ON BEING SINGLE…

Hello and Happy New Year to everyone who reads this.  Wow, 2009.  I remember when we celebrated the year 2000 – it seems like only yesterday.  At that stage I was married and had 1 child, with another on the way.  Now I’m not married, and have 3 children (although you’ll be pleased to hear I WAS married when I had the other two!!  LOL).

Well I have mixed feelings about seeing in a New Year.  In some ways a feeling of relief that I’ve almost made it through the FIRST year of being separated – and I’m still here, in one piece. 

Those firsts are always hard aren’t they after any kind of trauma, whether it be separation, death, just losing a friend or what have you.  Doing the first birthday celebrations, Easters, Christmas etc. can be kind of hard.  But we’ve made it through.  I’m having some great conversations with my kids about how life is for us now that we are TWO families instead of ONE, but sometimes being ONE for special events etc.  I know deep down they would all much rather we were still ONE family together, but they also understand that we weren’t happy being together, and that how we are now is OK, just different.  It’s hard to see your kids have to go through this stuff though, when it would never have been my choice for them to ever have to deal with such issues.

I’m thankful that their Dad and I are friends.  Geordie was invited to a friend’s birthday party this afternoon (the friend’s parents are divorced and have both remarried) and it was lovely to see both families come together for their son’s birthday celebration.  That’s how things are for us too.  The kids know they can say anything to either of us about the other parent, and we will listen and be supportive (sometimes seething inside, if I’m honest) but I NEVER want them to feel like they have to censor what they say – or that “Mum might be upset about that” etc.  I might actually be upset, but they will never know, and it’s not their burden to carry – it’s mine, and mine alone.

Thank you for the lovely comments following my post about anger.  It helps to know I’m not a lone soul out there – raging away and sometimes feeling like perhaps I’m the only one.  I know I’m not, but still it’s helpful to be encouraged and helped along by my cyber buddies.  Thank you. 

When I logged on tonight I saw that I’ve had over 2000 hits on my blog in the few months I’ve had it going.  I hope that my ramblings have somehow touched people, or moved them, or made them think differently about things.  Thank you to those who have encouraged me with comments or emails.  It’s really been wonderful to know that at least a few people are out there reading my thoughts and ramblings, and actually making sense of them sometimes!!

I’ll leave you with another few photos from Christmas.

Thanks for stopping by, and may the year ahead be one of happiness, love, joy, peace, and most of all – growth and understanding of the person you are meant to be.

F xx

Christmas Lunch – all wearing our kooky glasses! 

One of my favourite shots… my niece Mandy reading a story to Bella (who thinks the world of her big cousin).  This just melted my heart, and made me realise how precious our extended family are, and how lucky we were to have them here to share a special Christmas.

Okay, this is going to be a very HONEST post.  I’m an ANGRY person right now, and I’m not exactly sure where the anger is coming from.  I do know that it’s aimed towards my children far too often, and I’m trying hard to deal with it.

It’s horrible.  I go OFF on these rants about fairly insignificant things that become MoUnTaInS when they needn’t be.

I’ve got a book from the Library on Anger Managements which is interesting, but I’m not sure that it’s actually helping me at the moment.  I think I have lots of things swirling inside me that need to come out, but if you asked me what they were, I couldn’t be specific.  Just “things”. Perhaps it’s all just a continuation of the grieving process that one must go through after experiencing a loss, and a failed relationship IS a huge loss.  I still catch myself some days thinking “How on earth did I end up here, in this place?” but I soldier on and keep putting one foot in front of the other, knowing that “this too shall pass” – I just wish it would jolly well hurry up!!

Do you get angry?  I wonder how you deal with it?  I’m definitely on a journey here, and I hope I can come through to the other side minus the anger and nastiness that I unfortunately display far too often at the moment.

Thanks for stumbling into my sad little corner of the World.

F xx

p.s.  I promise to post a few more Christmas pics tomorrow – and to be more cheerful!!

Here’s something special I want to share from Christmas Day….

My Mum is an amazing seamstress.  She learnt how to sew from her Mum (my special Granny) who was also an amazing seamstress as well as doing almost every other craft known to man like spinning, weaving, knitting, crocheting (she even taught herself how to tat and made all the lace for my wedding dress!). Anyhow, I digress.

Mum has made Bella a special smocked dress every year for Christmas, and this year was no different.  When Mum visited us in October, we took Bella shopping and she picked out the material she liked – and here’s the result.  Isn’t it just so beautiful??  Bella wore her dress ALL day for Christmas, then put it on again on Boxing Day – and probably would have worn it to bed if I’d let her.

