Being nine.

 These two friends share a birthday and they recently turned nine. I had a delightful morning watching them together, discussing like old ladies how time flies.

 These three also discussed how they look forward to having their own children one day. When I asked them what it was about having children they looked forward to they all said playing with them and one said sending them to school! While another looked horrified and exclaimed she would definitely be homeschooling her children. The other shot back with, "Oh no it's way too much work."!!!

 Thankfully they are not too grown up yet to enjoy crazy dress ups.

 Gracie choose a GAPS friendly lemon meringue pie as her birthday cake which turned out well despite being left in the oven too long.

 They all love party poppers on their birthdays ...except usually the youngest who find the noise way too scary.

 We gave her this lovely book which tells the story of a little girl who was taught to stitch a decorative bread cloth by her Grandmother. The book came with all that was needed for Gracie to make her own cloth.

 The rest of the family went out one afternoon and we took the opportunity to read finish the book and begin the project.

It was such a lovely time and Gracie learnt up the needed stitch very well and has done an excellent job on her cloth. Now she is hemming it up and when it's complete I'll post a photo. I love to see her sitting her self down with her needle work and she loves creating all sorts of items as gifts or to put to use herself. Delightful.

Homemade chocolate.

The chocolate eggs I made at Easter were pretty poor, dull with honey crystals through them. They helped ease my need for chocolate but certainly didn't have good mouth feel. So it was time to try again and this is what I ended up with, nice shiny chocolate with reasonable mouth feel. I added roasted almonds as it was a little sweeter than I like, the honey flavour was there but wasn't too strong.

Thomas enjoyed helping with the clean up, as did all the other children.

Notice the chocolate drip on the chin! He is busy playing a Nancy Drew computer games, they love those games.

Chocolatey kisses.

Poor James was running a very high temp so missed the pleasure of clean up with the others.

This one would have eaten the lot in one sitting I'm sure. I think I may need to make the next batch when they are all sleeping and hide it away! Sure doesn't last long.

No Longer a Teenager.

My first born turned 20 this week, no longer a teenager, I think he is a little reluctant to leave those years behind him but I try to assure him life really gets richer as the years roll by. We all love it when he (well now when they) come to visit, there is always so much excitement in the house as everyone waits the arrival of biggest brother and his lovely girlfriend.

J

James has drawn some stars for Zac.

 This game was never finished as no one could remember how to play, we must download some instructions.

 James doing his first ever sewing.

 Daniel making a special gift for someone he loves and misses.

 I love to see them getting on so well, I wonder just how tall she will get.

 Zac is holding his gift from Serena, rosemary and thyme potted in boots and Nina is holding some lacto fermented radishes. 

We enjoyed a quiet afternoon together just enjoying each others company. A game of Mousetrap was started, and some stitching done. One brother spent the day on the couch most disappointed with himself for being unwell on the day his brothers comes to celebrate his birthday with us. But all in all it was a lovely afternoon. I'm very much looking forward to having all of me children together in a couple of weeks.

Happy Birthday Precious!!

17 times you have been around the sun. 17. What a delight you have been.

God blessed our socks off when He gave us you. You are such an amazing, interesting, big hearted person.

It's been wonderful to watch you grow, you'er growing in wisdom and  developing a lovely character.

I can't wait to see what you do with this life you have been given, I know you will continue to embrace it and live it well.

We have missed you so much this year but know that you have a wonderful opportunity to learn and stretch your self where you are.

Some new books and a Sri Lankan dish cloth.

After reading this post http://lifeasmom.com/features/booking-it-in-2011I had a little spend up on books online and then had the pleasure of parcels arriving in the mail...all for me! I have so far read 'A Sane Women's Guide to Raising A Large Family', which I enjoyed reading I wish I had taken notes so I could tell you more about it but I mostly read while getting the little one to sleep and taking notes then is not possible. Sometimes it felt like I may have written the book myself as the author sound very like me and sometimes I thought "yes that is an area I need to work on". I'll have another flick through with a pen and paper when I finish the other books that are inviting me in. A lot of this book was written for people deciding if a large family was for them or not, so really didn't apply to me.

I'm currently reading Organized Simplicity. Again it's an easy enjoyable book to read. I wondered at first if there would be anything in it for me, at first it seemed to me the author was saying growing your own food and using cloth nappies are extreme and that prickled me a bit but as my reading progresses I can see she isn't saying that at all. She is catering for a wide audience is all, and these things are not essential, though to me they may seem to be. I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the book and will attempt to take notes this time.

