In which I am the only one awake...

Quite often the evening flies by. Hub gets home, we have tea, do dishes, organise children in jammies, get ready for bed, and before we know it, it's 3 hours later.


Here we have the two little women asleep against eachother and daddy, watching a movie that they probably only got half way through.

And here is the whole picture. Daddy asleep too with another toddler on his lap. Every night the littles want to be all over us. And as I have run out of room, they all want to be on Daddy, fine by me, I get to breathe!

I have many, many photos just like this, from our first born, until now. I am sure there will come a day when it will be just hub and I again. But until then we cherish, as much one can getting squished, the coziness of having the children want to be close to us.

In which our bank redeems itself

So about an hour after finding out there is yet another form, and I am promised it is IT, Hub tells me our lender is sure I am going to go crazy and has said she will bring the form to us. You bet you are I said!
So a few hours later she is in our kitchen, with 'The Last Form' I beg her not to kid with me. I am 7 months pregnant, which is 9 months for a normal sized pregnancy, and we are in the kitchen, wink.
Yes, absolutely, it is it.
I won't hold my breath until settlement on the 16th.
The following day we will all be putting on gumboots and driving to our land to explore. I am sure at least 2 children will fall in the creek, so I will also be taking a change of clothes for them all, and towels.
And the way I am walking right now, which my Hub so lovingly told me the other day, was like a duck, I will take a change for me too.

I am having moments of 'over it' already. This baby already feels the size of a toddler. I am huffing as I roll over in bed, and whinging about organs and lungs being squashed.
But I am trying to embrace this pregnancy. It is our last. Which makes some of our friends laugh, but I remind them, I never said this about the other pregnancies.
This time, is the first time I have had 'that' feeling. The 'we are done, no more babies' feeling.
I am happy about it, and a touch sad.
Happy that we will be moving on to the next stage of our lives. But sad that I will never feel a baby inside me, or give birth, or be the first person my baby looks at when they open their eyes and focus for the first time as a fresh newborn, slimey and lovely in my arms.

Don't worry, I know it is not all awwwwww and cute and lovely. There is copious amounts of wee and poo and changing, feeding through the night, and the list goes on. I guess I just don't focus on those much now we have had a handful of children. I know how quickly baby becomes toddler, and child. I want to enjoy it all, and take as many photos as I can as my memory will fade, no matter how hard I try for it not too.

My eldest child now has an email address. He emails me and his Dad. He is how I know my memory will fade. It still amazes me how fast time has gone. It really does seem like yesterday he was a baby, just walking, starting to talk. Now he talks sooo much sometimes I will tell him to give his voice a rest, and our ears.
Embrace.

Will it ever end????

So today I dropped off what I thought was the last of the paperwork for the bank. An hour later we got a phone call, sorry there is just one more we accidentally forgot about. Imagine me standing beside a brick wall, banging my head against it mumbling.

I am so friggin over this shit. It is a block of land. It was meant to be easy. This is driving me more batty than when the kids drag dirt and sand through the house after mopping.

When we bought our house many years ago we signed one form from the solicitor, and 2 forms from the bank. Done. nothing more.
So far we have signed over 20 friggin forms!! One of which had to be witnessed by a person of an elite list.

Please, gods of real estate, let this be it. The bear inside me is waking. Not a good thing.

When others make your life harder...

Some say that life is what you make it. Others say that your life is as hard as you make it. What crap I say today.

I went to the bank, yet again, to get even more paperwork. Buying a small piece of this country has cause so much drama and stress it is ridiculous. The mortgage is teeny in the scheme of mortgages, and yet, due to others mistakes, it has dragged on for longer than it should, and seen us sign more papers than I have in my lifetime so far.
'Someone' at the real estate made an error on our paperwork to start with. This caused dramas. Because of this mistake the bank that copied said paperwork, had theirs wrong.
On top of all of this our solicitor had to have us sign extra paperwork to correct all those mistakes. Sigh.

Honestly by the end I was expecting to get a blood test for them and hand over my 1st born.
Fingers crossed it will all be over in 2 weeks.

And then the real fun begins as 'Build a house for 8 people' begins. Yay.

second verse same as the first........

I know!! What the heck? 26 days go by and not even a little hello from me, what a slacker. Or is that, busy? Meh.

Sooo many things have happened in the last few weeks, children's comments, places we have visited, new foods tried and hated.

One in particular I have enjoyed is seeing the other side of the state we live in. It has been so much fun to find new places, playgrounds for the children of course, and food, always food, sigh.

One of the recent weekends we went to an Island that is now very close to us. We drove there and visited a tourist stop. A huge building, with one side entirely glass, so you can eat your overpriced food and drink and watch the ocean. Not that the children cared about the view, oh no, not when there is an indoor play area to conquer.

When we were leaving we decided to have a look around near the beach. I am still laughing. The wind was so strong it was literally blowing children over. And what did I do as a loving, caring, protective parent? You might be thinking help the children. Wrong. I was laughing so hard my sides were hurting. Thankfully some of the children thought it was funny too. One cried when sand stung their eyes and face.

