I've  been thinking lately on little things that make life run smoothly around our place. I reflect on them when things aren't going well and think how can I get back to that. I have these tips and secrets down pat but they are just for my specific children and situation we are in as a family as well complimenting my personality.

I find that by doing less each day is key. When i say less, of course I'm on my feet all fay long with the little ones but i mean, go out of the house less and schedule less things to do. I have found if we attend one thing in the morning ie a playgroup, music group or playground visit - i find the days go better. We come home at lunch time, eat and then all rest. Jet and Sariah will have a decent sleep, and Asher gives me about an hour to myself where he is in the toy room - listening to stories on CD and playing quietly. I reward him after that hour by having one on one with him until the others wake up.

After this rest time we will have a snack: either a smoothie, popcorn, crackers and dip or fruit. They look forward to making the smoothie and the popcorn and the 3 year old is happy to nap because he knows what he will get to eat when he wakes up.

Naptime is from 12:30 til about 3pm. From 3pm - 5pm its free play. The boys do whatever they like and there's a good chunk of unstructured time where they can just chill. It usually ends up being some kind of role playing with their super hero costumes on.

If we have something to go to in the afternoon or i have to run to the shops or something i don't feel as relaxed or chilled out in comparison to this free time. Since we have a trampoline now, we all have a decent play on there too which can tick off my 'exercise' goals for the day. Its a work out!

Its ridiculously hard what is required of stay at home ms oothers. To make it work better and smoother is my goal every single day. Routine is so key for us here. Everything we do has a routine, we all know whats coming next and i love it.

To make the mundane more managable too we like to plan family activities as often as we can. We love having friends over for dinner, beach trips and holidays away. Although money is tight, we plan to take the kids to a hotel once a quarter - thats a holiday 4 times a year! We all look forward to that so much and both John and I feel so revived from the little treat. We have been lucky enough to invest in a timeshare hotel so thats  how we manage to do it. Defenitely recommend this :)

We all need to take things slower - mothers and fathers and children. More to time to be still - not necessarily more "me" time. More time to be quiet and ponder. Other ways i try to incorporate this is by taking a bath once they're in bed, quiet reading of a good book when they are playing at a park or nicely at home, quiet music when we are driving in the car together (the classical radio station), quiet time for myself each morning before the boys wake up - reading scriptures and my personal prayer time, and something i look forward to every morning is yoga stretches and strength movements. It all helps me to manage my days and time within the chaos.

Loving life with our cherubs xo

My version of bliss

We just celebrated our 7th wedding anniversary this past week. I can't believe it. I remember all the excitement leading up to our wedding day, then the packing and collection of things as we moved in together after our honeymoon. It was such a special time in our lives and I always look back with happy memories. I remember thinking - I feel so happy right now when is this feeling going to stop as in will it just fade and go back to normal and routine like soon?

I can truly honestly say, that happy giddy feeling has never really left. I actually still get excited, still want to put on make up or lip gloss before i see my man after its been a while. Maybe its because of the amount of seperation we have anyway because of the flying... but it has made for a beautiful 7 years.

I remember a month or two after our wedding John and I were asked to speak in front of almost a thousand of our youth and young people from our church. Their ages were 18 to 31 - i didn't think we had much wisdom and didn't really prepare much in advance as to what we would say. The reason we were invited to speak was to discuss how we were able to decide to get married and why we chose to do so. Some people are scared, some are from broken homes and could never see the point of marriage and some really wanted marriage but there were no prospectives. I remember standing next to john and feeling proud that i had made that leap of faith and step in the dark to get married. I know that i did cause john anguish during our dating as i was always unsure and very fearful of my heart getting broken or if he just wasn't the right one. It took me a little time to get used to having someone else as well as i was so independent. Through the whole experience i prayed and pondered and was able to receive and answer and it was YES!

