Archive for Family

19 Days

March 6, 2012 / Molly / No comments

19 Days. Thats how many we have left here in Perth and I can’t believe how little an amount of time that seems. The ‘stats’ so far for where we are up to with organising our move include:

95% packed (minus breakables, electronics and anything I can’t fit in a box)
90% of our house has been repainted
Flights, Car Transport and Removalist all booked
Backyard 80% sorted
ALL animals have gone to their new homes (that totaled 17 animals)
Our VW Beetle is sold and gone

We are now living out of suitcases and our house is an obstacle course. We are spending a lot of our time telling the girls to stop touching the walls (or to get down from the box mountain) and now we are hit with a week of 35C and up!! Yuck! (can’t say I will miss the Perth summer).

This weekend we are having our garage sale. I don’t expect to make hundreds of dollars or anything but we do need to try. I am happy to say that the majority of the larger pieces of furniture have been sold. We still have left a pond, an Ikea chair, a blanket box, an old wardrobe and drawer set (going very cheap), a tiny computer desk and a set of VW back seats.

So, the days are slipping by quickly and the list is still long but NOT as long as it was!! Phew!

Last weekend myself and four friends went on an Opshopathon (thank you Sarah for organising it), that was the first of three farewells (blog post coming). This coming weekend sandwiched between the garage sale and our removalist coming a few days later is my Etsy farewell. That is, a few of us WA Etsy friends will get together and I will say goodbye. Thats the hard part really, saying goodbye. The following weekend we have our own family farewell with our friends. Yes, we are coming to the pointy end of the move and the second that removalist truck pulls away I think I will get very very excited……………wow, thats a week away!!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Family / Tags: ,

Gone

February 25, 2012 / Molly / One comment

With 30 days to go until we leave things are started to move quickly. I have finished as much packing as I can do, the removalist comes in 17 days but we have a garage sale two weeks from now. Being mostly packed at this point means I can focus on other things such as helping my Dad with any painting or fixing during the next week and also preparing for the garage sale properly.

Yesterday I shed a little tear as Little L and I watched the council truck collect our junk. As I mentioned in a previous post our pram was in that pile along with our duck and chook enclosures. Here they are being loaded on the truck (they were crushed second later):

Its nice to have the huge pile gone but at the same time there was a lot of history there.

In my post about two and a half weeks ago I mentioned some of the Things I Wonder. These included:

- Will I find a home for our ducks?
- Will someone buy our VW Beetle?
- Will we rent or sell?
- Will my health settle down or will this stress cause me more damage?
- Will we be able to afford to fix the things we need to on our house before we go?
- Will I handle saying goodbye to so many friends at once?

I also stated that I fully trust that God knows the answers to these questions. We’ve had some answers to these already. For example, in that short time ALL of our ducks have gone to new homes. About two weeks ago our VW Beetle SOLD and today the new owner came and picked it up:

In many ways its very sad to say goodbye to our ‘Latte’. She was a great little car but its time to move on (and buy a new VW one day!!).

As for the other questions, we still don’t know what will happen with our house and I haven’t started the proper goodbyes (these start next Saturday). My Dad is coming this week to help with our house so that answers part of the cost of fixing it question, his coming reduces that cost A LOT (thank you Dad). My health has been up and down but I suppose thats not surprising and so far I’m coping ok (apart from feeling exhausted).

So whats on the list for this week? Mainly house fixing stuff while Dad is here as well as back yard cleanup and a visit from a friend. The exciting thing for this week is a fantastic Opshopathon with my friends next weekend (can’t wait!). It is however bittersweet because I know it will the last time I see some of my friends for a long time. Time is going quickly!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts, Family / Tags: ,

Two Piles

February 22, 2012 / Molly / No comments

As you can probably guess we are pretty snowed under at the moment. We are in week four of preparations for moving interstate and things are nicely on track. I think I may have packed around 60 boxes so far but I lost count somewhere deep into last week.

We have three large piles in our house right now but I wanted to share two of them with you as they represent where we’ve been and where we’re going. This is the first one:

Yes, we have a verge collection coming up and we’ve made as good use of it as we sorted through our house. We had to give away our animals and so their cages all came down. These were the duck and chook enclosures that we had spent a full day putting together last year. We don’t mind, we have to do what’s needed.
This large pile represents so many things but mostly it represents where we’ve been for the last 15 years. Some of what’s out there came with us from our previous house!

This is the second pile:

Yes, this is our growing stack of packed boxes. This of course represents where we’re going, all that we deem worthy to come with us! Turns out thats a lot but I don’t think its any more than an average family of four.

