Easter Weekend

What did you get up to this weekend? How do you enjoy family time? What is most precious about this time for you?

Mine is making sure the kids have a good time, but ensuring they know why we celebrate this precious occasion and what it means to us as a family.
Easter to me means family, love, celebration, rejoicing in new life and new beginnings, and most of all the One who suffered laid it all down for us. For silly old me. Because He loves me.

Last Easter was a strange one as we were all just hanging in there. Breakfast was being made for me while I laid in a hot bath and sobbed. Family stepped in and took over where I couldn't. It was amazing and beautiful and sad all at once. This year we were a bit more awake, as we took it as a chance to get some jobs done around the house that had fallen behind. The kids did a easter egg hunt for the adults, which was just as much fun. Especially when Johnny kept finding the ones he hid and ate them anyway!

I am so thankful for so much.

French Toast with Caramelised Pears and fresh mango...YUM!

Hello!

Easter Sunday Breakfast

Next up...a walk to work off all the chocolate. Take it away mum!

Tightrope walking

After falling over on his knee...

I got a flower for you mum!

If you are ever in Devonport, and its not raining, and your kids are hyped up on chocolate; then this is the place to take them. There is a walking track with lots of bush, high hills to roll down, rocky crops to climb, cabbage and palm trees to swing off, Mt Vic to gaze at, caves to pretend you're a bird, a wee letter box to post pretend letters. A world of imagination come alive when taking these three for a walk. Mt Cambria, an old mountain that was quarried away last century and now is a peaceful reserve. But be warned...there's no toilets.

Wee John still trying to get some sympathy for that knee...

Spotting the Rosella in the top of the tree...

Sushi in the Sun

Just a day out with my girls. First stop; Auckland Hospital for my 3 weekly Herceptin infusion.

The view from my Laz-E-boy

And some excellent "infusion" reading

Meanwhile Mads perfects the art of knitting herself a scarf, or is it a blanket, or a hat?

Next stop sushi from Takapuna. Hmm mmm.

After that, chocolate mud cake from The Ganache House on Hurstmere Rd.

 

At Takapuna Green to scoff it all down and then window shop. Sushi, chocolate and shopping. A perfect girls afternoon yes?

12 Years

At our engagement

12 years ago I was barely 19 and super excited that I was going to be married in a few days to the boy I was besotted with since I was 15. Actually, I'm still rather besotted and he still makes me laugh.

Hens night with my dear Amy. I was too young to even go to a bar. Haha!

What could be better than a big party with all our friends and family? And I get to dress up! Perhaps given my age there were simply no nerves, just hours in the way of happily ever after. To be able to live with this boy man and have a life together just seemed natural and exciting.

Getting ready

Mums looking a bit nervous...

Was he as excited as I was? Looks like it.

Just before the rain came...we all look a bit dorky here.

Truthfully, the first year was bliss. Then life throws curveballs your way and you do a merry dance of compromise. Kids arrive, jobs change, bodies change, big decisions to make. Life goes so fast, blink and miss sometimes. Since that day in 1999 we've had 3 children, 6 cars, 1 pet, changed careers and...well actually we are still living on the same street, so we haven't travelled far! Haha! But still, we might not have travelled far in distance but the deepening of our relationship gets better with time. This man is my rock, my best friend, my strength, my practical man. Honest, real, loyal and solid. The best I could ever hope for.

My 21st present...my beloved RX-7

No room for 2 door cars now...Madeline makes her entrance

Here's to many more years honey.

The Well

Some days this whole cancer thing really catches me off guard. Slaps me in the face and reminds me its still stalking me. I thought I had left it behind, but nope, there it is lurking in the corner. Smirking. Teasing. Whispering "I could come back...you never know..."

So I crawl back into The Well. The Well of Quiet Withdraw. This is when I pull away and need time. I might not be able to communicate or concentrate much on anything other than immediate tasks at hand. It's easier to retreat into my kitchen and plod away at a batch of 100 cookies more than anything else. Its quiet methodical work, where I can be in my own head and, probably to my detriment, think away and come up with all sorts of ideas - good or bad.

Its funny, because I thought I had well and truly climbed out of the well I was in after my treatment had finished. Back in March I felt like the well was really conquered and I had risen to the top and climbed out. But I've come to realise it's there to just pop back into for a while every now and then. It hasn't been boarded up. The well is quiet, dark and deep and I feel somewhat safer there but probably more alone...

I'm in the well at the moment. Is it because its the anniversary of my surgery? This time last year I was so confused and scared...no, terrified. I'm amazed, looking back, that I got through it at all. I was carried through on love and prayers most definitely.

So I'm sitting here in the dark. Thinking. Contemplating. Planning. Praying. Trying to ignore the sneaky stalker in the corner. It just never seems to leave though.

You Can't Catch Me!

A result of baking with my girls yesterday. Such simple fun.