I’m so thankful to have a Mum who makes precious memories for each of my children (she also does special things for the boys – last year when we visited NZ she made them each a cloak which they wear often, and everybody always asks where they got them!).

So today I send a loving tribute to my Mum.  Thank you for who you are and how special you make each of the children feel with the beautiful handmade gifts you make.  You are one in a million, and we are so thankful to have you in our lives.  WE LOVE YOU….

Thanks for visiting my little corner of the World.

F xx

Well after the frantic lead up to Christmas and a full-on few days with the family visiting, I’m now sitting at home on my own, really noticing the QUIET!  It’s great to have time to draw breath and to reflect on the past few days.

We had an awesome Christmas.  My brother and his family arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon.  We all went to a Carol Service at our local Anglican Church which was bursting at the seams with lots of families in attendance.  Afterwards we did a bit of a drive-by Christmas Lights displays – there were serious queues going past all the houses giving out lollies.

Christmas Morning dawned.  Bella was so excited – running down the hallway to see if Santa had been, then getting annoyed at having to wait for her Dad and brothers to arrive so she could open presents.  It wasn’t a long wait though, then off they went – ripping the paper off and oooohhhing and aaahhhing over their various gifts.  They seemed really pleased with what G and I had got for them. 

The family arrived a bit later on (they house sat my friend’s house while they were here) so there was more present opening and hilarity.  Mandy (my niece) bought us all silly sunglasses which caused a lot of laughing and fun.  My nephew Andy totally looked like Elvis in his!

Christmas lunch was a cold affair with beautiful ham from my friend’s farm and smoked turkey with salads.  Very delicious.  Then pavlova and strawberries for dessert.  Yum!

The W’s got a Wii for Christmas, so they set it up in the afternoon and we had so many laughs playing together.  The biggest laugh of all was getting Bella on there (for the very first time) to have a go at 10 pin bowling against me – and she totally thrashed me!  She got a turkey (3 strikes in a row) plus countless other strikes throughout the game, and scored 60 more points than me.  We laughed so hard at that.  Then Geordie was the boxing King, beating the entire family!

Boxing Day we had a BBQ for lunch, then headed to the beach in the afternoon.  It was VERY windy, so not the best beach weather, but everyone enjoyed having a swim and I lay on the beach and filled my ears up with sand!!

We ate sooo much, it’s a wonder we could actually fit in any dinner, but we did!  Then bacon and egg buns for breakfast this morning before the family headed back to Perth.

It was an awesome Christmas – so lovely to have family here to celebrate with.  The kids really enjoyed spending time with their big cousins, we ate too much, had lots of laughs, and generally just had a ball.

So, now it’s quiet as I sit here catching up on my blog, then I’ll go and do a bit of housework to tidy up after a very full-on few days.

I hope you had a lovely Christmas, and that you had a chance to contemplate the true meaning – that Jesus really IS the reason for the Season?  I know I did, several times…. just looking around at my family, and thinking how special it was that we could all be together.  What a blessing!

F xx

Well we had a funny old day yesterday.  I got the kids up early and out the door around 8am to get to to the supermarket before the mad rush started.  We visited Target first because Geordie had his heart set on buying a Mush-a-belly toy.  Bella was not to be outdone and chose the cutest little dolly (to add to her growing collection).  It’s a Berenger baby doll, but plastic, so good for bathing.  She LOVES to bath her dolls, and although we have plenty of plastic dollies, they don’t all take kindly to being bathed and fill up with water, which makes it a little tricky at drying time!  Anyway, they were both happy with their purchases and new dolly was named Krystal (after one of Bella’s dancing teacher’s this year – cute!).

On to Coles and grocery shopping for Christmas.  My brother and his wife and 3 teenage kids are coming for Christmas with us, so I needed to stock up on all the usual goodies plus some more.  We filled our trolley well and truly and by 9.30am there were already queues of 3 and 4 people at the checkouts!  I was glad we’d decided to go early.

Home again, but I kind of never got any enthusiasm to do much for the rest of the day.  I had plans to bake, and clean and tidy up, but not much of anything happened.  I got a new computer last week so I’ve been setting that up on and off over the last few days.  You forget what a hassle it is having to re-do emails etc, although I’m glad I discovered exporting all your info from Outlook so I could just plug all that straight in (email addresses, contacts etc).