Cooking for Celiacs, Colitis, Crohn's and IBS, arrived this week and has been a real winner. It's pretty much a GAPS cookbook. Last night I made Sri Lankan feast which was great though as usual I was a little heavy handed with the spices and our 'eyes bled' a little! Still we all enjoyed it and I will make it many more times. There are so many great recipes in there, the children have been drooling over them so I'm using many in my latest menu plan.

I still haven't finished Gut and Psychology Syndrome, partly because I do need to take notes with that one and partly because I have picked up much of the content on the internet already. It's a book I will refer to often and lend out regularly.

Down To Earth recently held a Dishcloth Swap (my first swap)  and my swap partner Dhilma send me this lovely dish cloth and locally made coasters. The dish cloth was quickly put to work and only rests while in the wash or on the line. I really like using it. All of my past handmade ones ended up with holes from washing knives carelessly and I'd forgotten how much nicer hay are to have around than the squares of blue cleaning cloth I have been using. I wasn't a very good swap partner, my cloth was a very plainly knitted bamboo one and it was posted late but still I enjoyed knitting for a new friend and I do like knitting with bamboo, it's so soft and lovely.

A Little Backdating.

We had an afternoon trip to the beach recently and by the time we were ready to leave the sun was casting great shadows that the children enjoyed playing with. 

 This little boy is rarely without a stick in hand, it maybe a sword or a gun or even a fishing rod but it's always very important.

 It was way to cold for me to get my toes in the water, the children really didn't mind the cold and I was happy sitting back watching and listening to the waves.

 Easter provided a challenge as I wanted to have chocolate of course but as we were all on the GAPS diet at that time buying chocolate without a sweetener was impossible. Thankfully I had saved this special bar of Willies 100% cacao from our trip to England. So I mixed it up with sour cream and honey both of which are GAPS legal, (although cacao isn't, I felt it was fine for us) and I made these truffles which were delicious. I also made some Easter eggs with cocoa powder, cocoa butter and honey. They were better than no chocolate but not great.

It seems the younger children can't get enough of cooking lately. Ella-Grace and Daniel sat together and prepared their own breakfast menu plan for those days the are allowed to make their own breakfast. So here they are making omelette together.

So, whats been happening?

I've been reading on different blogs a little about GAPS, so I've been looking into that as much as time allows and have now ordered Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Natasha Campbell-McBride. It all sounds very interesting and fits very well with Nourishing Traditions which I own and love. It is all about healing the gut and improving gut flora and how doing that can have such dramatic effect on overall health, apparently it has healed people with Autism, ADD/ADHD, Dyspraxia, schizophrenia and depression as well as less drastic conditions like food allergies. Fortunately we don't have any of those conditions in our family (except food allergies) but I'm always interested in optimising our health and would much prefer to prevent illness than have to cure it. From what I have read so far if the gut is truly healthy it will readily remove toxins we ingest. From my reading I was inspired to make some sauerkraut. I hope it is received better than the kimchi I made last year which I loved but everyone else complained loudly about as soon as I removed the lid. Maybe I used too much garlic. I'm keen to start some gingered carrots from Nourishing Traditions and some pickled turnips from Wild Fermentation. I watched a presentation by Natasha Campbell-McBride here http://gapsaustralia.com.au/gaps-utube/ and started watching one by Sally Fallon author of Nourishing Traditions they were both speaking at the Wise Traditions conference in London.
Totally against both GAPS and Nourishing Traditions Serena made this very yummy Danish apple pie. We've always has such trouble with the very buttery pastry but she made it work very well.
I finally finished this cupboard and am really happy with it. It was in quiet a state when I bought it but has come up beautifully.
An even worse photo but I wanted to include it because she is so lovely and I'm so prooud of her, she made herself this nighty from an old sheet. It was her first time using the sewing machine. Now she wants 'old fashioned dresses' and twirly skirts.

Other random happenings, Tim and I are both listening to the one year Bible in our separate quite times, I've read the one year Bible for the last two years but it's rather nice to have the iphone app with someone reading it to me. It's even nicer to know Tim is reading the same thing as me so we can talk about it together.

Thomas' s toilet training is going very well. He sometimes tells me when he needs to go but mostly it's a matter of me just taking him regularly.

We are back to doing school work every day, the children had been doing maths through most of the holidays but now we are back to a full load. It's going well as I continue to try different approaches. This year instead of covering every subject every day we do either science, history or geography as our core subject for the day and all writing stems from that subject. I think its going to work well for us.

Apart from that I keep feeling a strong pull to my spinning wheel and as is so cold now and my feet are so cold all the time I think I'll start by spinning and knitting myself a pair of slippers. Maybe I'll be able to start today, maybe.