2009 in pictures (lots of pictures actually!)

This has been a really big year for our family with lots of change and lots of exciting things happening. We started the year by flying to Tasmania on New Years day. The purpose of the trip was to attend the wedding of my old Bible college room mate who I've been friends with since I was 16, but we figured if we were going all that way we'd do a good job of it and organised a 10 day trip around the state, with mum and dad coming along for the ride as well. This is us at Cradle Mountain on a surprisingly warm, sunny day (we had many rainy and freezing days down there even in Jan and even had the fireplace on a couple of times).

This is at Port Arthur, in the penitentiary.

This is Jaden locked up at Richmond gaol.

The beautiful Russell Falls.

Bushwalking (the tree behind us is actually quite small, you should've seen some of the absolutely HUGE old trees!!)

At Tasmazia which was Jaden's favourite part of the trip.

Once we got home from holidays it was into full swing baby prep as I was due with our little bubba at the end of Feb. After 2 years of trying and a lot of heart wrenching times of thinking it would never happen we were so excited!! This was my baby shower which turned out to be on the hottest day of last summer with about 30 ladies all crammed into my sister's place. It was lots of fun though and we were soooo blessed with all the generous gifts!

On 1st March 2009 our little Bethany Joy was born. Brand new here with a very emotional mummy and daddy.

We all fell in love with our little princess straight away, inlcuding her big brother as you can see by his face in this photo.

She was so tiny to start with, just 6 pounds, 5 ounces.

Such a little cutie pie :-)

When Bethany was only 9 weeks old we moved house, which turned out to be a rather stressful event for a new mum, but we're very settled and happy here. We had tried to buy a house at the end of last year but our loan ended up being rejected. We had to move because our landlord was selling and we were not looking forward to heading out into the fierce rental market again, but God had an amazing plan in store. Some friends of ours from church bought a bigger house after taking on board 2 extra family memebers as foster children and they called and asked us to rent their house. We are here long term with eventual plans to buy it off them and they let us treat it like our own with murals, picture hooks, gardens etc, yet they sort out repairs, upgrades etc. They have been amazing to us and it's so nice to be able to feel at home here and not deal with real estates, inspections etc. The pic above is Bethany's bedroom with her beautiful mural and below is Jaden's. They were done by a fabulously talented friend of mine from church.

Not long after we moved into our new house my baby boy turned 10, can't believe I've been a mum for a whole decade!! Jaden is a big fan of all things science so he had a science party which was a big hit with both him and his friends.

I made a beaker for the cake.

The next big event for me was organising a girls camp for 15-25 year old young women. It was soemthing God placed on my heart and I thought it was a tad nuts to try my hand at something like that, having never done it before and having a baby who would be 4 months old on the camp, but again God came through amazingly!! I had a fabulous team to work with and things just all fell togther. I am normally quite a stresshead but was so amazed at how I was able to just lean on God for it all and remain really calm and peaceful. The camp was fantastic and it has since led to us having a fortnightly home group at my house now for young women up to 30ish. It has also led to another camp as the older ladies from church saw all the pics and heard reports and wanted one too, so we're doing a similar camp in March for the ladies but a very chilled out version as we sense it's a refreshing time so I'm looking forward to that!

We had a feast on the Sat night, which was a wedding banquet as we are the bride of Christ and it all turned out so lovely :-)

Not long after that I got a lot busier when I decided to home school Jaden after 2 terms of struggling at school. Here he is at our first visit to the Penrith home schooling group for ice skating.

We had a really enjoyable 6 months together, these pics are just a few little highlights of our home schooling adventure! Cooking....

gardening.....

and making an ant mine.

Then came the big surpirse for 2009. I am pregnant again!! After it took so long to get pregnant with Bethany we decided to not use contraception and just leave it up to God whether we had more kids or not and much to our shock and excitement when Bethany was only 5 months old the hubby knocked me up again!!! Our little peanut is due on the 23rd May next year and I get to have a sneak peek next week at my ultrasound. I am currently 18 1/2 weeks :-)

The year has flown by and little Bethany has grown up so fast and changed so much. She is walking around the furniture and crawling so fast. She is such a curious and cheeky little bub and lives up to her middle name by bringing us so much joy!!!

Our recent family holiday to Umina has been another highlight of the year and we are going to book a trip for Dec again next year.

So that's been our year, change, surprise, excitment and we are looking forward to finishing the year off with a lovely christmas with our families :-). I just have to give God so much praise for the ways He has guided us, provided for us and just been there with us always through every up and down!! 2010 will bring change for us too. Jaden is heading back to school and will be going to the public school up the road and our new little bub will come to meet us.

May you all have a lovely christmas and may 2010 be full of many blessings for you!!!

