Tired out...

So just a quick update: All my students passed their exams on Saturday, so that was a relief. Sunday was spent doing a whole lot of little things that needed to be done as well as church, and yesterday I got to be a mummy for a day, babysitting Mairead and Hamish from 8:30am til 5:30pm. Wow... it was full-on. Two more days of work til it's Christmas Eve (which will be a big day) followed by Christmas Day (which will be even bigger). I'm looking forward to a rest on Boxing Day.

An apology

I wish to apologise for my post "Feeling down" on Monday. I shouldn't have posted that. :(

Sometimes life seems to get so complicated. It's good to know that God is in control of all the mess.

A bit of happy!

Okay, I am happy again now, and thoroughly looking forward to Christmas!

Here's a little of what our last few weeks have held:

~ The beautiful wedding of some dear friends, Garth and Rebecca ~

...where these delightful little people were:

(I love the loving head-lock embrace)

* * * * *

~ A fun weekend of Christmas cooking at Donna's house ~

(Donna and I stayed up til midnight mixing, rolling and baking)

The next day we assembled...

and decorated ...

Until we ended up with this:

and a few mini gingerbread houses...

and indeed a whole town of gingerbread houses, trees, and reindeer!

Little cupcakes I made:

This is adorable Hamish trying to eat a candy cane bigger than his head...

And here he is again, dressed up as Snow White. These poor little guys with big sisters - Lachlan was the same...

* * * * *

Then we farewelled Meaghan, Michael and Jono at the airport as they left to go and spend Christmas in New York with Lachlan! I miss Meaghan...

So that's a bit of what we've been up to in photo form... beside that there's been the usual busy-ness, all the work (since Meaghan is away), my teaching (which has just finished for the year - yay!), I have my students' exams coming up on Saturday (and I'll be so glad when they're over!), we have a fundraiser trivia night at Alastair's church on Saturday night, and then it's the week before Christmas - I'm shamelessly excited! On Monday I'm looking after Mairead and Hamish so Donna can have a day on her own, and we're going to have lots of fun! I am so blessed. :)

Woohoo!

Today, it's 100 days til our wedding! Yay!

Eeeeee!!!

A friend of mine has said I can witness the birth of her baby sometime around the end of December/early January! I'm so excited! I've wanted to be present at a birth for years and years and years, and I will ever be grateful to this dear couple for allowing me to do so! (At least, that's what I'm saying now... ask me afterwards...) :)

On a wedding-y note... I'm putting our beautiful invitations in envelopes right now, and they'll be posted this week! Yay!

A question or two:

As a married couple, will it always be that there are lots and lots of things that we agree on and a few things that we don't see eye to eye on yet, but will come to agree on in time? Is that the way marriage works?

Post 101

God is good. Over the last three days, He has worked in and changed hearts and lives in an amazing way - it's nothing short of a miracle. Praise the Lord!

Alastair has gone to a LAN for a bucks' afternoon/evening for his best friend Garth, and I am at home doing things, slowly. Mum and I are going to start doing wedding invitations this afternoon too!

I had resolved to post at least once a week. Ha. :P

It's been a different week this week... happily busy, and in hindsight, it seems to have gone fast. But while it was happening, it was slow and tedious. And it had a few low points too.

Amongst the good things were: finding rolls of cellophane for only $2 each for our bonboniere (or however you want to write/say that frustrating word), finding narrow ribbon (also for the b-things, and invitations) which exactly matches the colour of the bridesmaids' dresses, actually picking up said bridesmaids' dresses because they arrived at the shop this week (and they are at our house and they are absolutely beautiful and the girls will look stunning!), buying the invitation supplies and getting that sorted, going to the doctor and having her very pleased with my progress and weight gain (7kg since I met Alastair!), having my eyebrows waxed for the first time ever, picking up my wedding band (all re-sized and paid for!), making our Christmas card list and going to Koorong together to buy our cards, and having a very social day on Saturday and quiet-ish Sunday (well, part of Sunday).

The biggest not-so-great things were: having a big misunderstanding with Alastair on Wednesday night over the phone (which is all fixed up now), and a lot of friction between Mum and I over the "secret" parts of the wedding preparations (which is not all fixed up). Sure, I won't be letting Alastair see me in my dress before the wedding - and he doesn't want to either, but I have no worries about people knowing the colour scheme or anything like that. So the disagreements we have are not much fun.

