..all those quirky things that happen when I am pregnant. For example, I snore really badly when I am with child! I’ve been reading that this is quite normal, but I think Justin is going to move out unless I get him some earplugs!

My MIL assures me I have the “bloom” and on the weekend at the Carnival i was ‘checked out’. A fellow organiser was having a coffee with her mother and divorcee brother close to my cake stall and he was allegedly staring at me and asking this girl if I was available. So she came to me and asked if I was married!! When I said ‘yes’ and that I had 3 children and one on the way, she said “oh well, if it doesn’t work out can you give my brother a call, he thinks you are so pretty!”. Far out – weird, but I guess in some way kind of way it was a compliment!

So, just over 15 weeks now, tummy poking out, feeling not to sick and tired, and much happier. Haven’t done any scrapping in ages and heading off down the coast next week for a bit of R & R with my sister and her family. We all need the holiday – seems as though all the kids have coughs and colds. I have been sneezed on, coughed on and vomited on so many times in the past few weeks that it was inevitable that I should come down with it too. The things we put up with as a mum. Looking forward to sitting by the beach in the warm days and snuggling up in the cool nights.

So not really much to report I’m afraid. Life is plodding along. Thanks for passing by!

The carnival is over and it was a huge success. When I woke up to rain on Saturday monring I freaked out, but it wore off by 9am and settled the dust on the oval and the day turned out to be hot and sunny.

The cake stall was a huge hit, with people donating about 120 I guess (14 by my Mother-in-law!) It had a steady stream of hungry carnival goers looking for something to tempt their tastebuds and it all went. Not one thing left over for me to take home!! Rach and Moi were my head cakes sellers and Ro did a stirling job pricing all the cakes from about 12pm, till she took over the book stall.

The bookstall itself had lots to offer and people were coming in droves to check it out and grab a bargain. Lisa and Ro did most of the work there and made heaps of money. I was so grateful to all the girls for coming along. None of them had any ties to the schools or community, but came to help me out. Now that says something about friendship. It was commented to me that my volunteers were the best and that is, without a doubt, true!!

The showbags all went. I had mixed emotions about the bags becasue I had put so much of my heart and soul into making them. I guess I was a bit sensitive that people didn’t have the ‘respect’ for them that I did!! I was offended if people didn’t see the value of them, preferring to spend $5 on a kids showbag with 10 lollies in it rather than spend $10 to get stuff worth over $90. Oh well, they all went eventually – with me having to reduce the last 30 to $5 to get them off the shelf and out of my loungeroom and almost losing my voice in the process as I was spruikng so loudly! If I had have bought any home I’m sure Justin would have filed for divorce 🙂

So I’m now taking stock of all that happened and refining my level of involvement for next year. After all, I will have a new baby and probably be a little tired. Just put me down a for a few hours on the BBQ.

It has taken me all day to write this post. I just lay down on the couch for a minute and woke up nearly 2 hours later. The girls are still asleep too and I have to go get Holly from School. I hate it when I have to wake them up but what can you do, hey!

Thanks for everyone’s well wishes re the Carnival, and I also have to say that I didnt make it onto the TVbit for the news. I’m obviously not beautiful enough!!! 🙂

Only one more sleep till the Carnival..tis getting exciting. Rides are going up on the oval today (The Hurricane, Dodgem cars, Giant Slide, Jumping Castles etc) and WIN TV is coming at 10.30am to do a story. So of course I am running down there in my ball gown to get on the TV looking my absolute best 🙂

Scandal errupted on Wednesday when at a meeting we were served with a letter from a TV stations Lawyers (that station shall remain nameless in the interests of me not wanting to be sued!!) who pretty much said that unless we remove the name of our singing competetion from the website and all our advertising material we were going to be in heaps of trouble. Since then, the local radio station has picked up the story and is running it at every news bulletin as a David and Golioth type outrage. Small school fete being bullied by multi-million dollar company over the use of one word.
It
Defies
Odd
Logic
If you get my cryptic little clues there!!! So it is all abuzz and the emails are flying back and forward with last minute things to do. I finished up my showbags last night and there is over $90 worth of goodies in each bag. How much value can I stand!
183 This is a photo of all the showbags taking over my loungeroom
186 And this one is of the T-Shirts that I made up for the Co-ordinators. They are cute as.

