Okay...it's been over a month

... since my last post. July has been a hard month for our family and I guess blogging has been in the too hard basket.

DH and I had a wonderful 3 days in Auckland at the end of June for our 25th wedding anniversary. Priscilla was great and I had a wonderful day exploring the scrapshops of Auckland.

The following week we got a call from Steve's brother to say their mother, who lives in Christchurch and we knew she wasn't well, had been given 24-48 hours left by the Dr's. We managed to sort everything out and get all of us (including Izzy, Abby and Taylor) to Christchurch within the next 36 hours. We got some precious time with her at the hospital and I'm pretty sure she knew Taylor was there and who she was. Sadly she passed away on the Sunday (5 days later) It was special to have all the family there (from NZ and Australia) and it was the first time all the cousins had been together ever (except our precious Olly, of course) Also special was it was Abby's first time ever in the South Island and it snowed. Her funeral was what she had wanted, and Steve's oldest brother gave a lovely eulogy about her life. It was hard for all of us of course.....and I found it especially hard to see my wonderful boy's be pallbearers again!!! (they were pallbearers at Oliver's funeral too) I guess it's often the little and unexpected things that upset me :-(

Getting back into things after that took a while and I guess we have just been looking after ourselves. Work is pretty challenging at the moment for various reasons and all I would like to say is "watch this space".

Scrapwise I have been plodding on. I have stopped our Thurs night scrapping at the moment as I have committed my Thursday nights to babysitting Taylor while Izzy and Abby do a great parenting course called Incredible Years. I used to be involved with facilitating it when I was a family counsellor and I think it's the greatest course. Instead scrapping is going to happen on alternate Friday nights at my house for the rest of this year.
I did get over to Hamilton yesterday for Crop Waikato though and I got 4 pages done which I am pretty happy about. I'll try and get some photos uploaded this week. It was great to scrap with a load of people who I have met thru scrap events, blogging and forums etc. A big thanks to Neen and Vicky for organising it.

Oh and last week, my oldest baby turned 20 years old. What a milestone. My boys are now 20, 18 and nearly 16. How did that happen?? When they were younger I used to wonder what life would be like when they were all teenagers. Now, although I love them to bits and am enjoying them all at the ages that they are, I would give anything for them to all be loud, little boys again (especially to have 4 of them!!). I'm sure it was only last week ... how time moves so quickly.

So that's me for now. I'm in bed today with a cold and trying to get better as I have stuff on this week I need to be well for.

I'm going to try and blog more...Promise.....

Caio