Moving is such an interesting thing. It gives you time to really look at what you have, what you’ve kept and why you’ve done so. You have to physically handle every single thing you own or at least eyeball it as you put it in the box. You have to let go (as was the case with our VW Bug and our ducks) but you also get to dream of where you’re going (as is the case with my considering how to set up the girl’s new room and my new art space). Its quite a cleansing experience in many ways.

Pile three is simply the pile for our garage sale coming up (March 10th for anyone in Perth, message me for details).

So, its anyone’s guess how many boxes I’ll end up with (after all, our removalists are yet to pack all our breakables and electronics/appliances) but I’m fairly sure that the pile out the front is finished. Its nice to be finished with the junk. : )

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts, Family / Tags:

Saying Goodbye to the Funniest Things

February 14, 2012 / Molly / One comment

Just a few minutes ago I wheeled our pram out to the verge. No, it wasn’t with anyone in it unless you count the family of spiders who have inhabited it. Its been sitting out the back behind our shed (under cover) for the last few years. It really wasn’t suitable to donate to anyone, it had gotten to that overused stage and even had a bump with each turn of the wheels. Saying goodbye to the pram is just one of the strange goodbyes we are having to do.

For example, our budgie Babybird went to live with her new owners on Saturday. I must admit to not being too attached to Babybird but there were other memories associated with her cage. After one of the girls knocked over her original cage we had to put her in the huge mansion of a Weiro cage. That cage was where we had housed our first Weiro not long after we got married.

Today we said goodbye to the last four of our ducks. If you read my blog regularly you will know that we loved our ducks. Our drake was called Moseley and he was the proud father to nine ducklings. One friend took three of the ducks the other week, another took two and then today a man I don’t know paid us for the last four. How strange to be catching the ducks to take them out to his car. I just dragged their purple pond out to the verge too, ready for the verge collection next week.

Yesterday we had someone come and look at our modified 1968 VW Beetle, affectionately known as ‘The Latte’. It won’t be long before we say goodbye to her too. Latte was once our only car. The stares we got driving her around! At the time we had our gorgeous little sausage dog who would sit on the back ledge behind the seats (its a two seater). She’s for sale by the way, $1500 O.N.O. Its a shame that we have to give her up but we can’t justify taking her across the country with us.

Lastly, we took a diversion driving home from our friends house on Sunday and popped by our old church. This was the one where Michael and I met and grew up in. We also took a very quick spin around our old area and past our old house. We figured its probably going to be the last time we do that for a very very long time, even if we visit Perth (which we will) we won’t need to go to that suburb for anything. I lived in that house for close to 20 years.

Goodbyes are funny things. I’m not devastated by any of these, we feel that we do have to make sacrifices in order to follow God’s lead. Hopefully we will be able to get more ducks or chooks one day and maybe even a VW again. Actually, I’m sure we will as these things are intertwined with our character. I like that thought.

Category: All Sorts of Things, Family / Tags: ,

Moses

February 2, 2012 / Molly / One comment

The other day Miss K was sitting at the table and somehow the conversation came up about Moses. By Moses I mean Moses in the Bible. She asked me to tell her the story of Moses and then later that day she wanted to watch the ‘Prince Of Egypt’ which is an animated version of the story. I quite like that animation, I think it does the story justice.

Anyway, as I told her the story I tried to make the exciting bits exciting and the sad bits sad and the dramatise the whole thing as best I could. In telling the story I was reminded of a few things that I had forgotten.

1. God’s plan to rescue the millions of Hebrew slaves began many many years before it happened. The moment Pharaoh declared that all Hebrew slave boy babies were to die God used this awful situation to set a series of events in place.
2. This series of events happened as people trusted God. His mother did so by putting her baby in what seemed a dangerous situation, inside the basket on the river.
3. It also brought out boldness in some. Look at his sister Miriam and her boldness to go right up to the Princess and offer some help. Think about Moses’ brother Aaron and how he spoke for him.
4. God shows us that our failures will always be used to glorify him. Moses killed a man whether accidentally or purposefully and it was because of this that he shook of the shackles of being that Prince of Egypt and instead became a humbled shepherd. Being a shepherd, it turns out, is more useful. Take note those who feel they are in powerless situations of no standing.

Of course there are many more things we can learn from the amazing story of Moses and I love that my daughter(s) are interested to see what happens. Two of my all time favourite history lessons are in the Bible and both happened in Eygypt, the story of Moses and the story of Joseph.

I am grateful that at a time when there are some real changes in our household the Lord uses the simple act of my daughter asking for a story to remind me of just how far back he arranges things and sets them in place. Psalm 139 comes to mind:

LORD, You have searched me and known me.
2 You know when I sit down and when I stand up;
You understand my thoughts from far away.
3 You observe my travels and my rest;
You are aware of all my ways.
4 Before a word is on my tongue,
You know all about it, LORD.
5 You have encircled me;
You have placed Your hand on me.
6 This extraordinary knowledge is beyond me.
It is lofty; I am unable to reach it.

The rest of the chapter can be found here.

I have decided to join Cath from Squiggle Mum with her new post idea for ‘Growing In God’. At the start of the month we are invited to share how our family grows in God through something we talk about or do together etc..

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts, Family / Tags: , ,

Amazing!

February 2, 2012 / Molly / 3 comments

I’ve been putting off writing this post for almost a week now. I’m not too sure what to write really or whether I want to write this on my blog. Let me just say this, God has provided my hubby with an amazing job opportunity which means that we will be leaving Western Australia. He applied for this job back in October last year, was interviewed in December and was accepted last Sunday. In time you will know where we are but I don’t want to spend the next 7 or 8 weeks blogging about moving (actually I might not have the time once the packing boxes arrive!). To summarise though here is what moving interstate means:

At this end of the 8 weeks
- saying goodbye to friends and family
- giving away our ducks, finches, chooks and budgie
- culling our belongings
- dealing with people I’ve never dealt with before such as banks, removalists, realtors, painters etc..
- packing packing packing

At the other end of the 8 weeks
- getting to know new people
- becoming a Pastor’s wife again
- changing schools for our girls
- getting new pets at some point
- unpacking unpacking unpacking
- doing all the things you have to do when you move state (as in transferring records, changing licenses etc)
- getting used to a bigger house that has an air con that works, ceiling fans and a dishwasher (haven’t ever had any of those unless you count the big box air con in our window here that stopped working while we were in Cairns).

Only a week before we got the news we set up the girls trampoline which was their Christmas present. At the time we knew that we may have to pack it up again in a few weeks time but we promised them that we would set it up. They love it and I’m sure it will look great in the new backyard.

So. Moving. Once we have things booked up and have gotten a hold of packing boxes I’ll be on my way. Feel free to share any interstate moving tips with me!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts, Family / Tags: ,

Cairns Week 6 – The Final Week

January 21, 2012 / Molly / No comments

I was all too aware that this last week was our last in the run up to getting on a plane and returning home so we made the most of it. Somehow we managed to fit in a few more trips to places around the area and a whole lot of swimming in my parent’s pool. We managed to spend a lot of time (and snapshots) on capturing still shots above the water, that was so much fun!!


My brother driving on water.

Another thing that we all did together in the last week was go back to the Botanical Gardens and see the world’s largest (and stinkiest) flower. By the time we got there it was dying but you can still see how big it is (and thankfully it had lost its stink!):


My sister in law next to the flower.


Rainforest walk canopy


Can you spot the building? This is the Botanical Gardens Visitors Centre

The girls enjoyed some special time tinkling on the piano with Nanna:

As well as a day of doll’s clothes washing in the backyard:

We also went for a visit to the Crystal Cascades. We went there last year but it was pouring with rain so this visit was quite different. The cascades are really pretty and we even saw an eel and turtle in the water as we walked along.


Miss K spotted this very interesting caterpillar which my brother told me will become a moth.

On our last day there (last Thursday) we managed to squeeze in a visit to the Cairns Contemporary Arts Centre and see some interesting artwork. There was this huge sculpture by Ron Mueck called ‘In Bed’. He really is an amazing artist, this lady is so retrospective and realistic. I was sure she was going to move her eyeball and look at me any second!


The girls outside the art gallery.

After that we had lunch together with all of us (there are ten of us when we all are together). My brother and hubby managed to get the same coke names, great way to finish together:


I wonder if coke cans from the US have ‘buddy on them.

Finally it was off to the airport with all our luggage. There was a lot of luggage and we did make it within our limits but only just! Our flight home was uneventful and the girls slept. Thank you to Michael’s Dad who picked us up.

Now we are back in the land of heat and dry. The grass is a bit brown but our house sitter did an amazing job keeping our animals fed and our garden producing tomatoes and cucumbers! I can’t believe that our mango tree here is actually growing decent mangoes. I’ll share a garden up date post a little later. Now I’m up to labeling school supplies and sorting the house! Happy Perth Summer everyone!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Darling Daughters, Family / Tags: , , , ,

Kids, Creation and God

January 14, 2012 / Molly / One comment

I have decided to join Cath from Squiggle Mum with her new post idea for ‘Growing In God’. At the start of the month (as you can see I’m running a bit late) we are invited to share how our family grows in God through something we talk about or do together etc.. Thanks Cath for starting this, I think its a great idea!

