A Good Week

With my last post I had decided to try and blog every day until the end of February. As you can see that is not happening. Maybe I'll try for March, but I'm not making any promises!

We have had such beautiful weather lately. Every morning is still pretty frigid, but by the afternoon it's a lovely day!  Don has been taking the advantage and washing the car often. I think he's washed it twice in the past week!  The kids love to help out. They've also enjoyed being able to play outside longer. Harry was given a bike last week and he is so excited about learning to ride!  We had to order training wheels/stabilizers so he can get used to the bike first. It would be nice if he learned how to ride without them this summer!

Harry and Kathy are enjoying doing some school work 3 days out of the week. Harry finished his consonants and is almost done with the vowels. He's very good at recognizing the sounds but still gets some of them mixed up. It's my goal to have him reading by the fall. Kathy just works on recognizing the alphabet and her numbers. She can say her alphabet and count to ten, but she can't recognize them very well. Sometimes it can be a lot of fun teaching them and other times...well we won't talk about the other times!

Kathy's first 'person' drawing - Flynn Rider

The kids had a check up last Wednesday. It was nice to find out how tall they are and how much they weigh. They're almost a foot apart in height (Harry - 111 cm/3'8"  Kathy - 90 cm/2'11"), but only 7 lbs difference in weight (Harry - 18kg/40lbs  Kathy - 15kg/33lbs). Audrey has almost doubled her birth weight. I think that's about right for being 6 months old.
Don and Harry made a short trip over to Lossiemouth. This is the town we eventually would like to move to. It's 6 miles from Elgin. Don would like to start a church in this area as God allows. They had a fun day over there and brought back some goodies since it was Valentine's Day.  Harry loved the beach and was very tired by the time they got back home.

I'm beginning to venture out a little more into the color shoe area. I pretty much have owned only brown or black shoes. Occasionally I've had white, but I have found that after a while they begin to look dingy and they get dirty quickly. I don't have very many shoes. Travel on the road for a few years and you pretty much keep to basics. But after finding these, I'm looking forward to trying other colors. Shoes can be fun!

We had Friend Day at church this past Sunday. We had 6 first time visitors and some have said they would like to return. The spaghetti supper afterwards was great. It was a fun time of food and fellowship.
One last thing to mention:  For all the Jane Austen fans:  The Royal Mail is issuing commemorative stamps this year in honor of P&P's 200 year anniversary!  I ordered mine a few weeks ago and received it on the day they issued them. This is a big win for me since I love Jane Austen and I collect stamps. You can order 6 illustrated stamps, first day cover, stamp cards, etc. Check it out! https://shop.royalmail.com/issue-by-issue/jane-austen/icat/janeausten/ 

A Short Drive

(I wrote this yesterday, but wasn't able to upload the pictures. So this post is a day late.:)
Today has been a pretty full day for us. I took Audrey to the doctor this morning. In another month she'll be 7 months and it'll be time to have her see a cardiologist. This was just a consultation to ask about a referral. We'll have to go down to Inverness for her heart check up. The doctor we saw today informed me that there's a team from Edinburgh that comes up to Inverness every few months. He's going to let me know when they come up net. He did say he noticed she seemed to be a little rattly in her chest, so we have a prescription to help clear that up.
After lunch we decided to take a drive up past Dornoch to Gulspie. It was a nice little drive. We saw a playground in Gulspie and stopped to let the kids play a bit. Dunrobin Castle is in Gulspie. It's closed now, but we hope to go up there during the open season and take a tour.
This coming Sunday we are having friend day at Bethel Baptist. I wanted to invite some of the neighbor ladies in our little area, so after we got back to the house I went out to do that. I visited for about an hour with Dusty, an elderly lady that lives across from us. It was a very pleasant visit.
It has been a very good day for us. The weather was nice. Audrey tried some homemade pear sauce today an loved it! She's now been eating cereal, peas, carrots, bananas and pears. I plan on making some applesauce tomorrow, but we'll see what happens. Don will be gone most of the day, so I may not get it done. :)
Here's some pictures from our little excursion today:

a church in Dornoch

A view of Dunrobin Castle

at the playground in Gulspie

Sunday

You may ask, "What do you do on Sunday?" Depending upon which country you're in, it can be very different. Since we are helping out the Cashner family we have the privilege of attending services. They have a small group of people that meet on Sunday. There is another church group that meets there in the morning, so Bethel Baptist Church meets in the afternoon. We have a Sunday School/Bible Study hour beginning at 2:10 followed by the main service. Before, in between and even after the service is fellowship time which means we stand around drinking tea/coffee and munching on biscuits (cookies). :) Here are some pictures to give you a little bit of an idea:

Don teaching during Bible Study hour

Sunday School with Miss Kimmy

Children's corner during the morning service

main service (this one was from our first service in Tain)

We had a small group today. Many were home sick. Most of the time we have a group of about 20 when everyone is there. Next week is Friend Sunday. We're praying we have a lot of visitors.
I am enjoying this time. I know once we move over by Elgin our services will be just us meeting in our living room. In April a group of guys from the church here and a church in Dundee will be going over there for 3 days to letterbox Lossiemouth and most of Elgin. Lossiemouth is a small village of about 7000. It's only 6 miles from Elgin. It's our prayer that we would see some interest in the Bible study offer.
And now I'll leave with a few pictures we took before going to church today.

