Zamirahs Baptism

Finally we have succeeded in getting our 7th child Baptised. This might sound easy, but the more children we have, the harder things like this are to organise. In part because we lack the motivation we once had… Not sure where it went, but somewhere between the 3rd and 4th child the newness, and excitement of occasions was replaced with a realistic daunting enlightenment that occasions are money sucking days that disappear in the blink of an eye, and that no matter how hard you try, you can not make everyone happy.
Our aim is to just get through the day and hope for the best, and surprisingly this is working relatively well.
The lead up is tremendously time-consuming, at times stressful, but the day is gone super fast, and with each baptism you know the things that didn’t work well previously, so human nature is to tweak theses issues aiming to illuminate all negative moments.
This is actually impossible, unless you take out 90% of the guests, including some of our own children … Don’t get me wrong, all the people we invite are important to us and our children, but they aren’t all necessarily going to be important in a positive way to each other ;)
Overall, with the diverse selection of family and friends we have, the day went really well.

We woke to a beautiful 14 degree day, black skies, gale winds, bucketing rain; a typical Albany day. The plus we had over other people was that we were all really ill, and had high temperatures. To us, it felt like a pleasant day of about 24 degrees with a slight breeze.
Zamirah was amazing, I really thought she would scream the church down; temperamental should have been her middle name, but unpredictably she was brilliant! We gave her nurofen for her soaring temperature, and it mellowed her just enough that she was alert, but not making a scene.

It is both hard and easy to pick godparents, we have found that in a strange way the child picks them for us, as each child has a connection that you can only hope, but not guarantee. We have tried to not have immediate family fulfil this role, as an Aunt or Uncle will always be part of the child’s life regardless. We have been so lucky with each set, and regardless of where life takes us, we have made it clear what we expect and feel very blessed that they understand and make the effort with their godchild consistently.

We momentarily entertained the thought the godparents had decided to pull out, as both the godmother and godfather were slightly late! We were getting ready to do a godparent hunt, and drag them to fulfil their duties, but they arrived ready to commit to this lifetime responsibility.
The priest was wonderful, and was happy to wait till we were ready, and made the whole ceremony work for us.
I think we had more children in the church than adults, and this always helps keep the day in perspective.

Once the formalities were over, we all went back to the motel to celebrate getting through another family occasion, welcoming the godparents into our immediate family, and officially celebrate Zamirah into the catholic family.

Thankyou to everyone that helped make this day another memorable occasion.

Warning… BIG whinge!

This last week I’ve had sick kids, 5 of them… some are/ were really sick. I even rang the heath direct line I was so over it all, and anyone that knows me is aware that unless we are literally dyeing, I don’t seek help… ever! Geez, if I did rush for help with as many children as I have, I might as well camp out in the casualty waiting room for months at a time.

Add to this, I’m also really sick, I can’t remember the last time I was knocked about so hard from a stupid virus.
I want to crawl into a hole and not come out until the children and I are better, unfortunately the universe is against me, and I have to apparently keep going as mums don’t get sick!
If we do get sick (and I’m proving that we CAN get sick) we still have to do everything as before.
I’m failing this commandment, if you look about all you can see is mess upon mess upon mess… WHY did the kids have to get this ill? To make it worse our dog got baited on the weekend and died, this has caused a large amount of tears and distress among the family, and we are organising a baptism for our 7th child… this weekend! Actually we were organising it… now I’m hoping it will just miraculously happen on its own, as I can’t be stuffed doing anything for it.
Z was the worst, she would cough so much she would stop breathing and just look at you with panic till she lurched another breath just when I’m ready to call 000. I actually think she has finally turned the corner, as her temp isn’t sitting on 39.5 anymore… but she is still whinging all day!
I wish she would rest, cause then I might be able to watch cartoons with the other sick kids and rest, but no, she wants to scream/ whinge, cry all day and night. I WANT SLEEP.
Eldest DD is also unwell, and this is like the straw that broke the camels back, I need her to be well if I’m not as she is my helper… unfortunately she is useless when ill (as we all are) and I’m getting even more tired of it all.

