When we Celebrated

 It seems weird to have had a celebration in 2020, but even in the midst of a global pandemic, life continues and there are things worth celebrating. One of these for us was our 12th wedding anniversary. Steve and I are pretty low key about presents and celebrating in general, but given the year, and the way our travel plans for January were absolutely on hold, we figured why not. 

We just booked a night away in town. Steve took the day off, and after I had dropped all the kids at school we were free. We did simple things; went for a walk, saw a movie, had a swim, I read three chapters of a book without interruption, it was wonderful. 

Dinner out, looking fancy, at a Japanese restaurant, and breakfast at a local cafe. It was lovely to have uninterrupted time together. After 12 years, Steve is still the person I want to spend life with, and I am still excited to be married. 

Thus ends the year. Here is to whatever 2021 brings, calm, crazy or chaotic. 

Seven Years Late

When Sophie was nearly one, she had her first Christmas, and I made her a felt Christmas tree. Turns out I never blogged about it. Weird. Anyway here it is:

I got the pattern/idea from a blog post I'd seen on the internet somewhere. I don't remember where it was now, but I have a vague recollection of actually emailing the original creator for a pattern, and she was Italian. I think. Moving on, it was a pretty simple: felt tree and lots of ornaments. 

Cute baby Sophie loved it. 

At the time, I got it to stand up with lots of bubble wrap that I had lying around. Any year that I put it out, between then and now, I did the same thing. This year, I didn't have any bubble wrap lying around, because I was cleaning out all my family day care gear and had donated it to the local school prep classroom. I tried to stuff it with pillows, but given the round, conical nature of the tree, and the square/rectangular shape of the pillows, it really didn't look great. 

Time to actually bite the bullet. The problem was, I didn't want a huge tree shaped pillow to have to store all year round. That was the reason I didn't make one in the first place. So I considered things, thought about it, procrastinated some, and came up with a solution.

Solution: Make three pillows. Seems complicated, but I figured if I cut the tree shape into three sections, only the top section really needed to be cone shaped (and thus a useless pillow). The bottom two pillows, or tiers, if you will, could just be circle pillows. These circle pillows I could actually use in the lounge room all year round, so I'd only have to store the top conical pillow.

As far as I could see, this solved the storage problem, and also gave us some more pillows for the living room, which were in short supply. 

So I made three pillows. I have plans to actually cover the bottom two with really nice fabric, probably this awesome fruit and flamingo stuff that I made shorts for Sophie out of earlier in the year, and the rest of the whale fabric that became Rachel's first school bag, but I ran out of time before Christmas. Too busy culling toys and selling all the day care things that I no longer needed since I was all finished with that. 

The good news is that inside the Christmas tree, you don't even notice that they aren't covered with fancy pillow cases, so I've still got time. 

The last thing I did was make Rachel her very own stocking. When I initially made the tree, Rachel was a small bump inside me, and we used to call her Yuka Lei, just for fun. But now that she's out and grown into a regular sized small person of six years, it was probably time she had a stocking for the tree to match the rest of the family. 

Better late than never right? 

Small Things

I have had a huge lull in sewing lately. A combination of finishing lots of projects and then just being generally busy with other things. The girls haven't had a growth spurt in a while, so there hasn't been a real need, but friends of mine are having their second baby next year, and while I went and bought them some practical baby presents (wipes galore!) I also wanted to make something a little special. 

I'd forgotten how small clothes can be. Even sewing the girls shorts now, they are starting to be fairly decent sized. There was something nostalgic in making this. Even though the girls are only six and seven, sewing clothes like this that they would have fit seems like a life time ago. 

The beautiful frog fabric had been in my drawer for ages, bought on special at Spotlight, but I never got around to sewing it when the girls were little, and now they don't particularly care for it. I used a dress pattern I had made when Sophie was nearly one, for her first Christmas Dress. 

It's so small. Just like the baby that will wear it one day. And that baby will grow, just like mine did. And that baby will wear it for such a fleeting moment, but it will be beautiful none the less. Maybe more so, because it is so brief. 

Merry Christmas

Happy Birthday Jesus.  It's been a delicious day this year. 

Girls One Nighter

The Queensland Government graciously gave all students two pupil free days at the end of the final term for 2020. I decided to use this extra time to the best advantage and take the girls camping for a night. Solo. No other adults, no extra family with kids to entertain each other. Just the girls and I. 

