10cm(i can't quite remember) that they discovered that Ethan was not in the right postion. He was on the wrong side and well...yeah he wasn't about to come out anytime soon without some help. I was started on a drip of sytonison to make my contractions as strong as possible in the hope that he would turn. He didn't. I pushed and pushed. He moved down but he didn't change his overall position. So they called in a Dr and he assessed me, gave me an ultrasound and decided that if there was no improvement in like the next hour he would have to be delivered by ventouse. Fine with me! So the Dr went off and did a c/s and came back to find me and the baby in the exact same postion. In the next minutes there were like a million people in the room all ready for the delivery. Ethan was finally delivered with a lot of struggle at 6.33pm after 17 hours of labour. He was 9lbs by the way.
Because he had to go in the special care nursery, was on oxygen for a few hours and i was downright stuffed, i didn't get to hold him or feed him til the next day.

So my first experience with birth was tough and i was thinking i had a pretty hard time with it all...that was until i found a book called "Eve - Sex, Childbirth and Motherhood Through the Ages" by Petrina Brown. I just got this book out of the library on Monday so i haven't read it all. But i am in utter astonishment at what went on back in the days before medicine. Of course i knew that these poor woman had to go without pain relief but holy cow some of the stuff talked about in the book is downright horrible. It's a wonder anyone survived childbirth at all.

The book starts off in the time BC and i'm currently reading about the Middle Ages. A straight forward birth was hard enough and was always feared but one with complications you can pretty well be assured that either you, your baby or both wouldn't survive. If a baby was stuck they would try physical violence to the mother such as throwing her around the room or hanging her upsidedown to try and move the baby. Sometimes the dr would resort to dismembering the baby to get it out. In one story a babys arm was cut off and then the dr swaddled it tightly(as they did in those days) with the arm in the proper position so noone would know what happened.

What i found funny though was some of the popular pain relievers in the days BC. Here's just a sample:

A drink sprinkled with powdered sow's dung
Drinking goose semen with water or liquids that flow from a weasel's uterus through its genitals.
Placing the placenta of a dogs on the thighs
A vultures feather under the womans feet
Earthworms in raisin wine.

And to relieve the new mothers sore breasts:

Drink mouse dung diluted with rainwater and ass's milk
Rub breasts with sow's blood, goose grease, rose oil and a spiders web
Lay earthwooms dipped in honey wine on the breast to draw out pus

Makes you appreciate the time in which we live doesn't it?? I would probably be dead if i was born back then.

There are many weird, yucky and downright scary things in this book. Not just about birth but about how woman were treated and thought of while they were menstrating, pregnant and after the birth.
I highly recommend you read it!!

Shall i compare thee to a ...dining room table?


I want you to look at these two pictures.
What do you see? To the untrained eye it might look like a very messy dining table and a woman. Yes, you would be right. That dining table is mine and that woman is my mother. What do they have in common? Well i'll tell you.

That table was once nice and new. I got it second hand off my sister, she got it second hand off who knows who. After moving it from her place to mine the base got a little chipped. After i got married I moved 1200kms to my new dhs place. On the way we had a car accident. If you can't tell from the photo, its a glass top table. When we packed up our trailer to move our stuff we cushioned it between my ensemble bed. After our accident, other then making sure we were both ok our first thought was for the table. Not a scratch on it! My poor violets weren't so lucky, they ended up upside down on the floor in the back of the car....they survived though until much later when they died a natural death of not being watered by me. Anyhow getting back to the dining table.....its a hell of a thing to move. Not only is the base heavy but the top is very heavy and you have to roll it or you just can't carry it without hurting your back. So its been moved 3 move times since we've been married and always up stairs and always with care to not smash it. The top has held up very well but the base is a bit knocked up. But unless your looking closely at it you can't really tell.
It looks pretty ordinary sitting there in my kitchen. But it needs a lot of maintence. Since its glass it shows every little mark including the grubby little finger type. So i clean it with a glass cleaner to make it look nice.
Its also very handy. Not only do we eat off it, but if you look closely you will see various items on it. There are some toy trains - so it's also a train track. There are camera lenses - it also serves as a work bench for my dh when he's taking apart his lenses to fix. There's also a fruit bowl on there - for quick snacks. It also serves as my bench for preparing food etc. Its also a place where i can stretch out material when i'm making clothes. So many uses for a common old dining table. I'm sure you probably do the same sort of thing with yours.

Now I want you to think about my mother and your mother. She was once nice and new too. Well she's still nice but she was young and fresh once. Over the years she's recieved a few knocks. She's moved around the country and overseas to live. I'm sure her 'base' is a little knocked up and chipped from accidents and just from the riggors of life. She doesn't always look like she's just been polished...as we all don't..especially first thing in the morning right? But after a little bit of care and effort she looks brand new.
She might look like just any woman, but thats not all she is. Like my dining table she has many purposes. She's also a mum - providing love, kindness, a shoulder to cry on, food and endless hours of devotion to her family. She's also a friend and someone to talk to when noone else will listen. She's also a wife - sharing her life and love with her dh for eternity. She's also a daughter of God - a wonderful person with great spiritual gifts that are hers and noone elses.
I admire my mum so much. She has been through so much in her life, more so then my poor old dining table and she has come out of it all ok.

She gives me hope that if she can get through life like she has, then i can too.

Finding Happiness

Considering my largly depressing previous post i thought it would help me if i post for a while..well every now and then... about what brings me happiness. I know logically that if we just truck along that we can better our lives eventually, it wont be like this forever. And i also know that if i focus on the good and what happiness is in my life that it will make it easier to bare..bear??grrrrr. Last night as i got into bed and prepared to read my scriptures i was reminded that the Bishop challenged us to read Alma this month. So i flipped to Alma and started. Chapter 1. Have you read Alma lately? Of course you have, you read the whole BoM last year right??? ;) The chapter is mainly talking about a man called Nehor and how he was trying to introduce priestcraft into the Church. He was preaching that the church should support him and he was the type of person to wear costly apparel and was prideful. He also murdered Gideon, a righteous man.

But this is the verses that stood out to me : 27-28.

"And they did impart of their substance, every man according to that which he had, to the poor, and the needy, and the sick, and the afflicted; and they did not wear costly apparel, yet they were neat and comely.
And thus they did establish the affairs of the church; and thus they began to have continual peace again, notwithstanding all their persecutions"

That kinda smacked me in the face. Continual peace from just being good people and not being worldly. Not peace from bad things happening but peace in their hearts. How nice :)

So today i have 2 things that have brought me happiness and made me smile.

1. Rubber fish:

I bought these for my dh when we were dating. He had 2 fish die so i bought him some rubber ones to replace them ;) You can actually fill them with water and then squeeze them and the water squirts out. They are now bath toys for Ethan. He loves them! So last night we were having a bath together and i had the job of squirting water in his mouth with a fish. He was in fits of laughter because i'm not a very good shot and i kept getting it up his nose. lol Its even harder to squirt 2 fish as once!


2. I Spy book:

We got this recently and Ethan loves it. We read it everynight before bed. Our usual routine is that i ask him where things are and he points them out. eg. 'wheres the horse?' he does the horse noise and points it out. But last night he wanted to hug all the animals. So i'd say 'wheres the horse?' and he would hug the book with a huge smile on his face. We did this the whole way through. He's just so damn cute!

Do you ever feel like you've totally ruined your life? Like if you had just made a different choice where a decision was concerned that your life would be better? I have been thinking about this lately. I have been trying to figure out where i fit in this thing called life. Some people breeze through life with no apparent struggles or hard decisions to make and i am jealous of that. But do they really have no struggles? I doubt it. I guess people cope with their problems differently. A lot differently then i do. I tend to want to tell people, to somehow make them see how hard things are for me. Crying for help or sympathy? Maybe. But sometimes i don't want people to see how hard i struggle with life in general. I never want my family to know if i'm upset or depressed or wanting to walk out on my life and never come back. But i have no problem telling complete strangers or MOFs. Why? I'm not sure. Maybe it has something to do with the fact that they don't have to see me everyday and i don't have to pretend to have it all together. I can be myself. With those who see me everyday and are related to me i want to appear normal and content so they won't think i'm a freak who struggles to keep the house clean and look after one child.