Seriously from that moment on i have never looked back, i shared that with those were speaking with. I shared that we were married in the temple and i felt even more safe. John always knew very early on we would be married but i took my time to figure that out :)

He is a wonderful man that does more as a husband then any other husband I know. I feel proud and happy and am so thankful for these past 7 years of marriage and 8 years of dating - here's to 70×7 more!

A little inspiration

In between thinking on Easter and teaching my cherubs all about it, I am reading Little Women at the moment. Yes and it is my first time at the age of 30! I know that at a younger age I would not have appreciated its tone and influence like it has on me now in this season of motherhood.

This just struck me, I need to remember this day in day out during the grind - during the tantrums and 4:30am wakings (from the 4 year old not the baby!!!)

" So they agreed to stop complaining, to enjoy the blessings already possessed, and try to deserve them, lest they should be taken away entirely, instead of increased, and I believe they were never disappointed or sorry that they took the old woman's advice."

Oh that i could be a mother so intent to teach my children that well. I want to be just like her. Her husband is away at war and she is teaching her children diligently to never complain. What power she has!

Easter

Easter is on its way to our place, we love Easter and love teaching about it. There is plenty for me to learn - to try harder to live kinder and gentler as I understand the trials the Saviour went through so we could have the peaceful life we have now.

We again are without daddy for the Easter long weekend, (almost every public holiday this year he is working!!) so we hope to make the season last a long time at our place. The boys get all excited about chocolates and bunnies and it is beautiful and sweet seeing how giggly they get caring for their little pet bunnies all over the place. I hope that even from this young age they can take lessons from the life of Saviour and how it can help them. 

Some traditions we do and ones we hope to fulfil this Easter:

28 days of Easter - daily scripture countdown

Weekly family night learning about Jesus Christ

Boys to purchase one new Easter item 

Easter photo and card for family and friends

Easter books, unwrap one a day

Decorating our Easter tree 

Names of Christ paper chain 

Easter front door wreath (have been doing since before the little bugs were with us)

Activity books, games and stickers all about Easter

A craft a day - a month full of easter crafts

Teach about palm sunday and the passover

Make home made hot cross buns

Class gifts to friends at Kindergarten and primary

Pet Bunny to tuck in each night

Easter bunny cake

Easter family brunch and egg hunt!

There may be a little more or a little less we end up doing. We always visit the beach, eat a lot of chocolate and enjoy being together. John is always away and that does make it seem sad but we do what we can to do all these things together while he is home.  I hope the boys have beautiful memories as we celebrate the Easter season and live it daily forever. 

🐰🐇🐣🐤

No spend year

I have a very generous and selfless grandmother. Other then all the things she does, still at the age of 30 she gives me birthday and Christmas money. Now that I have children - once a month or so she pops money "for the kids" into our account. That money is so appreciated at this time in our lives.

So I decided this year that I would not purchase one thing for the boys - at all. I have come to realise that they have EVERYTHING! And i really just enjoyed adding to the things they already have. A trap of commercial wants!

So what about when they actually do need something, a new water bottle or hat shoes or swimmers? Well we just have to make do, and then get creative.

I'm looking forward to their birthday parties this year - and again this will include the no spend policy! There will be no - purchased - gift from us. I want to see if its possible. The parties will need to be on a strict budget with serious creative ideas to pull it off.

When grandma does spoil them, I save making any essential purchases for then. Today it was new pjs they did desperately needed, all thanks to grandma!

We manage to live quite comfortably although on one small income. I'd like to think we can keep this up and remain self sufficient.  It is teaching me a lot and hopefully the children will gain appreciation for their posessions  also.

I'm grateful for the blessing of knowing money is a gift and not my own. There is much good we can do with what we have been given and this is my responsibility.

Anyway, just some of my thoughts for today

xx

The life of a pilot's wife

The life of a pilots wife...

So he's been gone for more then a week, about 11 days and surprised me by coming over for the weekend - just over 24hrs he will be with us before another week away.

