Cobbler Creek

Today Rory has a pupil free day, so he is meant to be working on assignments. I don't want him getting to much in the habit of Calvin in this comic strip.

 One of the things he needed to do was collect 10 different seed. It is such a nice day today, it is forecast for 19C and sunny. I thought that it would be nice to go for a walk in the reserve, with Anabelle and Benjamin, and help collect the seeds. We decided to go down into the creek during our walk. It is the first time I have actually walked through parts of the creek in the 13 years we have lived in our home. It looked so beautiful down there and so relaxing walking at Benjamin and Anabelle's speed. I had to take some photos with my phone.

Rory and Benjamin walking ahead.

Rory wishes he could add a water feature to this spot.

Rory would hang out with his friends here last year.

Anabelle insisted on bringing her baby.

Looking at the water.

Our home is up there.

At the top of the creek other side to our home. You can just see our roof through the trees.

I think I will have to go for a walk down there more frequently and enjoy this beautiful land Heavenly Father has blessed me with.
Thanks Rory's teacher for his assignment. Without it I probably wouldn't have ever gone down to the creek.

Learning Chinese

Our local primary school teaches Chinese and as a result 4 of our children are learning the Chinese language (both speaking and writing the characters). Rory has been doing it for 8.5 years now. He no longer goes to primary school but was lucky enough to be excepted into Adelaide High School through the Language program. He has been there for almost a semester and was chosen by his Chinese teacher to be interviewed by a reporter about learning Chinese in school. The article was in the Saturday Advertiser a couple of weekends ago. A found a link to this article but the photo of his class isn't included.
http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/ipad/lost-for-words/story-fn3o6wog-1226365668540

I know that Heavenly Father has blessed Rory with this ability to learn the Chinese language. He is also studying Spanish but is not enjoying it that much. Probably because he is starting for scratch so it requires more effort than the Chinese is. He is doing so well with both languages and I look forward to seeing his progress through his high school years.

Flooding

Not sure how many people know but at the end of October last year we had some flooding occur in our house. A pipe had burst in the wall and water had gone into 3 of our bedrooms. We were very blessed in that we were about to leave for church when Damien discover it. The mains were turned off and we went to church.

After church we started to assess the damage with the help of Mum and Dad Pilkington. We were very lucky that they came to assist as neither myself or Damien were coping at that moment with what had happened. We knew that the girls room had flooding and that our room had a little as well but later that day I noticed that Rory and Charles' floor was wet under the desk.

On Monday Damien left messages with the insurance people and got someone out the dry the carpets. When Steamatic came to do the carpets we found out it was worse again than we thought. The carpet was no good and had to be removed. The 2 children's room carpet was almost completely removed  and a section of our carpet was removed. The flooding had only gone on for about 30mins. I was informed that if it had been the 4 hours that we normally would have been out our whole house could have been flooded.

Our 4 bedroom home with retreat was turned into a 1 bedroom house with some of us sleeping in the lounge room. After 9 weeks (5 days before Christmas) with dehumidifiers going constantly we were able to sleep in our rooms again but with out carpet. We didn't get to pick our carpets until the beginning of February and had our carpet installed 3 weeks ago.

What were the blessing we received from the trial. New carpet ( the old carpet was almost 13yo), the motivation to paint the room, Benjamin's cot out of our retreat, all our storage and junk out of our retreat and finally a clean room.

What about the children's room you might wonder. We have floating floor boards to install in there rooms including the hall and Isiah's room. Hopefully it doesn't take us too long to get their rooms ready to do this.

I was hoping to install some photos but I'm not sure were they are at the moment. I hope to be able to put them up soon.

hello everyone

Hi to whoever reads this. It has been quite a long time since I have updated this blog but after my drought on reading other blogs (a big thank you to those that add to their blogs regularly) it has encouraged me to what to share some of our families life. Hopefully I can accomplish this. I plan on encouraging the children to add blogs to it as well. We'll see how we go.

Charles' great comeback

Rory has a habit of picking on the younger kids. for instance he will call them crazy. It is all in a joking way but sometime it upset them. Yesterday Rory was picking on Charles but Charles got his own back.



