HAPPY NEW YEAR........

I hope you had a Fantastic Christmas and New Year's we sure did!!  We had a quite Christmas spent with us and some really awesome friends.  We went to my Aunty's house on Christmas Eve and had a nice roast dinner and yummy trifle and christmas pudding and custard.  Christmas morning saw us up at around the 6:30 mark which wasn't too bad, the girls were totally impressed with there Nintendo Wii with Guitar Hero and Sophie with her new bike, it was so hot here so the Nintendo keep us all entertained for hours and thank God for Air-Con!!!  I'm not sure who got more enjoyment out of the Wii the kids or the parents lol :o)  We had friends over Christmas night and the adults had a blast playing Ten Pin Bowling and Frisbee hehe.  

It's been so long since I even blogged... I must admit I love going to other people's BLOG'S and checking out what they have been up to but seriously don't know if I should ever bother with the whole BLOG thing... so what do you think????  Does anyone out there ever visit me??

I will be back soon.............. MAYBE  

Raechel xxx

MY BABY GIRL IS 7 TODAY

HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY SOPHIE, I can't beleive that my baby is 7 years old today!! Where did those years go? It sometimes seems like life goes so slow but then all of a sudden your kids seem all grown up, it seems like just yesterday that I was holding Sophie in my arms and here she is so big and Independent. We had a very eventful day with her sister waking her up @ 7am (I think she was more excited about the presents than Sophie) and she received some lovely presents and being the girl that she is I couldn't beleive that her favourite present was these gorgeous little pair of shoes, as soon as I spotted them I knew she would love them (which she hasn't taken off all day - even with the blister that it has made on her toe), Highschool Musical 2 DVD, some nice new clothes, a Bratz Lil Angelz, a Mystic Baby and some money from Grandma & Grandad which she brought a little kitchen set & Daddy brought her a pink fishing rod (she can be so girly one minute and such a tomboy the next). So we went shopping, had a nice time (man can my girls shop, my feet were so sore when we got home) then we had a little party @ home which she had one little friend over and a sleepover tonight, took them all out for lovely KFC for dinner tonight and then had to go to a meeting for the Relay for LIFE that I am doing this year to raise much needed funds for the CANCER FOUNDATION, so I baked a cake & we all sang HAPPY BIRTHDAY and enjoyed CAKE!! I hope you had a wonderful day Sweetie I know i had fun....



I love you Baby Girl, but please slow down with the growing up I would like you to be my baby for a few more years yet xxx

... PANDORA ...

Who has a Pandora Braclet?? I had never really heard of them until my friend got one for her birthday and now that I know about them it seems like everyone has got one, it's very addictive though, my beautiful husband suprised me and brought me one for VALENTINES DAY and since then I have been trying to control myself and slowly buy the charms (yeah right). I got the beautiful Magenta Glass bead when we were away on holidays, it is so pretty.

I will share some more when it slowly fills up.

Take Care........... Raechel :o)

WOW..... It's been a long time

Since I BLOGGED...... actually everytime I went to post on Blogger it would lock up or not let me do what I wanted to do, so out of frustration I haven't bothered and then the other day when I thought I would try again..... I couldn't for the life of me remember my Password LOL :) But I finally worked it out and am back, so I will try and be abit more diligent in the world of Blogging, I know there are probably not alot of people out there who read my poor pathetic BLOG anyway but thought I would use it more for my own reference and see how I go.

So what has everyone been up to??? Well we have definately been kept busy here this year, starting with my oldest DD starting Highschool (let me tell you the first few weeks were a struggle with her getting used to the new workload and assignments man it never stops - I am so not prepared for this part of my life!!) then we had all the rain and we survived the flood with absolutly NO FLOOD damage to our place... PRAISE GOD but the amount of houses and people who lost almost everything is just devastating, just driving around was not nice seeing trailers of stuff just being taken to the dump and driving past houses with which looked like everything they owned on the front lawn. The weeks just seem to fly past and I can't beleive we just celebrated Easter and I am so looking forward to the holidays after this week!! And that we are in April already, my baby girl turns 7 this month!! eeeek where did that time go? I have been scrapping up a storm - not for myself but, one of my most cherished and beautiful friends Talia had a birthday back in February and since she is a working Mumma who hasn't scrapped since her boy was little I decided to do some scrapping for her... it was such a challenge since she has a little boy and I only have 3 girls it was so different to be scrapping a BOY! She was estatic with the result and I was very pleased that she loved it. I have also been busy making a quilt, one of my more experienced quilting friend helped me cut it out and helped me along the was so I will share some pictures when it is looking more like a quilt, I so love it the colors are just divine.

