My son took these photos over the last five or six days to show how quickly flowers do bloom. Aren’t they lovely? He brought this home from school for me.
Good morning Wordless Halloween Wednesday.
This flowering life
Archives for October 2012
Here yesterday, gone today
I walk past this house a few times a week when I go for my walk.
There was a hint it wasn’t going to be around for much longer because of the big machinery in the front yard. Sure enough, a couple of walks later it was completely gone – just like that.
Someone used to live there. I’m sure there were lots of memories – good and bad – made in that house.
No doubt it will be replaced by a couple of dwellings.
I received a letter in the post a couple of weeks ago from my dentist surgery and avoided opening it because it meant that I would have to make an appointment for a checkup. I did open it, however, and found out that my dentist had been unwell and had passed away. I liked him too. He had a no nonsense attitude. He was always about trying to save a tooth and not always suggest the most expensive option. I don’t know that his replacement will be like that and it was a bit inconvenient to get to so now I’m faced with finding a new dentist.
Then tonight I received an email that someone else I knew of had passed away. I always saw his name appear in a Facebook group I’m a part of and even though I’d never met him it was a sudden and unexpected death.
Death’s like that. Even when you know someone has been ill it’s always awful when they die. They leave a gap and it takes a bit of shuffling around to even try to fill that gap. I don’t know that the gap is ever filled because their memory lives on.
Life’s too short and now that I can’t say I’m in my early 40s I’ve noticed just how damn quickly time is passing. It makes me wonder if I’m making the most of my life. I know it’s jolly full and pretty enjoyable so that’s not a bad thing. But I wish I could reign it in a bit so I could enjoy it more.
All I can do is enjoy the time I’ve got – a day at a time.
It takes a village
Remember when raising kids was more community-based? Well, how about a virtual kind of take?
Read what I wrote over at bigwords. It contains advice about some life lessons I’ve learned so far.
Thanks to Bianca for letting me play.
My son wrote me a poem
I love my mum she made me be 🙂
She gave me food 🙂
When I had a problem she helped.
And she is there for me.
She shows me how to live and work.
She always loves me no matter what!!
My son wrote the above on my computer. I asked if I could blog it. He agreed so long as I fixed a couple of spelling mistakes.
It’s these things that keep me going as a parent. I love you JJ!
For my non-Wordless Wednesday.
I love a sunset
I don’t know about you but I never get tired of sunsets, especially sunsets at the beach.
Last Sunday week when it was the first day of daylight savings we managed to go for a walk along the beach after dinner, something which is a lot easier to do when the days are longer.
I loved how the sunlight was reflecting over the water.
Monty is missing from this photo. She can barely walk to the end of the street and back. I really miss taking her for walks and it’s not that long since she could manage this walk. The decline in her fitness and endurance has been quite rapid in retrospect.
After a short stroll along the beach we walked through the sandhills. It’s very hard work even after the pilates I’ve been doing lately.
Therefore stopping to take photos is a very legitimate excuse to stop and take some breaths.
The photo below is unedited – completely unedited. That’s what a difference natural light can make, especially natural light at sunset.
I love a sunset. And you?
Home run
The lad started playing baseball on the weekend. He did a come a try session (well two) a few weeks ago and absolutely loved it so we’re joining the ranks of club sport for this one. It also means I’m losing my Sunday mornings to playing, Friday afternoons to training, and my hip pocket will take more of a hit as club sport is more expensive than school sport.
Having said that I’m noticing a huge difference in the two types of sport. Club sport is nowhere near as a casual as school sport but it’s not that full on that the kids feel inadequate. Quite the opposite in fact. On Sunday I was really pleased that all the parents there were really supportive of all the kids, and knew all the kids names. When JJ showed his hitting prowess one of the parents commented on it and when I said that he was dumping cricket for baseball he said that it was cricket’s loss. My parent feathers fluffed at this.
I don’t know where JJ gets his abilities from as I was never that much good at sport. I managed to play for the A grade tennis for my local tennis club but that’s because we were a very small club, only had a few members and many of the women chose those few years to get pregnant so I flew up the ranks by default.
Taking up baseball also means that because he’s halfway during his cricket season neither one of us wants to let the team down so there goes Saturday mornings too. And I’ve only got one kid to ferry around for all of this!
So he had a great game on Sunday even though he was off for half of it. He had a couple of turns with batting and was run out for his first hit but his second hit eventually meant a home run. I’m sure I held my breath when he was on third base but he made it and he reckons I had the quietest reaction out of everyone else that was cheering him on. But I was so excited for him. He was proud of himself too.
Fast-forward a few days a kid at school said to him that one of JJ’s team-mates said that JJ was wearing a Family Man baseball cap and looked like an idiot. I’m not sure if it was his school mates take or whether it was his team-mates. Either way it gave me the shits that it was even mentioned. He was only wearing a non-club baseball cap because he hasn’t got his club one yet and he chose it himself on one of our op-shop visits. Actually he has to keep pushing it down on his hair because his hair has grown and that in itself is just like a cap.
Luckily JJ didn’t take this comment too seriously as he doesn’t really like this kid that much (the school one) and we tried to think of some comebacks if it ever happens again. Apparently my suggestions weren’t that good. What’s wrong with ‘That’s not very nice’?
So, anyone got some good, age appropriate, come-back lines if this type of thing happens again?
Spectacular sandhills for sliding
When we went camping over the long weekend the nearby property has some great sand dunes on it. They’re just a short walk away from where we were setup and you can’t not go there.
JJ liked going off in his own direction.
The rest of us followed the path. I wish I’d gone with JJ as we ended up where he went anyway. Those sand dunes are a killer to walk on.
And the first hill we climbed was particularly steep.
Once we made it up the first steep hill and tried a couple of slides we decided to try another hill. JJ knew the way so off we went.
I loved the textures of the sand made by the wind.
Finally we found the good hill to slide down. It wasn’t as fast as it might have been which was apparently due to recent wet weather. Sand is a lot faster to slide down when it’s dry.
Looking back over to the property we were camping on.
On the way back I looked down this hill and the textures here looked even more fabulous than just the wind-made ones. You could see where the water had run down this hill.
I only had my prime lens on the camera so couldn’t zoom into what you can see in the sky in the photo below. It was an ultra-light aircraft with a special birthday banner for the birthday boy whose property we were staying on.
Linking up with Trish for – again – almost Wordless Wednesday.