I'm a very jealous person. I never used to be. Not at all. And i really want to stop being who i've become. But how? How do i change the fact that every time i see that someone has something better then me i get envious. Not just saying 'oh how lucky, i wish i had that' But i get very depressed and almost obsessed about how my life is wrong, how it should be different. If i had done such and such i could have what they have. If i didn't have kids we would be better off. I'm not always talking about material things here. Its everything. Skills, looks and possessions. I'm seriously a screwed up person. But like i said - i never used to be this way at all. It's only since i got married. 3 years of wishing things were different. 3 years of hating my life. 3 years of regretting. 3 years of struggling to keep my mind on things that are important. And i've failed.

Yesterday i thought about leaving the private board i belong to because seeing peoples lives makes me sad and depressed. Lives that include new cars and new houses and more put together women(spiritually, emotionally and financially) then i could ever be. I had anxiety about it. I haven't had anxiety since November last year. I know alot of them read my blog and i want to apologise now. I'm sorry i'm so pathetic. You are great women and deserve everything you have.

I guess my biggest problem is learning how to fix it. How to fix myself. I'm not even sure of where to start. How do i start to love my life and get rid of my regrets and envy. I was thinking last night that if i lived in the middle of nowhere i would be fine. No contact with the outside world. Nothing to envy, no way of seeing what others have. Only relying on ourselves. Building up my skill of survival - i could finally be good at something.
But thats not really practical or realistic. I have to live in this world like everyone else.

So how can i be content with what i have? How can i make myself like being a sahm? How can i make myself enjoy my family? How can i save my sanity?
Lots of rhetorical questions. I have no answers.

I'm feeling a little covet-y(i know that's not a real word but work with me ok) So i thought i should do a list of 20 things i'm grateful for . I rarely do this so it's long overdue.

I am grateful for:

1. My dh who loves me no matter what
2. My ds who smiles when he sees me
3. A place to live
4. A regular income
5. A heater, its very small but it works at least ;)
6. Beautiful warm days and chilly nights
7. Autumn leaves
8. Track pants
9. My uggies - holes and all
10. My morning sickness is going away at last
11. Chocolate mud cake...is there anything better?
12. Good friends
13. Finally feeling the baby kick! twice just tonight when i was having dinner....it likes pizza apparently ;)
14. Repentance
15. My Heavenly Father is kind and loving and knows how i need to learn things
16. Eternal families
17. Having a Temple just 2 hours away
18. My family, who are my best friends
19. Our DVD player to keep Ethan entertained when i need to do housework
20. The internet. I would not be able to blog without it ;)

Happy Birthday to my Sweetheart!

It's my husbands birthday today! So this is a post to celebrate that. So here's his life story in a nutshell - he was born, he met me and lived happily ever after!! Sweeeeet. ;)

Ok, seriously now. Though i'll leave out the dirty details ;).

He was born on the 5th of May 1972 in Dalby, Queensland, Australia. He was a smart little cookie and when he was 6 he had a teacher do a study on him. In high school he thought he was even smarter ;) I find this comment from a Year 9 report card highly amusing:

"Graham seems to feel that because he is achieving highly he has the right to talk whenever he likes and disrupt the rest of the class"

LOL!

He graduated Dalby High in 1989 and then went off to the University of Southern Queensland in Toowoomba in 1990. He studied a Degree in Information Technology and graduated after 4 years. He worked in a few jobs, living out in Dalby then back here in Toowoomba. He was also married from 1997 -1999 and engaged in 2001 but we won't mention anymore about those unpleasant episodes :P.
We met in 2002 and the rest is history and i've already wrote about it.

So today my husband is 34. Wow. This morning he realised that he was almost half of 70! LOL Well if you look at like that of course its going to be depressing.
I tease him alot about his age, since i'm still in my 20's i'm allowed, right ;) But in all honesty i don't think he's old and i don't think he looks old. Sure he has a lot of grey hair but so do i!

So sweetheart, embrace your grey! Embrace your cane! Embrance your false teeth!

I'll still love you!!!

One husband...*cough*...pair of shoes 4 sale.


They say that woman are hard to figure out. Of course 'they' are probably men who have no desire to find out what woman are all about and just dismiss it as some strange phenomena that noone will ever get to the bottom of, kinda like Nessie and Bigfoot.
But you know what? I am here to say today that woman are not so complex as men. Yes, you heard me. I think most women will agree that if you have a question about something that we as woman do, if you just ask we can explain it to you, in easy to understand words. You won't even need a dictionary, i swear!
Now men on the other hand are different. After 3 years of marriage i am finding this out little by little....ok and maybe a big bit right at the start when i had some culture shock. There is nothing that can help me understand the reasoning behind how men think. Seriously, it boggles the brain to think about it.
If your wondering why i'm writing such a post, let me tell you. It stems of course from my wonderful, beloved husband(i have to write that because he reads my blog ;)) and the fact that i can't figure out how his brain works.

He has a pair of shoes. Jandles we call them, not sure why....but they are essentially what was commonly called Reef Sandles back in the days when they came out. They are the kind you can wear at the beach because they can go in water and sand and you can just hose them off or whatever to clean them. Very practical and cool to wear in summer. Now i generally would not have a problem with my Dh wearing shoes like this, except for one thing. The smell. On a scale of 1 -10, 10 being reserved for something like a rotting human body(not that i've smelt that, but i'm sure its pretty bad), these shoes get a 9.5. I have never smelled anything like it in my life.

Now here comes the fun bit.

My dh doesn't think its bad. Half the time he can't even smell it! So he's walking through the house with this smell eminating from him and he's oblivious. How can this be?? My complex female brain doesn't understand. What is even harder to understand is that he gags at the smell of a pooey nappy.
Even with my very sensitive pregnant nose, a nappy is nothing compared to these. Even at my most sickest with morning sickness, i could still change nappies. Of course i had to. Dh couldn't because they make him too sick. But get these shoes in the house and i'm feeling sick and Dh? Well you would think he had roses strapped to his feet.
Of course once i complain, he takes them off and then washes his feet but i can still smell it....everywhere. Its like a gas leak. It gets in everything. Only some heavy duty Glen 20 and washing the sheets gets the smell away. Washing the sheets? you may ask. Yes, once he wore them while lying on the bed! I can't remember exactly what i said to make him take them off but i'm sure if i find him doing that again i'm going to blow my stack.

Be afraid. Be very afraid.

So, can you see why i think men are more complex? They can be around horrible smells, they can even make horrible smells and delight in it. But get them near a stinky baby and its like you've asked them to cut off their left arm and hit themselves over the head with it.


* Note: I wouldn't really sell my husband....unless you paid me heaps.

My baby is growing up!

Yesterday was our wedding anniversary. 3 years. 3 long, long years. Just kidding! It has gone fast actually, although that could be because we are just so darn boring that nothing really happens to make it feel like we have lived a lifetime in just 3 years. And dh really is an easy person to get along with, its not too painful.
So anyway, since our little man Ethan is 2 and we are expecting our next baby in October, i figured that this anniversary would be the last for a while that we could have the night to ourselves. Ethan has never spent the night away from us before but since he is in love with his Grandma so much i figured it was worth a try.

We planned dinner and then a stay over at a motel(we decided to be rebels and book into a place about 10 minutes from our house instead of one 5 minutes away). I booked the Executive Spa room. Very nice!
Mum came and picked up Ethan at around 4pm and there was no dramas there. We checked into our motel just after 5pm and like all couples planning a romantic getaway without the kids, turned on the TV to see what was on Austar!!!! Austar is like a cable company in case you were wondering. For the record - there was nothing on! 10 channels and nothing.
We had a nice dinner at La Porchettas and grabbed some Maison on the way back to the motel. The mini bar was making me wish i drank so we had to have something! lol

Of course i kept wondering if Ethan was ok. What was he doing? I wonder if he went to sleep ok? Mum would call us if there was a problem, right? Should we call just in case?
This was all discussed over dinner and was pretty much the extent of our conversation.....other then the huge meals dh ordered that i was sure he wouldn't be able to eat. He did.

