Big Dam

 

We ended off our last day of spring break with our special friends at Big Dam.

I love this time of year, when every little detail comes alive with bright colours of the season. This also means that it is fishing season for my boys. Well mostly for Rob and Garren. Almost every weekend will be spent beside a water filled dam or lake. And with Danika being a little older we may join in on a few of those days playing along the shore line.

I hope your break was restful and rejuvenating and that the next few months of the long haul of term 4 treats you well. Good luck to all our big children who start their last term of exams. I know our home is always quiet and serious (for our eldest children) this time of the year.

Credit: @a n g e l a 🌙

The last week of September

The last week of September is done.

It brought with it my 40th spin around our Sun.

As well as the last days of the 3rd term of homeschooling which now means we are on Spring break. A much needed break this week for not only the small children but for this Mamma too - my house needs urgent spring cleaning attention. All the nitty gritty of house work always gets shelved during the school term.

It also bared a much needed break from social media. Not intentional I might add but it was needed - thank you cloud covered sky and stormy echos from the heavens for ever knowing just what my soul needs.

Welcome October.

The Long Weekend

It was the long weekend and it rained, rained and rained some more. In fact the whole long weekend was spent watching tiny droplets splatter against the window panes and listening to grumblings echo from the sky.

It rained out our god daughter's 4 birthday party and it rained out Heritage day. Heritage day also known as National Braai day around these parts was celebrated with homemade pie instead.

Back On Track

Our Orange tree is in bloom. The scent of the blossoms linger in the evening air and at times mingle with that of the Jasmine growing just outside our fence line aside the bamboo thicket.

This morning for the first time it was hard to ignore the light peeping through the slit in the kitchen curtains while preparing lunch boxes for Rob and Josh for the day. It is funny how suddenly and all in one moment you realise the change of season is not just words or about to happen - it is happening. I feel a little cheated this year. I am always aware of the slightest change, especially when Winter turns to Spring and then Summer to Winter. These moments are always so very profound for me. But not this year, not this turning of the wheel. I seem to have been lost in the last few weeks of trying to juggle the emotions that came with Danika's hospital stay and all the things that come with homeschooling and this new life of being a stay at home mamma. All those little things that you thought you would have time for do not always come to be. And I am absolutely fine with that. New paths do that, they sometimes (even if slightly) change the way you perceived it would all be.

Danika is faring well. She is back to singing (literally) through her day. Thank you all again for all your gentle healing vibes sent from all over the world. Those vibes made their way here and are helping more than you know.

We Will Prevail

We have a hospital bed!

The confirmation email arrived yesterday afternoon while she was napping and I was adding rows to a knit project. I am somewhat relieved but still anxious and I so really need that feeling to go away. So, this mornings tasks to keep me focused will be to get our small cooler box packed with snacks for breakfast and lunch for tomorrow as hospital cafeteria food is way overpriced and not pleasant at all. I will need to pack her bag too and add an array of books and puzzles to keep her distracted from the fact that she will not be able to nurse from me from mid night tonight. I know there is reason for this but it really will be a little traumatic considering she is a feed and cuddle on demand child. But, we will prevail and we will see the light at the end of this very dark and daunting tunnel.

  

And Oh Yes.. I will need to pack my knitting to ride out the nerves when she is in theater - right?

I know I haven't done a homeschooling update for a couple of weeks now. But we are still marching forward with lessons in the morning. It has been a slow two weeks were we have dragged our heels somewhat. With the end of the third term looming in the next couple of weeks. I do feel that we will be right on check for that. In the meantime we just do as much as we can without any tension and catch up next week when we will hopefully be back in some sort of routine again. The joys of homeschooling - you get to choose your times and days! 

Josh is on the last week and a bit of school too. He has been quiet of late. This time of the year they write their common tests which will prepare them for the fourth and final term and exams. The pressure is scary for all the grade 11s. I feel for them, really I do.

Both Rob and I want to thank each and everyone of you for your kind messages through email, whatsapp, instagram and here on our blog in our comments. We feel very blessed to have you watching over us and giving us a little more strength with all your gentle healing vibes.

The weather forecast for this weekend - rain!

Have a blessed weekend my friends and I look forward to catching up with you all again in the new week.

lots and lots of love as always

Angela ♥

ps - the photos :

1. last nights sky showing the first star of the evening and the witch's moon.
2. danika's new dress made with love by Oumie for when she gets out of hospital.
3. our new favourite breakfast - Coconut flour + Cinnamon Waffles.

Waiting.

Thank you for the well wishes and emails sent for our Danika. 

The dentist appointment went well yesterday although sadly she will have to go in for surgery to have those two broken teeth removed. We are just waiting on confirmation for a bed and hospital for her. Sometimes the paperwork regarding anything medically orientated takes more time than one would think. But, she is fine and thanks to the course of antibiotics is doing well and is now pain free. 

I wont lie, my nerves are slightly shattered this week with the thought of her heading on into hospital and undergoing this procedure but I am assured that this is all the norm and that all will be well. I do know this deep down but... still.

Keep sending us all those positive energies!

love Angela ♥

His Tenth Year

We all welcomed his 10th year here Earth side with him this past weekend.

We woke before the sun and shared gifts under the warmth of the covers in our bed while the smallest and the second eldest slept.

It was a moment just for him and Rob and I.

Rob is in the middle of his final stretch of studies and so is waking and leaving home earlier in the morning, this month, to travel to his college which is in another town.

