I have not been around very much lately, except to look at the alerts that my email sent me, it has been very full here!

My mother-in-law has been visiting us the past three weeks her and her little dog, and it has been busy but fun! Her name is Jeanette, but we all call her Granny, and she does not mind at all.

Every day we went on walks to look at the Christmas decorations going up, to she opp shops, and to the normal shops. The fridge and freezers were filled to bursting, the washing machine well used, and sewing galore!!

She spent time with the grand children, with Michael and with myself, and it was a really nice time! As she was sleeping in the spare bed in the girls room, she even got to re-experience getting up the crying children in the night if she happened to be bothered getting up before I woke!

Her dog, Tassy, had a great time with our two, and we even look all three out for a walk on a couple of occasions! Granny recons she had never managed to wear him out as he is a Jack Russell cross, but the combination of Max and Gaspode, AND Malachi (who took a shine to him) and he was taking a lot more rests than she was used to him taking!

Finally she went home with tears and many waves, and I am now finding my house rather empty with two less bodies in it!!

Phebe has reached the stage where she can get into almost anything, and talks back when you tell her off. It is unbearable cute and extreemly frustrating at the same time!! She and Hadassah have started to fight, usually being broken up when the screaming caused by handfulls of hair and scratches down the face reach either Michael or my own ears and we race over to break them up. Ah! I love my girls! Unfortunately they don't seem to love each other at the moment. They both love Malachi, however.

All our Christmas lights are up, inside and out, and it looks pretty good, even if I do say so myself! We are blessed with both a front fence and a hedge, so the not so desirable characters in our neighbourhood tend to not do much more then chuck rubbish in, and occasioinally yank of a fence pailing (the mongrels!!!!!), so we are able to put quite a bit out the front on display, while other people who do not have a front fence will more often than not only have stuff in the windows and/or on the roof.

We have had a few compliments on our decorations, but I am slightly frustrated with the whole thing, as we have had abour five lights die, and I really liked a couple of them, and its not like we can just go out and buy more, but any way. I have tried to get Christmas out the back as much as possible for the children, and so we have some other hardier ornaments, tinsel, and a couple of soft, washable toys out there all arranged nicely, and the children love it!

Oh yes, and we're pretty much oranised with the presents, not only the Christmas ones, but also the birthdays, as Malachi is the 21st, and Dassah is the 18th. Mine is the 4th of January, but I do not have any yet, unfortunately. But there is still time!!

I hope every one has a WONDERFULL Christmas, and a relatively stress-free festive season!! HOOROO!

You won't believe it, but I just made some rose petal jelly, and it was so easy!!

All I did was take approx. one dozen roses worth of petals, and steeped them in four cups boiling water (like you do tea) till they were discoloured.

After squeezing as much moisture as I could out of the petals I put the water (which smelt heavenly) onto the stove, brought it to the boil and added four cups of sugar, stirring till the sugar dissolved.

Then I left it on a low boil till it reached the jelly stage (where you take a tablespoons worth, put it on a small plate and put it in the freezer for a tiny while, and when it comes out its thick and slimy), and they I chucked it into my ready jars!

Oh! The smell in my kitchen was almost worth paying money to experience!

Better still, my husband has forbidden me to give any more of it away as he wants it all to himself! Isn't he a love?

If you have an excess in roses that are past the pretty stage in their bloom, I strongly recommend to try this instead of just throwing them away! It is worth it for the smell alone, let alone the beautiful flavour of the spread!

My husband was introduced to this site on his forum, in Lonaf, I found it immensely  fun!

The site is www.faceofthefuture.org.uk/

Here's what it came up with for me:

The smell of mold was getting stronger and stronger in our bathroom, and finally I complained to Michael, as my asthma was flairing every time I went in there!

Michael discovered that the grout was falling away left right and center, and some of the tiles were easily lifted off, so he has chipped them all away and left it to dry so he can fix it all properly, but it means the children have their wsh in the laundry tub, and Michael and I can only have sponge baths (as we don't fit!!)

Augh!!! I hate not being able to have a shower!!!

And its been sooooo hot!

