Veggie Run

 I was able to become part of a group of women who meet once a fortnight to go to the wholesale fruit and vegetable market to get goods cheap. This is the produce that is offered commercially and then at the end of the market day it opens to the public for an hour two days a week. The quantities are large and so it works perfectly to have 8-10 people who want to participate. So we all chip in 30 bucks and then two people go to the markets and the others stay back at the ladies house who lives closest and watches all the children.

 I actually share a "basket" with another girl because one basket is far too much produce for our family.

 The market is crazy and chaotic. There are small business owners and other groups like ours and who knows who else, it always packed to the max! You cant really haggle prices too much and you run the risk of others snatching up the good stuff if you keep moving on and wait to check all prices and come back. But you ahve to watch out for the produce guys trying to sell you stuff that may be past its prime. But usually its all a good catch and we leave happy.

Above is a closer look at one of the stalls. Huge boxes of produce with prices in chalk on the concrete. As the market comes to a close, you will see the prices get smeared out and reduced and stall holders yelling out their take it or leave it deals. Sometimes we have even had guys throw in free boxes of potatoes and such to just get rid of it. Usually that is the stuff that will need to be used up right away or have the lot is bad but you cant complain with free.

 Now the above and below pic are two baskets worth-$60 dollars. There is no way you could buy all that for any amount even close to that here. So while sometimes I still run to the shops to get something I want for a specific recipe or for more fruit or something, we are often are good to go. even with half a basket I find that I can usually give some to our neighbors because its more carrots than I know we can get through or whatever, they usually get a small grocery bag full that is worth my 15 bucks I put in my share.

Honestly my half basket fills an entire laundry basket. It ridiculously awesome!

my treasure

 This little guy puts up with a lot from me, all those rules mom give out, all those warnings about staying safe, all that rushing here and there.....and I am one lucky mom. He is such a happy, smart, and lovely boy. He has weaknesses but overall he is my treasure and such a gem. He started over the last couple months started getting into duplo legos, its one activity that I have endurance to play with longer and I love helping him use his imagination and seeing his creativity. He often wants me to build a house and he builds airplanes and rockets.

Wearing his pants huck finn style because the waist fits but legs are too short. I think it's cute!

 Its funny how as a parent there are some things that are easy to do with your child and others that we do because we know we should. Legos is just something I enjoy doing with him. Duplo size is perfect for him. Lindsay brought back a batman one from a trip a while back with the little lego pieces and his toddler hands were just not quite gentle enough and it was frustrating for him and me. But this size is durable and toddler friendly.

I love watching him be so determined in his building and stick that tongue out in concentration. I could eat him right up!

Fancy that

Sorry no pics today. I just thought I would share some very frustrating news. So you know that smobi I talked about. We were so excited to get close to finishing off the claim and I picked it up from the final mechanic yesterday. I drove it to get to playgroup and back and then parked it in the nearby residential area since we can't park it in our complex being that we only have one car spot. That was all fine and dandy, then when Lindsay got home from work he wanted to move it closer onto the street right near our place so that when he left before dawn for a TDY today that he wouldnt have to walk far. I followed him in our other car and we went on to a lovely dinner and then came home and did our normal evening routine.

Last night I didnt sleep well, Erik was coughing a bunch and I was having a hard time easing that, and then before I knew it Lindsay's alarm was going off at 4:15 am. I try to sleep as best I can while he gets ready so I can easily sleep once he leaves. 10 minutes later I hear him come back in and think, "Man, I just want some sleep-wonder what he forgot." Usually when he forgets something or cant find something I end up getting up and helping him so when I heard the door open I just jumped up and asked, "what did you forget? The keys for the car?" and not in a condescending tone, just wanted to know what I was looking for. He said," nothing.....you wont believe this but the car is stolen." Silence. I reply with "are you kidding me? You are not serious right?" "No, its really gone." "No way, we just got it back yesterday, it was parked in that spot less than 12 hours." He apologizes because he knows he is leaving me again for a trip and I have to sort it all out. Life isnt fair that way. I feel like I have enough to deal with to have things go wrong while he is gone. Let them go wrong while he is home so we can work as a team. Granted he calls when he can to check on me, the happenings, and if he needs to call anyone, he doesnt leave me completely cold handed but still it adds uber amounts of stress because not only is he not home but he is not usually easily reachable, so if I or someone else needs to call it gets frustrating.

Anyhow the smobi was just fixed and we were ready to finish up the claim and sell that cursed car off to some other person. But nope, we are stuck doing the entire process over completely. And with that comes more suspsicion from the cops and insurance company about me because both times I had driven it around the day leading up to the car going missing and although I know they are doing their job, it doesnt feel good to feel like you are defending yourself when you are completely innocent. I complied peacefully but it was not pleasant for me. I just wanted to scream and punch and throw a tantrum like a toddler. I didnt, I made all the phone calls I needed to, let our apartment managers know about it, called my mom, and then went and spent some down time with friends. That was nice, so nice. Then Erik and I stopped at the grocery store on the way home and my tender mercy was seeing that artichokes are in the shops now as they are in season and my mouth immediately started salivating. Came home, fixed up dinner, gave Erik a bath with cool glow bracelets to keep him entertained and ate my artichoke with a touch of butter in peace while he played and just about melted into heaven. SO glad to have small things like that end off such a bad start to a day! It was perfect!

Tomorrow is a new day and I am trying really hard not to get overly stressed this time around and just take everything day by day. I dont know why this year has thrown us curveball after curveball, I could do with some time with just trying to keep up with our normal life but we must be special for God to think we can handle all the extra. I try and remind myself often that when things like this happen, I can let it refine me and that I must have good potential that I dont see in myself because why else would we have trials put in our way? And I also remember, things could always be worse, my trials are just right for me and I would choose them over other peoples most days. So today was no good and so good. Just thought I would share!

General Conference Fun

 I set up our entertainment center for General conference so that when we had some friends over for the sunday afternoon session, Erik would have plenty to do and I would maybe get to listen to some of it. This probably looks like a ton, but really his attention is not real long so I knew I needed quite a bit of things. There are so many ideas out there for fun things to do with kids for General conference at home, and I tried to make up something using bits and pieces of many ideas and made them my own with some tweaks. I knew I didnt want it centered all around food and I knew that he wouldn't sit long enough to listen real well for key words. I didn't want to make it frustrating to where he would want to give up.

 So this was my system. I looked up prior how many speakers there would be for the particular session we were going to be watching and came up with an activity for each speaker. I just numbered them and had him follow in order. I did put a small treat on each number and there was one sucker on one number in the middle. I didnt buy anything new, I just used things I had and made a few things with resources I had.

So the activities were, file folder games, stickers, playdough to put on a dot coloring page, popsicle stick puzzle, cut out pictures from church magazines and paste them on paper, wood puzzles, beading foam beads onto pipe cleaners, and matching pictures of the apostles and first presidency. I also made a sensory box for him to play with once the activity was finished or it he didnt want to do one of the activities. I didnt want to fight with him or come up with things on the spot so I didnt push these things. I just offered and let him decide. I had him help set it all up and he was chomping at the bit to get started when our friends came. The end results was overall success, some things he did longer than one talk and others he just ate the candy and then went off. The sensory box saved me and am so glad I thought to make one up real quick. You can make one out of anything. I had a bunch of rice in a plastic bin and then added small plastic containers (really small ones) and small toys and weird knick knacks and he played with that happily. In the end he got a bit of sweets but not a ton, and he was entertained while I got to mostly listen (I did have to still facilitate and help with some of these fun things).

Success!

Easter

So Easter this year was great. Fun, friends, and low key. I wasn't quite sure how I was going to work it this year. I wanted to impress on the true meaning of the holiday and still keep up with some of the other fun activities. I didnt know if I wanted to keep Sunday strictly for religious things and do the other things on other days or combine them. Luckily it all kind of just fell into place. We planned to have an Easter dinner with a few other couples and a sweet elderly gentleman and Saturday we had traditional home made hot cross buns with some other friends. Schedule wise we actually never got around to doing an egg hunt. Which is pretty ironic since it was Easter last year that made Erik obsessed with eggs, and that obsession continues. But he had plenty of other fun stuff. Sunday morning he woke up to an Easter basket and I felt really comfortable with doing commercial holiday stuff with the religious part due to the fact that throughout the weeks prior as we taught about Jesus Christ and his death and resurrection Erik was very keen to learn and talk about the true celebration of the holiday. We didn't have the camera out as much as we should have and then we finally did pull it out it died within thirty seconds.

These are two guys Achilles and Jermaine that were a part of our get together. I was going around the room to take pics but like I said the camera died, so you only get to see these two. Their lovely wives were there as well. Achilles is a musician and Jermaine is a rugby player....we really like rugby and have gone to one his games where he scored! He is trying to make a career of rugby and is at the level where he plays on a feeder team for a pro team. And both of these couples are awesome!

 But I digress....here is the only picture I got of Erik in his cute Easter outfit. Well the more casual after church version. He had on nice slacks and a button up shirt at church but for dinner we went for polo and shorts. But he sure was handsome! The Easter bunny gave him all sorts of goodies ---actitivies for church and General Conference (handmade), very few treats, marbles, and a super cool airplane. Here he is shooting the camera. He has great aim and hit the camera right in the lens. Little stinker

All in all it was a great holiday and I got to introduce deviled eggs to these aussies while enjoying lamb and other yummies. Erik's favorite scripture story before Easter was Abinadi and now it is Christ's death and resurrection. We actually found an awesome app for the ipad from the lds church's bible videos. It is so awesome! You can watch the videos and also explore the land where it all happened and learn more about the people and what living was like back in that time. It is his favorite thing to do when he has the opportunity to use the ipad.

Funniest thing about it is that he will of course watch the crucifiction video the most and he always wants to watch from the point when Christ is being whipped and abused before he is nailed on the cross. we were getting a little worried that he skipped to that point every time and would watch it over and over. That is until we spoke to some one else about it and she had said that she read that children at his age dont understand that the story doesnt end the same every time so they reread or watch it to see if maybe it may change. A week or two ago he told Lindsay and I that he needed to get something so that he could save Jesus. Sweet little guy thought if he figured out a way he could save Christ. That then turned into further opportunity to explain why Christ needed to die for us. I dont think he quite grasps that one but it has been absolutely awesome to see him learn and absorb all of this information. Many days when he chooses what he wants to read together before quiet time or other times of the day when we read together he always asks to read his "gipsures" or scriptures. I am not going to complain or argue with that. It has been great. We just use the Book of Mormon reader that is animated with pictures. So lovely!

Fullgive and Commodores

this VIDEO is an awesome video of Scott Rawlings the mastermind behind Fullgive leather. He was our houseguest back in Janurary who was awesome enough to try some fun aussie foods with us (our first tasting of vegemite) and also introduce us to his world of leathercraft. He came to Australia to do a bit of side work finding some car parts and enjoy some of our bushland and aussie lifestyle. We happened to be lucky enough to host him and form a new friendship and have some fun. He stayed with us for a week while he got his ducks in a row for the rest of his adventure and we all decided to go into together to buy an older car that would benefit him for his trip and then temporarily give us a second car that we planned to sell a couple months later. More on the car later.

Lindsay and I were lucky recipients of Scott's Fullgive tour and received belts and me, a leather cuff. We loved it, his style has a cool edge.

 Above I was showing off my belt and the bag I ordered from him. It has a shoulder strap that I didnt have on that day. We were headed to the movies as a family and it stashed all my personal belongings, a full size water bottle and lollies for the whole family for the movie with plenty of  room to spare! I had Scott make a specialized pocket for my kindle and our house keys/swipe card on the inside and a phone pocket on the outside. Scott is open to all custom work so it was great to chat with him about the bag, I got to pick colors, dimensions, etc.

Here is a link to Scott's Etsy shop. He is based out of Utah but will ship internationally and is a great guy!

Lindsay ordered the quicksilver bag but had it stained dark brown and he loves it, and I must say I think it makes him look more like a stud than he is. He uses it for work and slings over his shoulder with his flight suit (that reminds me I really need to get a picture of that). Make me drool thnking about it!

This is the beauty (cough, cough) of the car we bought together. It was actually the car we borrowed from one of Lindsay's co-workers when we first arrived in Brisbane until we bought our own. It worked great then and although old and loud, was great. A classic Australian car-the Holden Commodore.

 This car took Scott down the Eastern coast of this beautiful continent and then Lindsay picked it up on a business trip and brought it home. This car has quite the story to tell now..I wont bore you with every detail but I will give you the quick rundown. Scott ran into a trouble /miracle one day when he was driving-the car overheated and he just so happened to be at an exit where right off the exit was a repair shop. And what do you know, the shop didnt have what was needed to fix the car but the part just so happened to be in the boot of the car (trunk). Time and money saved and he was traveling back safely on the road. That was one of many miracles experienced while here and it was quite inspiring to hear all of those stories. SO while Scott has a relatively amazing good fortune at every bad turn we took over and it has been nothing but hell on wheels for me. Lindsay doesnt get stirred up real easy, so for him it hasnt been to bad. For me I like to think of this car as the SMOBI as in stress mobile (well actually there is another word I would like to enter but its probably not appropriate).


At our place we only have one car spot in the parking garage so the old smobi has to be parked on the street, but like I posted recently most streets have crazy parking hours unless you are in a complete residential neighborhood. So I spend time walking to the parked car, loading Erik and I up and then driving around to find a spot until the next day or hours later when it all has to be done again.

Lindsay was out of town and couldn't help with this task and after he had come home he went out to go to work one morning in the smobi when in the spot was the exact same car, only it wasnt ours. Say what? Our car was gone and ironically in its spot was another of its kind. So I spent half the day making appropriate phone calls to report a stolen car and make claims, and all the other stuff that happens. Lindsay left out of town the next day and I was left to handle it all again on my own. Now i know being a military wife I will get left on own a lot and deal with a lot independantly, but it doesnt mean I enjoy it, or that its easy.

We were kind of hoping the police would not find it and that we would just get a pay out from the insurance. But the police did find it due to a good citizen doing their part and reporting a mysterious car parked in front of their house.Above is a pic of some of the damage done to get the car to drive away. Dash pulled out, ignition not working, only turns on with a screwdriver. We actually used bobby pins to drive it home from the impound lot.

(yes things are on the paper for a reason, to protect our private information)

The signs taped to wind screen (windshield) coming out of the impound. It also had a coat of ash colored dust from the fingerprinting they did on it. To cut this long story short, this car is called the smobi by me for many reasons. It has since broken down while I was running errands with ERik and is now in the shop to be fixed. I am hoping that as soon as it comes out of the shop we will be able to sell it fast and get it off our hands. We loved having Scott here, we loved helping him out, we even loved having a second car for a while, but now it is time to go back to one car with no added money or stress for all that the smobi entails and get things back to normal.

Dont want to end on a bad note, so go feast your eyes on Fullgive leather and enjoy!