This year we were able to surprise Garren and take him out to a restaurant for dinner. It is our first year of homeschooling so we dont have to cater for the numbers in the classroom like previous years. But what we did do is make up a few party packs and cupcakes for his team at soccer practice.

Our tradition is that on your special day you get to choose the meal and then a home-baked cake for afters.

Credit: @a n g e l a 🌙

More Time For

 

 

It was humid and warm and the sun shone brightly while we were away. On return we happily jumped into bed with shorts and t shirts and woke halfway through the night frozen to the bone.
It seems we have returned home, from our time away down the coast, to the beginnings of Winter.
I think this year I am going to love Winter. This year I will be home for Winter. This year I will have more time to add rows to my knit projects, more time to read lines from my book and that of the kids, more time to add a pinch of love to warming home bakes and more time for, the most important of them all, cuddles with my tribe.

I am working on a pretty pink cabled hat for Danika this month, the pattern you can find on Ravelry. Are you on Ravelry? If so, let's connect? I have been meaning to get my fingers and needles wrapped around this beautiful wool since I purchased it a few months back. I just was not sure of just how I was going to knit it up. Well, that was until recently.

This month I am currently reading a double in Self-Suffiency : Soapmaking with Natural Ingredients and Natural Remedies. These two I ordered months ago but only arrived last week while I was away. I am devouring them. On hand as always is The Rules of Magic (again) which I will follow up with Practical Magic (again) and Penelopy Ody's Home Herbal which I have always at all times at hand.

I have also moved our BareFoot HomeSchool SchoolHouse inside. And it would probably be best to name it something else for the colder months? Any ideas?
I've watch on each day, through my scullery window, and the sun has shifted. The rays that beamed down through the day from before have lightened and the ground is still cold to the touch by midday. My Wellie Boots have been dusted off and placed at the kitchen door and my good ol faithful flip flops have now been packed away.

It's time... do you feel it too?

Cousins + Bubbles

We recently caught up with special family. Small beings are always fun to have here at the Cottage.

Small beings and their Mamas! These small cousins are all around the same age. All under 3ish and made from similar cloth of the tribe and are so very different. It always intrigues me how littlies, although only a few months apart either way, grow and develop at totally different rates. So very unique. I know it has a lot to do with the "Village" that helps the Mamas along the way and the whole gene pool thing. But, it still is such an amazingly powerful thing to watch as they play.

I still stick to my previous convictions.. "Children like Chickens are hard to Capture" :)

Thank You March.

Family Earthing.

Backyard earthing every Sunday seems to be our "thing". Even when family come to meet and greet and feast. I am ever so thankful the atrocious heat kept a distance - the reprieve meant that we could let the wee ones run wild and free to their hearts content. With cooler weather comes cloud cover which does tend to lend to darker pictures to share. I am beginning to get used to capturing them so. These sweet moments were captured this weekend gone when Rob's cousins came for Sunday lunch. We had such a lovely time watching the wee ones connect.

This week has flowed perfectly. Homesteading and homeschooling flowing from one to the other gracefully, we may just be on track. So much so that today is just a revision day - well, except for Math and a couple of Science experiments that we could not complete until today, as I needed to collect the ingredients on my weekly grocery store run yesterday. We are both pleased with how smoothly lessons are going.

I have found myself gravitating more in this space here now too. With my new steps on this path we are all now following and with me being home daily and if you know how things work around here there are hardly internet waves in the sky that lend for much time connecting. Between that and devoting more time to nurturing our young ones it only makes more sense to flow with this not so new way of sharing. Should you wish to keep following you will find me in your mail box each time I should update here if you subscribe HERE (or click in the subscribe box to the right of your screen) or peek at my INSTAGRAM profile for our link there. I will also send out an email every so often with links to posts should you be interested. If you are interested you can email me HERE and I will add you to my mailing list.

Happy Friday sweet beings and thank you for always connecting with us.

love always

Angela XOX

BEing

it seems like a lifetime has passed since I was able to log on…

it is the strangest of weather we have been experiencing. Grey days filled with all the same shades that are our clouds and where even my moods have been mirroring the same feels. So very unusual for this time of the year. When the clouds linger longer – all sleepy, covering the tips of the pines – there is absolutely no connection technologically with the “outside” world. It’s wonderful and frustrating all at once and in days gone by this may have been my own personal tragedy, but I’m finding the older I get the more I am at peace with just BEing and eventually catching up again when the time is right. When it is all meant to BE. And this old newness of BEing is utterly liberating.

my home, is alive. Alive with sounds of children playing (even in the fine mist drizzle), weavers busying twittering about their new nests, cricket orchestras slowly beginning their tunes earlier every day. It is alive with the sounds of Summer. Albeit a grey one.

 school is done for the year and we are counting sleeps until Midsummer’s Eve. When the longest day of the year is celebrated in remembrance of the light that has been and a time to reflect on the darker days to come. A cycle within a cycle within another. As always proving that all things are connected.

day jobs away from the Cottage are done until the new calendar year begins and a celebration in the home and of the home has began. Twinkly lights flicker through the branches of the ol man-made tree we were gifted umpteen years ago and alarm bells have been placed on silent for the next wee bit of the seasoned holiday. Thoughts are on days of festivities, on feasts, on togetherness with those we hold close to our hearts. It is a time of BEing, in the moment, in the present, in the home with what makes our hearts beat in rhythm.