I have been slack with taking photos lately it feels like I haven't taken any in ages, but I haven't scrapped any of my own photo's for ages and I have so many to catch up on, but (doing a happy dance) I am going on a scrapping weekend soon............ YAY................. I am so looking forward to it, my friend Deb and I are going for a weekend away with the local scrapping shop at the end of April, which means between now and then I have to get organised....... hahaha can I do it!!! YES I think I will I so want to get some serious scrapping done so I am on a mission, I cleaned up my desk and supplies big time the other day so I know where everything is (well nearly everything).

Well I think that is it for me now.... so until next time.... take care....

Get Creative and Enjoy Life each and every moment.

Raechel xxx

The Mum Song

I saw this today on You Tube and thought it was to funny!! How on earth does she remember all those words, but it is just brilliant it's so accurate is so many ways LOL. Hope it makes you laugh like it did for me.

Raech :o)

...OH WHAT A NIGHT...

Well can you beleive that at this time last night I was laying in a hopital bed next to Sophie, how things can change in a matter of 24 hours... what started out as fun turned in one sore little girl & it all started like this... oldest DD had a friend over for the night & they were out the front filling up water bombs and playing games & during this time my brother-in-law turns up so we went inside for a chat - now I was thinking that they were just playing water bombs, but Tahlia's friend got Tahlia's electric scooter out and decided to go for a ride which was fine but it's when she asked Sophie to hop on for a double that the disaster started, & we have told the girls over & over that this is not allowed so they all felt doubly bad when it all happened but thank God it could have been alot worse & there were no broken bones or teeth knocked out - the freind got up speed & then lost control and they stacked it & the bigger girl fell onto Sophie who banged her head pretty hard on the concrete the other good thing is that all our street is concrete so her grazes weren't as bad as they could have been if it had been bitemen! So in comes Soph with blood pouring out her nose & one enourmous egg on her head, I stayed calm until she started vomiting & her eyes started rolling back in her head so we headed straight to the hospital were they admitted her & kept her in for observation for the night & she just keep vomitting which was not very nice (especially when the poor darling says: Mummy I don't like it when it comes out my nose) so I was glad that they kept her in just to keep an eye on her which meant 3 hourly ob's and when it was morning she said to me Mummy that was such a long night & how come they had to keep checking me, but PRAISE GOD there was no signs of any other problems & now just needs some very good sleep to recover which she is doing very quickly & has been eating constantly since we got home... I sure do hope that the rest of the school holidays are a little less eventful than the last 2 days that I have had, I think I will take the girls to see HAIRSPRAY tomorrow as it's cheap day (anyone seen it? I've only heard good reports!) & then I think we are going to go camping for a few days when Steve gets home later in the week but apart from that I think I am going to make the rest of this week relatively quite.

Thanks for a the SMS'S that I had regarding Sophie your thoughts & prayers are very much appreciated.

Take Care whatever you are doing.

Raech :o)

OH MY...

Look what I had at my back door this afternoon!!!!!!!!!!! Why do these things always seem to happen to me when my hubby is away, the kids had not long come in from playing outside on the tramp when the dog kept barking and barking which he usually does when the kids hide his toy bone that he is totally obsessed with so I went to the back door and this is what greeted me!!! I nearly wet my pants - luckly I had a male friend that was here with his kids for a visit & he imformed me that it was a carpet snake but he is also petrified of snakes & I think he was more scared than me LOL, now I think any snake is a dead snake whether it's venomous or not but there was no way either one of us was getting near it - so we called up the snake man & he came to the RESCUE... thank goodness - so all up we had 5 squealing children & 2 whossie adults but I will definately sleep better tonight knowing that its not still outside somewhere!!

BACK FROM HOLIDAYS...

We had a great time away, just what we all needed the only hiccup that we had was when we went to the Gold Coast Tahlia came down with her ashma and we had to take her into the hospital and she had to go on the nebuliser for 5 hours, the girls had a blast at DREAMWORLD & WET -N- WILD and it was great to catch up with some friends I just wish we had some more time so I could have caught up with some of my on-line buddies (a must to do next time). I can't beleive that I took about 850 photos while we were away & I so love my new camera I got some really great shots and have so much scrapping material now LOL. The place that we stayed at on the Gold Coast was great for the kids the kids club was so worth it even if the room was a little outdated there was so much to do for the kids at PARADISE RESORT and they had a absolute blast. Only a couple more days until the kids are on 2 weeks holidays which I am looking forward to even though we just had a holiday its like the saying you need a holiday at home when you go away for a holiday, so I am looking forward to the late nights and the sleep ins. Well I will end my post with some holiday photo's, take care whatever your week holds.

...CREATE...