I've never spent so much time away from Ethan. I missed him! I missed him jumping on us in the morning and saying 'wake up!!!!' but he can't say the 'k' sound so its like 'wate up' and i missed his big kisses and cuddles he gives us. He's so damn cute!!!!!
Apparently he was fine last night, went right to sleep when he was supposed to and everything. Not quite sure why he won't do that at home! We picked him up this morning and got all those kisses and cuddles anyway.

Ethans first big sleep over accomplished. Mums first big sleep over accomplished.

Phew!

Well i'm not quite sure what to say for today. If i was a better writer i'm sure i could come up with something poetic and moving but i'm not a great writer.
Its ANZAC day and we went up to the Memorial Service at 10am. Dh got up for the dawn service, i should have gone but i doubt Ethan would have liked that. Plus it has turned rather cold in the mornings, so getting up at 7am is early enough for me.

We walked the 1/2 hour to the War Memorial. The parade was just starting when we got there at 10. We bought some Aussie flags to wave.
The ceremony was nice and i admit i got a tear or two in my eye. I feel so sad for those who have lost their lives but so glad that they made that scarifice and continue to, so we can live in such a great country and to try and make this world a better place.

Binyon's Poem

They shall grow not old

As we that are left grow old,

Age shall not weary them

Nor the years condemn,

At the going down of the sun

And in the morning,

"WE WILL REMEMBER THEM"

"Lest We Forget"

I've been tagged! Thanks Sunny because now i have something to blog about :)

6 Weird Things Meme

1. Hellium enhanced voices FREAK me out! My dh bought home a bunch of balloons the other day from work(store promotion) and so like all 33 yr old men, he had to inhale some hellium so he has a funny voice. IT TOTALLY FREAKS ME OUT!!! I hate that its not his voice coming out of his mouth!

2. I hang my clothes according to colour. Although at the moment they aren't as nicely done as i would like, but since half of my clothes are still packed from when we moved in OCTOBER, and we have no wardrobes i've kinda let it slip. But i love all my clothes hanging according to colour and in each colour they must hang from darkest to lightest. But not like shirts and pants mixed together they have to be seperate and in their own colours, kwim?

3. I love winter. I know people think this is weird because i have been told so. But i love the cold. I love wearing layers of clothing, i love seeing my breath in the air. I love watching and waiting to see if it will snow. I love the frost in the mornings. But i also love coming out of the cold and warming myself by a nice warm fire and having s'mores and hot milo. Is there really anything better?

4. I can't get into scrapbooking. Yes, i'm a woman, i'm a mum and i'm a mormon and i can't get into it! I've tried and i have some really cool stuff and sometimes i'll get some good ideas to run with but i just can't get into it like most people. My sister is a really cool scrapbooker and i'm totally jealous.

5. I love ELVIS. Yes, Elvis Presley. You may not know this about me. Its my dirty little secret i keep semi-hidden because of ridicule i have recieved in the past....mainly from my dh ;)
I have all sorts of Elvis stuff, not enough in my opinion. I really want a whole room for Elvis stuff and before i die i want to go to Gracelands.....actually when i die, just bury me next to Elvis and i'll be happy.

6. Whenever we move into a new house i totally have to roll on the carpet in all the rooms. It must be done before any furniture is moved in. I have no idea why, but i just HAVE to do that. My dh thinks its totally weird. But i think its fun :)

If you read this - You've been tagged!

"Tootoo!!!!"

You know in the movies when some chick has the hots for some guy and every guy she sees is him. Thats what i call obsession. My ds has an obsession. I have talked about it before - trains. He loves trains so much. He doesn't just go for Thomas, he's not really interested in the character, he just loves trains! All trains. But the problem is that, like the chick with the hots, he think every hooting or tooting or honking noise is a train. Why am I talking about this you wonder??

Well on Friday i went to the Antenatal Clinic at the hospital for my first appointment with a midwife. It's just a general health check, book into the hospital and to get my beloved Bounty Bag. The midwife asked me to hop up on the bed so she could measure my uterus(as you do) and to see if we could find a heartbeat!!! I was so excited! With Ethan, the midwife i saw then told me that 12 wks was too early to hear a heartbeat with a doppler. Whatever!
So yay for a nice midwife who knows what she's talking about.
Turns out i'm measuring 2 weeks ahead. Nice one, trust me to have a huge uterus. No wonder i am popping out all over the place.
Anyways, so she gets the doppler out and puts it on my tummy. It makes those nice whooshing noises while she tries to locate the heartbeat. Ethan, our ever obsessed 2 yr old, decided it sounds just like a train and pipes up "Tootoo!!!, Tootoo!!!"
I could harldy stop laughing! The midwife found the heartbeat and of course "Tootoo!!! Tootoo!!!". My Dh almost had to take him away because we were laughing so much and he kept saying it over and over.

So next month when i go to have my ultrasound to check the sex.....i think i'll ask the Tech to make sure it's not a train. YEE OUCH!

So my blog is up and running again. Ok so it wasn't really down or anything, but at least you can read it now ;)

Blog under construction.........

So i had a few requests for my story on the Latino Stalker. Not sure there is much of a story really. Its probably way more boring then you all think ;)

It all started a few years ago. When i was single and living in Canberra ACT. I was sharing a house with my sister, her dh and their son/s(they had one, then they had two) I used to catch the bus to work every morning and more often then not i would walk down to the main road to catch the bus because one came every 5 minutes, where as the bus that came past my house didn't come so frequently. The walk from my house to the bus was about 10-15 minutes.

One day as i was walking to the bus stop i was greeted by a man coming from the shop after buying his morning paper. He said hello and stopped me and introduced himself. I can't remember his name, but he had an accent and was about 40. Over the next few 'visits' where he would seemingly accidently be coming from the shop and the same time i was passing it, he pretty much told me his whole life story. He was from Peru and was working for the University, something to do with Agriculture...blah blah blah. Of course i was nice and polite.

I worked for a Dr in an office opposite the mall and i would have lunch there everyday and friday nights i would go and visit my friend who worked at a muffin place in there. I started seeing him in the mall alot. For someone who worked in the University he spent an aweful lot of time on the opposite side of town.
One Saturday i managed to get to the bus stop without seeing him. I was heaving a sigh of relief when i looked up the road and who do i see???Yes, my Latino friend. How convenient! He starts the usual conversation...how was I? Your so pretty! You have beautiful eyes! Then he asks if i have a boyfriend. I replied 'kind of'( i liked someone but he wasn't my boyfriend) he then asked me if my boyfriend told me i had beautiful eyes. Of course not *cough cough* fake boyfriend. He then said that men from his country always tell woman how beautiful they are. Then he asked me to the movies - to see a Beautiful Mind! I declined since tomorrow was sunday...thank goodness for the Sabbeth!!!

A few months later i moved. My sister and her family moved back to QLD and i got my own little apartment closer to town where i could walk to work. I still would see my Latino friend(he refered to himself as that) in the Mall and one time he invited me to his house to listen to music. Ummmm, yeah, whatever! Supposedly there was a group of people going to be there. But seriously, why would i do that? I graciously declined.

Then i got married and left for QLD myself. My poor Latino friend probably has no idea what happened to me. But thats ok...i'm sure he found another beautiful girl with beautiful eyes to stalk.

Well turns out the the pics were on the computer but i just couldn't find them! lol

So here are some that i thought i would share.


Our second date(Oct 02)at Springbook. LOL You can tell i wanted my photo taken.


This is November 02, when dh came to visit me. We went to see the last remaining snow. Sorry its a little dark.

This is on the same day...and really has nothing to do with anything, but i just wanted to cry about how skinny i was then!! *sob, sob*

Now for some wedding pics!

For some reason i love this pic. We had just come out of the temple and my 'new' dh was trying to kiss me and i was embarrassed because there were all these people about! lol

On top of the Sydney Australia Temple.


Another favourite pic.


At our second reception here in Toowoomba.

Hope you enjoy!

Today i asked my husband what i should blog about, since i was running out of ideas. His suggestion was that i write about how wonderful he is. So, i thought, sure. Sounds good. So this post is about how wonderful my husband is.




