As of this moment…

I am loving the Autumn season, especially being able to watch the leaves change colour. There is something cleansing about it. And poetic too.

I am relieved and grateful that my cold is gone, and that I’m sleeping at nights again.

I am so excited about our ferry trip with the boys this morning. They were all such a delight and so well behaved the entire time. We drove to Manly Wharf, and then caught the ferry to Circular Quay where we got out for some milkshakes and coffees. A lady sat opposite us for the return trip, and as we were disembarking, she came up to me and said, “You’re a beautiful family.” I was so touched.

I can smell Rick’s spaghetti bolognese simmering on the stove top.

I’m watching Whose Line Is It Anyway, and laughing my socks off. Gosh those comedians are talented.

I am thankful for a night off together with Rick.

I hope that Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows is good!

I am looking forward to EQUIP tomorrow.

I am already missing Rick and the boys.

I would truly love to grow our family.

But, I trust in God’s timing.

I know He is in control.

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Project Life, Week 16

Still loving Project Life! I’m getting slightly quicker at it every week, which is quite a relief because in the beginning, it can be feel quite overwhelming. I would like to be completely transparent and reveal now that my incentive for completing this blog post is a handful of Maltesers which I’m allowing myself to consume at the end of this. So let’s do this:

The left hand page for Week 16. It was a rainy sort of week, so we were indoors a lot hence quite a few snapshots of the boys doing their ‘thing.’ I just love the shots of Pete on our red retro phone. It’s disconnected but the boys love pretending to make calls on it. Here, Pete was on the phone with Nan. Also included on this page are some gorgeous garden flowers from one our parishioners (first photo above).

Still loving the typesetting for the introductory photo. This photo is of the boys looking through an old photo album filled with photos of Rick and myself before they were around. I had fun asking them “Where’s daddy?” and “Where’s mummy?” and they had fun getting all the answers right!

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This is my man…

…ironing and hemming curtains for our walk-in wardrobe. He is a man of many talents, my husband, and this is one of them. More amazing is the fact that he chose to do this on his day off, during the precious two hours when Pete and Jamie are asleep. He knew that the fraying curtains had been on my mind for some time, so he took action without me even having to remind him. Does my hubby love me? I say yes.

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Mirror, mirror on the wall

Having scrolled through my faceless self-portraits, I realised just how much I’ve missed doing them. So guess what? I’ve tracked down a mirror in our new place that will allow me to take somewhat decent self portraits. And by ‘somewhat decent,’ I mean that only the top two-thirds of me will be visible. But don’t worry, you guys. You’re not missing out on much. My feet are quite uninteresting. Boring, in fact.

Anyway, this is what I’ve been wearing all week, no exaggeration whatsoever. Mainly because I’ve been sick with the cold, and this is my ‘I-have-the-cold-and-don’t-feel-crash-hot’ look. Lovely, right? Today I finally put on some new clothes, which guarantees there will be at least one photo for a new outfit post next week. Am I on a roll, or what?

Despite feeling exhausted and crook this week, I’ve loved:

  • watching Pete play in the dining table cubby house;
  • sipping lemon water;
  • finding pretty yellow flowers at the beach; and
  • taking naps in the afternoon sun.

A big thank you especially to my amazing mum yesterday for looking after all three boys by herself for almost three hours so that I could snooze. Talk about selfless mothering.

Thank you also to everyone for their well wishes for Jamie. He’s finally started sleeping through again these last two nights, after three nights on interrupted sleep. Mummy and daddy are very thankful…

I shall sign off now to spend the rest of the afternoon with the family. I hope you all have a wonderful weekend! Any special plans? Rick and I are looking forward to a movie night at home this evening, and I’m keen to get started on Angus’ Project Life album as well (speaking of which, I shall have a Project Life update early next week). We are also celebrating Rick’s grandpa’s 98th birthday on Sunday, which is simply amazing. Above all, I’m hoping to rest more and start recovering.

p.s. In case you were curious, I did end up bringing out one of Cameron’s photo frames and Angus has been carrying it around for the last couple of days. Today, during his quiet time, he came up to my desk in the family room and said, “Mum, I’ll put Cameron’s photo here to make your office beautiful, okay?”

