Sunday Afternoon

I'm not sure what Sunday afternoon looks like in your home, but this is often what it looks like in ours. The boys often say - 'mum, I'm bored, I don't know what to do!' yet there's plenty to do around the home. We played board games together and I taught Jarom how to play checkers - he whipped me after just one game, typical.

Tayler just loves to read right now, he's going to love this summer's reading challenge at the Library, we must join this week. And Nathaniel? Well, he just loves doing whatever his big brothers are doing.

We all love Sunday Supper - ummm, cheesy Wotsits, delicious, and chicken sandwiches made from leftovers, plus Jaffa cakes and pure orange juice (part of our 5 a day) - an absolute feast!

Our next young women's P night...

It's going to be so much fun. It's our first Virtue night, and it's based on value experience 1. I felt a little overwhelmed at first with the topic for 'p night' this month, the subject of virtue is so important, but needs to be handled with sensitivity.

We plan on having a great discussion with the girls, playing a great 'dating' game, and finishing with treats. Aren't these bags of Hershey's kisses the cutest?

As well as all of the above we'll be watching the LDS Youth Brand New Year Video on Dating, and also reading an excerpt from President Uchtdorf's talk to YW entitled 'Your Happily Ever After'.

I really feel blessed that my activity has come together. I always take a month to prepare each activity. I carefully pray and prepare each section for the needs of the YW in both of the weston-super-mare wards, even those girls who I know are unlikely to attend. I feel it's great blessing to be able to serve both wards in my calling, I especially love being able to spend time with my nieces and also the girls I have watched grow since Primary. I hope we all have a really fun evening together on Tuesday, I'm going to miss them all when they all disappear for the summer on holiday.

Wet wipes..

Today's funny story is sponsored by 'Huggies'.

Nathaniel has a thing about keeping his feet clean and dirt free. He spends so much time going bare foot in and around the house, but he still hates to have bits on his feet. I noticed this morning that he was sitting on the floor wiping dirt off of his feet with a wet wipe. What I hadn't noticed was that he had got into the cupboard, carefully taken out the wipes and got himself a wipe, then re-closed the packet and sat down to wipe his feet. What a clever little guy? I love how he watches everything we do, and copies us. I know he's only eighteen months old, and sometimes he still feels like my baby, but this boy is growing up fast.

Happy Monday...

Monday's are my favourite day of the week, (apart from Saturday when we get to play as a family and I get to spend more time with Jase) I really do love the feeling of a new start, a new beginning and the chance to get organised and do things right.

Today Nathaniel and I went to Costco to do some much needed shopping - we love their kitchen towel and we were down to our last few sheets. We were almost out of washing powder, dish washer tablets and we had completely run out of Otis Spunkmeyer cookies - how can we live without them? Pleased to say we're all stocked up now - yey!

This afternoon in the garden Nathaniel and I found to beautiful blue little butterflies. We don't have too many plants in our garden, but we have tried to plant things that attract wildlife. It was so nice to see them enjoying our garden, and doing what they do here.

Dinner tonight was for 10. Yes that's right, 10 people for dinner. This is actually starting to become quite a regular occurrence in our home. Tonights tasty nutritious meal was my boys favourite - Chicken & Broccoli Bake. Yum! It consists of one tin of chicken in white sauce, one tin of chicken soup, cooked pasta, broccoli and a cheese and bread crumb topping - all baked in the oven. Our dinner did consist of a little more then one tin of chicken in sauce, I might add, but you get the picture. My boys used to be terrible eaters, they wouldn't eat properly at all, this was the meal that saved us and they still love it.

So that was my Monday, all wrapped up. Busy. Fun packed. Great. Happy Monday Everyone!

Homework Project complete... Check!

Today was the day Jarom needed to hand in his homework project. He'd hate to admit it but he had a lot of fun doing this one. The brief was to create a mountain range and then label the features of the mountain.

We choose Snowdon for his project, as it is the closest mountain range to our home and Daddy has climbed it. We did all our research on Wikipedia. I love Wikipedia, it's such an amazing online resource.

Jarom's mountain range was made from clay from our local beach, he dug it up himself one evening with Dad. I helped Jarom do the research, make his little notebook and flags using photoshop. Jarom did a lot of the work, and learnt quite a few new photo editing skills. I hate to admit it, but Jason and I really enjoyed helping him.

