Facebook

I really like Facebook.

Since joining a few months ago, I’ve made contact with heaps of long-lost friends. Many of them are old school friends who I hadn’t seen or heard from in 10 or 15 years.

And I had lunch with one of those friends today!
How awesome is that?
We hadn’t seen each other since we finished high school (over 10 years) but he found me on Facebook. And instead of writing endless messages on each other’s walls, we decided to meet in person to catch up. And it was so much fun!

We met at his art gallery in town. Yep, he owns an art gallery. Then we had coffee (well, I had hot chocolate … I don’t drink “devil water”) at two separate cafes, followed by lunch at an Italian restaurant. We just ate, drank and talked non-stop! We had so much to catch up on, and also had a blast reminiscing about our school days. Ah, great memories. I laughed so much that I cried!

We’ve both changed a fair bit in 10 years, and our worlds are poles apart: he is a gay art gallery owner, living in the central city; I am a work-at-home wife and mum, living in the ‘burbs. But we still get along famously.

We will continue to keep in touch from now on. And we have Facebook to thank for our beautiful reunion.

Thanks, Facebook.

Accentuate the positive …

… eliminate the negative …

Last night, I was feeling grumpy. Sick, tired and grumpy.

This morning I woke up and decided that I would not be grumpy today. I had to make that choice, because I still felt a bit grumpy. But instead of bursting into choruses of ”woe is me”, I decided that I would look for the positive things and enjoy them!

* snuggling with Tyler this morning before he got ready for Preschool. Listening to him sing songs and talk about all the things he was going to do today.

* making an effort with my appearance this morning. I bypassed the slobby “I work from home” clothes. I plucked my eyebrows, put perfume on, straightened my hair and actually decided to wear a little make-up!
Nothing says “be gone!” to a bad mood like taking a bit of time to look/feel good.

* walking to school with Ethan and talking about how well he did at Athletics last night (he came 2nd in the 60m and 3rd in the 100m). Seeing how happy he was to know that I was really proud of him.

* receiving a lovely handmade card from a friend, thanking me for my help.

* hearing Mr Courier arrive, and finding this HUGE box full of scrapbooking supplies, all the way from Sharon in Perth, Australia!

I won a RAK on her blog a while ago, and this was it! Thank you so much, Sharon! I can’t believe how much stuff is in there, it’s amazing!

I’m sure there will be even more things to add to this list before the day is over.
And it feels really good to send my bad mood packing!

Jack #5

Time for another challenge over at Kiwi Jack Me Up!
This time the “jackee” was Delys, who did a stunning black & white layout.

I decided to add a bit of colour to mine. I recently bought some Paper Trunk papers from the Batik collection … and I LOVE them! I knew they would work well with the black & white photos and the metal accents I wanted to use.

SPECIAL BLESSINGS

Journalling: “I am incredibly blessed to have the two of you in my life. You are so special to me in so many ways. Each of you is unique and yet you are both mine, both part of me, and part of Daddy. God blessed us abundantly when he gave us you!”

Weekend away

We spent Labour Weekend up in Whangarei, visiting Rob’s family. The weather wasn’t that good, but we still had fun and managed to fit in some outdoor play as well.

The boys enjoyed spending time with their grandparents, aunties/uncles and cousins. Our youngest niece Georgia and nephew Brock are both 17 months old and Ethan just adores them. He loves playing with them. Tyler is ambivalent – he loves his cousins, but doesn’t really enjoy playing with “babies”. He has always tended to gravitate towards older children.

On Saturday, we took the boys to the new Wave Pool which has just opened. They had half-price admission over the weekend, so it only cost $6 for Rob and the boys! I didn’t swim, as I have a chest infection at the moment.
Tyler loved the hydroslides and would have gone on them all day if we’d let him! The wave pool was also a huge hit. I think Poppa and Jenni were glad to have the grandkids there so they had an excuse to try it out!

Here are a few pics from the weekend. Enjoy!

And just to prove I was there, here’s one of me and my new haircut!

20,000 hits!

!!NEWS FLASH!!

I have just reached 20,000 hits on this blog! I’ve been watching my stat counter all day, waiting for it to tick over.

Normally I don’t make a big deal about such things, but I thought I’d make an exception. Because I like making exceptions.

I’ve been blogging for just over 2 years. This is post #405. At first I used Blogger, but I switched to WordPress in February this year. Which means I have had 20,000 hits on this blog in just 8 months! I had a couple of site meters on my old blog; I think I had something like 12,000 hits on the first one, and then I changed to a different one and got another 8000 hits on that. So when you add them all up, it’s around 40,000. Wow.
I have definitely got more readers now than I did when I first started blogging. I used to get 1 or 2 comments on each post. Now it’s usually around 15-20, depending on what I’ve written about. And this means? Even more people are reading!

I just want to jump in here and point out that this number-of-hits thing is not a competition. I’m just quite happy with getting 20,000 hits in 8 months, that’s all. Quite obviously, there are several factors involved besides how many regular readers you have. To state the obvious … the more often you blog, the more hits you will get. I tend to blog every couple of days, but only if I have something to say. Some people blog daily, or even several times a day; they are bound to get more hits. Some people don’t blog for weeks or months at a time; they will get fewer hits. So it’s all relative, really. And I think you get the idea. It’s not a competition.

Okay, back to the subject at hand: Blogging.

If somebody had told me 2 years ago that I would become addicted to blogging, I would have laughed. I had no idea what I was getting into. Back then, I just wanted to start a blog for ME. I didn’t care if nobody else read it (although I knew my family would). Now it’s SO different! I have friends who I communicate with solely through blogging and email. It’s important to me that I take the time to nurture those friendships, so they don’t fade.

“So I need to thank all of YOU, my faithful readers and commenters.”
It all sounds a bit silly, really. Like I’m making some kind of acceptance speech at the Oscars.
But seriously, I appreciate all of you!

Reaching this “milestone” has made me reflect on some aspects of blogging, and why it’s important to me. I thought I’d share those reflections with you:

Some people think that having a blog is a waste of time.
I beg to differ.

* I love writing. I love it so much that I do it for a job. But my “professional” writing is very different to my “personal” writing. I spend my work days writing about serious stuff. Lots of scientific & medical jargon, no emotive language whatsoever. Gets a little, er, boring sometimes.
This blog is my forum for writing the way I like to write. I write about stuff that’s important to me. In doing so, I have documented many things that my kids are going to love reading when they are older. Things that I would probably forget if they weren’t written down. That, in itself, is a good enough reason to keep blogging!

* My blog is also a great way for friends and family who live far away to keep up with what’s happening in our world, especially how quickly our boys are growing up! I know many of them read regularly (but hardly ever comment, tsk tsk). In some ways, it makes up for the geographical distance between us. Or at least provides a “fix” until the next real-life visit.

* I am incredibly blessed to have made some wonderful new friends through blogging, several of whom I have gone on to meet in real life. A couple of them have become very close friends, and I can’t imagine my life without them now!
Rob used to call my online friends my “imaginary friends”. Cute, but so not true! My online friends are just as special to me as any of my other friends. I just don’t see them much (or at all!) in real life.

* And of course, I use my blog as a platform for expressing my creativity. It’s a place for me to share my scrapbooking pages with others. This is important to me. I have bookshelves full of albums, and albums full of layouts, but most people will not see those. That’s why I love being able to share them on here. Like any artist, I enjoy sharing my work with other people. If I inspire others in some small way, then that’s just a bonus!

So. There are my 4 main reasons for blogging. Pretty good ones, in my opinion. I’m not about to stop anytime soon.

Bring on the next 20,000 hits! With comments, please. Because let’s face it: we all love the comments! ;-)

Blame it on the boogie

Since school started again, Ethan has been doing “Jump Jam” at school every morning. It’s like Aerobics for kids.
He came home from school yesterday singing “I just can’t, I just can’t, I just can’t control my feet”, and he said he learned it at Jump Jam. He was singing away to himself for most of the afternoon.

At dinner time, he started singing “sunshine, moonlight, good times, boogie”, and Rob and I both joined in.

Well, you should have seen the look on his face!!
“How do YOU know the words?” he asked, incredulous.

He was totally shocked that we would know a song that HE learned at SCHOOL. We had to tell him that the song is actually as old as Mummy! LOL

After dinner, Rob rummaged around in our CD collection and out came “Absolute Disco“. I was really curious to see what Ethan would do when “Blame it on the Boogie” came on. At first he didn’t notice; I guess the version they use at school is some kind of modern remix, not the “classic” version by the Jacksons (who??) … but once he recognised the lyrics, he just started grinning! I could tell he was really surprised that we had the SAME SONG on a CD.

As soon as he recognised the song, he started dancing. I wanted him to show us the moves that they’d been doing at Jump Jam. He seemed a bit shy at first, but soon he was really into it.
Tyler, on the other hand, was shaking his lil’ bootie without any shame whatsoever! He’s totally got the moves, that boy. Great natural rhythm and his own funky style. Ethan is a bit more reserved, but that’s just his personality.

It’s times like these I wish we had a video camera! Our digital camera has a 30-sec video function, but it doesn’t have audio. But I took some pics anyway, and I think they show how much FUN was going on:

While I was watching my 2 boys dancing and having fun together, I couldn’t help but think about how much they have both grown up. It doesn’t seem that long ago when Ethan was the 3-year-old and Tyler was just a baby. Even back then, they were bestest buddies. See?

SO much has changed! And it’s more fun than ever!

And your name is …?

I saw this on Kayla’s blog the other day and thought it would be fun to do!

