What’s in my Bag?

Finally I got a layout done! Wahoo!

We are having an about me challenge at CD at the moment to scrap what is in your bag, and here is mine.. nice to get one done for a change!

Looks a bit pixelated because I resized it, you can see the full size version if you click on the preview.

Adventures of a budding artist….

I just had to share this photo. I had forgotten I had taken it but I have just downloaded some photos from the camera and was reminded!

This is one of many of the adventures my darling son gets up to on an at least hourly basis. (thank goodness for naps!)

One of the biggest problems in our household at the moment is the whereabouts of Jasmine’s felt pens. One of the biggest reasons we are working on her packing up is because of what Kyan gets up to with her goodies when they are left laying around. The felt pens being the most problematic item! In the past I have always bought washable pens, but this time I found some great pens cheap, and so I grabbed them thinking Jasmine is pretty good now and doesn’t need washable pens.. but I did forget about Kyan! Washable pens always come of, but these one aren’t washable, and if you don’t see the marks straight away they are there to stay! Thankfully I have managed to find most marks on walls, but there are a few marks on our table that I have managed to miss. DOH! I really must put these pens away and find Jasmine some more washable ones! On the other hand, these ones last sooo well. You can leave them for days without a lid and they don’t dry out!

Feeling Better and I’ve been tagged…

After my last depressing post I am back to my glass half full self thank goodness. I hate feeling that way, it is so not me, but I guess everyone is down in the dumps now and again. Life goes on, and now we have to look at which direction we are going to go next… I hate not knowing.. I like to know what I am aiming for, I am so impatient when it comes to making decisions as I like to know which direction I am heading.. but this is not an easy decision to make, so we need to take our time to absorb all the choices we have to make the best one.

I have thought of some more words that Kyan can say.. so I will write them down now while I remember! He can say Baby, Puppy, Water (which can be either milk or water or both.. it is all the same to him.. LOL), Hopup, Door, Baa (Bath).

I took him to the daycare centre where Jaz used to go twice this week to get him used to it. We are going to start him off one day a week as that is all they have a vacancy for, for now. I was a bit hesitant about sending him there because it really went downhill the last 6mths she was there, but they have been taken over by ABC and there are a lot of big changes happening over there.

They are getting lots more toys and there is a new director. Kyan has enjoyed playing with the other kids over there and settles much better than Jasmine did. He is a lot more adventurous than she was. She was always quite shy and took a while to come out of her shell. I have a feeling he will adjust much better than she did.

I have been blog tagged by Kirsty CD’s new team coordinator, as well as Debbie one of our store designers! so I had better do my bit..

Kirsty and Debbie Tagged Me!!!

Not Moving After All, Feeling Down & catchup…LONG!

WOW, I can’t believe it has been a month since my last post..

For those of you who we haven’t told yet, we have decided not to move to the coast after all. As much as we would love to live up there, we came to the conclusion that we just couldn’t afford to make the move and it turned out to be a little too risky for us financially.

It took a lot to swing me over to the idea and when I finally came round I was really looking forward to it, so now it will take some time to swing my thinking back round to the idea of staying here. At least Jasmine is still enrolled at her school and our plans in that regard can go back to what they were originally. All those things I was going to miss such as our friends here, doctors, hairdresser etc etc, at least I get to keep those now! LOL

One thing we do need to do now is reassess our plans for the future. Our business gets plenty of work, if anything we get too much, but the trouble is we just can’t seem to find staff who actually want to work, they don’t even have to be qualified, but all we ever seem to get is the dregs who can’t even turn up on their first day even if they do decide to accept the job. Then when we finally find someone, Dean spends a lot of time training them, effecting our output and then the up and leave a few months later. Apprenticeships apparently are not an attractive option when you can get paid plenty to do nothing at home.

The way the business is structured at the moment we can’t run it effectively without several staff, and since we can’t find them, we need to restructure somehow, so over the next 6mths we are going to have to work on a plan on which direction we are going to go.

The most attractive option to us is for Dean to work from home on his own so we no longer have to worry about rent etc. We are throwing lots of ideas around at the moment, trying to work out which direction we should go, we may even sell the house and rent for a while investing our equity to help us catch up a bit.