I'm so glad Jarom had the opportunity to do this project, we did have to encourage him at times to push himself and aim for a quality job, but there were times when he reminded us that the project needed to be done, I was quite impressed with that. I'm sure secondary school in a years time is going to bring more projects like this, I just hope Jarom will always aim high, he has greatness in him, I hope he always tries his best.

My thoughts from this week...

Sometimes, I am not the mother I wish I was. This week has been just like that. I often think of the title of a children's story book - 'The day mummy turned into a monster', where the mother in the story progressively becomes more and more like a horrible green bogie monster as her children become more and more difficult to handle. The story does have a happy ending, I hasten to add. It's that happy ending that keeps me going. I hope my children will forgive my frustrations with them, my overly high expectations, my grumpy outbursts. They truly are the most important things in to world to me, besides Jason, of course.

It seems the timing is just a little too coincidental, more like a tender mercy, that this weeks Mormon Message is a talk from Elder Holland, to boost my soul. I feel as though Elder Holland speaks directly to me, I find I am so touched and moved by all his talks. These words have come just at the right time for me.

"Yours is the work of salvation, and therefore you will be magnified, compensated, made more than you are, better than you are and better than you have ever been... The very fact that you have been given such a responsibility is everlasting evidence of the trust you Father in Heaven has in you. He is blessing you and He will bless you even - no, especially - when your days and your nights may be the most challenging."

All I need do is rely on him more, rely on him forever!

Good things...

This week has been full of good things, here are just a few...

Jarom and I worked on his homework project, we're almost finished, he just needs to build his mountain range out of clay.

I helped make the posters and invitations for the next RS activity for our wards. This one looks like it's going to be so much fun, and it's for both Weston 1st & 2nd, I love that. I don't often get to spend time with dear friends, and I'm looking forward to being with them again. Plus we get to wear hats - how cool, I will take pictures.

It's my birthday month, and what better way to celebrate then by spending my birthday pennies at Boden. I've been seriously coveting several items from this seasons catalogue for a while now, just couldn't justify the prices, but it's sale time, so my money will stretch further!

And last, but not least, Jason and I had a date night last night to watch Eclipse. I had planned to go see it next week, but my babysitters had double booked, luckily I managed to switch my tickets to Saturday. I wasn't sure about advanced screenings, we've never been to one before, but we were surprised the cinema wasn't that busy. I've really enjoyed each of the movie versions of Stephanie Mayer's books. Jason and I fancy ourselves as movie critics, we watch enough to know a little, and especially know a bad one when we see it. But we both really enjoyed Eclipse, Jase thought there was "too much kissing", I thought it was an absolutely perfect adaptation of the book. If I could book my babysitters again, I would defiantly go see it a second time.

Almost feels like the Caribbean...

almost. I looked up the tide times for our local beach (can you believe it's only a five minute drive from our home?) on Friday evening, with the intention of getting up early to make the most of the sun before it got too bright. High tide was listed as 7:30am - perfect. Any earlier and we wouldn't be able to get the boys out of the house in time.

We arrived to find this. It was almost breathtaking. The beach doesn't always look this good, we have such varied tide levels that most of the time the water isn't this close. It was so fun for the boys to walk along it and throw pebbles. What a blessing to have this on our doorstep.

Our bird feeder

Last week Grandpa bought us a new bird feeder. It's a beauty, a 4 star restaurant for our sparrows. I've had the little wooden house style feeder for a couple of years now, but our local neighbourhood birdies haven't been impressed. About 4 weeks ago I filled it up with some yummy grubs. It took a while for the birds to notice it was filled with such a delicious snack, but when they did they went crazy for them! We have heard that it takes a good few weeks for birds to notice an enticing snack when it is laid out for them, so we were surprised when we then hung their grubs on the bird feeder full of wild bird seeds, that they took to the new feeder instantly.

Each of us has had so much joy watching the birds come to feed in our garden. Jarom loves to relax in the evening with a pillow, a few garden chairs and a pair of binoculars (even though the birds are only a few feet away). It's so great to know we are supporting their survival, up until this point we haven't even had a black bird in our garden, we were beginning to worry. However our birds have expensive taste and they're getting through mealworms so quickly, we can't keep up with the demand!

Pictures of my boys...

A bright sunny Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago meant that we retreated to our local woods for a family walk. The boys were in good spirits and didn't mind having a few photographs taken. The sun was so strong at 4 o'clock in the afternoon, but the shade and cool of the trees was lovely. We were surprised when we were joined by the boy's Beale cousins who were taking their little dog Benji for a walk. We were reminded of how good it is to live so close to our family, and what a joy it is to spend time with them.