Gifts

I think at this time of year it is only natural for most peoples minds to be focussed on gifts. I find the hardest part of giving gifts is deciding what to buy people, and there is always the question of 'what do you give the person who has everything?'

I do belive though that the most precious and meaningful of gifts cannot be purchased.

This time 2 years ago we had just suffered a M/C, it was my first pregnancy and Cameron and I were oh so excited to be having a little baby, however it was not meant to be.

We also found out 3 days before Christmas that I was not pregnant that month either, we were really hoping that we could experience Christmas knowing that I was carrying the most precious of gifts.

I was given many beautiful gifts that year, but the gift that I longed for more than any other could not be purchased, the gift of life.

The following month on the 21st of January we were incredibly blessed to find out that I was pregnant with our precious little girl Lily.

There are many beautiful, material possessions you can buy for someone, however I am sure that many, many, dare I say all people have a gift they would love to receive that cannot be purchased.

This year, I honestly wouldn't mind if I did not receive a single gift, I have the best gift of all.
I am surrounded by those I love, and those that love me. Most of all I have the most precious, sweet, smiley, happy, delightful little girl that has ever graced this earth. (Not at all biased! hehe)

I am so happy that this Christmas I get to sit down and have a lovely meal and share in wonderful conversation and quality time with those that are most important to me, what more could one ask for?!

Unfortunately there are many that do not get this privilege and for those my heart aches, this time of year compounds many feelings, in particular love, loss and pain.
For anyone out there that is suffering at this time of year, perhaps even your family are well but you are seperated by distance, or perhaps you are spending that first painful Christmas without someone special, my warmest wishes and most gentle of hugs are sent your way. I hope you are able to find some form of peace at Christmas.

On a lighter note, I love to look back at pictures from the same time of year in the year previous. This is a picture of Lily on Christmas Day last year, aged 3 months 4 days.

This smile melts my heart right out of my chest into a big puddle...

Grateful 23/12

Today I am grateful that my precious little family is feeling better.

For the past 3 days, Cameron, Lily and I have been sick with the gastro bug. Not a nice time at all.

Today is the first day I have woken up feeling back to normal, so I am very grateful for that. I find I tend to take my health and feeling well for granted until I fall ill and then I long to feel normal again.
So I am going to make a conscious effort to enjoy and aprreciate my health each day.
It is so lovely to wake up each morning and bounce out of bed looking forward to the day ahead.

Today is Christmas eve, eve. I cannot believe how quickly Christmas has come around this year. I have only one gift to purchase, which I will do when I finish work tomorrow.
Oh and of course, now I am wondering if I have enough sticky tape to wrap all the gifts, there is always one last minute item to grab isn't there?!

Today, because of Cyclone Laurence that has hit WA, we have extremely strong winds and 42 degrees forecast for here today. This has resulted in a catastrophic fire danger warning.

I must admit now living in a farming area with a scrub close by it does make me very nervous. I guess all I can do is be viligant and prepared and keep an eye on the CFS website for any incidences nearby.
Our neighbours told us that the locals are very helpful and if there is a fire nearby they will come and let you know and help in anyway possible.

I am quite grateful for that as most days Cameron is working at least an hour and a half from home, today is no different.

I am hoping the rain we are forecasted does arrive this afternoon.

On a lighter note I am very much looking forward to Christmas day, I am most looking forward to spending time with my family.
Plus there is s0mething very exciting happening Christmas night that only my parents and I know about, I look forward to revealing all after Christmas.

I just adore Christmas decor.

Christmas 2009

I just cannot believe that December is here already! This year has flown by so quickly, and I must say Christmas has crept up on me this year!

We put the tree up last week and I was so excited to share this moment with Lily. Well Lily was interested for about the first 5 minutes when she was handing me the branches to put on the tree, however she quickly lost interest and cruised away with her little trolley.
So I continued to assemble and decorate the tree by myself.
Lily was a little more interested in the end result, and particulary in the lights.