Rory: (singing) Charlie picks his nose, Charlie picks his nose.




Charles: (singing) And Rory eats it, Rory eats it.



Yes, this is all gross but good on Charles for getting Rory back. He didn't even miss a beat. It might slow Rory down a bit.

Rory's now 12!

Rory has just turned 12 and it has been an exciting time. He was interviewed for priesthood a couple of weeks before his birthday as we had stake conference the week before his birthday. He was excited to be getting the priesthood but found it hard having to wait all that time between the interview and actually getting the priesthood.

A couple of days before he was ordained I had someone ask me how I felt about having another priesthood holder in the home. I had never even thought of it like that. Until that point my son was just going up to Young Mens. I all of a sudden wondered if I had prepared him enough for the responsibilities of the priesthood. 

Here are a couple of photo of the day.

Rory with his dad, grandad, Isiah,Juliet, Charles and cousin, Jeremiah.



Rory with his dad, grandad and grandpa

 We also had the opportunity to take him to the temple to do baptisms in the temple last Wednesday. We had some family there with us but we had also invited Rory friends at Church to come. Rory is the youngest of his friends so it made it possible to do this. It meant the whole Deacon's quorum was at the temple together. His quorum president wanted to watch Rory doing baptisms which meant he had to be quick at getting changed. Rory loved being at the temple and wanted to continue doing work there. The three boys were all excited at the end and were trying to find out how many times a week they could go. I'm so glad we had invited Rory's friends and he could have that spiritual experience with them. Sorry but I forgot to take a picture at the temple. Maybe I will remember next time.

Random pictures of our family

I thought I might just put up some random photos of the kids.

Charles entertaining Benjamin

Anabelle during Juliet's soccer game

Isiah was bored at the park

Rory as a traffic monitor this week (on the right)

Juliet, Anabelle and Charles at the end of a soccer game

Benjamin - 5 months

Anabelle, Rory, Juliet and Isiah playing lips on the Xbox. We were going to go to the Royal Adelaide show but it was raining. We borrowed Grandad's Xbox 360 and bought some games instead.

Juliet and Charles entertained by a portable DVD player while the boys had Primary Achievement day.

At Carisbrooke Park. Charles and Anabelle are on the swings and Ruthie is pushing them. What a nice cousin.

Benjamin in his capsule.

Anabelle at church

Juliet's shiner

My black eye.
This is the story of my black eye. On Saturday, I was carrying a tool. It swung on to another tool. It whacked me on the eye. I was crying. Dad squawked like my arm was chopped off. I was dizzy. I was walking around and around. Dad carried me up to the deck. Dad put me on a chair. Auntie Sarah gave me an ice pack. Nanna and Auntie Ruthie looked after me. That's my story of my black eye.
by Juliet


Juliet's shiner

 Last night we had a bon fire at Nanna's house. Damien had taken the kids up in the afternoon to prepare for it. Benjamin and I stayed home to rest while they were working. While Damien and the kids were helping Juliet was injured. (If someone is going to get injured in our family, Juliet is usually the one.)

The story I have heard is Juliet was carrying Damien's sleg hammer. She went to put it down but it landed on another tool, possibly a spade. The handle popped up and whacked her on the eye. My poor little girl and poor Damien, he felt so bad.
It doesn't look as bad as it did this morning. She could bearly open her eye.

Thankyou to all those that looked after when it happened.

soccer

The soccer session has just finished. It has been an eventful year. We would have not been able to do it without the help of family and friends. Thank you to all those that have helped us out, especially when Benjamin was born. We have watched the kids improve in their soccer skills. Isiah has become quite a good goalie, saving many goals. Juliet has managed to play games without falling on the ground and crying. She showed that she has potential to be a great player if she puts her mind to it. She is not afraid to tackle the boys who have the all. She even managed to score a goal. Rory managed to prove to his coach on the last game that he is a defender. He had a chance to get a goal but boot it over the goals instead. Charles participated in development squad with his Dad as the coach. Damien was the development squad coach and the Chairman of the club.

