Hello 27... I've been expecting you x

Hello 27..

Yep here it is again, just like clockwork, my birthday!

Each year as my birthday approaches I find myself reflecting on where the last year has taken me, what goals have been ticked off and where my future is heading. This year, of course, is no different, except in one massive way. For the first time in my adult life, I feel content. 

The last two years have been pivotal to me achieving this. I've gone from being stuck in a bit of a slump not knowing how to move forward to now feeling like i'm exactly where I should be in my life. In fact, it's a strange feeling, as if for the last 10 years i've been trying to keep up to this unknown deadline or working through some sort of backlog, and yet now, turning 27, i'm finally up to speed.

To explain, just before my 25th birthday I was feeling really down in the dumps. Michael and I were both in jobs we didn't enjoy, living in a damp, cold, old house we didn't own, wondering how we were ever going to get ahead. Fast forward two years, i'm in a job I really enjoy, Michael is self employed with some very exciting business opportunities in the making and we've built and moved into our own home! 

(..our own home!!!I still have to pinch myself a little bit) 

So with some big boxes ticked off and with 30 now well and truly on the horizon I'll be welcoming 27 with open arms.

Cheers!

Jessica x

Sleepover anxiety or just a homebody?

5pm came the "can I have a sleepover" phone call. I knew the family fairly well, we'd had various play dates at each other's households before, plus it's school holidays and so it was an easy 'yea, sure' from me. 

Now, I knew it was likely to end in tears, sleepovers have before and I'm sure they will again. The-matter-of-fact is that as much as Natalie wants to have sleepovers she also likes her own bed at night. Her routine is, in bed at 7.45pm, a story with me until 8pm, drink bottle and watch beside her bed, and then door closed and pitch black to sleep. She's naturally an early riser, always awake by 6.30am, twice a week awake by 5.30am for swim training. She's highly active, extremely motivated in school and sport and at the end of a busy day, needs her sleep. So at 8.45pm when I received another call from her saying her "her tummy was sore" I wasn't surprised in the slightest. I knew there was no sore tummy, or at most, just a nervous tummy and my response was a simple "shall I come and get you?"

Once home, with Natalie tucked up in her own bed with a hot water bottle on her "sore tummy", the discussion of how we should handle this sleepover "anxiety" came up with my partner. He believes I should have given her more encouragement on the phone to stay. And maybe he's right but here's why I didn't.. please bare with me as I try to explain, this could be a long one. 

At present, as a teenager and even as an adult, prematurely leaving social situations can be stressful and often not easy. Peer pressure to stay starts early and navigating it can be difficult. I mean, who then wants to justify leaving somewhere to their mother, their most trusted companion who should always have their backs. 

Last night Natalie felt the need to tell her friend she had a sore tummy to justify wanting to go home. Although she also initially replayed the same excuse to me, I'm hoping by using a 'no questions asked' approach, that next time, or sometime soon, she won't feel the need to give me the excuse because she'll know I'm not going to encourage her to stay if she doesn't want to. A simple 'Can you come and get me' will do the trick.

OK, so I know she's only 9 but I'm also already thinking ahead to those all important and scary teenage years. If she ever finds herself in a truly uncomfortable or dangerous situation, I want her to have the confidence to call me straight away and not have to worry about justifying how she got there to me. I'll be there to pick her up, no questions asked! (Obviously I hope it would come up in the hours or days to follow)

Today we've discussed what happened and talked about strategies that could help her overcome that bedtime worry in the future. She's at the age where everyone is having sleepovers and she doesn't want to miss out. However, as much fun as she has in the evening leading up to bedtime, sleeping its self always worries her. Sometimes she's soldiered through, often she calls me to come home. I've heard all the reasons, "the blankets looked too cold", "they wanted the nightlight on", "I forgot my drink bottle", the list goes on. 

 And so where do we go from here? 

One idea that came up was how she could politely decline to stay the night in the first place. We discussed that next time the topic came up of staying the night she could say something like, "I'd love to stay for dinner and a movie but i'd like my mum to pick me up by 8pm" That way she can enjoy the evening worry free, knowing that she'll get a good night sleep at the end of it. This idea seemed to sit well her so we'll let you know how that goes in the future.

But for now, Have you got a fussy sleeper or a child that suffers from anxiety? What did you do to help them overcome it? Maybe they grew out of it eventually? Let me know in the comments below. 

Good Night

Jessica x

7 Days of School Holidays

The first week of school holidays have come to an end and I thought i'd put together a little round up of what we've been up to in the Ramble & Record household. For me school holidays bring a welcomed changed of routine, the odd day off of work and an absolute earful of bickering. 

Sunday
We took the kids to check out the new Chipmunks. They ran wild for 2 hours while Michael and I drank good coffee and talked business.



Monday
I was worn out by 12.30pm and wondering how I was going to make it through the week! 
We were at the swimming pool for 8am for Natalie's training and all 3 of us spent 2 hours in the water that day. Home and fed by 11am the kids were ready to hop on their bikes and head down to the river with the dog before lunch. We then spent the afternoon hanging out in the sun and playing at the school playground.



Tuesday
Another morning swim followed by a trip to the shops to pick up a few small gifts for Michael's birthday. We then spent all afternoon baking and decorating Michael's birthday cake. You can read about that here.



Wednesday
Swimming... Again! 
Michael finished work at 2pm and came home to decorations, birthday cake, presents and two very excited kids. We went for a bike ride to the river where Michael attempted and succeeded to light a fire with flint (a survivor themed gift he'd recieved from the kids). We then played Monopoly and had pizza for dinner.