Christmas is all the more special when viewed through the eyes of a child.

I love Lily's excitement in the decorations, lights and also Christmas carols. I love to sing them to her, however I don't think she is a fan of my singing, can't say I blame her either!

On Friday I managed to complete the majority of my shopping which I was quite happy about, now I need to wrap, decorate and label the presents.

Last year as Lily was only 3 months old at Christmas time I could set presents down when I got home until I had a chance to wrap and store them, however this year is a different story!
Of course Lily loves to go exploring and unpacking bags is one of her very favourite activities!

In exciting news, Miss Lily is beginning to totter around, and if I may say so, is giving a whole new description to utterly adorable!
It is so cute and I am absolutely tickled pink and proud of my little lady!

Since I have no pics of our Christmas tree at the minute, here are some devine Christmas images.

How adorable is this Christmas Lego?!

And this adorable advent calendar...

Life's little treasures

My poor blog has been badly neglected of late, and it certainly isn't that there isn't anything to say, just not enough hours in the day!

I am really missing blogging, I need to set aside more time to keep my blog up to date.

Since we have moved onto land, as much as I love it to pieces there is always so much to do. Especially keeping up with the gardening, mowing etc.

Not to mention the gorgeous little girl that occupies all my waking hours. Lily is such a little treasure, much more like having a little friend and companion than a baby now. I am absolutely loving this age with her.

There is so much to catch up on, but since it is the time of year lets start with Christmas.

Unfortunately for this years Father Christmas photo, Lily wasn't at all enthused!
We went to the Magic Cave with my SIL and my 2 nephews.

This is this years Christmas picture, oh dear, not a fan at all!

Other than that though, Lily loved the Magic Cave and all the displays, especially the talking Christmas Tree.

Here is Lily with her big cousin Cooper, what are big cousins for? Helping you to stand up of course!

The talking christmas tree

Lily went on the merry go round, she wasn't sure at first, however once it started moving she quite enjoyed it.

Sorry for the picture overload, here are some other pictures from the life of Lily.

One day when we were at Mum's house, Lily was helping Mum in the bathroom while Mum was putting her make up on, she had such fun playing with all the bottles etc.

Lily loves her baths and had already had one that morning, but quite liked the idea of another!

Lily playing with Snowy, her cousins bird. She was quite fascinated by her.

I love the look on Lily's face in this picture, 'of course I didn't do it!'

My gorgeous, cheeky nephew Cooper.

I love this pic of my youngest nephew Callum creeping up on Lily, look at his expression, 'i'm gonna get her!'

Me and my everything...

I better leave it at that for now, I have a little lady milling around my legs wanting my attention.
For anyone that still stops by this blog, thankyou, I love to read your comments, and I am sorry for the big break between posts. I promise I will be back again real soon!
Love, Love

Family Ties

Last Sunday, the day after Lily's party was a family reunion for Cameron's Dad's side of the family. Cameron comes from a very large family.

I must admit, it is something I wasn't looking forward to. We had moved house the weekend before, I had worked all week and prepared for Lily's party, I was very sick and we had had Lily's party on the Saturday.
To be honest, I was just looking forward to having a day at home to relax and enjoy our new property, and to try to get better!

Anyhow, I awoke early on the Sunday morning, showered and prepared the dish I was taking for the shared lunch.
We all begrudginly got in the car and set off for the reunion.

Surprising I had a wonderful day and thoroughly enjoyed meeting members of Cameron's family.
Family is very important to me and there was just such a warm, inviting atmosphere that day. Everyone was very lovely and welcoming, it was a very enjoyable experience.
Lily without surprise was very much doted on and adored, everyone thought she was just beautiful.

Lily is very blessed to be born into a large family and I really do hope that as she grows she can have contact and forge strong bonds with her family.