Lately I have been creating a few scrapbooking pages, very simple one's but at least they are getting done so I thought I would share. I have been trying set aside a Wednesday that I get together & scrap with a couple of friends and normally I am very non-productive but this week I was very pleased with how much I achieved. It's been another busy week - I can't believe how fast the weeks are going before we know it it's going to be Christmas. To start of my week this week we had a bit of an event on Monday - after Steve took the girls out horse riding on Sunday they came home and on the way home in the car Madison was scratching her belly and just above her belly button she has a little scrub TICK so Steve pulled it out (I don't like things like that, I'm scratching now just typing) and told them to get in the shower and check there warm spots to see if they had any more, Sophie had on just above her ear so we got that out and that was that, but later that night Sophie woke asking me to put cream on the bite cause it was itchy but she was pointing to the other side of her ear, so at midnight I turn the light on only to find this teeny tiny tick, I got Steve up and got him to get in out except it was so tiny he got the body off but the head was still in there AGGHH so we rang the hospital to see what we should do and they said just leave it and take her to your GP in the morning, so we made and appointment and Steve took her - Thank God cause they had to give her a local anisetic and cut/scrape it out (BLAHHH) Steve said she was so brave so that's it for horse riding I think LOL. Been doing the everyday running the kids around after school to and from there dancing classes, I also got to catch up with my Aunty that I haven't seen in about 3 months it was so good to sit and chat and catch up with her. Got our poodle clipped this week, it's the first time we have had him professionally done and he looks so good, normally it takes us about 2 days to trim him where as they had him done in 2 HOURS! He looks so skinny now with all his fur gone. Tahlia is at Youth tonight doing a HIP HOP Class which looked very fun and we now have a very busy weekend with Madison having a sleepover at her friends house tomorrow night, going to another friends boys 13th Birthday with the other 2 tomorrow afternoon and then going Ten Pin Bowling, going to Church on Sunday and then catching up with another friend for lunch on Sunday then it's back to Monday again and it will be another week gone - so I hope you are having a great weekend whatever you are doing.

Take Care,

Raechel :o)

Girls

Playing with Picasa!

I thought I would have a little play see how easy it would be to create a collage using Picasa! Anyone else ever tried using it, it's pretty simple but I'm still figuring it out because as you can see some of my pictures have been cut off so I'm not sure it I have to crop my photo's before I select them or what, but it's a nifty little program I like very much!

We have had such a busy weekend and Steve has taken the girls out to a mates house who has horses for some horse riding so I am having some nice time at home by myself doing what I want 2 on the computer, I really should be doing housework but decided I will get stuck into it all day tomorrow. I hope you all are having a lovely weekend whatever you are doing.

Raech :o)

QUILTS, QUILTS, SO MANY QUILTS

Today we had a fundraiser for the Church that we attend to raise money for a team of Youth that are going over to Thailand in the September holidays who are volenteering to work in an Orphanage, what a great experience - I would love to go and do something like this with my daughter and experience another country and just how blessed and privledged we are to live in Australia. So some of the ladies in our church are into Quilting and something I also love so we organised a QUILT DISPLAY - it was fantastic, I have never seen so many different quilts and how talented these ladies are, I think there were a total of 80 Quilts! I am so inspired after seeing such beautiful work and brought myself so really nice Fat Quarter materials now I just have to get my machine serviced so that the reverse button works and I'm going to do some more quilting, I don't think I've make anything for a good 1 1/2 years and most of it is still packed in a box from when we moved so I am going to dig it out and set it up and make some nice little projects, the day was a huge success and I'm not 100% sure but I think they nearly raised $3000 - here are some photo's from the day.

SOMETHING TO SHARE

Today I had a chance to get together with a friend and we scrapped all day, it was wonderful and I had a really great time (thanks Deb) I got 3 pages done and was so happy with this one that I completed, it was a little out of the box for me - I actually glittered all the letters and the chipboard swirlies and then Dimensional Magic them, my scanner ate abit of it but you get the picture.

************************************************************************************

Tonight I am taking Tahlia to a orientation night at the High School she might be going to next year.................. YES I SAID HIGH SCHOOL, I can't beleive I am sending her off the Highschool next year.............. I AM NOT READY FOR THIS STAGE it seems like just yesterday that she was born and now she is nearly a teenager with lots of personality!!! It will be interesting, I think I will be more nervous than she will be when it happens LOL!

THIS IS ME

RIGHT NOW BECAUSE LOOK WHAT JUST GOT DELIVERED

AREN'T THEY GORGEOUS!!! THANKS BABE I LOVE THEM.

HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!

Today I have been married for 14 WONDERFUL YEARS, thankyou babe 4 so many wonderful years and many, many more to come... not doing anything special today as Steve is out of town working so it's a bit hard to celebrate but we will do something special when he is back in town. LOVE YOU TOO PIECES BABE xoxoxoxoxo

A DAY OUT...