On a plus, we wont need to spend much on the groceries this week, and we are all looking a lot more in shape after loosing a bit of flab :)

Well I’m off to crawl into my box again, (and pick up Miss Z who is still whinging :( ) I WILL be better by Sunday, and a lot brighter next time I blog

Playschool concert.

If it was left up to me, I wouldn’t have even realised playschool was visiting town, but I’m blessed to have some amazing friends that know I live in a cave, and they let me know the big things that are happening.
Youngest DS loves 3 programs, Diego, Dora and Playschool, we couldn’t miss this!
Had to cancel youngest DD needles… after all what is more important… immunisation or a kiddie concert ;) (We have rescheduled the needles)
This truly was an amazing day… sun was shinning, it was warm, not much wind: anyone who knows Albany realises that this is a rarity.
I had organised vaguely to meet my friend at the pool, and walk over to the PCYC… The general idea was that one of us would ring/ text, but this was not an option as I still had no phone after flushing it.
After parking, and getting Z and T out, I promptly put them back in. The 500 meter walk from the pool to the concert venue was as wet as a swamp, and we would have possibly drowned making the crossing.
As it was only 45 minutes till the concert, getting a park close was not going to happen, hence why I’m still in awe about how beautiful the day was! It was a really nice walk, as we were walking towards the assembly area, I did briefly think about making more effort to go walking; but it was only a thought, and unlikely to eventuate LOL
Finally we catch up with my friend…
(OMG I’m a terrible friend, I’m surprised I still have friends… note to self… pay her back for the tickets).

We got great seats (on the floor) and the concert began… it made my week, watching my friends DD and Mr T was so uplifting, they looked like real little groupies, dancing and joining in any interactive parts.
The only slight negative was when Mr T got smashed in the head with a shoe from another groupie standing behind him. He was a bit shocked, and it took a few minutes for him to come out of the daze. Who would have thought a playschool concert could get so aggressive. Oh they had a no camera/ video or pram policy… we did snap a quick shot after the concert had ended though :)

We spent money at the gift shop, and got a humpty dumpty, that Mr T insists on calling his humpy. Now we have one more thing to find each night for him to sleep with.

Fathers day

DH tells me on every occasion throughout the year that gifting isn’t a ‘him’ thing. I always get upset, as I am a gift giver; makes me happy, as does receiving, but DH is wearing me down to realise that it is easier not to bother.
The older children have also become hard, and don’t make much effort, it still hurts, but I can’t keep fighting a loosing battle.

DD in pre-primary is still optimistic about gifts, and made him an assortment of things over the last week, this included something she cooked a week or more ago in class. I’m sure it wouldn’t have been 100% safe to consume, it wasn’t kept in the fridge, but she was so proud that he had to try a bit! It was brown and as hard as cement, the spoon wouldn’t pierce it at all, and it looked similar to a brown cement brick, according to DD it was a moist yummy chocolate pudding. Looking at DH face, it was anything but.
Miss T also made numerous drawings and cards. DH does try to pretend to enjoy this, but you can tell he isn’t really into it when he attempts to throw out a special picture of him fishing, thinking it is rubbish/ wrapping paper!
I ask Miss T why she drew daddy fishing, and she tells us that she had to draw something daddy loves doing, she did 3 pictures, but 2 weren’t what the teacher wanted, apparently drawing him sleeping or working wasn’t the ‘fun’ thing the teacher had in mind. LOL

Personally I think that fathers’ and mothers’ day should be a day opposite to the usual; if you are a stay at home parent, with the children you should have a kid free day, and if you are away from the kids each day, you should spend the day with them.
For my DH Fathers day should mean he gets all 7 kids, and has them with him for the day, after all the name fathers’ day implies that it is THEIR day to be the father - hands on. ;)
With this in mind, father’s day wasn’t how it should have been, but seeing the younger children’s joy at celebrating how much they love him, made this an OK day regardless. :)

Positive thinking was a failure (Tuesday)

Get up and think; Today will be a wonderful day, boy was I kidding myself! It has taken me till now to gather enough energy to even think about blogging it.