6 months and other things

6 month photo

Look who turned 6 months this past Sunday.  I can hardly believe this much time has passed. We've been in Scotland 4 1/2 months now. Audrey is getting so big!  She can almost sit up on her own. She loves 'playing' with Harry and Kathy. It's going to be so much fun when she starts crawling. She started baby food. She loves the cereal, but was not really too keen on other things at first. I tried homemade peas and avocado. One time I ran out of cereal and only had a banana and she loved that!  Since trying the other I have made peas again and I believe I did it properly. I mad an ice cube tray full. This time I blended it more and it's so much smoother than the first time I made it. She seems to like it now. I made some carrots last night and got half a tray full. She tried some today and really likes them. I plan on making applesauce and pears still. There isn't a very good choice at the stores here in my opinion, so my decision to go homemade was a good one.

6 month photo with tutu, not edited

cereal for the first time

ready to freeze the peas

all ready to go back in the freezer

 

 

 

 

A few weeks ago I finally found a good deal on a sewing machine and ordered one!  I am so happy to have one and have tons of patterns and ideas that I've pinned to Pinterest! :) So, I have man ideas of recycling some clothes as well as making some new things. Recently I added a button and elastic to the back of one of Kathy's skirts so it would fit her better. That same afternoon I made her a skirt that was so easy. It wound up being a tad long and a tiny bit loose. She'll grow into it though and I thought I did a pretty good job!

My sewing machine, yay!!

 

the skirt I made for Kathy

Kathy in her skirt.

I love the charity shops over here. I'm always finding things for the kids!  I found this cute outfit for Audrey the last time I went out. It gave me an idea. The entire outfit is connected. So underneath is a full bodysuit with a dress attached.  A sewing project??? Then I found this cute shoes for only 1.50. That's pounds. I don't have that symbol on my keyboard. Anyways, these shoes were brand new!  I'm always picking up things for the kids on sale or at the charity shops. They are growing so quickly I might as well have things on hand and be prepared. And God always has something for me to find.

 

The kids are being such great helpers around the house. They don't always do everything willingly. One thing they do enjoy doing for me is clearing out the dishwasher. I'm glad their getting bigger and therefore able to help out more!

Time is going by quickly. The end of this month my first born will be 5. He's a pretty special little guy! I'm looking forward to doing a little questionnaire with him. It'll be interesting to see his answers.

Chicken Pox

Harry on Sunday  - he didn't want to smile for me

One of these days I will look back on this time and smile. I will be able to make Harry laugh about how he looks. We have been invaded by the chicken pox!  Two weeks ago the kids were unknowingly exposed to chicken pox. My thought was that this wouldn't be too bad. If they got them then it wouldn't be such a bad thing. I remember having them when I was young. I knew they were very itchy and simply irritating. I didn't realize they could be as bad as Harry got them.

I noticed some spots on Harry Saturday night after bath time. I didn't notice any spots on Kathy until the next day. We stayed home from church and did some crafts to go along with a Bible story. We took it easy. I thought, "This isn't so bad." Harry woke up Monday morning covered - his back, chest,  face and neck had little red spots all over. Kathy only had about half a dozen. Harry was miserable all Monday. I stayed out in the living room with him Monday night so he wouldn't wake up Kathy all night long. Every time he cried I felt like crying too.  He looked terrible.

We suggested a bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) bath. He refused. The sight of the spots all over his chest scared him. We did get him to hop in the bath for a bit on Tuesday and it seemed to help him.

All this while Kathy was getting new pox but very few. Even now I think she may have two dozen. Harry must have a few hundred.

They are finally on the mend. I have learned that soda baths definitely help, and cream is better than lotion. I was also able to find some children's Benadryl at the local pharmacy. The kids slept pretty good last night.

Even then, it really hasn't been too bad. They've been pretty good about not scratching. Instead if it itches really bad they just rub that area lightly. I've seen Harry pat his head lightly - the ones in his hair are pretty annoying.  It looks funny because it seems like he's smacking his head. 