So, here I sit, 8am on Christmas Eve morning, and I should have a lovely tidy house – but I don’t.  I should have a fridge full of homemade goodies – but I don’t.  I should have the kids presents all wrapped ready to put out tonight – but I don’t.  Oh well, I still have another day – and I’m sure we’ll enjoy pottering about at home together today.  We’re going to make some sweets and truffles, and perhaps make the Pavlova ready for Christmas lunch.  YUM!!

I hope you have a wonderful Christmas day celebrating with friends and family.  We’re looking forward to a nice relaxing day at home, just enjoying spending time with our nearest and dearest.

Thanks for stopping by.  I’ll leave you with some cute pics of the kids I took a few weeks back…

F xx

I listened to a great Webinar yesterday (which I participated in through a Virtual Assistant forum I belong to).  The topic was “Goal Setting for the New Year” and I got such a lot out of it.  Generally I’m not much of a goal setting type person – I usually just go with the flow and whatever happens, happens IYKWIM?  Yesterday though I made a few decisions, sort of New Year resolutions I guess.

1)  I’m going to set some definitive goals for my business (like I want to have x number of clients by the end of 2009, x number by 2010, etc).   A big part of this for me is trying to be self-supporting, rather than having to rely on Centrelink payments.  I am very grateful for the support that I get from the Government at the moment – to be a single parent without that monetary support would be very tough indeed.  BUT I’d like to think that I can support myself and my family without needing the assistance, so part of my goal in starting my own business was with that in mind.

2)  I’m going to be a lot more disciplined with my time – blocking out spaces in my diary to achieve goals that I set (like exercise, time with the kids, time for work etc).  It’s so easy to waste a lot of every day.  I’m terrible for sitting at the computer and thinking “Oh I’ll just look at this” or “just one more minute” – and before I know it several hours have disappeared – and for what?  Yes I need to be at the computer for my business, but I need to be present and engaged with my children, and I also need to have time away from the business doing fun things for myself.  Sadly that balance is lacking at the moment, so 2009 will be time to pull it all back in and sort myself out!

3)  This is a biggie (for me!) – I’m going to make myself available to serve the Lord in whatever capacity he asks of me.

This year I’ve done a lot of soul searching, as you do when you’ve had a fairly MAJOR event in your life; like separation.  I think I’m a very selfish person – I’m good at doing what I want to do, but not so good at giving to others in need.  One thing I’m really seriously thinking about is short term mission trips.  A family from our church are moving to East Timor to live next year, and I have this desire to go and visit them and help out where I can.  I have NEVER thought about mission work before, but somehow this feels like it might be the time for me.  I have absolutely no idea how I would afford any of this, but I know that if the Lord wants me there, he will make a way for it to happen.  It’s quite exciting (and terrifying) all at the same time.  I’d also love to take the kids at some stage to give them an appreciation of how blessed and lucky we are living in this country.

Anyway, enough rambling from me.  My computer time is up – it’s back to tidying for me (is that a whip I hear cracking in the background?).  Time permitting I’m also going to wrap a few presents to put under the tree.

Thanks for stopping by.  I wonder if you will be setting goals for 2009?

F xx

Wow – this is “see how many Christmas Carol tunes you can use to title your blogs with week”!

You’ll all be very glad to hear that the Christmas spirit has finally hit – yippee.

I just had THE BEST night. The kids normally go with their Dad after work on Friday, but this arvo he rang to say that he was going to be held up and would I mind keeping them for an extra few hours. Yippee. I had already planned to go to a lovely Carol Service this evening at the Anglican Cathedral – it’s called ‘Sing Noel’ and they’ve held it for the last few years. The City Band, the Choral Society and the Cathedral Choir all get together – do a few items and play lots of Carols that the congregation can sing along to, interspersed with bible readings. I really enjoy it. Angus wanted to come with me, so we just changed our plans and I said all three would come along. As a special treat we went to Han’s Cafe for dinner (we almost never go out to restaurants). Just as we were getting to the restaurant, G rang and wanted to know what we were up to (he’d finished work on time after all). Angus invited him to join us for dinner – so he came to Han’s as well and we had a lovely meal together (my “work Christmas party” – I joked!). So that was all good.  I love the fact that we still do things together “as a family”.  Although being separated is hard etc. it’s great for the kids that they can do things with both of us together and there’s no tension or difficulty – just fun being together.

After dinner we were off to Sing Noel, which was lovely – how can you NOT feel Christmassy singing all those beautiful Carols and reflecting on the birth of Jesus??

