Project Vivacious

I frequently get deliveries of fresh fruit and bread and meat and veges and eggs from a company called Hawleys. They are really helpful, the food is so fresh and tastes good and I love the fact that I am supporting the farmers in the area. Recently my box contained yellow plums and I have decided that I really don’t like yellow plums. They are relatively flavourless and tart. I put them in the freezer with the idea that I might be able to make jam out of them at some point.

Well, I did it. I made jam. I made plum jam (which I don’t like much at all) in my breadmaker. Maybe it was the fact that it was homemade jam or maybe yellow plums are really good for making jam with but whatever the case IT WAS SO YUMMY. So I have changed my view on plum jam; I love it if it is homemade. It was tart and sweet at the same time and well just the best flavour.

So yay, another one marked off my list.

Plum jam in pasta sauce jars!!

I had an experience on Saturday that made me realize something else I had lost in the computer-generated, immediate gratification cocoon I have been living in for some time: I don’t remember how to focus or concentrate. This is entirely different from the obsessive cycles that my head spins itself into at times because I have little control over that…or maybe my lack of ability to focus and concentrate is what is making it so hard for me to get control of those obsessive times now…hmmm…either way, I have been struggling to concentrate long enough to even read a book or say a prayer. I guess all those years of praying and reading my scriptures and…wait for it…doing puzzles, was really good practice for slowing my brain down and focusing on the task at hand. So what was I doing when I had this epiphany? A 1000 piece puzzle.

How it begins: a puzzle in pieces

By the time I had finally got the edges done I was wondering how I ever found this fun. It was so slow. And my mind had all this space to think about anything and everything. It occurred to me that maybe the sentimentality of doing puzzles together as a family was why I used to love it so much. But it was bothering me that the calm solving of the puzzle wasn’t good enough for me anymore. Had I really sunk that far?

Okay so now we have a frame to work in.

When I was talking to one of my sisters about this she said she had experienced the same thing some time ago (and she was never a computer addicted nut) and so had made herself start doing puzzles again. Has our instant gratification modern society really made it that much more difficult for us to slow down and focus? How are our kids gonna survive through to university if we are raising them with this exposure so early? Doesn’t it make turning off the TV and having less computer time seem more important!

By 3pm I was over it and decided to finish it another day.

Maybe it isn’t computers and TVs and emails and mobile phones. Maybe it is something else but I would be interested in seeing a study on computer gaming and it’s impact on attention span.

Getting back to the reason I began this post, I decided I wasn’t going to let 10 year old me get the better of 32 year old me and so I decided to push on. I did end up enjoying it and I have 3 more here I can do so I may try another one soon. And I can mark another thing off my list!

Yay! A finished 1000 piece puzzle.

Last weekend was mother’s day weekend and I had Belle and BFG here. It was a great weekend with pancakes made by Belle one morning and French toast made by BFG another morning. I finally got some ugg boots (yay) and I even got a nice hair clip from the mother’s day stall at school (and a block of soap of course). I spent the weekend playing Munchkin with the older kids, hubby submitted to a game of Ticket to Ride, I had a nice long bath with Belle and we finally got to use those lovely bath bombs she gave me last year. I had made a meat sauce the day before so when we went to have our mother’s day dinner I only needed to make the savoury scone topping and I still managed to get my favourite: Beef Cobbler.

Cheekychops the Swan Whisperer

But probably the highlight of the weekend was the visit to Weston Park. After the beautiful photos that hubby took at Lake Burley Griffin, I wanted some nice photos of my older kids so we went to do it again…and they really needed to try rolling down that hill…but as is quite usual when hubby is driving we ended up on a sentimental detour that had us somewhere in Yarralumla and then Weston Park.

BFG helping Cheekychops get a handle on the digging apparatus.

Weston Park is another one of those great parks in Canberra that is suitable for the whole family. When you have a 13 and 11 year old and a 4 and 3 year old it can get quite tricky to find places to take the kids that are appropriate and interesting for everyone. Add onto that the budgetary constraints and you have yourself a real conundrum.

My 13 year old playing at the water pump.