The community/area that we have just moved into is a farming area vastly populated by members of Cameron's family. Everyone was very excited that we had moved into the area and were able to provide us with lots of information about the community and even our property itself.

I seen some people at the reunion that I know from my childhood, well it turns out if Cameron and I marry, I will be related to them by marraige.

Coming from such a large family though we will have to be very careful that Lily doesn't accidentally marry a cousin!

When Lily was 3 months old Cameron's Mum requested a family photo from us to be published in a family history book that was to be launched on the day of the reunion.

It is a wonderful book that I have had great pleasure in reading thorough and looking at many old pictures of the area and Cameron's ancestors.
It is also nice to have a picture and our names in this book, I look forward to showing this to Lily when she is a little older.

Throughout the day there were many people speaking about their ancestors and family history, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing of peoples life stories.
There was one lady in particular that spoke of her families ancestors, in particular 2 ladies who did not marry.
As she spoke she said that if you did not marry and have children sadly your story wasn't told to anyone and in a sense you could be lost from history.
This lovely lady had done extensive research on these 2 ladies in hope of giving them 'a voice, albeit a faint one, however a voice none the less'

I thought this was such a lovely thing to do and honestly nearly brought a tear to my eye.

So all in all we all had a lovely day with family, met some beautiful people and drove home with a smile on our face and a warm heart.

Cameron's sister took this photo of the 3 of us, I really like it. My beautiful little family.

In the background, you can see a screen with a photo on it. Throughout the day photo's new and old were shown on this screen, it was such a lovely touch.

Here is Lily in her pretty dress. I couldn't resist taking a photo of her matching shoes, they are so gorgeous.
When we got home from the reunion Lily experienced her first chicken chippy, to say she loved it doesn't begin to cover how she felt!

I am very protective, often told to protective about what Lily eats. To me she doesn't know what chips, chocolate etc are so I don't think she needs those foods. However as an occasional treat I don't mind.

We then went outside to feed the horses, I can now have my horses at home which is great. Anyhow Lily just loves the horses and on our way out Lily had a play on her new swing set that her Nana and Papa brought for her for her 1st birthday, she really enjoys that swingset.

Where we are living we are unable to get normal broadband, we have to wait a few weeks before they can install satellite internet. For the time being we only have dial up and it is painfully slow! This entry and photo's alone has taken me over 2 hours to complete!

Happy Birthday Princess

This poor blog has been neglected for months, reasons behind I will go into in another entry, however this entry is to celebrate my beautiful baby girl turning 1 whole big year old! How did we get here?

As it turns out Lily's party was to be the weekend after we moved house, so it was quite a busy, frantic preparation.
We were originally going to have Lily's party on the Sunday, the day before her birthday. However Cameron's family was having a family reunion on that day so we moved it to the day before, the Saturday.

I was a litle apprehensive about how Lily would enjoy her party as she does not seem to enjoy being in a crowd of people.
I am though very happy to report that Lily loved her party and all her guests, she was quite the social butterfly.
She particularly enjoyed her cousins and other children that attended, Lily just adores other children.

I do think though that the part of the party that Lily enjoyed most was her cake, her first ever taste of sugar and indeed cake.
Lily thoroughly enjoyed her cake, so much so that she even carefully picked up and consumed every last crumb off her highchair plate!

Below is the cake that my Nana and I baked and decorated for Lily, a butterfly.
It turned into a bit of an ordeal, we baked it the day before Lily's party, and I was very sick. This alone was a recipe for things to not go to plan, however add in a new oven that I was still becoming familiar with an empty gas bottle, and well, what a fun day it was!

Anyhow, all things considered I was quite happy with the end product, and it was very yummy. There was not a peice of cake left over at the end of the night.

For some reason it will not allow me to rotate this picture, so this is a side view of Lily's butterfly cake.