Carolyn :-)

summer holiday

We spent 3 nights up at Umina this week and had a lovely family break. I was really sick the day before we left with a tummy bug and was worried about how I would go but I was ok by the time we got there (poor hubbby got it yetserday after we got home but thankfully we were all ok while we were away).

My nephew Josh came with us too and they were good playmates most of the time, with the occaisonal fight thrown in for good measure, just like brothers.

Bethany loved the sand at the beach :-)

Some chill out time on the deck, playing uno.

A sandy, happy baby!

Jaden bieng brave in the water, then hiding behind daddy when the waves come LOL

All wrapped up after a swim in the pool.

Bethany loved the toddler pool, she sat there happily splashing for ages!!!

The boys loved the jumping pillows.

Our cabin.

Some of the beautiful bird life.

Ducks visiting our deck

Scooting around the park.

Where things are at...

Hmmmmm where do I start.... well as you know I had a bit of a mini meltdown the other day, feeling totally overwhelmed, but that had been brewing for quite a few weeks and I would like to share where I've gone from there.

I have always been one to doubt my ability as a mother, having a child that doesn't fit in anywhere, needs medication just to cope with daily life, gets stared at in public etc etc makes one feel totally inadequate and like I have done something horribly wrong along the way. So I wasn't sure if my growing doubts about my ability to cope next year were just my own feelings of inadequacy rearing their ugly head again or maybe I was trying too hard in my own strength and forgetting to lean on God for His???? But it amazes me that even when I am so full of doubt I'm not sure if I can even hear God's voice, that He is always in control!!!

About 5 mins after I finished writing that post the other day the phone rang. I didn't know the lady on the other end, she was given my number by a child health nurse I took Bethany to last week. The nurse had heard Jaden's tic and we talked about his health isues while I was there and she asked if she could pass my number to a friend. So this lady rang me up and we had quite a long chat about life with a special needs kid. Her son also has tourettes and has had a lot of trouble with school. She meets with other mums from the tourettes association and the kids get together for social stuff as well (which has of course all finished for the year but will be great next year), but what was even more helpful was the info she gave me on resources for schools, she has a DVD and book that are specifically designed for teachers to watch and to share with the class so that they understand tourettes.

Why is this so fabulous to me??? Because my main concern about sending Jaden back to school was once again dealing with ignornace in staff that have no idea about aspergers or tourettes and I wasn't aware of such resources before. I have also been informed by Jaden's psychologist that they are more than happy to work with the school in whatever ways are needed to help him as well. So I took a deep breath and called the school up the road to go check it out and see what I thought.

I have only ever heard people say they don't want to send their kids there, so was quite worried, but have realised that the issue people have is the fact that this suburb has a large proportion of dept of housing homes and it's people from 'these' families that they didn't want their kids with. I wondered how self righteous that made me accepting ideas like that from others when I'd never even learnt anything about the school for myself, especially since we live in this suburb, so do I want to be judging everyone around me????

I discovered that the principal is really lovely and actually knows her stuff about aspergers which makes a nice change, and I was quite impressed with what she explained about how the school runs. I was also very excited to find out that the behaviour support teacher who worked with Jaden at a previous public school is actually based at this school and he remembered Jaden and said he thinks the new school would be a good fit for him. So I went up to the school and met the principal and looked around and felt quite ok about it. I wasn't sure how Jaden would feel about the prospect of yet another school (he's been to 2 plus the home schooling), but he was excited that it's just up the road so he could walk there and make some local friends and he was so relieved that he will be seeing his other support teacher again cause he worked really well with him.

I took home the forms and have spent the last couple of days doing lots of praying and seeking God's direction on this and am really feeling at peace about dropping these forms back in on Monday before we go away to enrol Jaden in school. I feel like a huge burden has been lifted off my shoulders and have been asking God why it felt like a burden when it seemed so right before and I really thought it was a direction from Him, and once again, as in many other times in my life I sensed God saying it's all about timing. Jaden was in desperate need of nurturing when I brought him home for school. He was struggling with school, plus he had been through a lot of change at home as well. He was dealing the having a new sibling after almost 10 years of being an only child and we had recently moved house as well. He needed to know where he fit in the new family dynamic and that mummy still had time for him.

The past 6 months have been a healing time I think. Jaden has been making progress seeing the child psychologist and it has helped us a lot as a family as well, plus he's had time to just hang out with me and his new sister and it's been really special, but the time for this season is over. Of course he still needs mummy time and nurturing, but the bubbas need my focus during the day now, just like he had when he was little too. So I think home schooling for next year felt like such a huge burden because it wasn't mine to carry anymore.

