Leilani's class did a little skit to the music Kung Fu Fighting.
Sunday 30 September 2012
O'Grams have got talent
Just found some things on my phone I forgot to blog about. Back in June there was a primary talent night at church. The nursery class and sunbeams (Tilly and Zach's classes) did a fashion show of whatever character they wanted to dress up as. Zach chose spiderman and Tilly chose a lady bird. They could do an extra individual talent if they wanted to, so Zach had decided beforehand that he wanted to do a dance. So I prepared a little track of Bad, Michael Jackson, just keeping it to 1 min long. It's his favorite - he knows it from the closing scene of Megamind. I thought he may not go through with it, but he had no problems. Got up on stage and did his moves :) Unfortunately I didn't get a video of it - I was using my phone to provide the music over the PA system at the time.
Leilani's class did a little skit to the music Kung Fu Fighting.
Leilani's class did a little skit to the music Kung Fu Fighting.
Saturday 29 September 2012
Polkadots concert
This morning we went to the first concert of the Polkadots New Zealand Tour.
The kids were very excited about it, but once we got there Lani and Tilly were both very shy about getting involved. Zach got straight into it as soon as the music started. He loves to dance. Actually he started dancing in the middle of an electrical shop the other day and had all the staff entertained and they thought he was very cute :)
So today he was boogying his little heart out. And Tilly got over her shyness and joined in too.
And now, it's late at night and we're waiting up for Jared to get here - yay!!!!
The kids were very excited about it, but once we got there Lani and Tilly were both very shy about getting involved. Zach got straight into it as soon as the music started. He loves to dance. Actually he started dancing in the middle of an electrical shop the other day and had all the staff entertained and they thought he was very cute :)
So today he was boogying his little heart out. And Tilly got over her shyness and joined in too.
And now, it's late at night and we're waiting up for Jared to get here - yay!!!!
Monday 24 September 2012
Is there anything cuter than a little duckling?
Maybe just a little duckling that will let you stroke it! We have a lake near our house and on Saturday we walked down with the kids to feed the ducks. When we got there we found ducklings :) They were very cute and came right up to us. And then, after a while they got used to us and if we moved slowly they would let us stroke them. Only downside was the nasty seagulls trying to get all the bread crumbs. Twice we saw a seagull pick up a little duckling by grabbing the bread it had in its mouth. The first time it lifted one about a foot in the air before it fell, but the second time it was about 6ft up before the duckling let go. Luckily it was above water, could have been painful!
After we'd been there about 10 mins two black swans came over with their cygnets. Beautiful.
After we'd been there about 10 mins two black swans came over with their cygnets. Beautiful.
Monday 17 September 2012
I love my husband :)
I love my husband. I think he's great. That's why I'm with him :)
I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet... it makes me sad to see how many times there are public exclamations of how annoyed someone is with their spouse, usually on Facebook. Your husband/wife is the person you should hold above all else. The person you are dedicated to build up and promote. Why would you moan about them in public? Sure, things annoy you and you need to talk about them, but find a more appropriate outlet - a private journal, a best friend, or better yet, communicate with your spouse - maybe after you've calmed down :) How would you feel if the person you loved and trusted most in the world was talking badly about you in public, even if it was half joking?
I'm making a plea for anyone who comes across this to decide to only post positively about your loved ones, especially your spouse. You should be their strongest supporter, their cheer leading squad and most trusted ally.
Adam is wonderful. He's not perfect, but he's perfect for me. He does things well that I find hard and fills in the gaps. He works really hard for us and is a great Daddy. He's also lots of fun. We have a lot of silly times in our family and he's often the one to start them. I love him more than is possible to verbalise.
I have a bit of a bee in my bonnet... it makes me sad to see how many times there are public exclamations of how annoyed someone is with their spouse, usually on Facebook. Your husband/wife is the person you should hold above all else. The person you are dedicated to build up and promote. Why would you moan about them in public? Sure, things annoy you and you need to talk about them, but find a more appropriate outlet - a private journal, a best friend, or better yet, communicate with your spouse - maybe after you've calmed down :) How would you feel if the person you loved and trusted most in the world was talking badly about you in public, even if it was half joking?
I'm making a plea for anyone who comes across this to decide to only post positively about your loved ones, especially your spouse. You should be their strongest supporter, their cheer leading squad and most trusted ally.
