a day to remember

Today I took my oldest daughter for a major bonding session.  She is ten and a half - and according to all the literature I have been reading around girls becoming teenagers - the more groundwork you can lay while they are compliant pre-teens the better.  Although the emotional rollercoaster has had the straps tightened, the final check by the spotty youth and is shunting out of the shelter...

I won't go into details around the discussions - spoiling a confidence - but it was a great day of sharing and planning and stories from my teenage years.

And we had a pedicure together. Giggle town (that bit where they use sandpaper to scratch away the years of dead skin - SO ticklish). We needed a montage moment of dressing in different clothes in the changerooms but that part didn't happen.

My big girl.  Ten years down.  Maybe 8 to 10 years left before she is gone.

At Sandgate Pier

Pedicure and frappe

So big!

On the other hand you never really go.  I had my Dad over for emergency babysitting tonight while we attended a trivia night (thanks Dad!).  Where I won a raffle prize.  Winning streak continues....

how we won a car in a school raffle

This is the story of how we won a car in April last year.  I mean - who wins a car?  Nobody I ever knew!

Annika came home from school one day with a book of raffle tickets.  They sat in the drifting pile of paper on the bench for about a month, until she suddenly said "Mum you had better hand in those tickets because the profit goes towards air conditioning in our classroom".  So I bought the whole book of tickets thinking I was giving a $20 donation towards air conditioning in classrooms.  And then forgot about it.

Then one Friday in April I was home by myself during the day, doing some housework, listening to music and waiting for Lisa to come over for lunch to plan a kids talk.  And the phone rang.  Conversation as follows.

'Is that Catriona Pine?'
'Yes'
'This is Musgrave Hills State School P and C.  Remember the raffle tickets at your school?'
'Yeeeeees..'
'Well, you have won the car.'
'You're joking.  WHAT?'
'The car.  The prize - we pulled your name out of the barrel.'
'Really?  Are you sure?  We don't need a car?!!  Really?  For true?
'(laughing) Yes.  And you can pick it up from .........'

I then rang my husband (AHHHHHH) and rang Lisa who was on her way and told her to scream loudly.

It was surprisingly easy to rock up to the dealership and pick up the car.  It was a Holden Cruze.  I only drove it once from the dealer to our house. We decided to sell it so we could spread the money around
- gave some away
- replaced the broken dishwasher
- fixed the kitchen bench
- upgraded to digital TV
- and decided to go on a family trip to CHINA and Vietnam to give the girls an idea that the world is bigger than Brisbane

What a blessing from God.

Who wins a car...

differences

From the same family gene pool my two girls are so different.  So much that you sometimes think are they not even sisters.

 This one is creative, organised, highly emotional, super musical, really smart (she was chosen to be a MATHLETE and I just saw her problems for the competition and I have no idea...), generous, and people oriented.  She wants to be a writer, and I can't wait for her to start getting grades for drama at highschool because she is practising it hard at home.

 This one is punctual, people oriented, organised, a great listener, HILARIOUS (all of our family crack up moments tend to be Gab inspired), committed (she will practise something until she gets it right), quiet in new settings and has long long ballet legs.  She wants to be a nurse.  And she will.  Because she has made her mind up and that is what will happen.  The same reason she knows God wears green pants and blue shirt.

It is wonderful and crazy and frustrating to see them grow.  They are the best of friends and play for a long time elaborate games with multiple characters - 'Mum pretend you are the mum and we are the visiting kids' - ok I will slip into that role well.  They also know exactly how to push each other's buttons to provoke solar flare ups and emotional battering.

Their relationship is fascinating.

And here are a couple of photos that Annika took from a recent wedding we attended.  I think she has a good eye for light....
And the wedding was gorgeous and we were so excited to be there!

the ditzy fee

Recently I have had to pay a few ditzy fees.  This is the expenditure that occurs through simple lack of concentration on my part. The times where I have to pay up for being vague and distractable.  And the ditzy fee has been quite high in the last month.

Here is the ditzy fee account for the last month.