I heard a familiar sound pull up in our drive way and quickly opened the door to see him standing there. I was so shocked and happy. I threw my arms around him and held him tight - ( probably as tight as a kid would do when you pick them up from a day at day care!! )

He had a tiny bunch of roses (I know for a fact we can't afford roses but he did it anyway) - my heart melted seeing him. I knew the boys needed to see him, sariah did - we all did. I was determined to make the next 24hrs count so I said "right, no naps today! We are going out!!!"

We had a delightful trip doing a grocery run, then onto an afternoon drive around our town and a stop at a huge playground, packed with families for the weekend. To top the night off we had a movie night enjoying hot chocolate and jelly!

Right now he is asleep, which is annoying but just the way it is - its like their home time is just so they can sleep and have the energy to go through it all again.

We love daddy!

xx

Book reviews & Sea World!

I'm in and out of things, and always on the go never really with a moment to myself. Thats ok with me as what else would I be doing?

But in the middle of it all I like to read. Generally several books at once that i dip in and out of - unless its a novel that i love and i don't end up putting it down until I'm done. And there are certain books I should read more and over and over.

Good books are like gold - little treasures of wisdom. The books I've been looking at over the past many months are about parenting (of course) and about teaching children.

Obviously using my own heart mind and judgement, I decide what suits us and what doesn't. I would say though that unless it's not from an area I already feel passionate about - I probably wouldn't continue reading as I know my heart feels different.

So a while back I read this book -

It is the montessori one I wrote about some time ago. I must have been 'guided' to this book as I stumbled across it in an old op shop...seriously a diamond in the rough. I think it was written in the 70s but so much good knowledge! Talks about how we really have only just tapped into the notion of how much babies and the under 6 crowd actually do take in within these first years of life. How there is so much more we could be feeding them, knowledge wise, and how that transforms these little ones and therefore our joy as we parent them - if there is more pleasure rather then just 'babysitting' all day long, the task is joyful!

Another are these by Dr Shefali Tsabary. Seriously, revolutionary stuff. For me anyway. This is not at all how I was raised - nor anything like it within my extended family. 

Again, this was something that I stumbled on...I follow Oprah on instagram (yep i do) and just was scrolling through her posts not looking at anything in particular - as you do while on the internet! Then bam. Here was a post about an indian clinical psychologist presenting a different mindset as to how we parent. There is some great stuff on Dr Shefali on you tube to check out. I love her TED talk. 

There is also this one - i love the way this is written as I believe the author has no professional background - but is a mother herself. So wise in how she uses scriptures to bring to life what was the intention of us being mothers in the first place. 

There is also the Dr Sears library - a collection of parenting books that i like, in particular The Baby Book. All about attachment parenting while also from a western medical point of view. 

I like their notion of trying to do things naturally ie medication wise before taking on drugs to treat children with illnesses - 'skills before pills' is their motto - which i love. 

There are plenty more books I haven't  mentioned that I've read and have helped me during these years - all in all - I love spending time on the different theories and hearing why they work. 

I pray about my kids and my parenting. I seek for correct guidance and I don't take any of it lightly. If something i do isn't working I go back and learn where to make changes. I love that this is a learn on the go kind of job. I love that I've been trusted to look after these babies - such a long way to go though for me and my maturity and understanding in my motherhood. 

Here is a little pic of a recent trip to Sea World. More then 4 hours return drive - by myself with 3 hooligans - it actually was a great day and they were remarkably manageable and well behaved. They were thrilled when I told them I was taking them there...Asher kept saying " I love you for taking us mummy " and several times during our visit he just randomly would say thank you over and over. It was worth the sacrifice! 

Daddy is not sure when he's coming home, could be another week, could be more. The boys miss him. We all do and look forward to hearing him come through the door. Until he does, we will keep occupied and work hard at all the fun there is to do from the eyes of a child. 

xx

I