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This and that

I love watching flowers go dry. They seem to develop a certain richness and character as they age and wilt. We’ve had these blooms on our sideboard in the foyer for more than a week now, yet they only just caught my attention tonight. I love how simple and pretty they look, and am considering drying them properly and putting them in our bedroom.

We hardly got any sleep last night, because a certain little munchkin kept us up. Poor Jamie has quite a bad cold – his first cold in almost eight months. I feel terrible, because I’m certain that I gave it to him. This recent cold weather has certainly gotten the better of our family. Only Angus and Pete remain healthy, which is kind of a miracle in itself. Anyway, here Jamie is in Nan’s arms, looking completely at home. It reminds me of this photo of him and Pa.

Our boys are so blessed to have grandparents who love them.

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Something he said

One of our parishioners gave me this lovely bunch of basil at church on Sunday. I popped it in a glass of water when I got home, and placed it onto our kitchen windowsill. I’ve been looking at it all day today, every time I pop in and out of the kitchen. It’s such a lovely, vibrant green. I love the freshness it adds to the room. One of these days, just maybe, we might start a herb garden of our own.

Last night, Angus pointed out to Rick during bedtime that there were a lot of photos of Cameron at our old house. For someone who is only three and a half, he understands a lot, notices everything and has an amazing memory. He knows that Cameron is a part of our family, even though he’s never met him. During bedtimes with Rick, he’ll tell Rick that he loves Cameron too, along with the rest of the family. He’s a beautiful boy, our Angus.

His comment about the photos of Cameron at our old place got me thinking: why haven’t I put up photos of Cam in our new home? After all, I can count on one hand how many framed photos we have: there’s one of the three boys in our family room; there’s one of Rick and me on our wedding day in the lounge; and there’s one of Angus and Pete with Rick in their room. Why didn’t I include Cameron’s photo somewhere? To think I didn’t even notice till Angus mentioned it. Such a contrast to when he first died, and I was desperate to fill our home with photos of him to help ease the pain.

Still, some things don’t change.

I experience the same stab of sadness when Angus is labelled our “first,” or Pete our “second,” or Jamie our “third.” I notice the empty seat at our dinner table every night. I weep when I read stories of other women whose babies were born sleeping. I continue to wonder what might have been if I’d been induced earlier. I still wish we had all four boys here with us instead of just three.

Tonight, I shall put up a photo of Cameron in our family room.

And I have no doubt Angus will be the first to notice in the morning.

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We knew.

Usually in the evenings, Rick and I work from rather separate parts of the house. My studio is upstairs and his office is downstairs. This week, however, we discovered that we didn’t have to be separated from each other at nights if we both moved our laptops into the dining room and worked side by side from there.

So here we are, at 11.30pm at night, sitting side by side. Both typing away on our laptops. Both in our PJs, both drinking Milo. Both sitting facing the lounge room where I’ve turned on the pretty IKEA Stranne lamp, so that we’re not staring into a black hole. We’re both listening to the dishwasher doing its thing in the kitchen. Now and again, he pipes up and shares a snippet from the sermon he’s finishing. Now and again, I look over and give him a smile. Or tell him to stop leaning back in his chair.

Marriage. I love it.

And him. I love him.

It was almost eight years ago that we got married. And only ten months prior to that that we started dating. I’d asked him out on a date. He’d said yes. We spent all of that following week chatting on the phone, often late into the night. By the time we actually went on the date, we were completely at ease. It was like we’d always known each other. We had Thai food, and then we watched The Italian Job. I remember not wanting that evening to end.

Somehow, we just clicked.

Somehow, we both knew.

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Life, actually

Sometimes, it’s easy to lose sight of the simplicity of blogging.

Who needs a recipe, or a room tour, or a guide on organising your laundry or a cafe review, when I can just amuse you with the fact that despite how organised our laundry is, it still doesn’t help with the laundry sorting. Yes, there they sit. Two determined baskets of unsorted laundry. In our bedroom. Piles of crinkled clothes that somehow need to make their way to the drawers. Daring me to get off my backside and start folding.