I was going to post a pic but as i went to browse i realised that my wonderful husband, when transferring all my info from the pc to the laptop didn't transfer any pics. Or maybe i'm just too dumb to find them. Whatever the reason, you will have to imagine that this sample pic from Windows is of my husband- just use your imagination.
I'll start with our 'love story' and go from there ;)

I met my hubbie in October 2002. That is when we met 'officially' in real life for our first and second date. We had 'met' months earlier in an LDS Chat room. Though he will deny it and i still don't think his parents know where we met.

I was taken in by his funny nickname, sense of humour and his serious addiction to flirting with me. He was the biggest flirt i had ever come across. By September 02 i knew that i had to meet this guy that was taking up so much of my time and thoughts, so flew to meet him. Here in Australia we don't have the luxury of having LDS guys to pick and choose from, otherwise there would probably be no way i was flying 15ookms just to meet some guy who could be a total psycho. I wasn't really desperate.....at least i keep telling myself that....but hey, by LDS standards i was seriously close to being on the shelf. ;)

We met up at an ice cream parlour called Cold Rock. Best ice cream in the entire universe btw. I thought he looked better in real life then the completely dodgey photo he had emailed me, which was a huge relief. After giving me a quick check over to make sure i wasn't fat, he says it was love at first sight. awwwwwwwwww. We then went roller skating. Yep, rollerskating, which i hadn't done for donkeys years. He fell over. I didn't. ;) That night he didn't drop me back to where i was staying until 3am. We talked and walked and went to see the Temple which was under construction. It was a great night.

A couple of days later we went on another date. This time we went for the day to Springbrook National Park in the Gold Coast Hinterland. I had never been there before so it was kinda exciting. So we hiked down to this waterfall. So nice! This is where is gets mushy. So please turn away if you need to puke, we don't need any more accidents on computers do we?

I had told him before we met that if he ever wanted to kiss me he would have to ask me first. The reason being, i didn't want to suddenly get a big ol' pash from someone who i had discovered to be repulsive. So while we were down at the waterfall he asked me if he could kiss me! Now why this is such a big deal is that he was my first boyfriend and i had never been kissed before so i was totally panicking!!! Yes, i was 23(turning 24 that month) and still no love for me(unless you count my Latino stalker...but i wont go into that now). So after what seemed like an eternity...i'm sure it was pretty close to that. I answered and said 'yes' he could kiss me. Which he did. He then told me that he loved me. WOAH!!!! Hang on, second date and your telling me you love me! This doesn't happen in real life, especially not to me! But it was true and still is :)

After i flew back home a couple of days later. We talked and decided we were 'going out' LOL such a stupid expression and soooo highschoolish. But nevertheless, we were an item and just mentioning that i had a boyfriend to anyone was extremely strange and freaky.

We continued our long distance relationship for a whole painful month before he drove down to see me in November 02. He tells me that he thought about proposing to me then but thought it was too quick so he waited a whole month more to do it ;) We got engaged on Christmas Day 2002. 4 months later...4 months of not seeing each other, we got married in the Sydney Australia Temple - 26th April 2003. I would love to include a wedding pic but all i have is this, just use your imagination:

And here we are coming up to our 3rd year anniversary. Time has gone fast but kinda slow at the same time. I probably should get around to telling you how great my husband is. He told me to say he was a good provider and good in bed....well i'm sure i can come up with something better then that to say!

I can honestly say that he makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world. I have always had horrible self esteem and still think i look like a man, but when he looks at me and tells me i'm beautiful - i feel beautiful. And he doesn't even think my ears stick out! How good is that? (i have serious issues with my ears)

He makes me feel like a good mum, although i never feel like one. You see a pattern here? He just makes me feel like i am all those things that i don't think i am.

I still love his sense of humour and i love that he is so passionate about his hobbies, although yes, sometimes i feel like throwing anything to do with a train and camera or a computer out of the window.

He is a good provider and he got a promotion at work, which begins in April. I'm so proud of him for that!

He does the 'night shift' with Ethan and doesn't complain. Much ;)

He sometimes does things i ask him to do...like housework, which i know he hates. But hey, who doesn't?

He loves our babies, even the one who isn't born yet. You should have seen his face when i came out of the toilet with the positive preg test! Priceless! At that stage i think he was more excited then i was...of course i was in shock...so that explains my reaction.

And the most wonderful-est thing of all is that HE LOVE ME! No guy has ever loved me before and it still blows my mind.

And the other thing he mentioned that he was good at....i won't even go there!

"Mischief, thou art afoot"......William Shakespeare's Julius Caesar

My little boy is a mischief maker. He's only 2 so i accept that, sometimes he does naughtly things on purpose sometimes not. Being 2 i am also trying to get him to 'go' on the potty. I'm not really pushing it but most days i give him some nappy free time after his bath. He thinks it's hilarious that he gets to run around naked and then run away from me when i try and dress him. Usually it requires Daddy's help too to get him dressed. Basically Daddy holds him so i can dress him, otherwise he'd be naked forever.
Yesterday we were playing in the backyard....well he was playing i was sitting down watching, and he decided to take his nappy off. Which i was fine with considering we were in the backyard and any accidents wouldn't need to be cleaned up. So after it got dark we came inside and i made dinner and we settled down for the night. Ethan is still half naked and i didn't really have a desire to chase after him to get that nappy on. I'm still feeling like crap, now with a cold and morning sickness. He peed 3 times - not in the potty. I seriously don't think he even knows what its for even though i thought he understood. So i cleaned everything up, thinking that ok, how much can his bladder hold?? I thought he was done for the moment. Boy was i wrong.

I wanted to watch the Commonwealth Games and Ethan wanted to watch Thomas so i put Thomas on dhs laptop, on the living room floor. And guess what he did then? Yep, he peed all over the laptop! dh was livid. So now the mouse pad doesn't work and some of the buttons don't work either.
It's a rental and was due for an upgrade. Now it's way overdue for an upgrade. Oh boy.

So my lesson learned this week - always keep little boys 'equipment' away from laptops.

In memory of Robert Cyril Blissett
15 May 1942 - 16 March 2005















We love you dad!

Out of the mouth of babes

There was a time when i thought Ethan would never talk. He just seemed to babble away with nothing even resembling english. Then suddenly he could talk. It appeared to happen overnight. He has always been a chatter box. Someone once told me that he sounded like Boo from Monsters Inc. And its true! He sounded just like her. But now he can say actual words and its great! I feel so proud of him....as if i personally am responsible for him being able to talk.

But of course with his new found ablility to converse comes the newfound ability to refuse everything. "NO" is one of his favourite words. Why do kids always learn that first??? He can't say yes, just "NO". Even if i ask him if he wants something and i know he wants it, he will automatically say no first. Sounds kinda familiar. When someone asks me to do something my first reaction is "NO!!!!!", before logic and guilt take over. Thats whats so great about kids, they never feel guilty about saying no.
His other favourite thing to say is "whats that?". This has taken on the same stigma as the dreaded "why?". He will ask "whats that?" about everything!!

him: whats that?
me: dinner
him: whats that?
me: ITS YOUR DINNER! said in a controlled non yelling voice of course

him: whats that?
me: the bath
him: whats that?
me: the water, your going to have a bath

...and on and on it goes. At least he will never get into something without knowing all about it first.
His most recent and cutest thing is the word "sore". When dh had his appendix out he had 3 incisions and we had to tell Ethan that he couldn't jump on daddys tummy because it was sore. He quickly picked up the word and now everything that doesn't look like normal skin is a sore. I have a mole on my face (like Cindy Crawford but better) and that is a sore to him. He looks at me then points and says "sore" then proceedes to try and pick it off! Because, as we all know, every sore must be picked.
Since i've had morning sickness and in an attempt to stop him jumping on me, i told him that my tummy was sore. Now, of course, his tummy is sore. And so is the large freckle that he has on his ankle. Its too funny, really. I guess its one of those things where you have to be here to appreciate it! lol

Everyday he seems to learn a new words. Bubbles is something he learned the other day. And yesterday he came out with "bye bye toodle-oo". Nice!