Have had a lot on lately, the stress of day to day stuff keeps mounting, so I decided the power of ‘positive thinking’ would help.
The lack of sleep was a little hard to shake off, but the positive spin on this was I got a LOT of cuddles from bub… all night.
Make a coffee, to find we have no milk…. or sugar - yes I need to go shopping, decide that this is great for my diet that I’m yet to consistently start.
Start making lunch for the kids, and we have no margarine, and only 2 apples for 5 school kids, notice that the fridge is leaking and that I forgot to turn on the dishwasher at bedtime last night.
My positive thinking is dwindling rapidly with screams from the children that the gas has run out and we have no hot water. I guess the positive there is that for once it didn’t run out when I was in the shower! :)
Youngest is tired, her determination to not sleep at night results in a grumpy little princess all day, and her screams are at the very least consistent. She might be a rock star in years to come with such powerful lungs.


I had a couple of meetings at the high school, but I must talk a foreign language, as I felt they didn’t understand the questions I asked, and I left more confused than I arrived. Positive here was I agree with DD that this teacher is in a world of her own; always nice to have something in common with your teens :)
Come home, and go to the toilet… (yes I know, TMI)… but this is where my day went down the drain… my mobile phone drops out of my pocket as I stand and flushes away!
Toys DON’T flush, food that you don’t like DOESN”T flush, Toilet rolls DON’T flush, but mobiles DO!
All my contacts, photos, music, and cool messages GONE! To make it worse, I haven’t saved any numbers anywhere else, they were ALL just in my phone… (So if I did have your number… I don’t now)
Positive… Hmmm … NOTHING, there is NO positive to flushing a phone! Now I pay out for a plan I can’t use, I don’t know if I should scream or cry, bub is screaming, and this time I can really relate to her feeling of frustration.
Have a couple more school meetings that were no more informative than the 1st, and do all the running about we regularly do after school.
I’m sure every idiot driver was out as I got stuck behind a few; if there is a big gap, you can GO… you will never get a gap where you can see no cars at all. Very frustrating when you are on a time limit.
Mentally and emotionally exhausted I decide to get take away for tea, and we go to Maccas, order , go home, and we start eating to realise they forgot the meat in the burgers! HOW do you forget the main part of a burger is beyond me! I couldn’t be stuffed fixing this issue, any other day and I would have rang them, but this day… I just wanted it to be over.
This was a day that I don’t wish to repeat… I don’t feel positive thinking worked as well as the literature implies,
Do you think if I tried the power of negative thinking my day would be better LOL

Moving rooms Part 2; Vacuums suck.

Upon arriving home I was exhausted, I had hoped the magical cleaning fairy had completed the room swaps, and was disappointed to find IMO a worse mess than when I left. I obviously got a visit from our special ‘Mess it up’ fairy!
Kids were very excited, my friend agreed to come back at 6, so we got pizza had a drink, and psyched our self to MOVE stuff!
It really was an effort, as soon as I thought about going down that end of the house, all my energy drained away and I felt like crawling into bed.
Get the vacuum out, start to suck up the sand pit, unfortunately there isn’t just the dust in the air, but smoke also; how dare the vacuum die again! My name should be ‘Kill it’ Not Karma; I have a death power for all electrical things, no matter what brand, or what product, if it runs on power it will die.
After ‘resting’ the vacuum then trying it again (yes I have a death wish) we got more smoke, plus a weird noise coming from the machine, we decide to try the spare one in the garage. After setting it up, I remember why it is a spare one; it doesn’t work! It sounds like a vacuum, looks like a vacuum, but it doesn’t SUCK… vacuums should suck… literally, not metaphorically!
I decide to give up on this idea; I want to get the carpets washed anyway. ;)
We spend forever getting the rest of the debris out of the old room and into the new, organising as we go, the enthusiasm from the kids lasted about 10 minutes and they went missing, preferring to play board games down the other end of the house. Thank god, as they were slowing down a time-consuming process, my plan was to ditch anything I couldn’t find a home for, or was messy, or too little, or paper; their plan was to KEEP the lot no matter what, apparently that bit of screwed up paper with a bit of scribble is their most precious important item in the whole world!
I had made a huge deal to youngest DS about moving rooms and sharing with his brother, so that was the next stage, get his stuff moved in.
ANYTHING after the horror bed was going to be easy, so we attack his cot and dismantle it in no time; we put it back together as a bed. After all he is 3, and he really shouldn’t still be in a cot.
Finally that room is DONE, we call the children but DS is unsure about his ‘bed’, we compromise and remake the cot, with one side missing, and a bed roll rail. He’s pleased, and I’m happy one room is done so a couple of kids can go to bed.
Realising it is after 10pm, my friend and her children go home, and the night just disappears with cleaning, sorting, moving, arranging and thinking WHY did I start this!?

