Playing house

It's a rainy, wet Saturday morning here - that means we haven't had to race out of the house for netball by 9am. Yay! Nothing better than knowing we don't need to go anywhere on at least one day of the week (although Geoff is at a prayer breakfast).

Whenever the house is tidy (we had people over last night, so it was tidy for that), the girls suddenly feel inspired to play, and that play usually involves a whole heap of mess! So in a matter of minutes, our lounge room was transformed into 'homes' with blankets, chairs and piles of books.

Elora and Bri

Sophie and Millie in their 'book world'.

The girls spent ages making signs to decorate their homes, but Millie and Sophie were unable to keep the peace in their home, and it all ended in tears!! After some serious negotiations, they decided to make their own homes. Now more of the house has been taken over with blankets and books, but I'm happy to say there is peace once again!

Family favourites

With six people in our family, it is hard finding meals and snacks that everyone loves. I try not to pander to all the individual likes and dislikes of each of my daughters. I certainly don't go down the path of making different meals for everyone in the family. The girls all have to eat just a small amount of whatever is dished up for dinner, even if they don't like it, but it is so much more enjoyable when everyone loves the meal. I am pleased to note that as the girls get older, they are becoming slightly more adventurous with food, but sadly anything with spice, heat or too much flavour (ie, all the things Geoff and I like) are not high on the list of favourites yet! (We're looking forward to the day when we can all sit down and enjoy a good Thai feast - doesn't have to be for a while, because there aren't any Thai restaurants in Wellington anyway!)

The girls favourite dinners are home made sausage rolls, wraps, nachos, spaghetti, BBQ and pizza. Bit boring really. We've been using the slow cooker a lot lately - Geoff joined a facebook slow-cooker group and found hundreds of recipes. We tried the potato and leek soup on the weekend and loved it (well, most of us anyway!)

As far as snacks go, Banana Choc-Chip Muffins are an absolute winner in our house. The recipe is one Mum gave me in a little hand-written recipe folder when I got married. I make them all the time and freeze them for school morning teas. I can whip up a batch quickly on my own, but if the girls are home they are all keen to help, (so a quick Saturday morning task takes ever so much longer).

My oven has been broken for the past few weeks. (I had dinner in the oven, and opened the door to put our dinner plates in to warm them up when the door actually fell off. I was left holding six plates in one hand and the hot oven door in the other!) It took a while for us to find someone who would come out to Wellington to fix the oven. We have replaced the oven at our past two homes, and we didn't feel like spending a fortune doing the same here. So thankfully a man was found willing to drive 'all the way to Wellington' (from Dubbo it is only half an hour), and now, $350 later, our oven is fixed. Yay!

Banana Choc-Chip Muffins

Lightly beat:     2 eggs

                         1/2 cup milk

                         1/2 cup melted butter

Add                  2 mashed ripe bananas

Sift:                   2 cups SR flour

                         1/3 cup castor sugar

Add                  1/2 pkt choc chips

Gently combine mixture.

Bake in moderate oven, 15mins.

Makes 12-15

I always double or triple this recipe and freeze left over muffins for school morning teas.

Beauty all around us

Taken last week.

 Taken this week

Autumn is beautiful in Wellington. The weather is cool in the mornings and nights (so we can sit by the fire), and lovely and warm throughout the day (so the kids can play happily outside). But it is the spectacular colours in the trees on our property and around town that I am enjoying the most. That, and the roses. I have never noticed so many beautiful roses. They are adorning the front gardens of even the most run down looking houses, and make my morning and afternoon drive to school quite a treat.

 We have two small climbing rose bushes near the front door. I had considered getting rid of them, but am glad I didn't. They're quite pretty now that they are covered in little roses.

Having been inspired by the beauty around us, I spent nearly a whole Saturday pruning some old rose bush shrubs, which I'm hopeful will kick back into life with some TLC. We also planted five new rose bushes to enjoy next year. I love yellow roses the best. Do you have a favourite?

Visitors

I consider myself to be quite outgoing and find it easy to talk to people who I don't know. But moving to a new area has forced me to be constantly having conversations with people who I hardly know. After a while it gets exhausting (I know it won't always be like this, but building up new friendships takes time). So it has been wonderful to have some of our family come and visit us - easy conversations, relaxed company, lots of laughs and great encouragement.

Le and Mum drove up for the weekend two weeks ago. We managed to pack a lot into one short weekend - ballet, netball, Wellington Show, a garage sale, tour of the school, fireworks, and church. My favourite parts though were the delicious meals cooked or inspired by Mum, the morning and afternoon teas on the verandah enjoying the views, and the ability to catch up with people we know and love.

The girls had so much fun riding on Geoff's new lawn mower with Le! 

  

We laughed so much when Mum and Bri had a turn on the Dodgem Cars at the Wellington Show. They spent ages stuck in the corner, and couldn't seem to get the car going. When the man came and helped them, they straight away got stuck again. By this stage, Mum, Le and I all had lost it - we were laughing so hard the tears were rolling down our faces. Bri couldn't figure out how to steer, and didn't really know why we were laughing so much. It was so funny!

We're very excited about all the visitors planning on coming soon, (Sabbens, Kings, Harris, Reitvelds, McKenzies, Gillards, Harveys, Schultzs ...) and are looking forward to the laughs we will share!

All is well

We've been in Wellington for 6 weeks tomorrow.

I've been reluctant to blog again for many reasons - I guess my head has been too full trying to keep on top of everything whilst we have been adjusting to a completely different life out here. I know Wellington is not THAT far away, but it is so different to what we were used to.

I think I'm starting to find my groove now. This new blog is to help me stay connected with those of our friends and family who are happy to follow us in the blogging world.

And the title?
Just a reminder that all is well (no matter how hard things might be) when you are where God wants you to be.