Skanky. Thats how i feel. You know i haven't washed my hair in about a week. You know how greasy hair gets when you don't wash it? Please don't answer that, i already know. I have it living on my head in all its putrid glory. But thats just the start.
If someone came to my house right now they would probably run away screaming. Its embarassing really. Even if i don't have all the nice things in life and nice furniture and a nice house, i at least try to keep it clean and looking respectable. But not now. It looks like a rubbish tip. If i described it i'm sure i would make you all sick. It makes me sick. It makes me sad. I wish i had a magic wand or even a magic husband who would clean up everything and make it nice again.....but all i have is a mum who comes over every few days and does the dishes for me.
So we are left to live in our squallor until i feel better again. I pray everyday that it will be sooner rather then later.

The Magic of Life...

Yes, kinda of a sappy title but i'm feeling kinda sappy. Those pregnancy hormones have kicked in rather strong. I find myself crying while watching The Biggest Loser. How pathetic is that?!
I was never an overly emotional person. My sister used to cry everytime we watched The Man From Snowy River II, when Deny the horse died. And i used to think...."ummm hello??? what is wrong with you?? its a movie!!" But you know what? Since i had my son, i'm a sap. Total sap. I can probably find some excuse to cry in every movie i watch. Of course now i also cry during commercials and silly reality shows.
And what can we blame it on? Hormones of course! That stuff that we can't see that causes moisture to burst from our eyes at random and make total fools out of ourselves in public.
I remember when i was about 8mths pregnant with Ethan i had bought a gift voucher for dh for Christmas. It was a gift voucher for a clothing store because he needed more clothes. So we went to see what we could buy. Turns out my dh likes to dress like an old man and this store was more for younger trendier people, not his taste at all. So i burst into tears, right in the middle of the mall. Crying my eyes out because there was nothing in there that dh liked.
Ahhh yes, the ultimate shame (other then your water breaking in the middle of a chinese restaurant).

And unfortuately those blasted hormones are right there from the start. When your baby is the size of a mustard seed your a psycho crazy witch. Isn't it amazing that something so small can cause so much trouble???
I just turned 7 weeks today and last Saturday i had an ultrasound done and my baby was measuring 5.3mm. Thats like the size of a pea. You would think something that small couldn't get up to much mischief. But the little scamp is causing heaps of mischief. I think we'll have to have words when he decides to face me on the outside.....of course by then i'll be an even bigger sap and forget all the trouble he's causing me now because he will be so cute and defenseless.

But seriously, the magic of life. Life is magic. The fact that 2 tiny parts of our bodies join(i'm talking about the egg and sperm here.......my dh would deny there is anything else 'tiny' about him) and voila! baby. It just amazes me how they grow and develop. How the brain developes and the heart. How their little finger nails grow and then feeling them kick around in there.
It's so utterly amazing!!! Is anyone else in awe of this? Or am i just sappy?

The Ellusive Cure

Unfortunately i have been struck down with a very common ailment. This 'sickness' forces me to throw up at random, fall asleep at the drop of a hat, become obsessive over every ache and twinge that my body makes, gain weight at a phenomenal speed and eat weird things that a normal person wouldn't think of eating. Yep, i'm pregnant. Again.
And with that has come the dreaded morning sickness. Just imagine that you have been on a ride at a fair ground.....a ride that make you go round and round and round and round and round(feeling sick yet?). How are you feeling when you get off? Thats what i fell like 24/7. Nice huh? Oh yes, its a lot of fun. The only problem is that there is no cure, other then giving birth or taking some nice strong drugs which apparently i can't get here from my dr so i have to put up with it.
So i've stocked up on supplies - crackers, every ginger product known to mankind, lemon fizzy and tic tacs. I even have those bands you put on your wrist. But nothing really works. I keep heaving and feeling like i've been hit by a truck. But i've lost a kilo(2lbs) so that a bonus.

This time we have decided not to tell people that i am pregnant. Other then the whole internet world of course! So, by doing that i will have saved myself from countless people telling me to just eat crackers...thats what they did and it was fine. Yeah, well whatever. Crackers do nothing, OK!!! If your not careful i will shove those crackers down your throat if you make one more stupid suggestion!
Ok so i might never say or do that, but who knows what a sick hormonal woman might do.

When i was pregnant with my son Ethan it was ok because i wasn't working. I was just at home all day wallowing in my sickness. I could lay in bed all day if i wanted to and i did. I was sicker with him then i am now so i think i was justified. But now i have a 2 year old to run after. And he's a very active 2 year old. My husband has been on holidays for the past week so its been good. Of course i only found out that i was pregnant on Friday - when i threw up and thought well maybe i was pregnant(how on earth did that happen?!)so its been great to have him here for at least the 4 days before he goes back to work tomorrow. Then i'll be in for it. Just me and the toilet and the boy. Fun times!

So i'm about 6 weeks which means if i go on my previous experience with morning sickness...i've got about .......34 weeks of it left. Ahhh the joy of pregnancy.

the colour purple......and red.....

My favourite colour as a child was purple. And do you know why it was purple? two words - Ninja Turtles!! yep, Donatello was my favourite Ninja Turtle, so purple became my fav colour. Maybe it was weird for a girl to be so into Ninja Turtles but I was also into Barbies and dolls....matchbox cars(i had a green Jag) and bike tracks and climbing mountains and having water fights. Ahhhhh my childhood was great! Anyway, back to the colour. It stayed purple for a while until i realised that lots of other people liked purple too. It was like suddenly realising everyone was dressing exactly like me...and that was not right, i had to be different! So i changed my colour to one i didn't know anyone else liked. My new colour is red. I love red in all shades and i think i will stick with it since i've had it for so long. I have a red toothbrush, red clothes, a red and silver mobile phone. Red is my State colour too! I had a red(maroon) bridesmaid dress at my sisters wedding. Even my computer hard drive is red!

I'm sure i've read somewhere that colours reflect your personality. Red is such a strong and confident colour....which is the opposite of me but something to work towards. Its also a sexy colour.....yep, opposite of me too. Its feisty.....maybe i can be feisty, who knows! Maybe red doesn't really describe my personality and i should be something like......brown but i love it just the same!

The Love Tunnel

I'm sure everyone has one of these in their town in some shape or form. A place that kids come to write their secret and not so secret loves. For me it was the love tunnel. It is located in a town called Beerburrum where i used to live up until i was 12. If you follow the dirt track that runs beside the school towards the cemetary you will find it. The actual tunnel is just a cement drainage thing so that the little creek can flow under the road. So on Monday my husband and i made the trek and we visited the 'love tunnel'. You see i'd never written anything in there and i thought it was about time. And considering i now had a love and being Valentines Day the next day, i thought it was fitting that i write in there who i love. Now its etched on stone!

The green eyed monster has a name and that name is .......

Andrea. Yep, thats right. I am the green eyed monster. My sister used to say that jealousy is a curse and i have to agree with her. I have discovered in these almost 3 short years of marriage that i am an insanely jealous person. I never noticed it before, maybe i wasn't before and marriage has brought out the worst in me. Who knows.

What, you might ask, am i jealous of? Well, just about everything. You can ask my husband, i'm sure he will tell you i am competely nuts. And it might very well be true. I am not proud of my problem and it is indeed a problem. It stops me from being truely happy. Hopefully i will be able to sort out my feelings and why i'm having them.

I have this friend. Well, she is a friend in the way that we see each other every few months and we have a chat and we occasionally invite her and her husband over for dinner, they occasionally forget and occasionally they remember to come. lol I actually like them very much and i wish we spent more time together but i am so jealous of her! Its crazy. She is like the perfect woman. Shes a couple of years older then me and the mother of 2 girls and a boy due next month. She is pretty, smart and can speak Japanese. She served a mission in Japan. She quilts and scrapbooks very well - I saw samples of her stuff up on the walls of a scrapbooking shop in town. She sings beautifully, she is always in the church choirs and gets solo parts. She has a craft morning at her house so that friends and people from church can come and do there little projects and have fun and talk - I was invited once but i was pregnant and tired and i slept in and wasn't invited again. Oh and my dh had a huge crush on her.
She seems to be everything i am not and everything i would like to be.