I struggled for the first couple of months after Bethany was born and was worried for a while that I was heading down the path of post natal depression. This time around I will have a very active 14 month old on top of that and I know that school can't fit on top of that for me, I know my limits and so does God. I know the timing of that helpful phone call was no coinidence, and the fact that one of the most amazing support staff who has ever worked with Jaden is based there and already excited about working with him again has to be a God thing. At first I wondered if only home schooling for 6 months meant I was a failure or a coward, but deep down I know that's not true. Jaden is an incredibly challenging child and being with him 24/7 for 6 months is definately not the work of a coward LOL

So that's where we're at. I guess once he is offically enrolled and starts next year that I wont be a homeschool blogger anymore but I hope that doesn't mean I can't still be part of the home school blogging world as I have loved this online community and have been encouraged, inspired, challenged and often amused by reading all your blogs and have enjoyed getting to know some fabulous ladies :-)

Overwhelmed and confused!!!

It could be hormones, it could be that I am just so unbelievably tired, it could be end of year burn out, maybe all of it together, but I am totally overwhelmed at the thought of home schooling again next year. I have plans and ideas in my head but when looking for resources and trying to write things down I just get so overwhelmed by it. I am conscious of just how hard it's going to be having a newborn and a 14 month old at the same time and am trying to be realistic about my ability to cope with 2 babies and give Jaden the time and attention he needs for school as well.

I have also been feeling sad lately that he is missing out on a lot of the fun and social things that he enjoyed about school, like christmas concerts, book parades etc. We have been going semi-regularly to a home school group but have really found the strucure of it unhelpful as it's ice skating and the kids are all over the place skating. I've met some mums there but he's only met a couple of kids and then he can't find them again on the ice.

I really felt when I brought him home this year it was the right thing to do and I know it's been good for him to have some chill out time, especially since the class teacher he had was not suited to working with an aspergers child at all (I made several complaints about her actually and the principal knows she is a large part of the reason I pulled him out, she isn't going to be back there next year so maybe I'm not the only one who wasn't happy with her!). But maybe he just needed a break and could go back to school after all, cause I'm not sure I can do this indefinately so he may have to deal with school again at some point.

I'm not sure I would send him back where he was. It's a lovely little christian school but it's a long way away and trying to get organised to get out there with 2 littlies is gonna stress me, plus the fees are a big drain on the budget. We actually have our local public school about 20 metres up the road, he could walk there while I watched from the front yard. It's not the best school around but that's because of the community where we live and aren't we supposed to be a light to our communities even if we'd rather hide behind the door and ignore all the unsavoury elements we think we're better than?!

Hubby and I are gonna keep praying about what to do cause I am just feeling so emotional, overwhelmed and confused right now and wanna do the best thing by my son but have no idea what that really is at that point. I would really value your prayers. Thanks.

Done!

I decided yesterday to declare school holidays cause I have absolutely nothing left in the energy tanks. We were just gonna finish up our 'Australia in the past' project this week and do a science day but I have hit a wall and just can't do anything. I am exhausted, it's way too hot and all I wanna do is sleep. So we will start back in mid January cause Jaden will probably be bored by then anyway and we'll finish up our project before we start year 5 work in Feb. We are off to the central coast for a family holiday next week, so looking forward to some family time, hubby has been working so much lately the thought of having him around all day for a whole week is lovely :-)

It's beginning to look a lot like...

Christmas!!!! This is our tree barracaded in the corner to keep little miss Bethany away from it. She hasn't worried much about the tree though because the coffee table was blocking off the other shelf of DVD's which I now spend half the day redirecting her away from.

This is the unbarricaded lit up version, but the lights don't show up well in the photo so you can't see how pretty it really looks.

Bethany's stocking :-) (it says baby's first christmas 2009 in case that's too hard to read)

We got special ornaments this year too. This one says big brother 2009.

and this one says baby's first christmas 2009.

Our family made nativity set. It's a little plastic set that we all painted various pieces of and the box it lives in becomes the stable backdrop.

Some of my other bits and pieces, Joy and Noel.

Our big nativity set in the loungeroom. It's actually not in fantastic shape, the angels wings have broken off, the shepherd has broken legs and all the green grassy stuff is falling off, but we still like it :-)

Jaden's hand made contribution. He also made paper chains that are hanging across the window above the christmas tree.

Our family photo wall christmasified.

The stockings.

Our advent calender that was made in India and came from the oxfam catalogue. I have typed up the story of Jesus from christmas right through to His death, resurrection and ascension and each day we take turns to read the verse which is then put up on the wall. There is also a small ornament in each pocket to add to the tree and a little choccie for each day (although they are in the fridge so they don't melt in there).

I banned santa this year. We had several ornaments and other bits and pieces with santa on them that I left in the boxes in the garage cause it's really been on my heart to teach my children what christmas is really about without the distraction of santa who has nothing to do with it at all. I did santa with Jaden and told him when he was about 6 that he wasn't real when I found him praying to santa and was horrifed!!! So I have decided that with Bethany and the one on the way it will not be something we adopt as part of christmas.

Speaking of Bethany, look what my clever girl can do now. The last couple of weeks she has grown up so much!!!!!