And Again.

 

I have been running. Nowhere in particular really. Maybe more like a good ol’ sprint in one place.

I have a gazillion photographs to sift through and I’m sure I will get to share them eventually. But this last week has found Rob and I filling humidifiers, filling humidifiers with essential oils of eucalyptus and lavender and rosemary and… whatever I can drain out of the last of my array of oils. It has found us slicing up bags of oranges and sneaking tiny little tissue salts into everything. The children have been slathered in home and shop bought Vicks ointments and we’ve boiled the kettle all but away for cups of homemade med-lemon drinks and shop bought ones (which ever we had at the time and whichever one we had not yet run out of).

And then once our heads hit the pillows it was morning again and we started all this all over again.

We made it through though. Usually around this time of the year we’ve spooned out on an array of anti-biotic bottles to both Joshua and Garren and somewhere I think there may have even been a hospital visit for the sickliest of them all, dear Josh. Not this time, not an anti-biotic at all not even for our littlest flower, who has cut all 4 top and 4 bottom teeth and had her first flu virus all at once - here Earthside. Now, I’m not going to get my highs on the real high right now, cause we still got some ways to go before the winter months are done and dusted. But, it’s a good start – don’t you think? There is a rattle here and there and I am determined to get as far as I can this season without a doctor.

Hold all those fingers and toes for me?

In the meantime, in between it all I am knitting up Star Gnomes (ever so slowly) for the Shop, other than peacock I will now add teaberry to our collection and I have still got soaps that need to be photographed and packaged for the shop. Packaging has become my nemesis with my soaps. I can whip up the lovelies but then I can’t get the right packaging for them. I do know that somewhere amidst it all I need to knit up another Knubblechen for a girl child that will land earthside soon and a bear with accessories for Danika’s first birthday too.

I’ll get there. Soon. I hope.

There is also talk of a new adventure into a few homemade outsourced products by other mums and dads out there that I will be affiliated with. I really am excited about it and I hope that you will be too. I have found myself gravitating towards supporting homemade and handcrafted home-grown businesses around these parts. It’s a rarity to find the likes of such treasures, so when you do you surround yourself and others with it too. But, more of that soon.

This weekend the boys every so kindly cleaned out the Lapa and we Sunday lunched there. It felt wonderful claiming back that space again. I’m sure if the weather keeps at it we will be making it our weekly shenanigan. I’ve add a quick clip from our after lunch Sunday meander up and down our road. Just for fun.

https://youtu.be/NNOnsP5Mo2g

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NNOnsP5Mo2g]

ps. did you see from the photographs … Danika is days away from crawling.

Protecting the Sprouts.

Rob and I had no idea that our little wildlings in the new veggie bed would sprout just as they have. We threw blessed seeds in with intense hopes and dreams and those blessed hopes have turned into little greenlings doing their thing against all the odds of the winter coldness that has finally arrived here to our space.

So, ever so thankful for the sprouts, we got the boys to help gather fallen pine needles to help keep them safe against the frost that will arrive and the winds that will make themselves known as the sweep from the Drakensburg snow-capped mountains.

https://youtu.be/-ltRtQqVSm

 

Tagging the little ones.

Dressed up in our winter warmests to keep out the cold front that had arrived and with fold out chairs under arms we made our way to support Garren in his first Tag Rugby Festival this weekend gone.

I had to search good ol’ Wikipedia for a little insight into this form of Rugby. As, while watching, I noticed that the game just wasn’t what I was used to watching while standing on the side-line of the field. This was Tag Rugby, slightly different and it seems that our little ones are not yet at the Velcro wearing stage (thank goodness) or there may have been a few cold bare bottoms out for the world to see! These boys are quite the ruffians out there on the field. It was just a tap here and there with plenty of coaches on the field to guide them through the game. Garren loved it and I am sure I would love the world of Rugby just as much (for him) if I could wrap my simple brain around it. I have tried, for years, and I have almost given up and come to terms with the fact that I will just love rugby because my son plays the game.

We’re still pretty much in the thick of Rugby season, around these parts, with a tournament played either home side or at another school each week for the next couple of weeks. So there will be a few more frozen field side mornings to come. It’s time to bring out our winter woollens.

"Many things that are true feel like a cheat. Kingdoms get princes they deserve, farmers daughters’die for no reason, and sometimes witches merit saving. Quite often, actually. You’d be surprised.”

Later through the day we decided that it was certainly way too cold to venture out again and so we made the most of it and turned the rest of the afternoon and evening into movie time. The boys love it - snuggled inside - under blankets - in front of the Television. The one movie that stuck with me was “ A Monster Calls” and will most certainly be added it to my favourite list. It was unexpectedly darkly intense, so much so I almost sent Garren out to watch another movie in his room for fear of how it would turn out and how he would react to it emotionally. We shed a tear together and we spoke a few words once done and I am so glad that I let him watch it to the end. I do tend to forget that he is “almost 9 MOM” and that I really should be encouraging movies that have a real story line and to remember that they are far better than the usual mindless action and fluff that seems to fill our screens more and more these days.

I am the Mother who tries to protect her children from harm.. the type that fills our newspapers and social media and television screens.

But maybe there is more harm in said mindless movies without much ado about anything much?

I have just realised that it’s only a couple of weeks left of this school term and then we will have officially reached our midyear break. 

Where has this year gone?