We made it back to the car safely, with our freshly wind and sand blown exfoliated faces.
We also stopped off for home made chocolates, apparently made from the finest Belgian chocolate. The kids were happy to eat theirs, but hub and I agreed we are quite the chocolate snobs, and have a taste for only what we like. We also agreed not to venture outside the chocolate bubble we love.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Two days later this post is still sitting here, sigh. As you can imagine I am interrupted a lot, and have to keep coming back to write.
Today we visited a book store, that also has art and crafts. After what seemed like forever with children changing their minds, we finally all settles on what we wanted and headed to the counter.
As the woman checked all the books, she pointed to the toddler in the stroller "And that book too?" I looked down. Cap. The toddler was chomping on a book about animal health.
I groaned. "No, that was not meant to be included"
Well, tough luck woman, that will be fifteen dollars on top of what you have already. I grumbled as I handed over my card.

As we hopped into the car, the toddler was smiling her big, cheesy smile. Ah well. It really could have been worse. She could have grabbed on the 80 dollar books that were sitting at child height.

I have now put a call out to friends, if they want the book. I am sending it free of charge. I have no animals, and clearly no need for an animal health book!

All the colours of the Rainbow

Here is our little ray of sunshine asleep on Daddy. The tie dyed all in one is from a very special friend.
The tights I found a couple of weeks ago, and loved them. They go perfectly with her top and a gorgeous knitted dress same very special friend made for her :)

Our youngest, at the moment, has grown so much in the last couple of months in particular. She is saying new words every day, and is very much into the 'My Mummy' and 'My Daddy' stage. The older kids think it is hilarious. She will be happy playing and they will come to one of us and loudly say 'My Mummy' and she will look over, see what is happening, come running over, pushing them out of the way and cling to me and squeal 'Myyyyy Mummy, My Mummyyyyy'

At 19 months she is now helping put away toys, put things in the rubbish bin, and help with dinner. She loves to 'help' even though it makes jobs take twice as long. I embrace as I know too soon, when she can actually do the jobs, she more than likely won't want to.

She simply adores her older siblings, and they her. The oldest boys give her piggy back rides and walk around the house trying to catch the other children. She squeals so loud with happiness, it is so lovely to watch.

She will walk up to one of her older brothers, arms outstretched and say "Up" and they always do it and say "Ok bubba, where do you want to go" and she will point around the house and they will walk her there, then stop ask where to now, and she points again, laughing. She thinks it is a hilarious game.

They keep going for her, even if they get tired. Her laughter is infectious, and heart warming to hear.

She brings so much joy and happiness into all our lives. No doubt the next, and last baby will do the same.

Where have you been?

So, How are you? How have you been? What's new?

Here, well, life has been happening. We finished the house, put it on the market and spent 2 weeks like crazy people keeping it clean. I was tempted to keep the kids outside in tents, so the house would stay neat. So I looked up tents online, meh. Just a little tempted.

In our strong desire to move on, we had a one month settlement. Most people thought we were

nuts, but hey, we were the ones moving, it was our house. In the end this was perfect. It forced us to get the last things organised, find a rental and get the hell out.

Amongst all this we had 2 of the children's birthdays. Our eldest and our 3rd.

Let's not the forget the little matter of a wee belly babe growing inside me. My belly is huge!! But that is me, we have big bubbas, I'm used it now.

Bellyfruit has been increasing in strength and movements over the last month. It is quite bittersweet, this being our last baby. I am enjoying and embracing pregnancy, but also content that this really is our last.

I never before, in the other pregnancies had 'that feeling' The we are done feeling.

This time, I have felt it from the start and it has stayed.

I feel content and happy about it.

What else has been going on. We looked at several properties to buy, but none of them fitted us. None grabbed us. Then after yet another awesome episode of Grand Designs, we realised the only way we were going to get the house that fitted and suited us, was to build it.

So now we are looking at land.

Fun and crazy times can always be had with us.

We are closer to settling in here. A few more boxes to unpack, and the rest of the many books we have to put on shelves and we are done.

The kids are enjoying playing in the vacant block near our house. Lots of messy fun to be had.

Schooling is almost back on track, getting there slowly. Adding more resources as I find them which is always exciting.

The boys love science, and even though I don't, in any way shape or form, I am diving in. Their education is about them, not me. So, a science hunting we go!

I have subscribed to a magazine for them. It is a science magazine for kids.

We also have our first Home Ed camp to look forward to next year. Lots of activities for all the children, which they are very excited about.

So much more has happened , all small, everyday things. Here are some pics of the last couple of months to help tell the story.

Having fun with fake moustache. Always a great pastime.

Here we have oldest and youngest(for now) peaking over from behind the table, being used as a barrier, while Hub was painting the kitchen.

I promise you will not have to wait as long for the next entry!