Ok, better dash off to get all dolled up for the TV. If you are in the ACT region, check out Win TV tonight at 6pm and see if you can spot the glamourous chick 😉

I have heard today that my sister-in-law’s father died. This is my brother’s wife, the one 8 months pregnant expecting her first baby in 4 weeks time. Her dad had previously had a few run-ins with cancer, which he recovered from, and was now in remission. Yesterday he was diving along, hit a tree and died instantly.

And my sister had a dear friend die on Monday. This girl was 27, got a virus a few months ago and ended up in hospital unable to move arms and legs or breathe independently. She was diagnosed with a disease like MS and would be in a wheelchair for life. She was making good progress and determined to get out of hospital and into the rehab place. On Monday the physio came in to do a session, sat her up and she had a heart attack and couldn’t be revived.

There are a lot of new angels in heaven this week.

Yes it has been a few days since I updated – I’ve been busy!!

Saturday was great fun in Bowral meeting the scrapping girls and having a great old laugh and delicious lunch. I am still feeling full from that huge pie that I ordered! Wow, the girls were so lovely and what good sports to travel so far and wide to meet up. How amazing to make friends online and then be able to meet them. What an age we live in hey!! I never thought this would be happening to me 🙂

Sunday was spent recovering from the trip. Monday was Canberra Day, so a public holiday here. Noice – I really needed that extra day with Justin at home to help out and let me sleep;) I’m feeling so tired and on the days when he is home I tend to just crash becasue I know there is another pair of hands to keep the kids on the straight and narrow. Meg has been wetting the bed every night, I’m so over it so I went to Woolies this morning and bought “pull-ups”. I didn’t want to do that becasue for one they are so expensive and for two I thought she would be better the next night. Stooopid me!! If I have to wash that stuff again I’ll go nuts!!

4 more sleeps till the carnvial – please don’t rain, please don’t rain- I have set myself a target to reach $2000 from my stalls. Between the showbags, the cake stall and book stall I think I’ll have it in the bag.

I was just sad to read that Rach had received a nasty comment on her blog. What is with that? I don’t get why people have to be malicious. If you don’t like what people are writing don’t read it and certainly don’t say something awful to them. If you cant say nice things, don’t say anyting at all (hello, that sounded like my father inside my head!!).

Have a great day.

I am pooped and if it wasn’t for the DVD player that is currently playing “Barbie – Pegasus” I’d be at my wits end.

Yesterday, Rach and I had a marathon efffort in filling up all the showbags for the Carnival. We had a production line happening and managed to get them all done in a few hours, as well as 300 cake stall kits (plastic plate and ingredients form in a plastic bag) to go out to the schools tomorrow. We just didn’t stop and were both aching and sore after the full day. Thanks for all your help Rach, it was insumountable on my own!

So today I am feeling tired and heavy and just need to take it easy. Hence the DVD is on. The bags are filled to the top and there is still more to go in which is stuff I haven’t receved yet. They are taking up quite a large portion of the lounge room and now each one is kind of heavy, so I am wondering how an earth I am actually going to get them to the Carnival. I’ll figure that one out later!

So Holly’s Parent/Teacher interview went well. The teacher, Mrs H, said Holly was delightful and gorgeous and so very quiet. She wishes she had a whole class full of Holly’s! Main points:

1. Holly stays on task – we were all right with this one!
2. Holly is better at language than numbers
3. Holly has trouble recognising the numbers 7, 8, 9 and 10, but can add up well
4. Her art is outstanding
5. She is making a wider circle of friends
6. She is settling into school routine well and coping very well.
7. She is so quiet and such a lovely child (reiterated a few times by teacher – I was beaming!)