the finished room!!!

Moving the rooms (Part 1)

If we only had 2 or 3 children, we would have a large house… 7 children and it is feeling like a shoe box… OK OK… it might be a boot box, either way, it isn’t feeling huge.
I decided that I wanted to reshuffle the children, and in my mind it had to be done now; Not tomorrow, or next week… now!
WHAT an idiot I was, I must have been suffering some horrid mental condition that made me oblivious to how hard this was to be! If I had any inkling on what the task entailed I would have just sent one off to boarding school. ;)
The plan was…
Move eldest DS out of the large bedroom into the smallest one
Move middle DS out of the smallest bedroom into the largest room
Move youngest DS out from the room he shares with Miss T, and into the largest one with his brother.
SOUNDS easy, but IMO it sounds easy to keep the house clean, or get all the washing done every day… reality is generally the opposite!

1st I had to get all the stuff out of the big bedroom into the centre of the house, this gave me a false sense of achievement… wasn’t that hard, didn’t take that long.
Then I started with the bed in Mr M’s room…. NEVER EVER EVER get one of those beds with cupboards under it if you plan on moving it… 4 hours… Yes you heard right, 4 hours it took myself and one of my best friends to move it 7 meters! I haven’t seen my friend in weeks, but called her to help me with this impossible task, once I realised there was NO way I could do it alone… not sure if I’m going to win friend of the year LOL
Do you think the bed would fit through the door…? NOOOOO, if we ever build again, I want double doors on EVERY room! (That might have helped.)
We conclude we had to take the bed apart, an axe would have made it a lot quicker, and less frustrating, but we had an Alan key and screwdriver.
The screws were special ones that are easy enough to get in, virtually impossible to get out, I thought a good ‘tap’ might help and it DID come out… pity it came out from the wrong side. Yep I pulled that screw out via a smashed hole, in my defence it wasn’t ever going to come out the way it went in.
We finally got the monstrosity of a bed practically flat packed, and shuffle it to the next room, it was so heavy, I would have found it easier to change a tyre on a 4wheel drive!
We get it IN the room, feeling rather over it, and realise we have to remember how to assemble it back together. That bed is NEVER leaving this room ever…. If we move it will be sold with the house. :)
The bit I broke had to be fixed; we hunted about the house for something, anything to ‘fix’ it. Found some weird tan glue looking stuff in a big tube, and smeared that all over it, not sure it did anything, but it smelt good :)
Finally we got the bed made, and stood back to look at our craftsmanship, to realise it isn’t where I want it! It was our irritation at the bed that gave us the strength to shove it to the correct spot!
The rest of the house looked like a war zone, we had moved stuff everywhere, add to this dust… lots and lots of dust, we could of built sand castles, I have no idea where it all came from… I do clean… honest!
Of course now it was school pick up… I leave the house in an absolute mess knowing I won’t be back till 6pm, Arghhhh