There is a simple title for this photo. Waiting. Here’s little L was watching out the window for her Daddy to bring her big sister home from Kindy. She always gets so excited when she comes home but she also enjoys her time with us by herself!

Time to review and reset some goals again with the Weekly What List. Firstly the review

Review of the Weekly What List for the 1-7 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day. – Not completely but I did drink more water.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day – mostly yes
- Eat less lollies. – on a whole yes.

Spiritual
- Memorise this verse (emphasis is on the word PATIENCE): Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride. – I would say that I have memorised it, I’m yet to really think deeply about it.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN – yes, did that.
- Make pendant for C – did it but not happy with the outcome.
- Sew another dress – No.

Family
- Go to the park with L, weather permitting. – sort of, we went to Sculpture by the Sea
- Continue Doll’s House with K – Yes

Friends
- arrange more morning teas – Yes arranged one or two
- birthdays – started.

Now for this weeks What List:

Weekly What List for the 8-14 March.

Physical
- drink 1 litre of water a day.
- Eat two pieces of fruit a day
- Eat less lollies.
- Don’t buy Ice Magic.

Spiritual
- Continue to memorise this verse but also get to know its meaning more: Ecclesiastes 7:8
The end of a matter is better than its beginning, and patience is better than pride.

Creative
- Get out oil paints and paint something AGAIN (yes again, have to try to do this every week)
- Fix pendant for C
- Take photos of work for listing on Etsy

Family
- Play outside more with L, even if its earlier in the day.
- Continue Doll’s House with K – time for carpeting and more walls.

Friends
- arrange more morning teas
- send off parcel

Strange photo of the day I know but this is what our passionfruit (from our garden) looks like when we take them out of the freezer as they defrost. I know, I’m a bit odd thinking something like this is interesting but I do. I love the colours, the texture, the pattern! My artistic eye notices the strangest things and I’m compelled to take a photo of them.

We keep our passionfruit in the freezer after they fall off the vine. They last a long time and are perfectly normal once defrosted. I’m fairly sure there’s only one or two more on the vine now.

The theme for this week was ‘yellow’ so we did a brightly coloured tray. It allowed me to try out a few different things with the girls although not everything was eaten.

We had; banana chips (didn’t get eaten), apple slices, bikkies in cream cheese dip (one liked it the other didn’t), cheese stars, peaches with stars cut out, wholemeal bread with apricot jam.

I managed to remember to take a couple of shots of the other paintings I did the other night so here they are.

I singled one of the pods out for this one. The white part is the shininess from the oil which is not dry. Red takes ages to dry!

The burnt sienna painting ready for layer two.

This is to show the size difference. The smaller one is 4″ x 4″.

Sometime this week I will get the paints out again and continue with these. I am loving that bright red!

We never thought this would happen but…….our banana tree is growing fruit! We inherited the tree which looked quite young when we moved in and haven’t even checked it as we weren’t expecting anything. We were quite excited to see that we have a nice bunch emerging out of the flower (that we didn’t know we had). We assumed you couldn’t really grow tropical fruit here in Western Australia without some sort of shade house.

I got the oil paints out again last night and set up a little study to practice on. These are seed pods I gathered in New Norcia last year and they were a vibrant yellow when I first got them. The yellow has dulled but I still painted them as their bright original colour.

This time I had a few rules for myself.

1. Treat it as a study not a finished painting
2. Use a limited palette
3. Do more than one

I did three in total, one of them has no colour at the moment because I’m using the method of under-painting using burnt sienna. When its dry I will paint over it and share it. The other study I did I forgot to take photos of, mainly because it only started to work when I was nearly finished for the night.

I have been more of a painter of people and portraits in the past but am finding these studies a good way to get my painting hands back again. This one is still quite tiny, 4″ x 4″.

This is the still life setup

The painting area

The study so far

Found these funky paintbrushes at Riot Art the other day and K finally had the chance to have a go at using them yesterday. She made all sorts of swirls and patterns in the paint and got quite mucky in the process. She enjoyed herself a lot even though the photo above makes her look like she’s going to cry!

She told me those were cupcakes and by the time they dried they actually did look like cupcakes.

I was thinking about our girls the other day and about the bigger picture. Eventually they will grow up and become adults and face really tough situations. Eventually they will have to make hard decisions, decide how to react to things and choose a direction. It seems so far off right now but thats ok because it means we have the next ‘however many’ years to prepare them for what life will throw at them.

Sounds very depressing to think about the harder things they will face but its true (and I’m a realist as opposed to being a pessimist). If we (hubby and I) don’t take our part of their future seriously, as well as preparing them for the more practical things then I feel that I would be being neglectful in my parenting (just me and my thoughts about myself, not about others).

For example, its fine to teach them to cook, how to budget, how to save, how to drive a car etc… but what about how to react when they are struggling? What about how to treat other people in circumstances where they are blindsided? What about how to rely on God, I mean REALLY rely on God.

That last one is one of the most important things that I want to teach them. Its something my parents taught me and I want to pass it on. As I said in a guest post over at Narelle’s blog last month:

“I grew up in a household where trusting God for every day things was the norm. My parents worked for a Christian newspaper in which ‘wages’ were given if available through supporting donors. It was a great way to grow up, every time we needed something my parents first port of call was prayer. We prayed for food, we prayed for money, we prayed about situations that were challenging and so I learnt to pray myself, and to trust God.”

Now our situation isn’t the same as it was for my parents…..yet. This doesn’t mean that we can’t teach them this lesson too. I want it to become so ‘normal’ to them to go to God first and so deeply embedded that it becomes a life skill.

Being a parent is very hard work. Its full of responsibility, worry, joy, sadness, battles, tiredness and fun. I hope I can look back in many years to come and not have regret about how I parented my girls (but the realist in me knows that I, like most of us will probably have regrets). The best thing I can do for them as I go along is to pray for them.

I really enjoy making canes. If you want to know what a cane is, pop over to my other blog where I wrote a post explaining them. Knowing how amazing some caners are I know that I’m not brilliant at it but I do get a buzz out of slicing off the end and seeing what I’ve got. I also like to make random canes using up scrap clay.

Yesterday I lined them all up to see what I’ve got and here’s the photos: