My little gardener

Hollie seems to have a very green thumb. For the last 2 years we have bought bare rooted roses and grown them in pots. We buy them online and it is Kevin's job to tend to them every afternoon. Hollie helps him and this year has become very interested in gardening herself.

She even found seed pods in the yard and germinated them, planted them out and now we are the proud owners of these 4 tree seedling that I don't know what we are going to do with. I didn't think they'd survive the germination process let alone the planting out.

Here is Hollie with her seedlings.

Yesterday Hollie found her first red strawberry. She was so excited and said it was the most delicious strawberry she had every had. How cute.

At kindy they are also growing plants. Hollie's seddling is one of the biggest in the class. Everyday she shows me how much bigger it has grown. Yesterday when we were at Crazy Clarke's she wanted to buy more seeds to grow. She has been collecting the seeds off the lettuce plants to sow next season. She has a lot of patience for a girl of nearly 4 1/2. We are very proud of her.

An ultrasound

On Friday we went for the 19 week ultrasound. We were most relieved everything was ok. Unfortunately we didn't get a good picture of the face and there wasn't a chance to get a head and body shot like the others have. They couldn't get the hands because it had hands on head or hands on chest. It is head down. Face down. Very difficult for them to get measurements but at least everything is progressing well and NORMAL.

This is as good as it got for head and body.

3D profile. The umbilical cord is in front of its nose.

Another 3D.

Its feet.

Maybe I have time now

Maybe I have time to upload some pics and talk about what I've been doing lately. My MIL has gone home, Jessica is watching a Playschool DVD and Hannah is desing up as Dorothy the Dinosaur so I may just have a few minutes to update.

This is a very bad picture of the locusts which destroyed this tree. There were hundreds of them in this tree. Possibly thousands. Time will tell if it will recover.

Heading to Brisbane for Creative Block, me with the Scrappy Tech team. What a wonderful few days away.
 

I got to meet up with my Mum for dinner. It was lovely to see her even if it was only for a short while.

About to board the Brisbane Eye. It was a funny time. Thanks for the ear lick Heidi.

Packed and ready to go home. Pity I didn't have a bag big enough to take all my projects, make and takes and shopping. Ah, that's what Father-in-laws are for.

And in the bottom of one of the borrowed bags (which was mine, I'd just left it in Brisbane at their house) I found my engagement ring!! It had been lost for 3 months.

I arrived home to a sick househould. Here is Jessica sleeping in our bed trying to recover.

Kevin with his birthday cake chosen by Jessica. Can you guess by the colour of the icing?

I'm sure now that the house has returned to normal that I'll be able to update a little more reguarly. I must away now. There is too much fighting. Peace and Mummy time over.

Easter Saturday

This is the result of a long, long, long day. Here Jessica went to bed after the day we had today. She had been in trouble many times for mucking around in her room and not sleeping. This sleep was meant to make her well behaved and happy during the long Easter Mass tonight.

What a day today. We got up, had the last of the hot cross buns and loaded the kids in the pram, Hollie on her bike and we went to town. Hollie rode all the way!!! That's 1.7kms for a nearly 4 year old. Pretty good I reckon. We thought ahead and took a dog lead to attach to the bike for the homeward bound journey and Kevin towed her for part of the way.

After the street parade we came home and headed for Ilfracombe. There was another street parade and market stalls. A free jumping castle, face painting and rides in the Cob and Co. coach. The girls enjoyed the jumping castle and Hollie patiently waited in line for the face painting for 10 minutes to get her face done while Jessica just walked straight to the painter as there was no-one else in line by that time.

Home for sleeps (a very rare thing in this house), then a movie and dinner before baths and Mass. Hannah cried, no screamed the whole time during Mass and Kevin or I missed out. Kevin eventually taking her for a drive in the car to get her to sleep. She cried for 20 mins in the car while he drove her around Longreach. There aren't many places to drive to in Longreach, just lappies of town.

After the eventful day Hollie still wasn't asleep at 9:30pm!!! Tomorrow will be better when they are charged full on chocolate. Yeah sure.

My baby is one now

Birthday girl.

On Thursday my baby girl turned one. Gosh I can still remember how I felt just after she was born. Wow the time has gone so quickly. It's quite scary actually. It has been a truely wonderful year with her. She has been such a good baby.It is delightful to see her grow. She has just started to get some real attitude about her too. She doesn't like it when people take things off her, eat food and not share it, go somewhere she wants to go and she lets you know about it too. Kevin said over the weekend that he will be glad when she can talk because at least she can let us know what she wants. Unfortunately when that happens they let you know about everything. LOL.

Hannah in her party dress.

We celebrated Hannah's birthday with presents in the morning before Kevin went to work. We didn't go to playgroup because Hollie and I were sick. Jessica and I made the cupcakes for Hannah and they didn't burn which is a first for this oven. Hollie and Gan made the icing. When Kevin got home from school we had the cakes and the happy birthday song and tucked into the cupcakes. Unfortunately Hannah burnt her finger on the flame of the candle but when she was given the cake to destroy she was fine.

Hollie the princess had to put a good dress on for Hannah's party. This is the dress Caileigh wore to be our flower girl when we were married. Jessica, not such a princess, just wore a normal play dress because it was "pretty with flowers on it". They looked so cute all standing and dancing while holding hands. Poor Hannah can't keep up though.

A new Car

We bought a new car on Thursday. How exitig. It's an IMAX. The car that we've been looking at getting for when we are a family of  6. It meets all our requirements, except for looking cool. It has 8 seats, a big boot and drives well. We're not in the market for a new car because we don't have a 4th kid on the way but we now have enough room for 3 more children. Let's hope we don't need it for that reason.

Unfortunately it's in Brisbane until the end of June when the in-laws come out for Hollie's birthday. It is too far to travel to bring it back. We are wanting our Commodore to be in Brisbane so we need to swap the cars over. The current plan is the in-laws will drive the new car up and the old one back in June but gosh that is so long to wait. SO I'm a little sad that I won't get to see the car pass through 20,000km on the odometre. I would have loved to drive it into Longreach. Drive it home. But I have to deal with that. I just can't wait to drive it.

No pictures yet. I may be able to upload one if my mother-in-law took a photo of it and has it on her camera.

Diet and exercise

The diet, salad and tuna for luch most days and an increase in vegies for dinner, and the swimming and aqua aeorbics don't seem to be working. Initially I lost a lot of weight. 3kgs in 3 weeks but I have since put on weight and no I don't think the fat is turning into muscle that happened a long time ago. I have no idea what's going on. I don't feel heavier, in fact my clothes are baggy and I'm feeling really good except being a little tired from late nights and all the exercise. I did have a lady at aqua the other night, who hasn't seen me in a while, say that I looked really good and toned around the shoulders and my chin/neck area looked more trim. That was a lovely compliment because I don't know her apart from aqua classes so she was in no need for her to be polite as women often are. Maybe I am doing something right. It just sucks to put on weight when you're putting in all this effort.

Organisations

As it is with most organisations, a few people do most of the work. I am the tresurer of our local Playgroup and also do a lot of other other running of the Playgroup. A lot of organising, a lot of the cleaning, a lot of the buying, a lot of doing activities with the kids.

I always say that you should give a busy person a job because you'll know it'll get done. I'm also the kind of person who just gets in and does it because usually I don't mind and I know it'll get done. I don't mind but at the same time I don't understand how people can sit around and not do.

It is very rare that I am not involved in the cleaning of the Playgroup shed and it is usually because the kids need to get home to sleep. I don't know how many times I've vacuumed the floor with Hannah crawling behind me crying or being held by one of the people who never vacuumes. There have also been numerous times where I have vacuumed and mopped  and when I've finally closed the shed there has been noone there. Yes. This is a whinge because I guess I'm sick of being one of the few.

On a lighter note, we did have a good time at Playgroup today. Heidi brought playdough and so did I so we had two different colours which is always good. We discussed many of the issues of Playgroup such as the cleaning and it was decided that I should write an email reminding people of their shared responsibilities and to call a meeting of interested people.  One of the problems is that there is no committe so it is difficult to make decisions because it is more of a consultation process which takes far longer than a meeting would. I have proposed a meeting after dinner out somewhere. That's a good idea right?

Here is a photo of Hannah at Playgroup a few weeks ago.

Non-date date

What a stupid thing to do a layout about. This sign. But the sign is very important to Kevin and I. It's a silly photo. Not very well taken and most people would look at this and ask why take a photo of a sign let alone do a layout about it. It was the place where Kevin and I went on our first date. It was a date according to him but just somewhere to meet to me. It wasn't a date to me but he did ask me to marry him then so it might as well have been a date.



I'm going through my scrapping folds and uploading layouts I have completed but not posted anywhere. Then I'm deleting the photos so stay tuned for more layouts.

Rain, rain and more rain

It was meant to stop raining today. The low was supposed to have moved south. The worst of it is over I guess as the winds have died down and the rain isn't as heavy. It's just that set in, constant drizzle rain you get here. The kids are a bit stir crazy because they haven't been outside much in days. They have energy to burn and they are burning it by talking, harrassing me and being crazy lunatics in the lounge room. Oh for a day a sunshine to be able to do my washing too. The weekend was definately one of those weekends you wished you didn't have kids. It was snuggle in bed, read a book, watch a movie weekend. But not to be and I wouldn't swap it but you know those weekends.
This was the yard yesterday. It is even more full of water today. We'll have to take a drive out to the river this afternoon to see how much it has risen since yesterday. The shops are out of bread because the road is cut. I couldn't supplies from the newsagent because the road is cut. Maybe this flood will have more effect on us than last years.



Until next time. Thanks for stopping by.

Ultrasound photos

This ultrasound pic is from when Hannah was in my tummy as the girls call it. It was a bit difficult to do this layout considering everything that has happened but it has been on my "to-do" list for over a year now and I thought there's no time like the present so I just got in a did it. I've been off the scrapping wagon for a while. I've had to pocus my attention to other things. Naturally, considering the circumstances but now that renovating has ceased and we have returned to normal life I can get back into it. This was completed using my stash and these were all left overs from other LOs. The journaling came straight out of my journal I kept on Hannah's pregnancy. I have kept one for each of the kids and have even managed to finish Kathryn's even though hers ended differently. I think they will be valuable for the kids to read when and if they are mothers one day.
Thanks for stopping by.

Having friends

I feel so blessed to have the friends I do. I don't have many but the ones I have are gems. Last night I had t go to Jillian's to order some photos. I have no idea why my computer wouldn't let me process the order. We had a bit of a chat about my darling baby and how I'm coping. Gosh it is so difficult to put into words. I don't even know why I try to do it. There are too many mixed emotions when dealing with something like this. I'd just like to point out that I'm ok. I'm doing much better than I thought I would and I'm content with life at the moment. I actually guess there isn't much to say at all. I guess friends know what's going on.

Today I left the kids at Jillian's (again, and left them crying, again) while I went to IGA. There I ran into Leesa. Thanks Leesa for your questions and your support.

Hollie and Jessica got home from Jilly's and were asking me about Kathryn. They wanted to know they didn't get to see her in the memorial garden, when we were going to have another baby and could I please ask God for a boy baby this time. At times I don't think Jessica is coping very well. She still gets angry when people talk about babies and yells that our baby is dead. They can both remember too well when I was pregnant with Hannah. The poor dears.

Here's some photos of the lovely girls.

What a start to the year

We have had such an eventful start to the year. We spent the first 3 weeks of the year renovating our house for (hopefully) new tennants. What started as, "We're not going to paint this room,"  ended in "We have to completely renovate these two rooms."

Here's the story:

We were going to leave the sunroom unpainted but I decided the wall paper strip should come off which ended up taking paint off so we had to sand to paint the room. The guy who owned the house before us had used ply, plaster board and whatever else as the walls. He had also filled a crack in the ply with plaster so that when Kevin went to sand the wall the plaster fell out; then he took a chunk out of the plaster board wall too, not knowing it was there. So he had to take down those two panels. We decided then to turn the sunroom into the 4th bedroom. Where we put the hole in the wall for the door was written, "Was a door is no more." Kevin wanted to add "is once more". The two rooms were finished.

Half way through the renovation.

In amongst all this we went to the hospital to have our routine 13 week check up for the "new baby" as the kids call it. We spent half an hour doing all the paper work with the midwife then I got on the bed for the examination. She couldn't find the heart beat. She brought in a portable ultrasound machine (which was a bit dodgy) and still couldn't find it. So she booked us into have a proper ultrasound. Luckily they could see us straight away. We went through all of this with the 3 kids. Can you imagine how restless the kids were after all this time in the hospital? And they were so excited because we had told them we were going to hear the baby's heart beat. The sonographer couldn't find the heart beat either. Our baby had died at 10 weeks. As you can imagine it was devastating news.

We were told to come back in on Monday to have it sorted. Needless to say we were in a state of shock for the weekend. My Mum had already spent 2 days helping us paint but I called her and asked her to come again. The kids stayed at home with Pauline while we went to the hospital on Monday. We arrived at 9am and left after 8pm!!! What a day. They kept the remains to be cremated. I have no idea how they cremate something that doesn't have bones yet but anyway that's what they said they were doing with our baby.

All of our children were born in the same room of the birth suite except Jessica who was born in the operating theatre but we laboured in the same room before the C Section. Jessica and baby Kathryn were "born" in the same operating theatre and I recovered in the same maternity ward room with both of them too. We are glad we discovered Kathryn's death before we returned to Longreach. At least they were all born in the same hospital.

This is the photo taken of the 5 of us before we went to hospital to have Kathryn removed. We have taken a photo like this of the family before we have gone into hospital to have the next child. I thought I should do it again because I was actually going into hospital to have Kathryn and I didn't want to devalue her life even if it was only short.

We orgainised with our local parish priest to say Mass for our baby in our front yard the following day. We called her Kathryn Poppy Knight (she has the same initials as Kevin Paul Knight - who was going to be Kathrine had he not been Kevin.  Poppy is because all the girls (including me!) have flowers in their names) on the basis that we have 3 girls already we assumed this one would be a girl too. I guess we'll find out one day when we get to meet her. Maybe he will greet us and asked why we named him Kathryn instead of Kevin. We felt so much better after Mass. The act of a proper send off really helped us. It didn't help the kids but it did help us. What helped the kids was going to the memorial garden at the hospital. I'm such a chicken. I left all the hard stuff to Kevin. He did the explaining to the girls in the garden.

The house got finished (kind of) and we returned to Longreach. It is absolutely beautiful. So green and lush from the rains. The whole drive up here was green. The explorers must have come through at a time like this. Why else would you think it was a good place to run sheep and cattle?  The midges don't encourage anything!