They are just so into camping and I want to make the most of the time we have together. So I booked a night at Springbrook for us. I figured one night would be pretty easy, and Springbrook has a BBQ facility, so I didn't need to pack as much kitchen stuff. The weather was absolutely against us though. So much rain. 

I still feel like we made the most of it, and had a great time. As is usual for a camping trip, I've come home with more good things that outweigh the bad on my list, and I'd be happy to go again. 

We got up to the mountain about 10:30, and set up a very basic camp. I had just brought the two man tent - which the girls kept insisting was actually a "three girl tent" for us. It's a very simple pop up tent, which was fine for a night, but I wouldn't want to do any longer in it. We also popped up the gazebo, which I was very thankful for in all the rain. 

Two years ago, when we took the girls to Ceader Creek with our friends the Pans, it was rainy and wet. The red dirt there turned to mud very quickly, and the five kids had no trouble forgetting about it and tramping it all over our picnic mats and into our tents. Despite our best efforts to remind them to take their shoes off at the door, or on the designated towels, the red mud was everywhere. 

This time, I saw the same red mud situation about to happen, but it seems the girls have levelled up. I only had to explain once, and every time they remembered to use the towel and take their shoes off. It's a small victory, but it made a significant difference. I feel we can camp so much more now, just because of this tiny step. 

Anyway, the rain was clearing, so we took off for the Purling Brook Falls walk. 

Again, my memory of doing this walk six years ago, when Sophie wasn't even two and Rachel was only four months old, is very different to how it played out now. We had a great walk. Sophie kept saying: "This feels so enchanted, Mum!" and Rachel was super at spotting small things. 

We went all the way down to the falls and had lunch and a paddle before starting back up again. 

We were right at the top and the girls asked for another paddle when the rain started up again. I called the girls over to hurry them back to the campsite and unfortunately slipped on a rock. I was mostly fine, but both of my shoes were completely submerged in the water. So annoying. Still, we made it back to camp and played some games under the gazebo together while we dried off. 

Given that I was going solo with the girls, I had planned the most basic and easy meals for the trip. Dinner that night was two minute noodles, which the girls loved. In the morning we had shaker pancakes on the bbq. Too easy and still delicious. 

Given the rain, after our dinner, we just crawled into the tent together. I had packed a chapter book to read to the girls called My Side of the Mountain. It's about a boy who runs away from home in New York to the mountains to live. Perfect for our camping trip. We cuddled in and read until bed and when we woke up in the morning, we read some more. In fact, thanks to the rain, we read about two thirds of that book. 

I say, "when we woke up in the morning we kept reading" like it was a great 8 hour sleep for us all. It was mostly a good sleep for the girls, but I had the worst time of it and it felt like the longest night ever for me. We all fell asleep about 8, but then I woke up at 9, and 10, and 11. It was the wake up at midnight that convinced me to pack up all the outside things (picnic mat, food box, stove) into the car and shift the gazebo so we were more directly under it. The rain wasn't getting in, but it was still directly on our tent. 

Also, because the tent was so toasty warm inside, and the rain was so cold outside, there was a lot of condensation happening on the sides of our very small tent. The girls were on the edges, so I kept pulling them in towards me whenever I woke up, but Rachel woke up at about 11 completely saturated despite my efforts. 

I gave her my sleeping bag and tried to get back to sleep sharing with her, but it was very squishy. At 2am I gave up, and moved to the car with Rachel's wet sleeping bag. Compared with the tent, the car was absolutely freezing, and the wet sleeping bag I had with me didn't really help much. I slept there rather brokenly for an hour and a half before returning to the tent. 

Good thing Rachel's sleeping bag had dried out in that time, because Sophie woke up on my return and discovered she was wet. The three of us cuddled back in together under the two sleeping bags that were still dry and slept until 6, so not too bad at the end there. 

We crawled out for breakfast at 7, and then back to the tent for more reading. There was a break in the rain shortly after, so I figured that was as good a time as any to pack up. It was a bit of a shame to have to leave so soon in the morning (we had been hoping to do another hike that second day), but the rain had really set it and there was no chance of it clearing. 

We took the long way home, with a stop at the Gold Coast for a play in the park and a walk on the beach. Even in the terrible weather, the girls still had fun running around on the sand and chasing waves. 

I just loved the time I had with the girls for this short camping trip, and I'm feeling pretty confident that I could do another, longer one, with them again soon.