Joel is 6 months old...

Where has the last six months gone????

Took some photos this morning of Daddy and Joel

Isn't he just the CUTEST!!!!!

A trip to Holland.....

 

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......
When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.
After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."
"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."
But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.
The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.
So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.
It’s just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.
But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."
And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.
But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.
* * *
©1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author.

 

I read this and though about it for a while and even though Matthew doesn't  have a diagnosis he still has a disability and I enjoy tiptoeing through the tulips every day....though sometimes we get mud on our clogs.

We had our first visitors

 

We arrived home on Sunday and the kids wanted to get straight in the pool only to find that they had been beat to it....

This is what we found

Mummy duck had bought her 11 ducklings to our pool for a swim. They were too little to get out themselves so Darian and I set up a gang plank for the little ones to get up....they did and an hour or 2 later they were on their way...don't know where as we don't live near any water????

Sunday Family Fun Day

Its not often we get to take all 5 kids out, it involves lots of planning and taking 2 cars...and then the fights of who gets to go with who and sits where.....sometimes so not worth the effort.

Today we took the kids to Megan's school for their annual arts and craft festival. The kids make art work and the parents can purchase the art to help fundraise for the school. The catch is that you have to go on the festival day to purchase, this means while you are there you get to spend more money entertaining the kids....someone is very clever...

So we took the kids and boy were they excited. They were given 10 tokens each and got told....spend them how you like.

I took Matthew into the petting zoo for 3 tokens. He was even brave enough to pat a few, he especially liked the goat

Eloise chose a pony ride (what a shock) for 4 tokens

Megan went on the jumping castle for 3 tokens...couldn't get a photo of her inside so took one of her and dad instead...

Talia being miss scrooge really wanted to go on the Velcro wall but it cost 5 tokens...she didn't want to spend that much as she wanted to buy other things...she did know what though. I convinced her to live a little and here are the pics...she had a hoot..

We then went to the show bags and kids bought themselves a show  bag for 5 tokens each...

Elosie and Matthew spent the last of their tokens on getting their faces painted.

Elosie ended being a puppy or panda...still not sure what its meant to be???

and Matthew got a spider web

The kids came home exhausted but happy.

Another Chapter Completed

I love moving house, its like a fresh start. New house, new life. I have moved 37 times in 34 years. This has been the hardest so far....5 kids and 2 adults even the removalist said we had a lot of furniture.  We did all the boxes and light stuff and we got the professionals to do all the heavy lifting...it still took them 5 hours to do the lot. The best money we spent.

We have basically finished moving, all that is left is the fish tank and all the "stuff" that is lying around. The stuff that doesn't get packed in a box, just gets shoved aside when the removalists come. The stuff that takes forever to pack in the car and move....its the mess.

Once that is all gone, hopefully Monday as Darian has the day off we can get to and clean. Though when we moved in here the house was filthy, I mean disgusting.....ewwww. How people can leave a house dirty is beyond me. If anything I over clean because I am scared that I wont get my bond back.

So on Friday the carpets get cleaned and the windows get washed in the old house (this was in out lease agreement) I was moaning about it at first, but now I am glad as I don't have to do it.  Then Monday 27th the keys get handed in and that chapter of our life ends and a new one begins....

Oh and for the record, I don't want to have to move for a VERY long time....

We went to the park today

Matthew was in daycare today so we are going to go back tomorrow with a picnic...

Here are some photos from today