On the way home we did a drive by of some of the Christmas Lights up on houses around town. Wow, some people are a bit over the top with it all. It must take them weeks to get their displays done.  I find it hard enough to get one string of lights on the tree!  LOL.

Something else great happened today… Bella received a parcel in the post.

Bella LOVES to receive mail, and gets quite upset at times if the boys receive a letter from a penfriend or what have you.

So what was in the parcel (apart from those pretty ribbons)?  This…

My beautiful friend Jenny has been at it again – this time blessing Bella with her wonderful craft work.  I seriously cried when I read her blog the other day and saw what she had done.  She is amazing – making beautiful presents for her family, and then making this for Bella.

Jen, you’ll be pleased to hear that the bag got taken to Sing Noel tonight – it held a jacket for Dolly (who also came to Sing Noel).  Bella is so thrilled with her gift.  Thank you for making a little girl so very happy by a) writing her a letter; b) sending her a parcel and c) making her something so beautiful which also happens to be in her two favourite colours!!    She is in Heaven.  How lucky we are to have such a thoughtful, wonderful friend.  Now if only you weren’t quite so far away!!!!!

Thanks for stopping by my little Christmassy corner of the world.  I think Charlotte Church has the voice of an angel – this is a glorious version of my most favourite Christmas Carol….

O Holy Night, the Stars are brightly shining, it is the night of the dear Saviour’s birth…

F xx

Actually, I lied.  This year I feel the least Christmassy I EVER have, which is kind of sad really.  Normally I LOVE the build up, choosing presents, wrapping gifts, setting up the tree, etc.  But this year it’s all been a bit blah.

Perhaps it’s because this is the first Christmas following separation?  We will all spend Christmas day together (my brother and his family will also be joining us) – so it’s not like I’m anticipating a day on my own without the kids etc.

I did take Bella to see Santa today – and she was pretty happy about that.  He asked her what she wanted for Christmas and she just shrugged her shoulders and said “I dunno”! 

She sat on his knee for the obligatory photo (to be honest I was amazed she did!).

Thanks for those who emailed me or commented on whether you journal.  Here are a few links that might be of interest to anybody else who wants more information on journalling:-

http://newlifestories.com/discover-the-healing-powers-of-journal-writing/

http://www.amazon.com/Writing-Way-Healing-Telling-Transforms/dp/0807072435

I haven’t started journalling yet, but I probably will some time soon.

I’ve got my big transcription file which is almost done (yippee), then some data entry work to do tomorrow, plus a Chaplain Interview Panel to attend – then I’m DONE – I’m taking a holiday, and we’ll do some baking, make some yummy truffles which I’ve been drooling over for the past week – check them out here!

Thanks for stopping by.  Sorry I’m not more full of Christmas cheer for you.  Maybe tomorrow….

F xx

I had a wonderful “deep and meaningful” conversation with a dear friend this afternoon. She’s younger than me, but one of those really “wise” women who seem so much older than their years IYKWIM?

I was talking about all I’ve been through in this past year, and the journey I’ve gone through in trying to make sense of all that has happened. That’s a work in progress – let me tell you – but my friend said I should be journalling and putting all my thoughts and feelings down on paper. She’s suggested it before, and I thought it sounded like a great idea, but I’ve never actually got around to doing it.

Is that something you do in your life? Do you find it helpful – getting “stuff” out of yourself and away from you. I’d love to hear from anyone who does this – and how you find it.

She asked me today whether I could ever see myself in another relationship. If she’d asked me 3 months ago I would have said “never” – but as time passes, and the reality of being single again hits home, every now and then I find myself wondering about the possibility of finding somebody else to share my life with. I’m not desperate, you understand, but I feel like one day that could definitely be a possibility – or at least I’d like to think so.

I have a few friends who are in “second time around” relationships – and I know it CAN work, although my main worry would be how the children would cope with it all.

Anyway, it’s been a good day, I’ve had a cry, I’ve had a few laughs, I’ve pondered where my life is at now, and perhaps where it might go in the future – but above all, I’m happy, I’m content, I’m glad that I’m living the life I’m in, as hard as it is sometimes.

Change the subject completely – if you’d like a “feel good” few minutes, check out the blog on my blog roll “Days With My Father” I watched this the other night and thought it was a beautiful representation of love from a son to his father. See what you think.

Thanks for stopping by….

F xx

Another quote from “the happiness we share”-

EVERYONE SMILES IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

Anon.

F xx