As you know we’ve been away on holidays for quite a while now. This means we are out of any form of routine which is of course doubled by the fact that its the summer school holidays. Whenever we are over here we spend a lot of time exploring the area (which you may have noticed from my previous posts), visiting rainforests, waterfalls, farms, lakes, rivers etc etc…. As far as I can tell the girls enjoy exploring as long as we include a few stops at playgrounds along the way or let them go swimming where possible and safe.

The girls are getting to the age where there are lots of questions and Little L answers most things with ‘why?’. We take every opportunity to explain to them what the Bible says about God being the number one artist around, showing them how creative he is. We don’t sit down and have family devotions every day but we do try to incorporate God into the every day. Its important that they don’t associate God just with serious talk, praying before a meal or church. What better way to get to know the creator than to spend time in his creation!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Deeper Thoughts, Family / Tags: , ,

Cairns Week 5

January 12, 2012 / Molly / No comments

Once again this week was full of a lot of looking around and exploring. Seeing as I blogged about our little break up on the tablelands I don’t need to include that here. This week we did two long car trips, firstly up towards Port Douglas and secondly down to Babinda. Both are about 55kms away from where we are staying, in opposite directions. We also had a family photo-shoot at a beach and we can’t wait to see the results.

On Monday we got in the car and headed north. Our first stop was the Barron Gorge where we saw the hydro plant. It was quite hot so we were slathered in sunscreen. This is what we saw:

We drove down the road a little to Lake Placid. We weren’t that impressed but we were amused by a sign that said ‘kayaks for hire’ when the lake had ‘do not swim here, crocodile area’.

We took off towards Port Douglas but decided to have a look at Mossman first. We visited the town for lunch and then the Mossman Gorge. What a beautiful area, the rainforest there is quite different than other places we’ve been and they have a ice cold swimming area there:

We stopped off at Port Douglas after this before driving back.

Yesterday we spent some time at Clifton Beach having some photos taken. Its a gorgeous area although you can’t really swim at the beaches in Cairns due to the jellyfish (stingers) and sometimes the threat of crocodiles!


My hubby, Dad and brother.

After the photo-shoot was finished we all drove down to Babinda where the Babinda Boulders are. We didn’t realise just how hot it was until we got there. The boulder area is very pretty but I don’t think we all enjoyed it as much as we could have because of the heat and the march flies. However, once we figured out a safe place for the kids to swim we all cooled off as the water was once again, ice cold and beautiful!


Babinda Boulders

The rest of the week included doing piles of washing from our trip, a little shopping and a sleepover by my nephews. What a busy week! We have one week left here and I can’t believe the time has almost come to leave. I love being here, its so relaxing and revitalising. I’m not sure what this last week will bring but I do love living from day to day with very little planning!

Category: All Sorts of Things, Family / Tags: , , , ,

A Holiday within a Holiday – Day 4

January 11, 2012 / Molly / No comments

The final day of our trip up to the tablelands was also busy and fun. The kids learnt a lot as the first thing we did (once we had finished cleaning our cabins) was head to Malanda where we stopped off at the Malanda falls and reserve. There is meant to be a range of animals there including platypus and tree kangaroos (although we didn’t see any). We really enjoyed walking around the rainforest walk as each forest we’ve been to is quite different from the next. This one was full of fungi (I love me some fungi to photograph!).


This was outside the falls area.

From there we drove up the road to do a tour of the ‘Dairy Farmers’ Milk Factory. We weren’t sure how much it would be but again, this turned out to be one of the cheaper options for families in the area. The cost was $30 for a family of four and you get a tour plus a milkshake (worth $4.50) each at the end. We weren’t allowed to take photos inside the factory but we got to see how they make the bottles (and recycle the ones they need to), bottle the milk, make mozzarella cheese and then wandered back over to the cafe next door for the milkshakes.


We all had to put on gumboots (unless we had closed in shoes on already). This is myself and my Mum.

The great part of this tour was that the kids got a follow on from the previous day when we had visited a dairy and watched how the cows were milked. That farmer sends his milk to this particular factory.

After lunch we headed off back towards Cairns but had two more stops along the way. The first was back to Lake Barrine to show my brother and sister in law the tea house. The second was to see the Cathedral Fig Tree on the edge of the Tinnaroo Dam area. This one was much bigger than the Curtain Fig Tree we had seen a few days before.

After this we all headed back down the very winding road that is the Gilles Highway.

What a great four days it was, very memorable and somehow we managed to an awful lot but still relax and sit still. Each place we visited we took our time, wandering, sitting, looking, exploring and enjoying. I love living in Australia where we have such a varied landscape and I have the opportunity to see God’s creation by stepping outside our door.

Category: All Sorts of Things, Family / Tags: , , , , , ,
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