Then there are houses. Yes, i am jealous of everyone who has there own house. Insanely jealous. Everytime i see the crazy mess that is my kitchen i curse those woman who have a nice kitchen of there own. Mine is a crazy mess because we don't have enough cupboard space, so one corner is piled with boxes of my dinnerware and other kitchen stuff. We moved in October last year and yes, it's still packed because of our lack of anywhere to put it. Our appliances live on the stove and the ironing board. When we need to use the stove they go on the ironing board and when we need to use the ironing board they go on the stove. Thus the reason i now have melted plastic on one of my hotplates. *warning: do not turn on the hotplate where your electric jug is sitting*
My breadmaker lives on the floor until i need to use it. My kitchen is my main gripe though my bathroom comes a close second. Its small and a family of cockaroaches live in there. One day i will manage to eliminate them. I would love to decorate but the lack of money and that fact that this isn't my house prevent it.
You would think that i would be more thankful for what i have, considering what i lived in while i was in my teens.













Yep that was my house when i was about 13. My mum, my sister and I slept in the shed and my brother in the tent and my dad on a fold out bed, you can just see it on the left, under the awning of leaves. We only lived in that for a couple of months before my dad built another shed that had 4 rooms - 2 bedrooms(one for me and my sister to share and one for my parents, my brother slept in the living room) a living/kitchen and the bathroom which wasn't attached to the main 'house' . Still had dirt floors but we went up in the world by having a wood stove instead of a hollowed out termit nest. I don't have a pic unfortunately.

We lived in that for a few years until my dad built our proper house. It was like luxury! a cement floor instead of dirt, my own room(my sister and brother moved out)
and well.....it was like a proper house, except for the carpet hanging down for walls and our bathroom was still outside. We even had a flush toilet! I lived there until i moved interstate at the age of 19.
This is what it looks liked like last year during the process to make it a REAL house, like the kind other people live in. My dad died before he could finish it.

This is why i can't understand my jealousy of houses. I mean, c'mon, anyone want to volunteer to live like that for 6 years??? It was a great learning experience for us, it made us appreciate things. Everytime someone complained about anything i used to think....what is wrong with you??? you have no idea what its like to rough it. Now i have turned!! I'm that person complaining. How did this happen?
I think what happened is that while i was living the good life in the city for 4 years after i moved out of home, i changed my opinion of what was important in life. Is it seriously about what kind of house i live in? Is it about whether or not i can paint my walls the colour i want? Is it about that fact that someone might have better skills then me? Or can speak a foreign language? No. Its not. Its about being comfortable with who i am. It is finding happiness with what i have in my life. So what if i have to move the appliances off the stove several times a day - I have a loving husband and a gorgous son. We have sufficient for our needs and some of our wants...ok for some of dhs wants ;) We own our own car and by the end of this year we should be debt free.

Then we can work towards getting that house......

My Fully Sick Greek Chick

A few weeks ago i recieved a package in the mail. I opened it up and there was a birthday card and a box full of homemade choc chip oatmeal cookies. Inside the card was a wonderful letter sending Birthday and Christmas greeting. If you haven't already realised, it has been more then a month since Christmas and about 4 months since my birthday. No, the package wasn't lost in the mail and just magically showing up now - my friend, my Fully Sick Greek Chick had only just posted it. It only takes 2 days to get from her place to mine. You see my friend is a little absent minded. Though i really think that she just has so much to do that she forgets to do things.

I'm not a great writer so all that i wanted to say about her is probably not going to come out right. I love my friend for so many reasons. She's easy to talk to, she listens, she advises, she sees things in a different way then i do. She's spiritual and i can talk to her about anything. She served a mission and returned home a better and wiser person(though she still can't do things on time!) she held my hand when we gave blood- i never knew that getting a huge needle poked in my arm could be so much fun! She's charitiable, she brought me pizza and helped make my wedding dress, she helped me decorate my apartment for my wedding night since dh and i couldn't afford to stay somewhere nice. She sent me the coolest Antonio Banderas poster from Greece when she was on her mission. She finished Uni successfully and is now holding down 2 jobs and a very full social calender. Oh and she crochets everything from socks to beanies! She sounds great, right?

I lived with her and her single mother for a month and it was the craziest experience of my life!
Other then all those wonderful attributes i listed she's also a loudmouth, she talks non-stop! She is neurotic and obsessive. She over-anaylizes everything! She can't cook for anything(even 20mths in the mission field didn't help much!) and she fights way too much with her mother. They fight because they are so much alike, its not funny.
I've known her for about 6 years and she has accomplished so much in her life and i'm totally proud of her and a little jealous. But she is my very best friend and if she was any other way she just wouldn't be Kiki.

Oh.....and if you know any single guys wanting a 23 yr old, greek, loudmouthed, non-domestic, crazy, wonderful woman just let me know. And i'll even throw in the MIL as a bonus........

I'm tagged. Thanks Misty!

Remove the blog in the top spot from the following list and bump everyone up one place. Then add your blog to the bottom slot, like so.

1) ScienceWoman
2) Professor Me
3) Musical Mom
4) My Inner Aria
5) fountainescapades
Next select five people to tag:

1) Becky
2) Sunny
3) Rachelle
4) Onica
5) Linsey

What were you doing 10 years ago? I had to come back and edit this part. What i was actually doing 10 years ago was....i had finished high school in Nov 1995 and i was bludging, i was unemployed and i never got into the TAFE course i wanted to do. So i went on the dole. Nice ey?

What were you doing 1 year ago? I had just started treatment for PPD which i had been suffering from for 11 mths. We were also trying to build my parents house so that my Dad had something nice to come home to when he got out of hospital. He had cancer and died in March, he never came home.

Five snacks you enjoy:
1. Chocolate
2. Fruit and nut mix
3. Corn chips and salsa
4. Jatz and dip
5. Ice Cream

Five songs to which you know all the lyrics:
1. Twinkle Twinkle little star
2. Incy Wincy Spider
3. Poisen by Alice Cooper ;)
4. The songs off Ethans Thomas dvd
5. A few random other songs.....its hard to just pick 5!

Five things you would do if you were a millionaire:

1. Buy a house.
2. Get my citizenship.
3. Donate an air conditioning unit for the Maternity Ward of my local hospital
4. Get our car repainted
5. Get my hair done

Five bad habits:

1. Biting my nails
2. Making my dh feel guilty
3. Negativity
4. Junk food
5. Staying up too late

Five things you like doing:

1. Reading
2. Painting
3. Making things that make my home homley
4. Spending time with my little family
5. Taking long drives

Five things you would never wear again:

1. Track pants with straps that go under your feet
2. A tank top in public
3. Shoes that make my feet ache
4. Calottes (not sure of that spelling)
5. a nappy ;)

Five favorite toys:

1. my mobile phone
2. my air conditioner
3. my computer
4. my scrapbooking software
5. my son

New Shoes

I love new shoes! These are the first new shoes i have ever bought Ethan. He has new slippers and new gumboots but never new shoes. He was so excited. He can say shoes now...though he says it 'sooooooos'

Simple Pleasures

Anyone who has a toddler will know how hard it is sometimes to get them to eat. Ethan started his 'starvation' diet when he was about maybe 18mths old. He just refused to eat anything other the Soho Nacho crackers. Joy. He would throw a fit when he couldn't have them. So after a few months of him not eating i finally thought that maybe if we weaned him off the crackers then he might eat some real food. He's a skinny little thing and i didn't want him getting sick or anything. I thought too that his behaviour might have something to do with all the artifical flavours etc he was eating.....nope, just normal apparently!
So anyway, we started the weaning process, i cut it down to only 2 Soho snacks between meals and if he didn't eat his food then he got nothing. He started eating a little more. Then i just went cold turkey and stopped buying them. He still didn't start eating much more then what he had been. A bit of fruit, toast and museli bars were his main diet.

Then, here's where the simple pleasure comes in, after christmas he decided he is hungry again!!!! YAY!!! Now he is eating everything! He will even eat meat and raw vegies - like carrot sticks and zucchini, grapes, apples, plums, he eats noodles and pizza! Its amazing.
I am so happy that he is eating again. He even gained a kilo (2lbs) since christmas! I'm not quite sure what a kid his age should weigh but i'm glad that he's putting on weight.

I feel relieved when he sits in his high chair and starts chowing down!