So a good result after all. Just before I left to go to the interview I asked Holly one last time if there was anything Mrs H was going to tell me. She said “Well, um, it was my news day today and I didn’t have anything to tell, so I told a lie.”
Hmm, ears prick up and attention grabbed “Oh really, what did you say?”
“Well I said that Jessie had swallowed a Bratz doll head”.
Me: What the….. ! – Imagining the size of a bratz Doll head!!! How is that even possible?
“What did the teacher say?”
Holly: “She asked if Jessie had to go to hospital to have it taken out and I said no, because you were a Doctor and looked after her” – ahh, now making sense at teachers comment the other day about me being a Doctor. Well I guess this shows that she has a good imagination 🙂 Mrs H wasn’t worried when I relayed this story to her. She said that News is all about making the kids confident to stand up in front of peers and talk. It doesn’t matter if what they say is true or not! Still, I would rather that she didn’t make up tall tales!

Ok that is enought for today. Going to rest.

My first ever Parent/Teacher night. I asked Holly what her teacher is going to tell me (just in case there are any little surprises) and she said “that I am a good girl and stay on task”. I am predicting the following will come up:

1. Holly does not hold the pencil correctly
2. Holly can be a chatterbox
3. Holly is a good reader (ie she has a good memory)
4. Holly has a nice friendship group
5. Holly needs more confidence
6. Holly can stay on task!

I’ll report tomorrow on how many I get right! Gee, I am a bit nervous 😉

When I picked her up today she had a huge bandaid on her knee – a morning tea injury, which is probably just a small graze but is causeing her to limp and need pampering. I asked her teacher if she had been brave and she told me that Holly was indeed brave becasue I was a doctor and would look after her. She thinks and thus tells everyone I am an Ear doctor, but I’m really just a retired audiologist. I think she is proud of me 🙂

Holly was a bit sad when I dropped her off at school today. She is so like me, and it breaks my heart to see her not happy. Her little friend (that she has know since daycare) came back from 10 days holiday and all her group were delighted to see her. So they were excited and jumping around and being crazy. Holly held back, clung to me and said she didn’t want to go to school today. I see so much of her in me. I would have done the same. Kept away from the kids being so enthusiastically excited in case I got ignored or rejected – preferring to reject myself to save face. But is she saving face, or just sending a message to those kids that she doesn’t want to play with them, or that she isn’t fun and doesn’t like them. She wants so badly to be in with them, but wants them coming to her and not the other way around.

Finding your place in friendship groups is hard. I think Holly thought she knew her place – as this girls friend for years, the best friend, the priority. But it seems that others are getting in on that and pushing her out. She does have other little friends and I am trying to encourage her to play with them and get to know other kids. Life will continue its ups and downs within circles of friends and while no-one is being deliberately mean to her, some friendships click better than others and those one you can’t fight. I need to find a way to tell her that. I wish someone had told that to me – I still hang back and wait to be spoken to. Is that a fear of rejection or just being shy? Maybe both.

I love the quote “Some people come into our lives and quickly go, others stay awhile, leave footprints in our hearts and we are never, ever the same“. I hope that when the time is right, she finds a friend that stays with her forever and makes her believe that she is worth it.

Where did the years go? Holly is off at her first Swimming Carnival – GO GREEN , Meg had her first night in Undies after about 10 days of dry nights, and there was no accident; and Jessica is
understanding everything and trying to say everything. They are growing up and getting big. I’m so proud!

Yesterday Rach and I did a little scratting at her place (that is where you Scrap and Chat). Poor Matt was home sick, but went beyond the call of duty by going out and buying us an Iced Coffee. What a gem he is.

I’m going to be screen printing Saturday. These showbags need a logo on them and so do 10 T-shirts. Stuff is rolling in for the bags. At one stage I was worried they wouldn’t be full enough, and now I am worried that I may have them too full. Might have to bump up the price to $12 rather than $10. Remind me not to do this again next year – I’ll just help on the BBQ or something easy 🙂

I hit the 12 week mark on the weekend. Feeling good and not like I am protruding too much. I feel very heavy down there, but I guess that is just that my body is worn out from having so many babies. At the end of the day I am already feeling like I just need to fall in a heap. Gosh I hope I start to “bloom” soon!! My SIL has 5 weeks to go till her first is born and I had to tell her my Boys name so that she and my brother don’t steal it. I just love this one boys name, so imagine if they called it that one. Fortunately it wasn’t on their list!! (and NO Justin it isn’t Kevin!). I’d better remember to tell my other SIL who is due in July – I can’t take any chances here!!

Almost 3 – better do the school dash.
🙂 🙂 🙂 🙂