Weston park has a little train that costs money to ride and a little cafe of sorts but it also has swings, ducks, funky sculptures that the kids love climbing on, a water…thing…, mini dams, pump, that sort of thing, barbecues, a sandpit with digging apparatus, large climbing frame, kangaroos, some spinning thing, a series of little bridges going over…cement, a little beach (its close enough to walk to but not in line-of sight to the playground so the kids don’t nag you about swimming in the middle of winter), places to ride and decent toilets.

We walked…

Bugalugs running towards the paths and bridges.

and played…

Belle busy making dams.

spotted some animals…

Kangaroos live here wild...

unfortunately the day wasn’t overcast so the light was not the best for photos but we took a few.

Cheekychops, Belle, Bugalugs and BFG at Weston Park

We even found some interesting leaves that were fuzzy white on one side and smooth brown on the other. We walked past a grove of trees so I got to show the kids what that looked like too.

A Grove of Trees.

The kids ran and rolled and explored; it was a great afternoon.

BFG, Belle, Cheekychops, Bugalugs and me.

And the best thing was that nobody was bored.

Bugalugs spent a long time being a digger.

I woke up on Friday morning to hooting and hollering. Hubby had told the kids to get their shoes and dressing gowns on; he had something to show everyone. I put on a few pairs of socks and my dressing gown and toddled outside to find my back yard was sugar-dusted…actually it only looked sugar-dusted: it was covered in what I think was Canberra’s first frost for this year. Canberra really is a beautiful place.

My girls holding their frosty weeds.

The thing is that this was my first frost too or at least the first one that I can ever remember. It’s sad but true that simple things amuse simple minds but I really did find it entertained me for a good 10 mins. In fact I was so caught up looking at the grass that I missed the first casualty of Jack Frost: my basil.

Two days later as I was checking out how my variegated sage was going, I noticed that my basil looked all brown. So not only have I had my first experience with seeing frost but I have also seen the devastation that it can cause, at least in my little garden.

My frost-bitten basil.

As I looked at my sad and soggy brown plant I pondered on how heartbreaking it would have been for the pioneers and for the free settlers here in Australia every time they got hit with an early frost that destroyed their crops and their livelihood. It makes you appreciate what you have, even if it be little, all the more.

This year the kids were finally old enough to really enjoy Easter. We made bunny ears and bunny baskets and poured melted chocolate into molds. And we didn’t buy a single easter egg.

We ended it all by attending a ward activity where there was a great barbecue lunch and the kids all played together. They rolled homemade boiled and painted eggs down a hill, wore crazy easter bonnets and a very lively Easter bunny or at least someone wearing ears hopped in and the children chased her around until they eventually caught her and a small bundle of eggs or jelly beans was distributed.

The adults even got a chance to roll some eggs too and wouldn’t you know it, the men all destroyed theirs in spectacular fashion and lowly little me with a serious case of the can’t-play-sport-for-peanuts won purely because my egg didn’t crack!!

Anyway, it was a great weekend and for the sake of “recording achievements” here is a picture of the kids with their bunny ears.

Bugalugs and Cheekychops have stopped bouncing long enough for me to take a picture of their homemade ears.

I wanted to update anyone who is interested on how my “101 things to do in 1001 days” is going but telling you that I have started this or that is probably a very boring read so I thought I would take this time to show you another one of those quirks of mine.

So, maybe I stopped using lists because they were depressing but the anal meticulous in me still comes out everywhere. Here is how I am keeping track of some of those habits that I am trying to forge: Habit Training.

This is how I keep track of the habits I am forging.

It is a chart that I have laminated that has room to work on 4 habits or to keep track of 4 things plus room to keep track of any thing that isn’t necessarily daily. I use a white board marker so that if I miss a day I can always just scrub that particular habit and start again without disturbing the tracking of the other habits. It also means I can reuse it again for other habits once I have got these ones in check.

At the moment I am working on daily scripture reading, prayer and trying to bring my body clocks hunger for breakfast to before 9am. I will start focusing on having some one-on-one time with the kids and will be keeping tally of that in the tally boxes but for now it’s just those three things.

The chart can be used unlaminated too but I must have a laminating “thing” because it’s just something I do. I like being able to reuse stuff. One day I will take a picture of my meal planning on my fridge and you can stifle a giggle as you see just how silly I really am.