Bubba :-)

This is our little bubba, all good and healthy :-)

This is a 3D version but the face is hiding behind 2 little hands, so cute!!!

Little feet!

We're not sure of the sex. The sonographer said probably a girl but the baby had it's legs crossed most of the time and she couldn't get a really clear look, so she said she thinks it's a girl but it could pop out a boy and surprise us. I kind of like not knowing for sure actually, makes it a bit more fun :-)

veggies!

We finally had some veggies ready to pick, YAY!! The corn are small but they were very yummy (we had them for dinner last night). The pumpkins are small too but I think they're meant to be cause they're called golden nuggets. Hubby checked the carrots and they are growing but are still fairly small so we may have them soon as baby carrots if they don't grow much bigger. Alas we had no luck with our zucchini plants and the tomato plants have grown well and flowered but we have no tomatoes :-(

Brett's dad is a veggie gardener and he thinks the spot we have the tomoatoes and zucchinis probably doesn't get enough sun, so we'll have to rethink the planting strategies. But still it's very exciting to be able to eat some things that started out as seeds in yogurt pots :-)

Christmas Festivities :-)

Well the christmas festivities are over for another year and I de-christmased the house today so that we no longer have to try and keep the baby away from the tree. One of my fave gifts this year was the gingerbread house pictured above that my 'heart sister' for the year from church gave me. There's not much left of it now!!

We had a couple of christmas gatherings this year. On the 22nd my older sister and her kids came over for the day and mum and my little sis and her kids joined us too. We don't see my older sister all that often because she lives over an hour away and leads a very busy life, so it's always nice when we get to have a family catch up.

We exchanged gifts after lunch and Jaden was very excited to receive a Ben 10 alien.

Bethy loved ripping the paper off!!

These are my mum's grandkids. Josh is 6, Jaden is 10, Bethany is nearly 10 months old, Abigail is 3, Arabella is 6, and Kiera is 8.

On christmas eve I hosted dinner here for my family which included my parents, my little sis and her kids (her hubby was sick), one of my auntys, and 1 of my cousins and his wife and 2 daughters as they were down from Qld for christmas. I did the traditional christmas dinner with turkey, pork and roast veggies and for dessert there was yummy christmas pudding that my mum made and chocolate bavarian for those lilke my hubby who don't like 'fruit' things (I get all the fruit mince pies, fruit cake etc in this house, yummo!!)

Mum handing out pressies from her big box full.

Abi helping Bethy open her gifts.

Brett popping the cork on some alcohol removed wine I bought which was very nice!!

Time for the feast. (That's my dad)

My cousin's wife Rebecca pulling a bon bon with her daughter Talia.

My cousins daughter Hayley, my aunty Carol and my niece Abi.

Jaden reading silly christmas jokes to Josh.

My cousin Zac and my parents.

Bethany though the hats were very funny.

And she thought the bon bons made a fabulous microphone LOL











Christmas morning we woke up to pressies :-)

Jaden was very excited to find wii Lego Indiana Jones in his stocking.

Bethy found some peek a blocks.

This is Brett's present stash (yes I spoilt them all I know). Can you tell he is game person with 2 wii games and a playstation game there?!!

This is Bethy with her pressies. The teapot sings and talks, it's so cute and she thinks it's hilarious when we sit down and pour cups of tea with her :-)

Jaden got spoilt and especially loved all the Ben 10 stuff. The knex box was a set to make a roller coaster which he's already put together and is really cool, and the pro builder set is a helicopter which is all done now too. He loves to construct things and then of course pull them apart and see what else he can make with it.

This is me with my pressies. I got a Dymocks gift card which is very exciting news for me LOL, some perfume ('lovely' by Sarah Jessica Parker), Guy Sebastion's new CD, choccie stuff, the latest star trek movie on DVD (which I knew about cause I bought that myself ), a family edition of trivial pursuit so we can all play my fave board game togther (I bought that one too), and a beautiful willow tree figurine of a mother with a baby that made me get all emotional when I opened it. My very sweet son also bought me a pressie from a market stall which was a 2nd hand video of 'the vicar of dibley' cause he knows mummy like the vicar :-) (I also got Dawn French's autobiography as my kris kringle from Brett's family and am about halfway through it already).

We had our traditional cooked ham, eggs etc for brekky then off to church. For lunch this year we were with Brett's family but we have no photos at the moment cause our memory card was full by then and we didn't have time to download stuff before we went, but his parents took plenty of pics and we'll borrow their camera and download some off it soon, so I will post one of the kids on Brett's side when I have it.

Boxing day the kids needed to rest and chill out at home. I went out for a couple of hours with my mum, sis, aunty and another aunty and uncle to visit my grandma in the nursing home for her 92nd birthday. It's the first time she hasn't been well enough to come out for christmas or her birthday and she looked so frail. My grandma helped raise me when I was little and she has been one of the biggest influences in my life in terms of my faith. It's really hard to see such an amazing, vibrant, woman of faith deteriorate into a withered, frail, person who takes a while to even remember who we are. She is hoping to go home to be with Jesus soon and as sad as that makes me I know it will also be wonderful for her to released from the body she is in now and be with her saviour and reunited with her husband and the rest of her family who are all dead.

So that's been our week. Hope you all had a really lovely christmas (for those who celebrate it)!!

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 :-)