Well i managed to do all my to-do list yesterday! I finished at 10.30pm but thats ok.
This is what i did:

• vaccumed living room
• sweep kitchen/dining floor
• clean spilt pinapple juice off floor and train table! ick
• wash dishes
• wash 1 load of washing and hang to dry
• took dry washing off line
• clean bathroom just enough so that it wasn't embarassing for guests coming over
• dusted
• yoga - only 15 minutes though
• folded a huge amount of clean laundry - didn't get it quite finished
• made 9 smocks
• cooked dinner and entertained my sis, bil and their 4 kids...oh and my mum.
• prepared nursery lesson
• general tidy up of the whole house

No wonder i was exhausted. I just want to go somewhere and die now....or have a really long sleep!

I never thought i would have trouble coping as a mum. I never thought it would be easy, that is just stupid but i always thought i would cope ok. I mean, everyone else seems to be ok, right?
Its coming up to 2 years since Ethan was born. And i'm finding out everyday that i am not coping. The older he gets the harder it is. Well maybe it was always hard but now the problems are different.

When he was born it was the sleeping issue. He wouldn't sleep well, he had to be rocked or nursed to sleep. So i would spend hours upon hours in the middle of the night rocking him in his pram. Sometimes he would wake up every 1 1/2 hours all throught the night.
The poor little tyke spent about the first 6 mths sleeping in his pram. Now he sees it and starts crying. No wonder. He never started sleeping through the night until he was over 1 yr. I want to slap those mothers who brag because their 6 wk old baby is sleeping through.He also screamed alot because he had horrible wind.

Now its the tantrums. His tantrums started at about 8mths ,much to our horror. So much for the 'terrible twos'. He pretty much hasn't stopped since then. The more indepentant he became the more tanties he would throw. He went through the phase that getting his nappy changed was like trying to pull teeth! Almost impossible. As soon as i picked him up he would start trying to head butt me, then if that didn't work(because i would dodge him) he would start slapping me in the face or biting me on the shoulder. Of course once i got him on his change table he would kick me several times in the stomach and struggle the whole time while i changed his nappy. Repeat this procedure about 4-5 times a day and you have one very annoyed mum. He has settled down in the last couple of weeks when it comes to his nappy changing. I am trying to toilet train him a bit, well, at least get him to tell me when he's done a poo. He actually, a couple of times, has grabbed my hand and taken me to the change table so i can change it! Hopefully the days of being beaten up by my toddler are over. He also bangs his head on the ground when he's upset. The other day he did it because we were out on the deck and i went inside to make him lunch. I hear a huge bang and lots of crying. I went out and he had this huge mark on his forehead. It was blood under the skin. He almost always has a bruise on there. I have tried to help him so that he wont do that, but obviously i know nothing because he still does it all the time.

My husband at present is in hospital, having had his appendix taken out today. So after spending 5 hours in Emergency last night, most of that time with a cranky, tired and sometimes screaming toddler i am ready to tear my hair out. There was a women in there with her 4 daughters waiting for hours. She didn't look frazzled at all!! And here i was just struggling with one! My mum and my husband were there with me and i still felt like i just can't cope!
What on earth is wrong with me?
My house is a mess and to be honest Ethan is so demanding that i find it hard to get everything i need to do everyday done and have decent 'me' time. I have a 'to do' list on my fridge. It has been there since i think wednesday, its now friday night (11.18pm according to my computer clock)and i have only 2 things crossed off it. They were all supposed to be done on wednesday.
Oh and tomorrow i have 13 smocks to make to be ready for sunday! Lucky me.
I think i just need to go into a small room and scream my lungs out. Maybe that would make me feel better.

Australia Day

Tomorrow is Australia Day. Its the day we celebrate being Australian.

If you know me at all you will know that i was not born in Australia. I was born in New Zealand. And although i have Australian parents there was a misunderstanding and i wasn't registered as such so i am actually a NZ citizen. I have lived here for 25 years and class myself as an Aussie even though i don't have that piece of paper that says i am and i can't vote. 14,000+ people will take the plunge and become Aussies tomorrow. I wish i was one of them.

Why i love Australia
















Its beauty - it covers everything from beach to desert. I love everything! The mountains and the rainforests and the wide open space! Its just truely beautiful.

This pic was taken last year. It is the most easterly part of Australia, at Byron Bay. From this vantage point you can see whales and dolphins.

















Its culture - we are a multicultural country. And as such alot of things were bought in to add to the mix and to add to the fun!

This pic is the only thing i could find that had something to do with culture! lol It's the Kuranda train from North Queensland. The Cairns/Kuranda area has a lot of Aboriginal touristy places. And as you can see the train is painted with Aboriginal paintings.
















Its animals - although we have lots of dangerous 'i can kill you' animals like snakes, spiders, crocodiles and sharks we have lots of cute n' cuddly animals like kangaroos, koalas, platypus, wombats, bilbys, emus....ok they aren't all cute or cuddly but i still like them!

This was taken at Australia Zoo in 2003. I was about 5mths pregnant. While kangaroos are cute and you can pat them in the zoo they can attack you and cause all sorts of nasty injuries so please don't try and pat them in the wild!
















Its Flora - we have some beautiful plants here. Gums trees are great! They provide shade and you can play music on their leaves, pretty cool! lol

This is a banksia flower.
















Its people - I personally think Queensland people are more friendly then anyone else in Australia with Sydney people coming dead last! But real Australians are laid back, down to earth, hard working people, who only want to have a go. If you treat people with respect, they will treat you the same way. Of course there are always exceptions to the rule but i think they are being un -Australian!

This is my husband relaxing on South Stradbroke Island. Its a hard life huh?



I truely love Australia, and there isn't anywhere i would rather be! And hopefully soon i might even be a REAL Australian!

There are times that i miss being single. You know when you've have enough and just want to be by yourself. I've had a few of those days lately but what i realised is that i didn't miss being single i just missed being in control.
My days seems very out of control. I can't control my husband, i can't control my son and sometimes i can't control my irritation that seems to be controlling me most of the time.
But with all that i have some wonderful moments in my life. This morning as i was lying in bed trying to drag myself out of sleep....it takes a while, i was jumped on my my bubba boy. He layed on top on me, with his face really close to mine and then planted a big fat kiss! And contined to kiss me ' mmmmmmmmmmmm ahhhhhhhhhhhhh' until i was laughing so hard that i couldn't take it anymore. He really is the most beautiful thing i have ever seen.
Don't ask me how the rest of the day is going.......it was all down hill from there................

Friends....

As i was thinking of what i could write about today and as i was reading what others had written on my posts and as i was reading my friends blogs i realised that that is what i wanted to talk about today. Friends.

Growing up i only had a few friends. I was never a popular person, i guess that was because i was a bit reserved. What others would call shy. Though i have always hated that word and refused to use it when it came to describing my personality. I am not a shy person, i just sit back and assess the situation and comment if needed.
When i got to high school i had to make all new friends because noone i knew from Primary School was going to the same High School as me. It was tough but i soon found some friends, and it helped that my very BEST friend was there - my older sister! Chrissii is 2 years older then me, so even though i was in year 8 and she was a year 10er she still hung out with me and i hung out with her friends too on the occasion.
We moved after year 8 and when we went to our new school it was just us and we both had no friends. We quickly adapted however and enjoyed the rest of our school years. We are still best friends and i doubt nothing will ever change that.

After i finished school i tried to keep in touch with my friends but eventually one by one we fell out of touch. I was unemployed, lived at home, in the country and my sister had got married and moved away. I was pretty bummed. I was depressed and lonely.
Eventually i moved to live with my sister and her husband. Best thing i ever did!!! They lived in Canberra ACT and it was fantastic! I lived there for 4 years (3 with my sister). I made some great friends who i love dearly. I met my husband and moved back to QLD, in a town where i knew noone but my husband.
Back to being lonely. I still kept in touch with my Canberra friends but it just wasn't the same. Then i discovered this wonderful thing........

Internet forums.

Since i am an active member of my church and at the time i was pregnant with Ethan i found a forum of LDS members, mainly women and mums. It was fantastic. I got to talk to women of my faith about pregnancy and babies and about church. It was really helpful and i made a couple of friendships. I eventually left that board a joined a new private one. This has been the best thing ever!
I have managed to make a few friends in my new area but to be honest, i have much better friends online. I hope they don't mind me mentioning this. Since i'm sure they are the only ones who read my blog! lol
They have helped me i my life so much. They inspired me, they pick me up when i'm down, they encourage me when i'm tettering on the brink of breaking my diet. They give me suggestions when i need help with something and most of all they show love for someone they have not met in person. Most of these wonderful ladies live in the US. I have plans to visit them one day. Maybe i should have put that on my 'seven things to do before i die' list. ;)
They probably don't know how much they mean to me. I am serious when i say they are the very best friends i have ever had.

