Party time.

Today was Ollie's last party at his precious Ouma's house - Sylvia has been such a Godsend to us, she has relieved so much stress about leaving my boy while I work - she could only have been sent to us by God!!

My heart is so happy for the last two and a bit years that Sylvia has given her heart, love, time, patience and more love to my boy - he has thrived in her care and I just know he would NOT be the boy he is today without her! My heart is also broken knowing that we won't be seeing Sylvia every day and knowing that his little chapter is soon closing. My mommy heart is NOT ready for my boy to go to school and not ready to admit he is growing up. Gosh. Breath. Stop crying.
I will remind myself to be thankful and grateful for Syliva as opposed to be sad about missing her! I am still amazed daily for Gods provisions in our life.

Bits and Pieces...

Over the last few weeks I have been feeling a bit overwhelmed with life / work / home / to do list and have vacated from social media for a little while. Its just that time of the year when socially we are super busy, work parties to organised and home stuff to be done.  It helps knowing it one less thing I feel compelled to do. I do however use this platform to document our lives together and I love posting things I can look back on and see what we were up to at a certain time in our lives.
The last little while has been filled with bits and pieces of joy and family and love in the midst of the busyness.
Lolly and I baked cookies on the weekend, it was cold and rainy and wonderful. Lolly did however eat more dough that he made cookies but that;s the fun right!

 After a unpleasant afternoon of shopping, Mike had this waiting for me in the freezer - he is a lifesaver!!

 Rainy afternoon cuddles.

 Mike taught Lolly how to bowl a ball into a tower of blocks and OH MY what fun they had!!! The squealing and laughter coming from the kitchen was contagious.

In between all of the above we had friends over for a late lunch, the boys played xbox, I had a sleep in, we drank lots of delicious coffee and Mike and I started watching "FRIENDS" again. We are slowly beginning to unwind and we cannot wait for the holidays to roll around!

Intrique of Tinsel...

I LOVE that Oliver can understand the concept of "elf on a shelf" this year - its SO much fun!!!! I can see his little eyes twinkle when he finds Tinsel... I love watching this play out.
This morning Tinsel was found on the ladder holding some Christmas stars with a note asking Lolly to hang them on the Christmas tree. He was so excited he even said thank you to Tinsel.

My one thing that I will try my best to go is let Lolly be a child for as long as possible, for him to enjoy the wonder of Christmas in the most innocent way. I love how his imagination is running wild - I love how he knows that "pretend" means. He RAN to us yesterday when we fetched him because he so excited that he had made sausages out of play dough. We had to sit and enjoy these big, fat, red sausages. My heart just swelled. I loved living in books when I was little, my imagination would run wild and I could be apart of so many stories... I hope Lolly is able to enjoy the wonder of his imagination for many years to come.

Tis the season...

T'is the season to be Jolly (thank goodness) - November is always a hectic month for me so I am glad its over.... This weekend we put up our Christmas tree and decorations, last night we drank coffee and watched our first christmas DVD of the season while the slow cooker slowly cooked something delicious.

 .... and then this morning Tinsel appeared with a little pressie and a note for Mr Lolly.

Christmas magic is in the air.

MIA

I have been MIA for a little while, I took some time off to prepare for the festive season and to unwind a bit. I managed a day of total rest and then I got my life in order. All my Christmas presents are sorted, I watched a movie at the actual movies, and I eventually started my "Lolly quilt" made of all his old baby clothes! I cut the squares ages ago and finally got my machine out (with a little reminder crash course from my mom) I managed to sew all the squares into strips.

 I added some bits and pieces to them - a bib, a sock, a little tiny shoe, the first outfit Mike ever bought Lolly (which turned out to be WAY too big and he only ended up wearing it months later) - all very special memories and each and every piece of material took me back to him being a little baba.

I cant wait to sew all the strips together and then all his baby blanky's for the back! I will be able to cling to this when my baby seems to be getting TOO big!

These moments...

These moments....

Camp outs...

During the week its all about routine / bedtimes and structure - its who I am. I feel its so important however I also feel there needs to be a balance so every couple of weeks we have a camp out in the lounge.... some weeks are hectic and full and we are both so tired and somehow cooking a nice dinner and having a little camp out in the lounge refreshes us. Oliver will soon be old enough to join us in our camp out but for the moment he is just so delighted to have the mattress in the lounge and then in the morning to find it still there. Its that little bit of chaos that seems to keep us all sane from time to time.

I hope we never feel too old for camp outs in the lounge!!