Thursday
The busy week was finally catching us on us all so we swapped in a morning of swim training for staying in our PJ's until 10am instead. After an early lunch we headed to the driving range to hit some balls. The kids then spent the rest of the afternoon preparing for our anniversary dinner. You can read all about what they did for us here.



Friday
The kids had to come to work with me for a few hours in the middle of the day. We rode our bikes there and popped to the park on the way home. We had a quiet evening over a game of 'Life' and I totally forgot about my picture of the day until this snap of Natalie reading to herself before bed.
 


Saturday
After a couple of quieter days we were more than ready for a Saturday Adventure. We hoped in the car and took the 1 hour 15 min drive to Paradise. We spent the day bush walking, patting ponies and giving the kids driving lessons.



And there we have it.. 7 days of school holidays.
Next week brings more working days and Kydan will head back to his mums so things will be a lot quieter around here. 

So the question for you is.. Do you get time off work for school holidays? and do you find them exhausting or welcomed? 

Until next time,

Jessica x

Possibly the luckiest lady alive?

So it turned out last night was one of the best nights of my life, and left me feeling like i'm quite possibly the luckiest lady alive.

Remember how I said the kids shut me in my bedroom while they decorated the dinning room for our anniversary dinner... Well they sure didn't disappoint. We entered to find the table had been laid with candles and flowers, them both dressed in black and white to look like waiters and Natalie had even searched youtube for romantic music. Seriously, does it get any cuter than that!

I cried, tears of overwhelming love and happiness.

After i'd supervised them cooking of course, we sat down to have Natalie "take our orders" off of the menu they'd drawn up, while Kydan fetched us a glass of water each. The food didn't take too long to arrive, which is always a bonus, the presentation only scored a 6/10 but was made up for by the gigantic portion sizes! They then proceed to tell us they were going to eat theirs on the couch "to give us some privacy", maybe I was foolish to think they were actually going to sit in the living room, they sat on the couch all but a metre from the table and chatted to us and giggled the whole way through. I cried some more, from laughter this time (the whole "privacy" thing really got to me), then dinner was followed by dessert, followed by the "bill". At this point Michael pretended he needed to use the bathroom and snuck off to find some cash. If only you could have seen their reactions when they received $50 each for such excellent services!

A fair price for a priceless night.

The kids "giving us some privacy"

from,

A loved up lady of luck xx

Two thousand three hundred and thirty six million miles

Today marks Michael's and my fourth anniversary and it's fair to say we've clocked up a few miles together..

Two thousand three hundred and thirty six million miles to be exact, the distance the earth has to travel to orbit the sun four times.

The kids have shut me in my room while they decorate the dining room and lay the table, apparently they're cooking us dinner tonight, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to take a walk down memory lane.

Lets start at the beginning...

Christmas at the races 2013: We won first place and had to have our picture taken, the reporter asked 
me if Michael was my boyfriend and I said 'yes', I guess that was the moment we became "official".

October 2014: Our first holiday today, Kydan wasn't allowed to come but the 3 of us stayed 3 days
 in Sydney with Michael's Grandma before heading to the Gold Coast for a week.  

April 2015: We left the kids at home and went to explore Bali, we'd been together a year and a half at this point but had never even spent 24 hours together without the kids.

Christmas 2015.. the whole beautiful family! I remember the weather was amazing that year, the perfect kiwi christmas.

Valentine Day 2016: We walked up Wye Creek, had a picnic lunch on the helicopter pad and had a go at rock climbing

September 2016: The Frames were up on our house..My grin says it all really. This was such and exciting time of our lives

November 2016: Sinead and Dylan's Wedding, a day and night of so so much love and laughter.

End of November 2016: There was only a few finishing touches to be completed before we
received the keys. We "snuck" in and had our first meal in our own home.

February 2017: Our first holiday with all four of us. We flew out on Natalie's 9th birthday and
it was Kydan's first time on a plane. We spent that afternoon on the beach in the gold coast,
I think that first day was my Favourite.

And that pretty much brings us up to date.

Putting this post together has left me feeling pretty loved up, with Michael, with the Kids and with the life we've made for ourselves. I'm ready to give him a big smooch when he gets in and thank him for the last 4 years together, it's been incredible to say the least!

oh and on that note, Michael's truck has just pulled up, the dogs barking and the I can hear the kids are getting excited so it's time for me to sign off.

All my love to the lot of you..

Jessica xx

 

Another cake.. but this time, Birthday Cake!!

Birthdays have never been a big deal for Michael. He's always been a less is more kinda guy. Infact for the first couple of years we were together he'd hardly let me acknowledge them at all. These days however he's learnt how to graciously accept a small gift and has realised birthdays are a great excuse to eat overly sugar loaded cake, which happens to be up there with some of his favourite things! 

If your wondering.. this is what 7 cups of sugar looks like!!

 

This year, the kids decided they'd like to make Michael's birthday cake "all by themselves, without any help". So, naturally, I found a recipe, put all the ingredients and utensils out, lined the tins, poured the batter and cooked the cake for them. But to give credit where credits due, they did manage to take it in turns to measure out the ingredients and put them into the bowl without arguing! Oh and lick the beater of course and that's the important part, right?

So hear we have it, as chosen by them, the making of Michael's 24th 'survivor themed' Birthday Cake..

  

If you too would like to consume 7 cups of sugar, then you can find the recipe here.

Enjoy xx