Anyhow, that's about it for now...

6 weeks flies by!

Wow, I knew it had been a while - but 6 weeks!?!? A little while ago I realised that I needed to get a lot of wedding stuff thought about during the school holidays, because Term 4 is always enormous with students' exams, Christmas/end-of year stuff, etc, then Christmas comes, and since some places shut from Christmas til halfway through January (and then it will be 8 weeks til the wedding) I really needed to get a few things definitely booked. :) So I spent a lot of time doing that sort of stuff. Actually, since so much has been going on, I think I'll update in point-form:

• I helped at Alastair's church fete and made a billion sausage sandwiches.
• I performed as part of the Fisher's Ghost Youth Orchestra at our Bowral concert.
• Alastair, Donna and I went to a Sons of Korah concert - they are AWESOME!
• Mum had an operation on one of her parathyroid glands. And she broke her hearing aid. :P
• We got my engagement ring repaired - a corner chipped off one of the clasps.
• Alastair and I did the Spring Cycle in Sydney with his Uncle Jonathan. 40km - North Sydney to Olympic Park. Woo - go me! (I was sore afterwards!)
• Lachlan came back from the US for two weeks and competed in the Southern Highlands International Piano Competition - he came 6th out of 18 or so people. :)
• I made a billion phone calls to bridal hair and make-up people, had trials, and booked two ladies in!
• I ordered my wedding shoes online - it took two goes, but I have them now, and they're sooo pretty!
• We attended my friend Ann's wedding. She married Mark, my friend Bek's brother. :)
• I helped out at a school holiday fun day run by Alastair's church - I got the pre-schoolers. Wow, I was tired after that. :)
• I met with a florist, booked her in, and paid a deposit. :)
• Alastair and I spent an afternoon making a list of all the stuff in my glory boxes, so we know what we have and what we don't have.
• I bought all the vases and candle holders for the table decorations for the wedding. And spent hours picking/soaking/scraping off all the price stickers. :P
• I made an album with the pictures from our engagment photo shoot by Bethany (she's an amazing photographer).

• Alastair and I took Donna to see U2 3D at the IMAX in Darling Harbour - they are both obsessed with U2. :) I fell asleep in it. :P
• Alastair and I went to Melbourne with a family from Alastair's church (Scott, Kerryn and their gorgeous kids Ben and Emily), so that Scott and Alastair could do the Around the Bay in a Day ride - 210km! It was a fun weekend... I love the Queen Victoria Markets! My dear fiance has spent the rest of the week there, and I'm really looking forward to seeing him tomorrow!
• Meaghan did her A.Mus exam - and passed! We are so proud of her!

This week, Term 4 started with a vengeance - it's Friday night, and I've only got half the things crossed off my to-do list this week! Before I finish though, just a quick note to my almost-sister-in-law Carly: of course I don't mind if you comment on my blog! :) (But that game in Canberra was miserable. :P )

Btw, this is my 99th post. I think that's cool. :)

Oh, and we're under five months til the wedding now. That is also cool. :)

More time being sick...

I have spent the last 10 days feeling very sick, sore and sorry for myself, and even landed myself in hospital for a night with an acute case of tonsilitis during that time. Not fun.

And it means that I have lost more time being sick, and I have a stack of stuff to catch up on.

Before I got sick last Monday 31st August, I was feeling fine. My student recital the day before went off without a hitch, and I really got great pleasure seeing a lot of my kids perform... many of the little ones for the first time ever.

Last Sunday was Father's Day, and my 25th birthday. I still wasn't feeling 100%, so we just had a fairly quiet day. I felt very loved though, and will hopefully upload a photo or two soon.

Dragging myself through these low times is hard work. Today I felt like a human being again, which was great, so I started working out all this budgeting stuff for our wedding... but of course budgeting often brings with it a sober realisation and a dull thud in the tummy as the reality of saving every penny really sinks in. Weddings really are very expensive things, and so now I'm looking at ways of cutting costs.

And I'm very tired, so I'm heading to bed.