1. YOUR ROCK STAR NAME: (first pet & current car)
Fonzie Primera

2.YOUR GANGSTA NAME: (fave ice cream flavour, fave cookie)
Cookies and Cream Mallowpuff

3. YOUR “FLY Guy/Girl” NAME: (first initial of first name, first 3 letters of your last name)
H-Bla

4. YOUR DETECTIVE NAME: (fave colour, fave animal)
Blue Dolphin

5. YOUR SOAP OPERA NAME: (middle name, city where you were born)
Amelia Auckland

6. YOUR STAR WARS NAME: (the first 3 letters of your last name, first 2 letters of your first)
Blaha

7. SUPERHERO NAME: (“The” + 2nd fave color, fave drink)
The Purple Water

8. NASCAR NAME: (the first names of your grandfathers)
Arthur Alfred

9. STRIPPER NAME: (the name of your fave perfume/cologne, fave candy)
Tommy Girl Sour

10.WITNESS PROTECTION NAME: (mother’s & father’s middle names)
Can’t do this one – my mum doesn’t have a middle name!

11. TV WEATHER ANCHOR NAME: (your 5th grade teacher’s last name, a major city that starts with the same letter)
Lloyd London

12. SPY NAME: (your fave season/holiday, fave flower)
Christmas Lily

13. CARTOON NAME: (fave fruit, article of clothing you’re wearing right now + “ie” or “y”)
Strawberry Vesty

14. HIPPY NAME: (what you ate for breakfast, your fave tree)
Crumpet Plum

15. YOUR ROCKSTAR TOUR NAME: (“The” + your fave hobby/craft, fave weather element + “Tour”)
The Scrapbooking Sunshine Tour

I’m not tagging anyone, but I’d love everyone (yes, even you lurkers!) to choose one (i.e. you might like to choose “Hippy Name”) and then post a comment to let me know what your name is! It will be fun to read them all.

Say “what?”

I’ve written before about Tyler’s ear problems. The last time I blogged about it was about 2 months ago and we were adopting a watch-and-wait approach before deciding whether to get grommets (tubes) put in again (they fell out a few months ago).

Today we had an appointment to see if the watching-and-waiting had done any good. In other words, to see if the fluid behind his ears had gone.

It hadn’t.

For the past 3-4 weeks, we have noticed Tyler saying “what?” All. The. Time. I think it’s partly a habit, but I’m also concerned that his hearing is being adversely affected. I told Dr Ruth about that this morning, and when she saw that both ears had flat-as-a-pancake tympanograms, she gave me The Look. The one which says “now we have to do something about this.” And for us, that means deciding whether or not to subject our little boy to his 3rd operation under general anaesthesia. Not an easy decision.

I suggested that we get a proper hearing test done first, before we make the decision. Thankfully, Ruth agreed with me. So she’s written a referral to Starship for Tyler to see the Audiologist and get a thorough hearing test. She’s also written a referral to the local ENT Nurse, which will hopefully speed up the process. I’m hoping we won’t have to wait too long to get an appointment at the hospital.

So, it’s back to more waiting! Waiting to get appointments, and then waiting for results. And THEN making a decision. Not looking forward to that. At all.
Prayers would be appreciated, if you’re the praying kind.

—————————————————–

But it’s not all doom & gloom. There have been some really cute and funny moments today which I just have to share.

I told Tyler this morning that he was going to see Dr Ruth. He LOVES going there, so he was excited to hear that. Here’s the conversation that followed:

Tyler: I will get a lolly from Dr Ruth today.
Me: Yes, you will.
Tyler: And I will say thank you to Dr Ruth. I will say “Thank you for making me.”
Me: But Dr Ruth didn’t make you.
Tyler: Yes she did! She jumped into God!

Yes, I told Dr Ruth. And yes, she thought it was the cutest thing ever!

Tyler must be thinking a lot about God today, because this was another conversation we had in the car this morning:

Tyler: I’m not scared of God. Or Kevin.
Me: Who’s Kevin?
Tyler: You know, where God lives.

He meant “heaven”, of course. I nearly died laughing!
I LOVE this age, they say the cutest things!

Honey Roasted Pumpkin

So here is a good recipe for my vegetarian friends.
This is really, really delicious!

800g pumpkin, cubed (5cm cubes)
2 slices thick crusty bread, cubed
3 tablespoons honey
1 tablespoon olive oil
2 teaspoons sesame oil
2 teaspoons sesame seeds, lightly toasted
1 tablespoon olive oil, extra
1 tablespoon red wine vinegar
salt & pepper

Place pumpkin and bread on an oven tray and toss to combine.
Whisk honey and oils in bowl, then pour over pumpkin.
Cook at 190-200C for 20 min.
Add remaining ingredients and toss to combine.
Serves 4.

Chicken & Couscous

This is one of my favourite recipes! It’s a Sophie Gray (Destitute Gourmet) recipe I found in a “Kids Cooking” pamphlet. I love how some of the couscous is all crunchy and golden at the end. Yum!

8 chicken drumsticks
1/2 chopped onion
3 cloves crushed garlic
1 potato, cubed
1 kumara, cubed
100g pumpkin, cubed
2 carrots, cut into sticks
1 tsp dried thyme
2 cups chicken stock
1 1/2 cups couscous

Place drumsticks in roasting pan. Add onions, garlic, thyme, potato, kumara, pumpkin and carrots.
Bake at 180C for 20 min, stirring at least once, then pour in stock and continue cooking for a further 20 min. Sprinkle in the couscous and shake pan until it absorbs the stock. Return to oven for 10 min.
Serves 4