Welcome to the Family

The weekend just been was a busy one for us… and that’s an understatement.

Easter, Mike’s birthday and Anzac Day all in just one weekend – but best of all was the arrival of our new family member :)

Compared to most years, Easter was a bit of a non-event this year… usually we have an Easter egg hunt at Mom’s house, but not this time.  We were a tad pre-occupied with the pending arrival of our newest family member – My older sister, Sarah gave birth to her first baby, Mom and Dad’s first grandbaby and my younger sister and I (and Mike’s) first nephew.

Sarah lives a five hour drive from us and I miss her a lot.  I wouldn’t have missed the birth of her first baby (or any of her babies for that matter!) for anything, so when we heard she was in labour on Thursday afternoon; we packed up the car after work and hit the road.  We arrived around midnight, just after they (Matt, Sarah, Mom and Dad) had left for the hospital.  Thinking she was about to have the baby, I was too excited to sleep, so I stayed up and made pram-shaped cookies – as you do. 

It turned out the baby wasn’t quite ready to grace us with his presence, so they came home about an hour later and she laboured at home for another few hours before heading into the hospital again at 3am.  Baby was still not ready to come out and Sarah ended up staying in hospital.  There were several complications and because the baby wasn’t lined up properly, he had to have his head suctioned around.  But finally, after 27 hours of full on labour; Sarah delivered a perfect baby boy on Friday afternoon.  She is amazing and I am so proud of her.

Nine pounds, eight ounces and 61cms long.

 We got to meet the little man when he was about half an hour old and we even had the privelege of babysitting while Sarah had a shower, it was such a precious time :)

Welcome to our family sweet nephew, we love you so much already! xox

 

Always the Way...

Isn’t it always the way?  The minute you decide to do something, a gajillion other things pop up and get in the way.  That is exactly what has happened to my poor neglected blog.

On top of many other distractions and inconveniences, I managed to get myself a bulged disc, also known as a herniated disc.  There are discs of gel between your vertebrae and one of mine has bulged out (the physiotherapist compared it to squeezing a cream donut) and the gel is pressing against my nerve, as per this handy diagram:

It’s very painful and means I can’t do any lifting or bending and I am banned from housework for two weeks at least.  Sigh.  I’m not meant to sit down for more than 15 minutes at a time and I have to do special exercises every hour or so – what fun!

There are two things that contributed to my very sore back.

1.     Running.  In the dark.  Without my glasses on.

2.     Letting my husband attempt to teach me how to do “proper squats” after said run.

In hindsight, neither of these things were such a good idea.  It's also quite possible that a bulged disc was God’s way of saying “LIZ. DO NOT DO EXERCISE.”

Thankfully, with the help of physio and Voltaren (glorious Voltaren!), my back is feeling much better and I am almost back to full movement… and I promise I’ll be blogging more ;)

What Inspired Me to Start this Blog...

You know what?  I was inspired to start this blog by a craft tutorial.  Yes, a craft tutorial.  This one right here, actually - Elm Street Life – DIY Vintage Sign Tutorial.  It didn’t hit me while I read about it, or while I collected what I needed, it happened while I painted those two words, say grace.

As I painted, I thought about those two words.  I thought about how true the saying “life is what you make of it” is.  I thought about how some of the happiest people in the world have nothing and some of the most unhappy people have everything.  And I made a decision right then to be more grateful.  To spend more time appreciating what I have and less time dwelling on what I don’t have.  So that is what I am going to blog about – the things I am thankful for.   This is my place to say grace (I love accidental rhyming.  Even when it’s not so accidental…).

One of the things I am most grateful for is my amazing husband.  I just love him to bits.  I didn’t know I had so much love in me until he came along.  You can bet your sweet bippy there will be lots about him on here.  The past few months have been the best months of my life, I am so happy and content right where I’m at and I love my life.  Our life.  In the words of Aerosmith, “I don’t wanna miss a thing.”  So here, I will record it.  Every detail of our adventures as husband and wifey.  When we’re old and grey with faded memories and we spend our days sitting on the covered front porch of our villa, holding each other’s wrinkly hands and just rocking away on our rocking chairs, our memories will be here.  Kind of like a cyber version The Notebook, if you will, though nowhere near as romantic as a worn leather journal…