I hope they're pretty healed up by Christmas next week. Last year we all had the stomach flu the week before Christmas. Hmmm...what will we get next year? :)

December

Okay, so I've been wanting to blog again for a while now, but had put it off because I really didn't want to sit down and write out what we've been doing. For one thing it's a pretty normal life we lead now...uh sorta.  So, I thought I'd change the way I write about things.  I'm just going to add some pictures and write a little about each. Kind of just some highlights of things we've been doing. (since I can't seem to get the layout I want by putting pictures and text on the same page, go to PHOTOS to see the pictures!)

We started off December with a renewed tradition. One we hadn't been able to do in 2 years - decorating for Christmas!  We added a new tradition of making cookies together. The kids had tons of fun!

I have a dishwasher. Pretty amazing, huh?  Well, I hadn't used it at all since we got here. Then last week we had a party and I used it! Now I have suddenly remembered why I was so excited when I heard we had a dishwasher!!  I just load it up during the day and after the kids go to bed I turn it on. The next morning they usually help me unload it.

I've also been pretty creative this month. We get a lot of glass jars from jam, mayo, sauces and other things. These have to be recycled. So, I have a bag of glass jars sitting in my laundry room. Then I got pinspired!  (I'm pretty sure that's not original, but I like to think I came up with it :) I used a few jars to put our toothbrushes and toothpaste in. Some I even added ribbon and flowers to. I finally found a medicine jar for only 50p at a charity shop to store my cotton balls in. (I love charity shops!) I'll work on making it a little prettier.

Other pinspirations include a 3D  snowflake(I like to think of it as a star, it looks more like a star), paper snowflakes and organizing the kids colors and coloring books. Side note-don't look too closely at the carpet in the picture!  Yes, it is pink!!  But it's in the play room, so not a huge deal.

Another crafty thing I've been working on is stockings - that is Christmas stockings. Kathy and Audrey didn't have stockings. I bought plain ones and personalized them. They're far from perfect, but they're cute.

Audrey passed four months on the 3rd of this month. Shortly before that she started turning over belly to back. This gets a little annoying because she'll wake up screaming from a nap and be laying on her back. She gets upset since she can't turn back over. Then just the other day she turned over back to belly. She hasn't done it since, but I think she'll master that pretty soon:)

In a week and a half it's Christmas and a week after that it's the New Year. Then my birthday :D!

Hope you're having fun this month. I sure am!!

Another thing I plan to do before the Christmas: make some salt dough ornaments - I need to find a recipe that tells me the temp and time for a Celsius oven. Kathy never got a "Baby's First Christmas" ornament and Audrey needs one, so I plan on making those and some personalized 2012 ones (like with our family name and then a new fun one for Harry and Kathy each - think train and princess crown?).

Merry Christmas!!!

Adventures in driving and other things...

A few weeks ago Don decided it was time I learned to drive our car, a manual.  While I wasn't very thrilled with the idea,  I knew it had to be done if I wanted to be able to go out and do things on my own,  i.e. go shopping without dragging everyone with me! :)  So we began our lessons.  The first time I learned to back up in the driveway and drive in and out of the garage.  Then we drove on a short stretch of road near our house, in town.  That was soon followed by a longer stretch right outside of town.  Before I knew it he was having me drive every other day.  To Asda, to church, halfway to Inverness,... I've caught on to the driving part pretty quick, it's the driving on THESE ROADS that makes me nervous.  In the States the streets are much wider and most have a shoulder before the ditch.  Many of these roads are very narrow and there's no shoulder before the ditch.  Thus we found ourselves with a flat tire on the way home from church on Wednesday.  Don had me drive home and I took the longer route so I wouldn't have to drive the curvy road home.  A double decker passed on a turn and I moved over too far.  When I began to speed up there was a loud thump thump!   I'm glad we were so close to home.  I stopped and Don slowly drove the rest of the way home.  We were able to get it fixed the next day.  And today I found myself driving to the grocery store all by myself!!!  I certainly didn't think it'd wind up being so easy.

The days have been nice.  A little overcast for the most part, but not bad temperature wise.  The kids have been enjoying playing outside some.

Audrey turned 3 months old this past Saturday.  She's getting her first tooth.  I was so surprised when I discovered this.  My other two didn't get their teeth until they were 6 or 7 months old. I finally got her bed fixed up,  so at night she sleeps in her cot(crib) and during the day she sleeps in a small travel bassinet.  She's almost grown out of the bassinet.  Her room doubles as Don's office for now since she only sleeps in there. So during the day she sleeps in the bassinet that is usually in my room.

I have very few boxes left to unpack. Only 2 or 3.  It took me a while to get to my craft supplies because I didn't have enough storage. Now we just need to put all the boxes and totes in the garage and do a little decorating and our house will be done.  I'm looking forward to it!!