Greenway Clan
HeatwaveI want to thank all of you dear people who commented on my last entry. You encouraged me so much. What a wonderful community this is! And what dear friends you are becoming. Thank you for your kind words and most especially your prayers.We are having a quiet week at home - waiting to hear from the hospital on when we are to go for Teddy's EEG - but my doctor called yesterday to say that the assessment of the CT scan is all clear, so that is good news and such an answer to prayer. We are trying to stay close to home these days mostly because it is so terribly hot outside. Our part of New Zealand is experiencing the hottest temperatures recorded in over 30 years. They're comparing it to the outback of Australia! I had to go into town yesterday to see my obstetrician, and I treated the children to McDonalds for lunch (they were so good waiting at the doctor's very posh office). We took it down to a local park where there are beautiful trees, but even sitting in their shade was unbearably hot. We ate quickly and got back into the airconditioned car. I had to go and get my third trimester blood tests done, and the nurse was a little bit grumpy - she is usually very friendly. She was stuck in a tiny room with only a fan and was fed up with the heat. Here is a news link about our weather: Heat Rises, Temper's Flare The heat was even setting off fire alarms! My obstetrician says I'm all ready to go - baby is definitely well-engaged. Cooler weather is coming this weekend, so that could be a good time to go into labour. I guess the race is on between you and me Ashley! 
Schooling the Littles Sometimes I get busy with school and forget to spend a little one-on-one time schooling the littlest of my littles. What a difference it makes when I do. They are SO excited to have their own one-on-one School time with Moma. :) So much so that afterwards, I hear... "Moma, is it our school time now?" quite a lot. :)Now don't get me wrong, they school right alongside the older children, while we are having school time they are coloring or learning the Presidents or writing their letters... but it helps a lot to spend a little time to work with just them, one at a time.  What a blessing it is to me, to be the one who sees their children learn new skills, what a joy it is to be the one who is there helping them, teaching and nurturing them and watching them learn. There just is NOTHING like it. Enjoy them being close to you, being with you, so much so that it is an ache in you to be away from them... Children are a gift, given to US... from the Lord. Cherish, Enjoy, Treasure every moment. No, it is not always easy for me to do that either, but when I realize that the next time I blink my eyes that they will be grown, it makes it a lot easier for me to slow down, breathe deeply and know how incredible my life truly is. I hope you have a great day and enjoy time with your littles, big, small and in-between. :) My Cup Runneth Over... Jan 7thAnother gloomy day full of wind and rain! The winds got up to at least 28 MPH. Our garbage can got blown across the road. I had to adjust our satellite about 4 times because the wind kept moving it over! They started running production at Jerm's job yesterday, and they're not wanting anyone to get any overtime. Thankfully he did have a lotover the Christmas season, that was nice. It is nice having him home earlier as well...it's not like I'll be buying Polar watches or anything so I think we're good! My eczema was flared up really bad so I had to start using my steroid cream again...it's helped immensely but I hate using it...my skin is gonna get so thin I won't have any left! Well I ned to upload some pics, have a nie evening! Blessings, ~*Becca*~
We made butterOne day last week I remembered that I had bought some heavy cream over the holidays for Moma's Favorite Cookie, which I am GOING to post the recipe for! REALLY! :) Well, I thought with this much cream, it would be a good time to show the children how to make butter... well the easy way to make butter.We pulled out the ole food processor.  Poured in all that cream and turned it on... There were a few different stages that I told them we would see...First of all we saw it just as a liquid, as it is as cream. We would start seeing the cream slowly becoming thicker, until we had it at the whipped cream stage. They all tried it at this point and sneered... sadly they thought it would taste like cool whip. Pitiful, huh? I told them at the enormous amounts of 'stuff' added to cool whip and this was so much better, and that we could add a little sweetner if we wanted whipped cream, but we want butter!  Keep it moving, keep it moving...FINALLY! BUTTER! :) HURRAH!  Please forgive the skunk stripes down my child's hair... our New Years Party got a bit crazy! :) haha Mmm... this butter is good, Mom!We even took the buttermilk and put it in a jar to use later and washed the curds with ice water to help get all the milk off so the butter would last longer. Now a solid. How crazy are we? Doing school when we are supposed to be on holiday? haha... so is the life of a homeschooler. I hope you have a great day friends. My Cup Runneth Over... Aprons Like I told you... I have been excitedly sewing again. I am so happy. :)I decided the other night to make myself a new apron. I like the smock type of aprons so I went for that. This one is modified a bit from my original purple smock that I love. This fabric was my Grandmothers/Nannie Red's. I only had a smallish remnant and sadly the smock is a bit too short for me. I am considering what I want to do with it now... try and sell it in my Etsy or possibly wait and see if I can refashion it to make it work somehow. I LOVE how it turned out... the colors are wonderful and vibrant and I adore the fabrics.  