Adam is wonderful. He's not perfect, but he's perfect for me. He does things well that I find hard and fills in the gaps. He works really hard for us and is a great Daddy. He's also lots of fun. We have a lot of silly times in our family and he's often the one to start them. I love him more than is possible to verbalise.
Sunday 16 September 2012
Leilani's Netball
Last week Lani played in her last netball match of the season. She played centre and did a great job. Worked hard and ran a lot, finding the space and making quick passes.
They won 18-2. They had a close loss the week before of 5-3; up until then they had been in 2nd place in their grade (year 3 grade B) but that bumped them down to 3rd. They finished the season in 3rd place and so were invited to the official prize giving where they got a badge each and the team were presented with a trophy.
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| Waiting for prize giving to start |
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| Most of the team after the prize giving: Caitlin, Leilani, Chantelle Brook, Leah, Kyan (not here: Mia and Janna) |
Leilani's 8th Birthday Celebration
Leilani's birthday was on a Friday and her baptism the next day, so we put off doing any sort of party thing til the next weekend. We kept things pretty simple, after last year when we let her invite most of her school class round to the house for a party. We told her she could invite 3 friends to the movies and Burger King, so she took Olivia, Riley and Winter and we went to see Ice Age 4.
And one of Lani's cute little drawings:
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| A cherub statue |
Things to document
I've spotted some photos I've forgotten to stick on here and document the stories that go with them, so here they come...
This one is a painting Leilani did at school. She hand drew each picture, and then painted them in contrasting colors. They were studying this style at school and I think she may have had some Andy Warhol stuff to copy.
When I came back from England for Jess's Wedding, Adam convinced me that Tilly needed her first hair cut because her hair was getting too tangled. So I did it. I was very reluctant because she had such beautiful curls over about the bottom half of her hair, that would make her whole hair go curly.
This one is a painting Leilani did at school. She hand drew each picture, and then painted them in contrasting colors. They were studying this style at school and I think she may have had some Andy Warhol stuff to copy.
When I came back from England for Jess's Wedding, Adam convinced me that Tilly needed her first hair cut because her hair was getting too tangled. So I did it. I was very reluctant because she had such beautiful curls over about the bottom half of her hair, that would make her whole hair go curly.
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| Pretty long to start with! |
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| Excited for her first haircut |
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| Bye bye baby curls! |
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| Checking herself out with her new cut |
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| Adam brought Krispy Kreme doughnuts back from Australia |
Back to normal
Speaking of being bored.... I had a spare few minutes and tried to take pictures to show my new hair colour. Came up with this in instagram and really liked it.
Sunday 9 September 2012
Our Story (part 5) - engaged
We got engaged in mid-May. We planned to be married before uni started in mid-September so we soon got thinking about a date. We settled on 1st September. I refused any Saturday before that because I wanted to make sure it was after my 20th birthday. 1st September also gave us a couple of weeks for a honeymoon before uni started. So we had three and a half months to plan the wedding. Quite possibly the worst three and a half months of my life. All sorts of difficulties were thrown our way and at different times both of us came close to calling off the whole thing.
I moved back to Reading for the summer and Adam went back to his parents' house in Louth. He was struggling to find enough work and we were miserable apart from each other. After just a couple of days of this (I must have been awful to be around) my Mom suggested that Adam move down to Reading and stay in the small room. We thought it would be much easier to get summer work in Reading and then we'd be happier together too. A couple of days later Adam spent 8 hours hitch hiking down to Reading from Louth. He managed to get a lift from Louth by going to the truck depot and hitching a ride down to London. From there he hitch hiked down the M4. Only there are 3 junctions for Reading on the M4 and he got the wrong one and ended up walking about 6 miles the rest of the way to our house.
We managed to get very glamorous jobs for the summer... working at McDonalds. It was about a 20 min walk, so was pretty convenient and we got a really high pay rate because the manager was really keen to hire us, since we were quite a bit older than the usual McDonalds employee. We ended up on a higher hourly rate than most of the teenage supervisors there. Not that we let them know that :) So while we didn't get a huge amount of job satisfaction from it, we did manage to earn enough money to start us out and book a honeymoon. Downside was we put on a bit of weight because you were allowed to eat a meal if you had a full day shift...