These are some of the thoughts from the kids regarding the soccer season:

 Isiah: Saving goals and having another player get angry at me for letting a goal in. Fun. It is fun being a defender.

Isiah and Mario (U9 coach)

Juliet:Sad the season ended. I loved it. I'm going to miss soccer. I can't wait until next year to play soccer.

Juliet with her trophy

Rory: Awesome

Rory collecting his trophy from his coach, Nick,
and assistant coach, Peter.

Charles: I like kicking the ball into the goals.

Charles with his certificate and medal for
participating in development squad

Anabelle: I want a lolly pop. (I shouldn't have asked her with a lolly pop in my mouth)

Benjamin: Is just happy he can sleep in his bed on Saturday mornings.

As for Damien and myself, we are happy to have sometime on a Saturday to do work around the home (The garden is in desperate need of attention and we need to put the vege garden in). We are also looking forward to not needing to go out on Tuesday and Thursday evening for practise.

Local Newspaper

We have recently had a lot of rain in Adelaide and as a result some of the soccer pitches have been too wet for playing on. Damien is try to get the council to do something about the drainage on the pitches so that it is safer for the children. Damien and some of our kids had a photo in the local newspaper about this issue.

Here is the photo.
If you want to look at the article here is the link: http://news-review-messenger.whereilive.com.au/news/story/goal-to-improve-pitches/

Well done Charles

Charles has been going to Kindy for almost two terms. One of his favourite activities is going on the computer. Before your can go on you need to write for name on a board and then wait your turn. Yesterday he wrote his name without his name card. He only forgot the r but I managed to put it in for him. He has been able to recognise his name for quite a while now but has only come to terms that it reads 'Charles' not 'Charlie'. We love you Charles.

Juliet's goal

We are nearing the end of the soccer season. I look forward to having Saturdays to do things and Damien looks forward to sleeping in. We have had some exciting times watching Rory, Isiah and Juliet play their games on Saturdays. But I wont be missing the cold nights of practise and the games played in the rain.

Last week the boys both had no games and we did think about Juliet missing her game so we could go to the show. when we decided she would play her game we had problems with getting her ready for her game (she is a shocker to get ready for most things). Well she was very happy that she did make it. In the second half of the game Juliet scored her first goal. Well done Juliet.

Benjamin

Today we received the photo of Benjamin that were taken in the hospital. We got the CD that contains extra photos on it and allows us to put them online. I have picked just a few photos from the CD so that you can all get a better look at him.

I thought that this was a nice black and white photo of him.

Benjamin looks like he is smiling in this photo.

Babies hand and feet are so small.

BRINGING BENJAMIN HOME

Images and thoughts from the day Benjamin came home
i just thought this picture of anabelle was cuted (the little horror)

Better feed Benjamin before we go i would hate for him to cry in the bus

Benjamin loaded up ready to go

walking down the corridor

all loaded in the lift

Anabelle insisted on helping push the trolley to the bus "i'm taking my baby home"

loading benjamin in tghe bus (gotta love those opening windows)

home at last

i thought for this post i would put up some of the kids memories of bringing home Benjamin don't get any suprises.

RORY

he was sleeping
i was playing with an axe
isiah hogged the seat next to Benjamin
the flower truck arrived with flowers for mum as we was leaving the hospital (not that we realised until it was too late :)

ISIAH

I was playing the game boy i borrowed from rory
the game was super mario land
benjamin was boring and did nothing
rory farted it stunk out the bus
i am awesome

JULIET

we saw mummy waving from her room as we arrived at the hospital
mum feed benjamin just before we left
benjamin had a pooy nappy

CHARLES
I CANT REMEMBER ABOUT THAT DAY

ANABELLE
just loves Benjamin

New addition

Last Friday night we had a new addition to our family. At 10.01pm Benjamin was born in to our family. Weighing 3.23kg, and 48cm in length. He is one of our smaller babies but was also a week early. The other children love their new brother and are wanting cuddles frequently.