For the Life of us

I am sitting at my computer with a furry baby milling around my feet and my human baby in bed for a nap. I have actually noticed the sound of birds singing and silence, a luxury you are not afforded during the whirlwind that is the July school holidays. A whirlwind that takes you on a crazy path of destruction, chaos and crazy fun and then all of a sudden it's gone. And your house is quiet and you are able to finish a hot cup of coffee and you find yourself in the irony of missing the chaos. Kind of like that feeling during the day when you long for 7pm to roll around so you can put your tiny army to bed and then sit staring at the 'angels' as they sleep, missing their company. Go figure. I have just finished applying for a focus group where you give an hour of your time one evening and receive a $50 giftcard. It got me thinking about how many of those cool opportunities there actually are, especially for the mum at home. This thought rolled off the back of another train ...

I am currently sitting in the most amazing batch, on a cold Winter's day in Mangawhai. The fire is burning, making the intently focused faces of my three gorgeous kiddies glow as they watch the evening movie. I have been so sick for the last few days, peaking yesterday with a very unproductive day. My low point was sitting in tears in the car asking Gavin what time he planned on coming down knowing full well he had a work dinner that night... I had dragged myself out of bed , got the kids ready and took them for a walk and a scooter after breakfast thinking a coffee from the café may make all well with the world. As we reached the bottom of the road it started to pour. We headed back to base camp and swapped the scooters for the car. It took me ordering a coffee through streaming eyes, stuffy nose and throbbing head to realise that at only 9am, I still had a full day to entertain kids away from Auckland's array of luxury rainy-day activities. So I headed home, put my f...

So, school is out. For 3 weeks!!! It will actually end up feeling way shorter as we have our annual, AMAZING church conference this week so that leaves only really 2 to fill with fun. Holidays and I have a love hate relationship. My affections closely mirror my kids relationships, I've come to realise. For the most part they get on well but admittedly there are points in the holiday where I wish we had the structure of school and being able to separate 3 little people who are living in each others space ALL day. O well, nothing like holidays for kids to learn conflict resolution and team work...and patience...and cooperation and the list is endless of life lessons you hope they take out of the situations they find themselves in daily. I find my best, most successful school holidays are the ones where I have a plan! Usually a loose plan (because God forbid it rains and you cannot stick to the plan which three little people will hold you to, mercilessly). I like to describe our...

One of my vivid memories as a young child was sitting in the bookstore (Exclusive Books, in South Africa) reading books. Mum would go shopping, dad would head to the bookstore and we got to choose  who we wanted to go with. More times than not, we would end up at the bookstore. For hours. After looking around a bit, the only thing to do was to choose a book to read, to pass the time. We spent many a Saturday morning on the floor of a bookstore in various shopping malls. To me there is nothing more exciting than climbing inside a story in your head. Having the freedom to create how the characters look and sound. Able to look at black and white words on paper but to envision whole worlds and the lives in them. No prizes for guessing I'm a HUGE fan of reading!! This passion is embedded in our family's way of life and purposefully so. In what other way can we give children an experience outside of time and space and their reality? What a precious gift. I also believe you cann...