I finished the edges with bias tape and made 2 pockets on the front... perfect for clothes pins on wash day or running out to the garden to pick a few peppers. The rick rack was a tribute to a dear friend of mine and I just love it. :) I hope to find the time to get back in the sewing room again soon... to make one equally as cute that I can wear. I LOVE my aprons, I love wearing them... I actually do wear them. Putting one on helps me feel ready to get to work. :)Here is a little something a friend sent me about aprons, I was reminded of it when I saw it on a message board that I frequent... Grandma's Apron The principal use of Grandma's apron was to protect the dress underneath, because she only had a few, it was easier to wash aprons than dresses and they used less material, but along with that, it served as a potholder for removing hot pans from the oven. It was wonderful for drying children's tears, and on occasion was even used for cleaning out dirty ears. From the chicken coop, the apron was used for carrying eggs, fussy chicks, and sometimes half-hatched eggs to be finished in the warming oven. When company came, those aprons were ideal hiding places for shy kids. And when the weather was cold, grandma wrapped it around her arms. Those big old aprons wiped many a perspiring brow, bent over the hot wood stove. Chips and kindling wood were brought into the kitchen in that apron. From the garden, it carried all sorts of vegetables. After the peas had been shelled, it carried out the hulls. In the fall, the apron was used to bring in apples that had fallen from the trees. When unexpected company drove up the road, it was surprising how much furniture that old apron could dust in a matter of seconds. When dinner was ready, Grandma walked out onto the porch, waved her apron, and the men knew it was time to come in from the fields to dinner. It will be a long time before someone invents something that will replace that 'old-time apron' that served so many purposes. REMEMBER: Grandma used to set her hot baked apple pies on the window sill to cool. Her granddaughters set theirs on the window sill to thaw. They would go crazy now trying to figure out how many germs were on that apron. I don't think I ever caught anything from an apron ! Have a wonderful day. My Cup Runneth Over... OrdealJust wanted to pop in briefly to update you all. No baby yet - and I'm praying I don't go into labour tonight.Our little son, Theodore (4) was rushed into hospital last night after suffering an unexplained seizure. He had another more severe one in the hospital and was admitted for the night. We have just returned home now in the evening of the following day. He has had blood tests and CT scans today - all of which appear normal, and is doing well. But we are exhausted after a sleepless night. This emergency has shown us in a real tangible way how blessed we are in our little community here - one neighbour took the older children straight away so both my husband and I could go in with Theodore. Our dear church friends bought food up to us in the hospital and cooked us our dinner tonight, and another neighbour came over, unasked, and mowed our overgrown lawns, and tended to our dogs and chickens. We feel overwhelmed with God's blessing from these dear people. I don't feel up to going into the drama of all that happened, I haven't had a good cry over it yet - just that it was awful and I felt so helpless. We had to throw ourselves onto God's mercy. Teddy goes for more tests later this week probably. We had a wonderful nurse looking after us - God went before us all the way. We are glad to be home, hoping and praying that there will not be a repeat, and praying for at least a day and night where we can catch our breath before labour begins. I would covet your prayers for us at this time. The Sewing Bug...I have been bit by the sewing bug again, finally. I haven't been in my sewing room since the craft festival. I have thought about it, only to say, "No way". I don't know, it must have been all those nights of being in there until 3 am that helped me to shun my love of sewing for all this time.So I had been thinking of making my children some colored pencil rolls. I thought they would be a nice thing to have to take along to church, on field trips, to have on hand when they want to sketch something... I also thought I would make them a bag to hold their pencil roll, their Bible, and a sketch pad... I still have to make those. :) So Saturday afternoon, I seized my opportunity to go into my sewing nook. And here is the outcome.  The one above is Cameo's. She loves the fabric. I made 14 slots in hers... 12 is because colored pencils come in a 12 pack at the dollar store and then I wanted her to have a place for a pen and a pencil.  It was a strange thing when I went to the sewing nook to pick out the fabric... I pulled most of the fabric off the shelf, sorted, folded some neatly and came to realize that the deer/elk fabric was the only boyish fabric that I own! NO JOKE! How sad is that! I know that there is some really cute boyish fabric around but I own only the half a yard or so I used to make these roll ups. So I had to make two different colored ties for Eli and Abrams so they could tell them apart. I ended up making myself an apron after I finished the pencil rolls and I will show you pictures of that later on. And if that didn't tickle me enough, I taught myself how to knit a little. Oh, am I awkward and silly looking right now... but I figure in time it will become easy to me. I know how to cast on, and how to do the knit stitch. I am so tickled. I have been practicing over and over and am so slow. haha. Next I will learn the purl and hopefully try and make something... hooray! :) Have a great week friends. My Cup Runneth Over... Sun Jan 4thToday was a good day. We had a guest singer and guest speaker at church today. The singer was Marty Magehee, but I can't remember the other guy's name...I know it was a friend of his though. What a blessing they were to everyone. I've been knitting a hat for Lucas...it's a stocking cap, and I can't wait for it to be finished! He'll look so cute in it, that is, if it gets cold enough for him to wear it. We've had such strange weather this year...it's either really cld or unusually warm. I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but we got a new TV last week as sort of a family Christmas gift. It's pretty nice. 32", full HD LCD. Thankfully