I love you girls!

Dieting.....

I think i have been dieting all of my adult non-pregnant life. In all that time i have been successful twice in obtaining my goal. Its such a fantastic feeling to look in the mirror and like what you see. At the moment i don't.
I have 10kgs to lose all up but at the moment i am working on losing 5. I would love to be 5kgs lighter before i get pregnant again.
I have a subscription to a Slimming and Health magazine. Full of tips and recipes and exercises to lose your butt. I found a nice section on celebrity diets that apparently work. It was in the 'beach body' section and apparently i can lose 6kgs in 6 weeks.
There are 3 diets to choose from. The first one can make me look like J.Lo, the second like Angelina Jolie and the third like Liz Hurley. I chose the second plan 'The Grazing Diet' since it looked like the best one for me, though i'm hoping since Angelina does this diet that my fat will not be displaced to my lips. They are fine as they are thank you very much!

I can't stand diets that have weird food that i have to go out and buy ....like chickpeas and hommus and stone ground wheat. The theory behind The Grazing Diet is that i eat 6 small meals a day to keep my blood sugar level and so my body doesn't go into starvation mode. And the food plan is actually very sensible and i don't have to buy weird food. It also doesn't make me feel like my throat has been cut.
I'm on day 4 and although i cheated a bit yesterday i am doing good.
When i started i weighed in a 71kgs and this morning i was teetering between 69.5 and 70kgs but finally rested at 70....darn digital scales! lol
I am feeling optisitic that this is actually working though. Today when i went to have my 10am snack i wasn't even feeling hungry yet.....
I'll be looking terrific in no time!

My husband Graham has two passions. Trains and photography. Luckily they go hand in hand. You can't go and see a train unless you take photos of it. Lots of photos. Black and white photos. Colour photos. Slides......don't get me started on the types of film one can use to take a photo of a train!
You would think it would be as simple as whipping the ol' digital out and snapping away. But nooooo, theres a whole science behind it that i am not about to go into. For two reasons. 1. I don't want to talk about it and 2. I have no idea what that science is. Graham tries to tell me but it goes way over my head.
Photography is not what i wanted to talk about today. I want to talk about trains.

Graham loves trains. Sometimes i think he loves them more then he loves me. He assures me he doesn't but when one wakes up to the tooting of a train horn and not to the sound of undying love being whispered into my ear, i have to wonder.
He has a train driving simulator on his laptop. So he's being driving trains for the last couple of nights now. Its fun but i would lose interesting after having one go. But that is because i am not passionate about trains.
He has a model railway downstairs which is kinda cool. I like miniture things so its ok....as long as its downstairs and i don't have to look at it everyday. We have a huge picture of a train on our living room wall. It is one he took and had enlarged at work. He also has the same photo as a background on his laptop.
We spend weekends chasing trains. Yes, chasing them. He finds out when steam trains are going to be running and then we chase them all over the place and take photos. Well he takes photos, i usually sit in the car bored stiff. Did i mention that we went to the train museum for my birthday last year? No, well that was great. For MY birthday we go to a train museum. Nice one darl!

And like father like son. Our son Ethan loves trains! It must be in the blood or something. He has a Thomas the Tank Engine set. Engines, track, tunnel, bridge, station. He still has a lot to get and i swear those are the only toys he's getting ever! He would rather play with a train then any other toy. His daddy just made him a 4ftx4ft train table! It takes up half his bedroom! lol But he loves it. He spends hours just playing. He also loves watching Thomas on tv. So he has 2 dvds and 2 videos that he has borrowed from my sister. Needless to say that is all that we watch. Graham now sings the songs around the house almost without thinking. Its kinda sad.

He also loves our weekend trips chasing trains. You should see his face light up when he sees a train! Its like christmas! Of course he can't say 'train' yet but he says 'toot toot' and 'Percy' which is just super cute.

I think it is great that he has such an interest in something even though the hours of being forced to play trains and watch Thomas is getting on my nerves and slowing driving me insane.

Seven things to do before i die:

• attend a State of Origin where QLD wins....well i hope i have alot of time left ok..it could happen!!
• pay off the damn credit card
• buy a house
• go to Paris
• have more babies
• more road trips with my dh and kids
• learn the guitar

Seven things i cannot do:

• tell a lie to someones face
• remember the cords for the guitar! lol
• justify paying someone money for something i can do myself
• remember the last time i went swimming!
• go a day without telling my husband i love him
• get organised enough to scrapbook
• i cannot ever be as smart as my husband

Seven things that attract me to my spouse (not necessarily in this order!):

• His broad shoulders
• His intelligence
• His height
• His sense of humour
• His passion for his hobbies
• The fact that he's 6 years older then me and i like older men ;)
• He loves me....so i love him back

Seven things i say(or write) most often:

• Ethaaaaaaaaaaaan!!!
• Don't hit!
• I love you
• My name (write)
• Do you need to sit on the potty?
• Do you need snacks?
• Ethan what are you doing?

Seven books i love:

• Lord of the Rings
• Much Ado About Nothing
• Pride and Prejudice
• The Book of Mormon
• Jesus the Christ
• The Glass Lake
• The Copper Beech

Seven movies i could watch over and over again:

• Bloodsport
• The Castle
• Yentl
• Pride and Prejudice
• Dirty Dancing
• Lord of the Rings trilogy
• The Dish

Seven people i want to join in:

ummmmm....not sure...whoever! lol

I just wanted to check in just so that i keep a regular thing going on here. But unfortunately i have bad news. I am 99.999999999999% sure i have miscarried. My dr seems to be holding onto some sliver of hope but i know i my heart that i am not pregnant anymore. I am still going through the process of trying to confirm it. Not sure why i don't just get another ulrasound but anyways.....i am going the blood testing route to check my hormone levels. Yesterday apparently they weren't really indicating anything. Figures. If my body needs to do something it usually does it the hardest way possible.

But i am feeling quite a peace with what has happened. Obviously quite sad and devestated at the same time but i'm optimistic that we will have a healthy baby soon.

A New Year

Yes, I know i'm 4 days late but better late then never, right? Well what to say about the new year....i'm really glad that its here! The past year has been horrible. My dad died in March from cancer, i had PND and finally got treatment in January after suffering for 11 mths. We have had sickness after sickness go through the family. We moved house and had trouble with the Real Estate. But on good news - my sister had a baby and i got pregnant! I swear those are the only 2 things that happened this year that can go in the good news catagory.
BUT that year is over and a new one has begun. Which brings me to New Years Resolutions. When i was in my late teens and early 20's my resolutions consited of 2 mains things......get a boyfriend/husband and lose weight (I was one of those reject girls who never got a boyfriend until she was 23, acutally i was a month off begin 24)
So those 2 resolutions never got accomplished until i was 23. That year i went from a size 16 to a 12 and was feeling pretty good, then i got a boyfriend and ultimately a husband (yes i married my first boyfriend).
So...now what other goals can i set for myself?

I still stuggles with my weight. I put on 19kgs when i was pregnant with my ds. After i had him and my weight settled down i was 7kgs overweight. I managed to lose 7 kgs and was almost down to size12 again. Then came some medication that made me gain weight no matter what i did. I swear i could of stopped eating and i'd still gain. So i gained 5kgs back before going off the meds. And then i got pregnant. Very planned and wonderful but still heavier then i would like to be. I'm only 5'3 so every kg is very noticable! So, my goal is just to eat healthier this pregnancy and to exercise...if summer ever leaves! Oh and then i'm joining the gym after i give birth.
My second goal is to spend more time teaching my ds. While TV is such a good babysitter i know it's not the best thing for him.
I'd also like to go on more dates with my husband. We hardly go out alone so i would like to do that more.
I'd like to spend more time improving myself and working on my spirituality

So those are my goals for this year. We will see how it goes!