Our babies are doing well

How was your day?  Did you do anything special?  I did.  I worked a bit on something that I think came out pretty good. Not 100% as perfect as I was hoping, but I'm pretty happy with how it came out.  Especially considering I've not done this before and relied on a YouTube tutorial.  I'll have to share pictures really soon!

This morning Caitlyn wanted to know how many more weeks until her birthday.  She was horribly disappointed when I told her that there was still about 2 months to go.

One thing I love about the Christmas season is Christmas songs!  It irritates Terence no end because he doesn't really like Christmas songs (actually I don't think he likes most of the music I like listening to), but they bring back such memories for me.  Do you like Christmas songs?

This one in particular really brings back memories, I must have been about 10 when I heard it the first time

Bullet point Wednesday

I don't have a particular post in mind so this will mostly be a rambling sort of post.

• Today is a beautiful day.  Just in time for the official start of summer tomorrow.  The 1st of December.  Unreal!  Can't believe it.  It has come around so quick.  

• Am busy making little green boxes for the kids' advent calendars, but am a bit behind so tonight will officially be known as the night of the green box.

• Am really excited about another project I'm working on which will be ready in the next week or so.  I just hope it works out the way I'm hoping!

• From this weekend things are becoming quite a bit busier for us (sigh!).  What is your schedule like at the moment?

• There is only about 2 weeks left of school for this year.  Then Bianca will be completely done with Year 3.  Somehow this year seems to have gone too fast! 

• Did I say what a beautiful day today was?  After all the rainy and grey days we've had the last little bit, the sun and blue skies are really a welcome sight!

• Next week I need to start Christmas shopping.  Have you done yours already?

So what's happening in your life???

Bullies!

So in the news this morning I read about a mum who got involved when her daughter was bullied and assaulted by a group of other girls.  (Read here).

I'll never forget once we went to a particular indoor play area and as soon as we walked in, this one little boy walked up to Caitlyn and pinched her.  And of course she cried her little eyes out.  We sort of left it at that, comforted Caitlyn and went to let the kids play.  Now usually these areas are safe and secure enough that we can sit one side while they run around and have fun.  Except on this day.  On this day, this little boy and about 3 or 4 other kids from the same group for some reason targeted Bianca and Caitlyn.  They kept following them around, pushing into them, if they built something with blocks, they'd run and push it over, shouted at our kids when they were playing with something.  It was terrible!  And the stupid parents were just sitting there watching it all happen offering the kids ice blocks every so often and refusing to do something about it.  It got so bad that Terence and I had to physically follow our girls around to make sure they won't be hurt.  And then at one point this one little boy did it again - ran right into Caitlyn and at that point Terence lost his cool and told the little boy off for his behaviour.  Oh my goodness, that was the fastest the dad jumped up and told Terence off for telling off the little boy!  Well at that point we had enough, loudly told the girl behind the counter and the group of parents that we were leaving because we refuse to let our kids be tormented by these bullies any further.

I have to be honest that reading about some of the bullying behaviour out there makes me feel a bit anxious.  While it seems easy to protect our kids when they are little, when they are older and more independent, it won't always be possible to protect our kids from things like this.  I wonder just how effective anti-bullying programmes at school really is?  And whose problem does it become when these things happen after school?  What is really the answer to solve these kind of problems?  It seems to have become much more severe and vicious than I remember from my school days.

Finally I am able to say

For a more than a week now I've been wanting to share something with you.  But I couldn't because the time was not right!  But finally I can share it with all of you today!

My mum's birthday is tomorrow on the 29th.  So yesterday my brother and his wife and their beautiful little girl Febe celebrated with my mum seeing as it was the weekend and during the week my mum often works really late.  Because my mum lives in South Africa, we could not be there, but we were definitely there in spirit!  Very much so.  So much so that we made her cry.  At her birthday celebration!

In 2010 we started the process to sponsor my mum to move here to New Zealand.  Since 2004 we've only ever seen her maybe for a total of 9 weeks.  Earlier this year we received a letter from Immigration where we needed to supply more information and more documents and it took me about 65 days just to get everything together.  It was incredibly stressful and I spent hours on the phone, email, Facebook tracking people down, asking for info and getting ready.  And amazing people came on our way.  People I've never met before, but who were absolutely amazing in supplying what we needed.

So finally I submitted this big stack of documents.  And then we waited and prayed and waited some more.

And last week I finally received the letter we've been waiting for.  That my mum's permanent residency is approved and that we now need to send in her passport and the migrant levy.  What a big relief!  An absolute answer to our prayers. 

And so I sent a copy of the letter which my sister in law carefully inserted in my mum's birthday card as a nice birthday surprise from us.  Sorry mum for making you cry!

And next Christmas we'll spend it together!  No more sending parcels that never arrive (on the 1st of November 2010 I sent a parcel to my mum and my brother and it has never arrived!).

We were incredibly blessed throughout the process.  So many who did so much to help us!  And we had the most amazing and most helpful immigration case officer working with us.  We'll be eternally grateful!

So mum, time to start planning your big adventure!

Happy birthday mum, next year we're spending it together!

Nothing much happened today

And so this post won't be very significant or necessarily interesting.  Apologies!  Sometimes we are really boring people...

I've learned something - there is such a thing as planting too much lettuce.  When I planted mine I had no idea just how much we'll end up with.  I don't think we'll ever use it all - even if we had salad for breakfast, lunch and supper (and then some more in between...).  Anybody wanting some lettuce leaves?

Saw the cutest little kittens yesterday.  I used to volunteer at the SPCA with the lady 2 houses away from us.  She sometimes fosters kittens and keeps them at her mother-in-law's house next to our house and so when she saw me at swimming on Friday she invited us to come and have a look.  Oh my goodness!  So cute!  There is a mother cat and her 4 kittens who are only about 2 weeks old now.  In about a week we'll go visit again to see how they are doing.

And now I'll leave you with this photo and message I saw on Facebook - how true!

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"As long as we have memories, yesterday remains; as long as we have hope, tomorrow awaits, and as long as we have friendship, each day is never a waste." -Heart Matters