Happy Good Friday

Is "Happy" Good Friday the right words? It seems strange to me to be saying "happy" when it's all about Jesus dying today. Ah well, it's the only words I can think of, so Happy Good Friday everyone!

I like Good Friday. It's a day when almost everything is shut so almost everyone has a day off (I feel sorry for those in essential jobs that can't take the day off - sorry to rub it in!). It's also a day to remember the great sacrifice Jesus made for us all those years ago.

I'm sorry I'm such a bad bad blogger. I don't get on here very often, do I? I can't promise that's going to change - I'm always going to be a bad blogger I reckon! Ah well. Good thing this blog is for me, and not for anyone else! If you happen to read it - good for you, but I blog because it's interesting to me.

My sister's gotten into blogging now though, and my mum has a new blog for all her recipes and food stuff. And they're GOOD bloggers! They actually have posts more often than once every 3 months...

Go visit my mum HERE and my sister HERE and let them know how good you think they are for blogging frequently :D

Well, I seemed to forget February, so I'll just jump straight into march. I might go back and update February some other time...

We had a blue-tongued visitor in the front driveway. Phillip was absolutely fascinated...
The kids are absolutely obsessed with brushing their teeth. It's their favourite routine of the day!

We went out the day after Matt's birthday and had a yummy lunch at The Entrance. Yummy Cold Rock icecream for dessert led to a need for the bubblers. Neither Phillip nor Elizabeth had ever used bubblers before. It was quite funny watching them try!
Matt's birthday cake was one of those new Michel's Patisserie (sp??) ones. They're nice and small - perfect for a small family. Just enough for 2 nights of cakey goodness!
Phillip did a good job of falling on his head and getting an enormous bump! Silly kid now knows not to chase balloons around on the concrete driveway...

I've been scrapping a tiny bit too (I seriously need to clean my scrap area so that can change from "tiny"). These were the cards I made for the March card swap at Scrapchat. Sadly Australia Post lost them in the mail, so I'm in the process of making another lot to send to people individually. Grrrrr..
A layout using paper I printed myself using my new Vintage Elegance kit over on Tanyah's Scrap N Craft With T blog...
A LO for a class I did with the awesomely talented Chelle on how to create spiral flowers. It's Elizabeth and our neighbour Ava - they are such good friends!
A digi one I've done for a CC challenge at Scrapchat - it's meant to be "whimsical", but I'm not 100% sure I really achieved that! LOL
And one of my kids and Tanyah's kids from earlier in the year having fun drawing with chalk (it's all it seems we do here! LOL)

My baby is back...

No, Elizabeth and Phillip didn't go anywhere, my baby is my computer. After almost 3 months, too many phone calls, one cock up after another, I finally have my computer back. Sadly it is minus it's harddrive. Just about every single thing I have done for the last 2 years has gone. It has run away, never to return. There is one final, last-ditch chance of getting something off it. It relys on them being able to get their hands on an identical model harddrive and transferring parts between them to *hopefully* get something working. Learn from my story - BACK EVERYTHING UP!

My Year So Far In Pictures:

New Year's Eve: It wasn't us who set off the fireworks in their backyard - Honest!

And they did the traditional thing of covering poor Judith's front yard with the leftover streamers from the party poppers...

First week in January: Tan and her family come for a visit. Even though we threw furniture at them (don't ask - it was a long and slightly scary story), they seemed to enjoy themselves! We had heaps of fun having the over for a visit too!

Most of January: We spend out lives out the front on the driveway... Playing with bubbles, drawing with chalk and doing water painting, and playing with the neighbour's kids. Lilli particularly loves playing with Ava. She calls her her best friend!

Oh, and I MADE Elizabeth this purple dress! Very proud of myself!

11th January: Finally took the Christmas decorations down. The tree came down very early, but all the other stuff just stayed up for a while...

15th January: Photo shoot with Bellie. Sarah just wanted to go somewhere and I stripped her child off while they were here and took some photos...

23rd January: Charlie finally decided to make an entrance after keeping everyone in suspence for most of January! Poor Cath had to have a ceasarean because he was taking his sweet time with it!

26th January (Australia Day): I cleaned the bathroom which caused bubbles to come up through the floor in the bathroom. The kids LOVED it!We had a yummy BBQ for lunch (wow - WAY too much food! I learnt from my mum to seriously over-cater...) and spent the day out the front playing with bubbles with Ava. TWO bubble machines certainly make a whole lot of bubbles! Elizabeth certainly looks patriotic enough, shame about the lack of enthusiasm...

And that's pretty much January 2010 for the Abel family in a nutshell. Hope your year is going well!

And on this very sad and reflective day, the anniversary of the horrible Victorian fires this year, I hope we can all spend a little time today looking back and remembering...