I am a bit paranoid about mold, though, as my Mum caught pneumonia  because of mold spores, and I really, REALLY don't want to catch pneumonia!!!!!

On the plus side, however, I'm sure we're saving HEAPS on our water bill!

Malachi is writing like a pro, and learning to sound out words, (though he doesn't have a lot of confidence yet, as there are so many different ways of saying each letter!).

Hadassah has no interest in letters or numbers, but she has better dress sense than any child her age I know.

Phebe can count to three, and she is saying all sorts of words now, AND gives the BEST bear hugs ever!!

Here I thought every one was being consistantly quiet, but now I've just discovered that my watch list is not working the way it used to, and I've been missing blog conversations from just about EVERYONE!!! Worse still, I cannot seem to make it work, though I think I have followed the instructions given as best as I can . . .

Can any one help me out? I do not have time to go to each individual and check to see what I've missed, but I do not want to miss anything either!!

We are not big spring cleaners as a rule, I mean, we like our stuff, you know?

But our church is having a garage sale and we wanted to help, and so I started to half heartedly look through this and that, saw some stuff I didn't really love, and so it began!

Three car loads later and we are left considerable lighter and wondering where we kept all the stuff.

But wait - theres more! There are still pockets of stuff to look through, and I just can't seem to stop!

Help me! Somebody! Please! I've caught the spring cleaning bug!!

Michael's nose has had the septum go crooked again and its blocking almost all of one of his breathing passages and causing a lot of pain.

There is only one ears nose and throat doctor in the valley, and its really hard to see him, and he cannot see Michael about this problem till next month.

It is very hard to deal with this as we are helpless to fix it, the painkillers only dull the pain not kill it, and he has been getting nasty bouts of temper and unreasonableness because of the pain that his depression medication should control and is not.

I keep telling myself that it'll be okay and I am trying very hard to believe myself, but sometimes my cheerful self is very small and quiet.

Man alive! I have been trying to log back in for a fortnight now, but it kept rejecting all my passwords that I might have used, and when I asked it to send my password to me (twice!!) it never arrived! Aurgh!!

Well, the house is up and running again! We still have to paint, lay floor and carpet and finish many, many little things, but it is weather proof, and we are, for the most part, moved in! Yay! The house feels a lot bigger, and Michael and I wonder how we every survived with it the size it was before!

Malachi is in his own room, with his own furniture, and his own toys, and his own STUFF, and the girls are in their own room also, and now we are trying to teach them the meaning of the term, 'Respect of privacy'! Slow going, but I know we'll get there in the end .

The bathroom is at least twice the size of the old one! We are LOVING it!!!!

Oh yea, and we hardly miss the yard space either!

Michael has had his sinus surgery, and is feeling very sore and sorry for himself, and there is the chance, we've been told, that the problem may come back again, but we are optimistic . . .  let me rephrase that, I'M optimistic, Michael's a grump, and when he feels up to it, the work will start again, and the house will be finished . We've also got a sleep apnia machine to help with Michael's snoring when he can breath through his nose again.

Malachi is learning to sound out his words, now, and he can write all the alphabet, and know what he's writing!! Hadassah has extremely good dress sense, as is dressing herself and learning to do her hair. Phebe is chattering away now, and you can sort of understand her, and she is an amazing (and terrifying) climber!!

Michael, as I mentioned earlier, is a grump, and I have hit  65 kilo's !!!

We finally have the thumbs up from the Bank to extend our mortgage and renovate our home! We are getting a new bathroom in a new place, a third bedroom and a small study! YAY! Our house is this small box, and with the three children in one small bedroom, and one some what narrow lounge room, AND a small kitchen dining room, it can be challenging (especially on rainy days!)!

The builders have arrived a week early, the back yard is a muddy swamp, the front yard is okay, but we need to leave the front door open so that the children have access, and the cold, cold, COLD wind usually blows from that direction!

I am starting to get excited now. Its hard for me to get excited about something when some one is only telling me about it, as so often words amount to very little, but to SEE it happening is completely different!!

I hope that the whole build  finishes as quickly as it started!

Oh yea, and its SO cute - the two older children have taken to sitting on top of the chest of drawers with their noses pressed against the window pane watching the the builders work!