One thing is certain and that is I am almost definately going to have to return to work next year. Still working on a plan in that regard as well, but we are going to put Kyan in Daycare two days a week soon to get him used to going to daycare and I am going to use that time to work on CD to get it happening and who knows, perhaps I can grow it enough to make it possible for me to work from home. If not, no harm done, CD will stick around and I will return to work. We just can’t afford not to have that second income anymore and once Jaz starts school it will actually be worthwhile for me to work. It is pretty pathetic that the cost of daycare makes it not worth the effort of working if you have more than one child not at school. It is also terrible that in today’s day and age it is almost impossible for lower income earners to live on a single income. Oh well that one rant for the day! LOL

With all the upheaval at our house it has left us both feeling a bit down. We have some major decisions to make and all of them feel like a compromise. At the start of this year I told myself that 2006 would be a good year after all the difficult years we have put behind us in regards to all our losses and infertility and other struggles, but we keep struggling this year and there are times I wonder what I did in a past life to deserve all of this.

To top it all off I find out that some pretty nasty things have been said about me around the web. I try really hard to be a good person, I try my best to be good to people and treat them right, but sometimes no matter what you do, it still gets taken the wrong way. I am busy working away on my site, head down and bum up and have a busy household with a toddler who is good at climbing and getting into mischief. While the world goes on around me as I have my head down I find I have less and less time to keep in contact to people and apparently that makes me two faced???

To all those wonderful wonderful people out there who know me better, thank you for being so patient with me, I really do mean well, but I find myself swamped and overwelmed with responsibility every single day and that means I do let things slide… something I HATE doing.. but that is my life at the moment and for the moment can’t see an immediate end to that. I need to try and help make ends meet and I am doing that the best way I know how in our present circumstances.

I was moved to tears this morning when a very wonderful friend who I run into at Jasmine’s swimming lessons sometimes (you know who you are!) reached out and said she and her husband had some ideas about our business and that she wanted us to know that they were in our corner and would help us out if they could. She invited us to come over and chat about it as you never know when a fresh point of view will help which is so true! It means so much to know we have such wonderful friends who care and are willing to help us out.

The kids are doing well. Jaz is still loving her swimming lessons and is relieved we are not moving to the coast. I asked her if she wanted to stay home and go to school with her Pre-prep friends and she said yes, and I explained we would be staying and she promptly said we can’t have a pool because I want to stay here and went off to play. ROFL Kids are so funny sometimes.

Her sticker chart for packing up is working reasonably well tho she often will only pack up if you help her. We will keep at it, we have a few little gifts ready for her when she reaches 10 again, this will be her third lot of 10 when she does. Thanks to Aunty Peta and Oma for sending up some stickers for her chart. She was excited to get some mail again.. everytime there is a break in mail she tells me her sad face didn’t work. LOL

Kyan is STILL teething. He will have the odd night where he sleeps through but more often than not he is still waking at night from it. His fourth molar is giving him lots of trouble. It is absolutely huge at the moment and looks like it is full size but just not cutting through. It looks as big as the other one so he has a HUGE lump on his gum where you can see the tooth underneath.. I wish it would hurry up and cut through properly for the poor little man! I may get the doc to look at it next time if it isn’t through by the time I see her next as it looks so red and sore.

He is leaping ahead developmentally learning new words every day, some words he says are Mummy, Daddy, Opa, Oma, Hop up, Whats dat, bibi (bickie), ba (bath), boo (book), bush (brush), and there are heaps more I can’t think of right now. He said his first 3 word sentance a couple of weeks ago, when he pointed at a book, and said, What dat boo? (Whats that book?). He is constantly asking the name of things and lately has been picking out dvd’s from the cupboard and bringing them over to us to put on. He LOVES the wiggles and anything where there is dancing. Today he was copying the arm movements the kids were practising at Jasmine’s swimming lessons, very cute! LOL

He is still a mega mischief, climbing on chairs and the table and on top of the toilet and goodness knows where else as well as pinching Jasmine’s felt pens and sneaking of and drawing on walls, doors, table you name it.

On a side note…It seems also by pure co-incidence that our Bonnie Babes Charity kit was launched the exact same day as a kit for SANDS on another website. A bit of bad luck they were launched the same day! How would you be, that a kit that was organised months in advance, and a charity voted on by the team of designers out of about 5 other charities as the charity to do the kit for, just happened to be a similar charity and launched the same day as another Mega Kit. I hate that, that has happened but what can you do?

Anyway, the kit is still available and a HUGE bargain, there is so much in it and it has such pretty and versatile colours. If you haven’t already got it, go check it out. If you are on dailup you may prefer to take advantage of the cd burning service rather than downloading. Why not grab some other kits while you are at it!

Anyway, I have poured my heart out in this post and I feel better for doing it, I wonder when that good year will happen? I think I will go crazy if it isn’t next year! Why is it that some people just seem to come up smelling like roses no matter what they do, good luck just seems to follow them around, whereas others keep slogging hard at it and never seem to catch a break.. maybe that past life theory has some merit??? LOL