We had a fabulous day out a couple of weekends ago and I have just gotten around to sharing some of the shots that I captured with my new toy, I had lots of fun experimenting with it and I have still so much to learn with shadows, lighting and all the technical stuff, this camera has so many functions on it that I don't think I will fully understand them all, but I must say it takes a absolutly fantastic photo so much better than my little Kodak digital camera, I think every time I get the camera's out the kids go NO, NO PLEASE NO MORE PHOTO'S LOL - but guess what - too bad Mum says and away I keep snapping - the beauty of the digital camera is that little delete button when it's not so good, I am in love all over again and guess where I am going tomorrow to get lots of photo's printed from - Harvey Norman has a special on at the moment for 15c and hopefully I will get my finger out and get something scrapped LOL (don't faint) it's been so long and everytime I think about it I just don't have it in me at the moment - anyone else ever feel like that? I hope my MOJO returns soon, but I will be well equiped with lots of photo's when it does return. Off to get some beauty sleep. Night Night.

Raech xx

Photoshop Course...

For 2 weeks I have been doing an on-line class with the lovely Erica Glover from the Scrapboxx on the computer progam Photoshop which I have been wanting to learn how to use for ages, I have had the time today to really sit down and have a play with all the notes that were provided, it is so fun to be able to work on something and see the results, I am very happy with my progress but still have a long way to go.

I found these photo's of Sophie that I took a couple of years ago that I just love, so I scanned them and did a collage with a border, which was some of the stuff that the notes covered - I am very impressed with the results (thanks Erica YOU ROCK) there is still so much that this program can do that I want to play with, it's quite easy once you know what you are doing and there is so much that it can do, still trying to get my head around it all! Just had to share my progress. RAECH xx

WHAT A MORNING!

You know when you lose the plot with your kids & then you sit back & look at the situation & feel really bad about how you handled it, well that was my morning.... I am so frustrated & I don't want to be, sometimes I just want to crawl back into bed and stay there and not deal with the everyday life stuff, silly I know, it is raining very hard, very dark and just the weather for crawling back into bed, but the day must go on... I think I just have to realize that we are all human and make mistakes (especially with our children) and start again, but sometimes I don't understand what can be so hard about getting ready for school - so this was my morning.... we all get out of bed & middle daughter informs me that she doesn't want to go to school because it's wet & cold and she just doesn't want to go... she is so hard to get motivated in the mornings... it's like Maddy get dressed, Maddy what are you having for breakfast, Maddy go get the brush so I can do your hair, Maddy brush your teeth, Maddy get your shoes and socks on, Maddy have you got your lunch, Maddy make your bed.......................... IT"S SO FRUSTRATING..................... meanwhile the other two are ready to go & we are waiting for her, well this morning I didn't say anything and when 8:30am came I went in there and said - are you ready it's time to go, then there was screaming and yelling and her telling me how mean I am and BLAH, BLAH, BLAH and now I feel like a really CRAP Mum... anyone else ever felt like that, I think that as Mothers we do so much for our children that sometimes they just expect everything but I think there comes a point where they have to take a little bit of responsibility.... RIGHT?? Hopefully tomorrow we will be a better day, and as much as they frustrate me I love them to peices - my life wouldn't be the same without them...

so on a much brighter note, my cousin had here 4th baby the other day, so yesterday the girls and I went to the hospital for a vist and they were like 3 little mothers - my cousin said ahhh look you should have had another one and sometimes I think I should have had a 4th but when I sit back and look at our 3 girls they are well and truly enough to keep me busy, but little Charlie is the cutest little thing it's enough to make anyone Clucky! I didn't even get to have a cuddle so I think I might go up today for a cuddle. Have a great day..... Raech :o)

GUESS WHAT I GOT?

My very own brand spanking NEW CANON SLR EOS 400D Digital Camera! I am so excited that I can't wait to take some photo's. I've been wanting to get one of theres cameras for a while and lovely hubby said I could get one (doing a happy dance here). I've only been able to have a little play with it yet & it is a little different to operate than my little point and shoot digital camera, and as it's been raining here for the past couple of days haven't been able to venture outside, but this morning it was nice & sunny and I said to the girls that I was going to take them to some spots to get some piccies and all my subjects declined the invitation and wouldn't be apart of it (it seemed that playing with there friends was far more important than there Mum getting photo's - I couldn't beleive it!) so now I will just have to read the book abit more and try and learn some of the features (it has so many buttons). Well I have been sitting here trying to add some photo's and this Blogger won't let me, so I am off to my nice warm bed. Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend.

Raech :o)