The tall pink candle that you can see in this picture, is the candle that Mum purchased for my 1st birthday cake, therefore that candle is 23 years old! Thankyou to Mum for treasuring it for all these years. I will now take great care of it and hopefully it will last for Lily to use on her daughters cake. Lily's actual birthday was a relatively quiet affair, we had lunch with my Mum and Nana at Mum's house, Lily simply idolises her Nana and Great Nana and I realise how incredibly lucky both Lily and I are to have such a wonderful relationship and see these 2 incredibly important people on a very regular basis.

Mum has a ride on train set that Lily rode on for the first time on her birthday. She really enjoyed it and it didn't take her long to learn that if she pressed the button the train moved and she was soon riding around by herself, of course with her Nana in the middle ready to catch her if the need arose. However Lily was very balanced and only got a little wobbly a couple of times.

This picture below shows Lily riding on the train, trying to make it go faster, we may have a little jockey on our hands!

After working up an appetite riding on the train Lily lunched on a toasted sandwich, another first for her first birthday.
As you can sort of see in this photo Lily is quite the dainty eater and doesn't appreciate getting her fingers dirty or sticky.
Another first followed the toasted sandwich, Lily's first taste of fingerbun, after grapes of course! Lily really enjoyed the new tastes and I was most impressed when she ate the bun as well as the icing

I simply cannot believe that my sweet, beautiful little girl is one whole, big year old. Just where does the time go!
I love Lily more and more each day if that is even possible, each and every day I am amazed by this precious little girl I have been blessed with.
One of my favourite things to do is to hide and peek around the corner at Lily playing. I love seeing the animation on her face as she plays with her toys or if she is sure I am not watching she will sneak over, stand up at the DVD stand and pull the DVD's out, cheeky little lady!
Lily is incredibly well behaved though and once told no will always put down or move away from whatever it is she has been told to. I am though aware that this will no doubt change!

I just cannot explain the love that I feel for my daughter, it truely is a love and bond that no-one can explain, nothing can prepare you for the feelings that you feel for your child.

Who would have thought...

Who would ever have thought that Monday would one day be my favourite day of the week? Certainly not me.

I clearly recall that Monday's used to be my least favourite day of the week, having just returned to work, rarely was I fresh from the weekend, more often than not yearning for just one more day off.

However now has seen quite a turn around. I now savour my Mondays.
Monday is generally the only day that I am home all day, and boy do I really enjoy it.

I spend Mondays thoroughly cleaning all rooms of the house, and I actually really enjoy cleaning, or more so the end result. I just wish I had more time that I could dedicate to cleaning and organising.

Lily also enjoys the whole day at home, actually i'm not convinced of that. Lily just loves going out. To the point where if I pick up the car keys or walk to the front or back door she gets so excited and starts shrieking and flapping her arms about, very cute!

Lily has been having lots of fun today playing on her activity chair and table. I love seeing her eyes light up as she plays and discovers.

As my Great Grandpa used to say to my Mum, 'there's no flies on her' Lily is a very quick learner and picks new skills up very quickly.

I love watching Lily explore and marvel in the world around her, I am so excited about the coming years, we are going to have so much fun!

We had a lovely weekend, we travelled down to the coast for racing, and stayed in a friends holiday house on Saturday night. Another lovely weekend with family.

Here is Lily with her big cheeky grin, look at those toothies!
Whenever I look at this photo, my heart just melts. How did I get to be so lucky?

Last Thursday we went for a visit at my brother and SIL's house.
Here is Lily sitting with her little cousin Callum, you would not believe that there is 6 1/2 months between these two, Lily is such a petite little girl!
She was very eager to grab Callum, she thought he made a fantastic toy!

Here is Lily, Cooper and Callum sitting together, the best pic of the lot, can be very difficult trying to get 3 children to look at the camera!

Lily idolises Cooper, she gets so excited when she see's him. Cooper adores Lily also, he calls her his 'little lady' awww...Here's that smile that melts my heart once again...

This is Lily's innocent face, 'Mum, of course I wasn't just trying to grab Callum and drag him over to me!'