I'd rather not dwell too much on the engagement period because most of what I remember was stressful and not all that enjoyable. The usual wedding planning went on, and as most people who've planned their own wedding will know, it's not as fun as you might think it would be.
I had my hen night on the Thursday before the wedding. We went to TGI Fridays where I had not one but two obscenely shaped balloons given to me. (They thought the first one had accidentally popped, so replaced it....). We had some fun games after. Most memorable story of the night was hearing how Janette had done a poo in the sea when she was 16.....
I moved back to Reading for the summer and Adam went back to his parents' house in Louth. He was struggling to find enough work and we were miserable apart from each other. After just a couple of days of this (I must have been awful to be around) my Mom suggested that Adam move down to Reading and stay in the small room. We thought it would be much easier to get summer work in Reading and then we'd be happier together too. A couple of days later Adam spent 8 hours hitch hiking down to Reading from Louth. He managed to get a lift from Louth by going to the truck depot and hitching a ride down to London. From there he hitch hiked down the M4. Only there are 3 junctions for Reading on the M4 and he got the wrong one and ended up walking about 6 miles the rest of the way to our house.
We managed to get very glamorous jobs for the summer... working at McDonalds. It was about a 20 min walk, so was pretty convenient and we got a really high pay rate because the manager was really keen to hire us, since we were quite a bit older than the usual McDonalds employee. We ended up on a higher hourly rate than most of the teenage supervisors there. Not that we let them know that :) So while we didn't get a huge amount of job satisfaction from it, we did manage to earn enough money to start us out and book a honeymoon. Downside was we put on a bit of weight because you were allowed to eat a meal if you had a full day shift...
I'd rather not dwell too much on the engagement period because most of what I remember was stressful and not all that enjoyable. The usual wedding planning went on, and as most people who've planned their own wedding will know, it's not as fun as you might think it would be.
I had my hen night on the Thursday before the wedding. We went to TGI Fridays where I had not one but two obscenely shaped balloons given to me. (They thought the first one had accidentally popped, so replaced it....). We had some fun games after. Most memorable story of the night was hearing how Janette had done a poo in the sea when she was 16.....
Our Story (part 4) - the proposal
Previous parts to his story can be found here: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3
After I got back from my trip to New Zealand I did some serious thinking and praying about our relationship. I found it quite difficult to feel like I'd come to a conclusive answer and studied up quite a bit about personal revelation. I also read a book by John Bytheway called What I wish I'd known when I was a young single adult. There was a section that talked about how when we're praying to know if we're doing the right thing Heavenly Father sometimes won't step in just to tell us, yes, you're doing the right thing. He will definitely let us know if we've decided on the wrong thing and then asked him if it's right, but if we're doing ok and making good choices, he'll let us carry on making decisions for ourselves. It's kind of the whole reason we're here anyway, to be able to learn and grow and figure out how to make choices without being told every time which way to go. So if you have a feeling of peace combined with not getting a feeling of "no", you know you're on the right track. It takes a while to recognise the ways that Heavenly Father tries to communicate with you personally, and it can be very different for different people. I learned that I fall into this category of "carry on until you feel it's a no". I rely heavily on that feeling of peace and calm to know I'm on the right track and when I start to feel unsettled and lose that peace I know I've started on something that's not the best thing for me.
I felt good and peaceful about the decision that I should marry Adam. The next step was to try and let him know that. To give him the green light, so to speak. We had many conversations skirting round the edges of marriage, but it's dangerous ground when you're dating! I decided to go for a not so subtle, but definitely non-confrontational way of letting him know I was ready for The Question. I went to a friend's wedding and got Lovehearts (the sweets) as wedding favours. I happened to get one that said Marry Me. I kept it and later slipped it into Adam's scriptures. He never let on when he found it.
A couple of weeks later we were watching a movie in his tiny room (proportionally you could probably call it a cinema if you compare the size of the TV to the sitting space in the room) and afterwards we were talking when the conversation took a sudden turn...
Adam: *in a semi-jovial tone* Shall we scare our parents and get married?
Me: *pause* Are you asking me?
Adam: umm.... I don't know
Me: Well, you decide if you're asking me and I'll answer.
Adam: *thoughtful pause* Will you marry me?
Me: Yes
Turns out Adam had a plan to propose to me about a month later, by taking me up a mountain in Scotland. However, that would have been as the uni summer holidays started, and me with my practical head on knew it had to be sooner than that so we could be married before going back to uni and get our own place, not needing to find people to take our places in the student houses in the middle of the year. So the impromptu proposal came about instead.