it came with a tv stand...there's no way we could mount a tv on our walls. I can barely keep a towel rack up! We just have to make sure Ethan stays away from it. He breaks most anything he looks at! Well have a nice night! Blessings, ~*Becca*~ An Hour of Havoc - a storm of almost Biblical proportionsWhen Theodore (4) came and told me to look at the sky yesterday afternoon, I just thought it would be another ordinary raincloud. Does anyone remember that story from Anne of Avonlea where she sends the children home from school when a black, angry cloud is spotted out the window, and a hail storm arrives to cause chaos... well, this was almost an exact re-run of that story. When I looked out the window to the south I had to catch my breath! It was so black and menacing we were captivated by it. We watched sparks of lightening flash across the sky - bolt lightening too, which is a rare occurance in New Zealand. We usually only get sheet lightening. If I had been more alert I would have rushed out to cover my baby plants - but with this cough I have been avoiding going outside in cool air. We saw Robin rushing the dogs under cover and he made it inside just as the first spits of rain fell and darkness, like night, came over the house and land. The story in the Old Testament of Moses and Pharoah and the 10 plagues of Egypt is one of my favourites, and while we all sat on our bed yesterday afternoon watching the enormous hail pound the ground - it was the size of large marbles - I have never seen hail like that before - Robin said he could see why God used hail as one of the plagues. I normally love storms - they thrill me, but this was scary. It passed right over the top of us with lightening and thunder crashing almost upon each other and the hail storm lasted quite a long time. We warned the children not to go near the windows, so we took refuge in our bedroom which is on the north side, but it was so incredibly loud on the roof. I was so incredibly grateful that we were all home and safe and not out driving somewhere. And so our summer landscape turned to winter. This was taken through the window at 3 o'clock in the afternoon.
Anyone fancy a swim?
As it subsided, we emerged to survey the damage. Our new wooden front door has quite a few large dents in it - but as far as we can tell, that is the only damage the house received. But the garden is another story. Robin wouldn't let me go out until this morning to look at it. He said it would be too depressing. Shredded beetroot
Shredded artichoke
Shredded Tomatoes
Because we were late getting our vegetable plants in this year, I think most of them should bounce back. Not many were in flower. A few baby beans were forming, and a few flowers no the tomatoes, and the zucchini and pumpkin have been very slow this year to grow, so hopefully we won't have lost too many of the plants. The strawberries incredibly seem to have fared the best. I think the chicken wire over the top must have helped protect them. One good thing came out of this.... we didn't have to water the garden last night. Shredded Rhubarb
Poor Apples
The hail turned this once bushy Buxus plant into an instant Topiary.
I've Engaged!!Or technically I guess I should write... the baby has started to engage. This is very exciting for me. I have never before had a baby engage before labour. I've always had long, hard, awful labours and have needed 'help' by an obstetrician in one way or another. The obstetrician was telling me only last week that it is not uncommon in subsequent pregnancies for the baby not to engage until labour is well underway. This has always been my experience and I didn't expect it to be any different this time. Yesterday I went to see my midwife and she told me the good news. She made another appointment for me to see her in a week's time, but said she expects she'll be seeing me before then - at the hospital. We went to tour through the hospital yesterday too - what a lovely place. The gardens outside are in the full bloom and colour of summer, and Robin and I read together the old plaque on the foundation of the hospital wall, "This hospital was built for the Glory of God, and in honour of the early settlers of Canterbury...." . The maternity rooms are on the second floor and the elevator was out of order (how nice, really - an elevator just didn't fit in with the old-fashioned atmosphere). We walked (slowly for me) up the wide sweeping stairs into the quiet maternity halls and were met by a midwife who showed us around. There are beautiful big old, hundred year old trees outside all the large, sash, gabled windows giving it quite a cool feeling on a hot day. The plaster on the walls had big cracks running down from ceiling to floor, and the carpet looked a little worn - in an elegant kind of way. The little reception was tiny with a glass window instead of gleaming, sterile counters that scream at you. The nurse bought a brand new baby wrapped up in a cot along for my children to look at. My son wanted to know if our baby will have a wobbly, wrinkled chin like that baby? I'm sure my labour will be a quiet one in there. Indeed I'll be too awed to yell or moan during those last few pushing moments - it just oozes peace and quiet in that place, and I'll be thinking of my dear grandmother who gave birth there over 60 years ago to my father - she herself the daughter of an early pioneer. In spite of this awful cough (the doctor said my chest is clear, so no infection) I feel so blessed to be able to go to this place and have my baby. So grateful that everything indicates a normal delivery. St. George's doesn't have facilities for complicated deliveries or anaesthetics. The nurse told us that if I deliver here I get to choose from the best recovery rooms, and I know just the one I want - it has glorious, grand trees outside the windows. And I have my verse of promise from the Lord for my fearful, untrusting mind and heart; from Psalm 37. "Commit thy way unto the Lord; trust also in him; and he shall bring it to pass." { Last Page } { Page 1 of 5 } { Next Page } |
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