Happy New Year

Well, it's 2010 already! I can't believe it! I saw someone with a car number plate which had "91" on it, and I thought to myself "They are SO not old enough to drive if they were born in 91", but then I thought about it... Wow, how fast the time is going past!

We had a really fun New Year's Eve this year. My mum and Dave had been in Darwin during their cracker night, so they had bought a couple of bags of mixed fireworks. It was heaps of fun! Some of them were duds, some were awesome, some really quite strange, but it was funny working out which was which!

When I get my computer back (IF I get my computer back!) I'll upload some photos from over the Christmas/New Year period. Of course I took WAY too many photos! I don't know how I'll be able to scrap even a quarter of them...

I am a bad mummy

I am a bad mummy. I must be. So many people are telling me I am. My brother called me daft, a friend asked why I was ruining things for my kids, others just think I'm a nutter.

What have I done that's so horrible? So disgusting and wrong???

I've told my kids that Santa is a great story that heaps of people like to pretend is real, but it really isn't true. Santa doesn't magically leave presents under the tree, Mummy and Daddy do. It's something Matt and I have dscussed and something we felt was the right thing to do.

I guess it's unforgiveable. We are ruining their Christmasses for the rest of their lives. We are taking away the magic of their childhoods. We are scarring them for life and segregating them from all other people in the human race. Or at least that's the impression I'm getting from everyone else!

Why do we feel the need to out-an-out LIE to our children to create a magical and imaginative world for them to live in? Kids are amazing creatures. They can watch movies and be taken to fantastical worlds, read book and be transported to out-of-this-world wonderous lands. They play with a brown box that can amazingly become a car, a rocket ship, a boat, a house, a cave, or whatever else they want. But when it comes to Santa, we can't trust our kids to take it as an amazingly wonderful story about the giving spirit behind Christmas? Why do we have to tell our kids that Santa is alive and well today and lives in the North Pole and has magical elves and reindeer and delivers presents personally to each and every child? Why do our news programmes feel the need to perpetuate this downright lie by giving updates on "Santa" and even little graphics on where he is by using the modern technology of GPS? Why can we not trust our kids to create some magic themselves, and instead foist it on them in the form of our own ideas?

Elizabeth isn't missing out on anything. She gets to lie under the Christmas tree and count all the twinkling lights with me. Tonight or tomorrow night we're going to pop some popcorn and drive around looking at Christmas lights and ooohhhh and aaahhh. She's getting a chocolate every day from the Advent calendar as we count down the days. She has heaps of presents under the Christmas tree all waiting for her to unwrap (she claims there are 10 - that's a big number for her). She'll celebrate on Christmas Day with a whole pile of loving people and plenty of good food.

Phillip doesn't seem to be missing out on anything magical either. He screams with excitement at every single Christmas decoration he sees (if it has flashing lights that deserves an even bigger yell). He's overjoyed every time he comes down the stairs to see our Christmas tree (despite the original fear because he shattered a glass bauble). I can just imagine the noise tonight or tomorrow as we search for lights! I might bring some ear plugs. He's gobbled down each Advent chocolate as I give them to him. And he's sure to gorge himself silly on Christmas Day!

Why on earth do we have to lie to them about a big fat man in a red suit to make it magical???

And why am I classified as a bad mother and a killjoy because we have chosen this way, and why do I have to keep justifying our choice to every friend, brother, shop assistant, and meddler around?

I'm running away!

I am a bad bad blogging mummy. I have neglected my blog. How bad am I???

Sorry blog. What can I do to make it up to you?

Maybe after my retreat this weekend I'll have some cool things to put up in here. I'm running away to QLD for a few days! I'll be heading to the Ohana retread with all my lovely ScrapChat friends (except for some that sadly couldn't make it - we'll miss you guys!).

As it is, I'll just have post up a few photos from the last couple of (rather busy) months. I hope that makes you happy, my poor neglected blog...

We've had Elizabeth's 4th birthday. That was heaps of fun. She got heaps and heaps of presents, and her cake was a treasure chest that she helped me decorate...

My sister had her baby - Isabella Ruth Alice. It was a looooong labour, and was set to go even longer, but they decided enough was enough and chopped her out by emergency c-section. Both mummy and baby are doing really well now.

I finished crocheting a dress for Isabella, about 1 week before she was born. Good timing I reckon! Modelled by the ever-poseable (but rather grumpy) doll Beatrice.

And we had fun around Halloween by actually carving jack-o-lanterns! Not that we actually celebrate Halloween, but I've always wanted to carve a jack-o-lantern, and now I have!

And finally, a quick picture of my 2 kiddles *acting* like little angels. Of course Blogger is having a little hissy fit, so you might have to flip your head sideways to get a good look at them...

OK, I'd better run. Phillip's having his immunisations this morning. That'll be heaps of fun...