I went home that evening and told one of my flatmates (followed by silent little squeals in her bedroom) although we'd said we wouldn't tell anyone until we'd told the families. The next day was Monday and it was very weird. Surreal to think what had happened the night before. That evening we called my family and I put Adam on the phone to my Dad. Mom said she could tell what was happening by Dad's face... I bet it was a picture as Adam asked if he could marry me. There was a looooong pause before Dad spoke, and then he grilled him on some of his scripture knowledge! Adam was pretty nervous on our end of the phone, but answered all the questions well and was given the go ahead from Dad. We were in a quiet room at the instate building while doing all of this, because we were up there for YSA home evening. So afterwards we came out and had fun telling everyone our news.
After I got back from my trip to New Zealand I did some serious thinking and praying about our relationship. I found it quite difficult to feel like I'd come to a conclusive answer and studied up quite a bit about personal revelation. I also read a book by John Bytheway called What I wish I'd known when I was a young single adult. There was a section that talked about how when we're praying to know if we're doing the right thing Heavenly Father sometimes won't step in just to tell us, yes, you're doing the right thing. He will definitely let us know if we've decided on the wrong thing and then asked him if it's right, but if we're doing ok and making good choices, he'll let us carry on making decisions for ourselves. It's kind of the whole reason we're here anyway, to be able to learn and grow and figure out how to make choices without being told every time which way to go. So if you have a feeling of peace combined with not getting a feeling of "no", you know you're on the right track. It takes a while to recognise the ways that Heavenly Father tries to communicate with you personally, and it can be very different for different people. I learned that I fall into this category of "carry on until you feel it's a no". I rely heavily on that feeling of peace and calm to know I'm on the right track and when I start to feel unsettled and lose that peace I know I've started on something that's not the best thing for me.
I felt good and peaceful about the decision that I should marry Adam. The next step was to try and let him know that. To give him the green light, so to speak. We had many conversations skirting round the edges of marriage, but it's dangerous ground when you're dating! I decided to go for a not so subtle, but definitely non-confrontational way of letting him know I was ready for The Question. I went to a friend's wedding and got Lovehearts (the sweets) as wedding favours. I happened to get one that said Marry Me. I kept it and later slipped it into Adam's scriptures. He never let on when he found it.
A couple of weeks later we were watching a movie in his tiny room (proportionally you could probably call it a cinema if you compare the size of the TV to the sitting space in the room) and afterwards we were talking when the conversation took a sudden turn...
Adam: *in a semi-jovial tone* Shall we scare our parents and get married?
Me: *pause* Are you asking me?
Adam: umm.... I don't know
Me: Well, you decide if you're asking me and I'll answer.
Adam: *thoughtful pause* Will you marry me?
Me: Yes
Turns out Adam had a plan to propose to me about a month later, by taking me up a mountain in Scotland. However, that would have been as the uni summer holidays started, and me with my practical head on knew it had to be sooner than that so we could be married before going back to uni and get our own place, not needing to find people to take our places in the student houses in the middle of the year. So the impromptu proposal came about instead.
I went home that evening and told one of my flatmates (followed by silent little squeals in her bedroom) although we'd said we wouldn't tell anyone until we'd told the families. The next day was Monday and it was very weird. Surreal to think what had happened the night before. That evening we called my family and I put Adam on the phone to my Dad. Mom said she could tell what was happening by Dad's face... I bet it was a picture as Adam asked if he could marry me. There was a looooong pause before Dad spoke, and then he grilled him on some of his scripture knowledge! Adam was pretty nervous on our end of the phone, but answered all the questions well and was given the go ahead from Dad. We were in a quiet room at the instate building while doing all of this, because we were up there for YSA home evening. So afterwards we came out and had fun telling everyone our news.
Wednesday 5 September 2012
Attitude
Charles Swindoll — author, educator and pastor — said this about attitude: "The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important … than the past, … than money, than circumstances, than failures, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company, a church, a home." He continued, "The remarkable thing is we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past; we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is [to change] our attitude." He concluded, "I am convinced that life is 10 percent what happens to me and 90 percent how I react to it. … We are in charge of our attitudes."
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/
http://www.ldschurchnews.com/
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