I scraped someone's car with the nose of my car while parking in our local supermarket carpark.  It was a mum from school that I said 'hi' to while I was grocery shopping, little knowing I had just removed the paint from her station wagon's back door.
Ditzy fee = insurance excess

I was singing loudly to Wicked and talking to the girls while driving past a stationary speed camera in the Clem7.  I was 11 km over the limit.  I was warned three times about the camera through signage.
Ditzy fee = speeding ticket

I have just been to a conference in Adelaide. When registering for the conference at my workplace I accidentally ticked a box saying that I would require accommodation at the conference.  Then I organised other accommodation.  The Mercure rang the conference organisers on the second day of the conference - concerned I was not sleeping in the room they had prepared for me.
Ditzy fee = one unused night in a hotel (I feel a bit tempted to go and get a little shampoo from them).

Maybe my brain is so brimming with fabulous ideas that details drip out the side.  Maybe I need a personal assistant slash carer.

But the ditzy fee is hurting my ipad aspirations.

Zaccheus song

I made a youtube (with the filming help of Annika) of the Zaccheus song.  Hopefully someone else can use it!

The kids at RE really enjoyed singing it and we sang it about 4 times in each lesson.

Here is the link!  Please excuse my poor ukelele playing - I only know four chords.

something funny at morning tea

So I have to share a fantastically funny moment that happened to me at work this week.  Brought to me by the amazing mind of a four year old.

I was having morning tea with two young ladies at the early childhood development unit on Tuesday.  Everyone else was outside playing as they had quickly scoffed their morning tea, but these two girls and I were just sitting around, shootin' the breeze and practising communicating with a PODD book.  Neither of the two girls was verbal, but they were great communicators in every other way.  I was showing them how to navigate between the pages of the book, and find the symbols that we needed to talk about the topics we wanted, like the approaching storm, fashion, economics, Doctor Who (by the way very excited about the new series) and what we were eating for morning tea.  However, being a generic book we were working with, it did not have symbols for any of the morning tea that we were eating.  The page looked a lot like this...

What are we to do? I bemoaned out loud.  How can we say that I am having a cracker for morning tea?  The DRAMA.

Very carefully one of the girls snapped off a piece of the cracker she was eating, put the piece in one of the squares on the page, and pointed to it.

Then smiled beautifully at me.

Then we giggled and laughed and put bits of all our morning tea on the blank squares and told each other by pointing what we were eating.

Some days my job rocks.

Hopefully that did not break too many rules of using a PODD, because maybe the PODD police will get me....

little ditty

I have spent the weekend at YNET - a youth leader's training event up at Mt Tambourine.  I learnt a lot about pride and humility, had a great time catching up with people and making new friends, and learnt four chords on the ukelele.

So now I am going to use those four chords in RE tomorrow to help tell the story of Zaccheus.  The chords are C, G, Am, F.  The tune is Jason Mraz 'I'm yours'.  I love it when I can use skills straight away that I have recently learned.  It consolidates the process, and I get to pass it on quickly.  And I am hoping I can sing loudly over my chord changes and fingering on the ukelele.  And that the tuning holds up for tomorrow (I tuned it to a website on the computer).

Here are the lyrics:

Zaccheus was a short man who lived long long ago

He collected all the money and kept some for himself you know

People did not like Zac

They never asked him back

One day Jesus came right into Zac's home town

Zac wanted to meet him and see Him all around

But Zac couldn't see

So he climbed up a tree

(chorus) Jesus came to seek and save the lost Luke 19:10 I'm sure (repeat)

Jesus said 'come down I really want to meet you,

I'm coming to your house to sit down and eat with you'

Zac's heart's been far away

but this is a brand new day

Zac changed his life, gave his money to the poor

He was a very different man than he was before

He gave it back times four

But he was still short

(chorus)

I plan on teaching the kids the chorus which is the memory verse for the lesson, then I will just sing the verses.  I hope it works!

I am also planning on bringing a significantly sized tree branch to school for one of my puppets to climb up and pretend to be Zaccheus.

Fun times at RE.