To be honest, I think I need to get back to the basics of just blogging. These last few days, i’ve been reading some random posts of mine from last year (my so-called outfit posts, in particular, made me laugh), and it struck me that I’ve possibly been over-thinking my blog posts these last few months. I need to break out of this box that I’ve trapped myself in. I need to start blogging simply again. And by that, I mean – just blogging about life. Unstyled. Unscripted. Unstaged.

So in the spirit of just blogging, I would like to say this: I hereby pledge to sort out the laundry this weekend. Who’s up for the challenge?

Happy Friday, my friends.

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Project Life, Week 15

So I’ve been pretty slack with posting my weekly Project Life updates. But the good news is that I have actually kept up with my weekly spreads these last few weeks, and I’ve found that it doesn’t take all that long to do once you discover your rhythm and establish a workflow. I still can’t begin to express how excited I am about this new way of documenting our day to day lives (thank you Elise!). It’s simple. It’s flexible. It’s beautiful. And it’s enjoyable, and not guilt-driven.

This is left hand side of the spread for week 15. Lots of people shots, because the week was filled with spending time with people. I’m quite sure no one else will notice, but it bugs me that the top right photo is slightly butting out in this shot. Now you know. (How crazy I am.)

I decided to change the design for the first photo. The tiny arrow in the left hand corner just wasn’t working for me. I love this new look because it has instant impact, yet due to the transparency of the text, you can still see the entire photo. This shot of the boys is also one of my favourites for the year so far. One of those moments that I want to remember forever.

The ‘this week’ template is working beautifully. Just enough space to capture each week’s highlights without going into too much detail, allowing the photos to tell the stories. The shot of Pete in a bucket at Clareville Beach reflects so much of his character: spontaneous, fun, cheeky and completely unpredictable. He’s such a cutie and always his own little person.

This top shot of Rick and the boys was taken on Tuesday morning just before he was about to read the Big Picture Story Bible (best children’s bible ever) with them. The photo is special because it’s not that often that I have time to snap shots during the hectic morning rush. The guys are all doing their ‘thing’: Rick attempting to reply to an urgent email; Angus attempting to climb onto Rick; and Pete and Jamie attempting to climb out the window.

On Wednesday, Aunty Jess came to play! So some lovely shots of her with Pete and Jamie, with a small paragraph of text on the first photo.

On Thursday mornings, my parents usually come over for a few hours to spend some time with the boys. On this particular Thursday, we miraculously managed to get a few photos of them with the boys all smiling and looking in the direction of the camera. It was also our last time seeing them before they were due to leave for a 2 week holiday in Hong Kong, so I definitely had to include one of the photos in the spread. I love how the boys all have their blue bibs and their plastic IKEA plates. So Casa Mason.

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As of this moment…

I am thankful for my husband, who cooks for me every night. Every time I sit down to a meal that he’s cooked, I feel deeply loved.

I am thinking of our friend from church, whose husband did die on Wednesday night as we had feared. The loneliness, and the emptiness…. my heart just aches for her.

I am typing away at the desk in our family room. Rick is in his study, working. The boys are upstairs, quiet and asleep. Such is the lull of our Saturday nights.

I feel so refreshed from our family time together yesterday. We went on a spontaneous road trip: we headed first to Church Point, where we stopped for coffee, sultana buns and a walk down to the wharf. From there, we drove to the West Head lookout where we saw the most spectacular views. Rick and I were literally breathless at the beauty that stretched before us. In the evening, we went to Dee Why to catch the sunset and watch the waves roll in.

I am learning to switch off and just be ‘present’ with the boys when I’m spending time with them. In fact, this week, I began putting my phone away so that I’m not tempted to check Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. There is still a long way to go, but baby steps are being made.

I am still in disbelief that the boys all ate their dinner tonight – happily and willingly. Three cheers for chicken and spiral pasta! Three cheers for daddy who cooks!

I am looking forward to dinner tomorrow night with my friends.

I am sipping cappuccino from a sachet, because we’re out of milk.

I am eager to get on with my scrapbooking!

I am missing my parents, who are still in Hong Kong.

I am shivering from the cold. Whatever happened to autumn?

I am tired.

I can’t believe it’s almost May.

I wish time would slow down.

I wish the boys didn’t grow up so fast.

I wish I could ease my friend’s pain. But I know I can’t. So instead, I shall weep with her, and grieve with her.

I shall cherish Rick all the more.

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