Back to the 80's

Our friends Fleur and Richard celebrated their 40th birthdays last weekend with a "Back to the 80's" themed bash.

It was such fun to get all dressed up, but even more fun to dance all night to some of our favorite songs from high school. When we were getting dressed the girls thought I looked beautiful with my big hair and puffy sleeves, but when I told them it was an 80's party Meggie replied, "That is SO old". 

Here is a picture of me with some of the girls in my swimming group:
And my book club group:
My dear friends Alison (in her own high school uniform - with the punk accessories added) and Fleur:
Dugald as Pee Wee Herman with Richard (Billy Idol) and Matt (Boy George):
I had a prom dress at one stage with sleeves exactly like the ones I wore, how sad they didn't make the move with us or I might have shimmied myself into that one. Or at least tried.

Thanks Fleur and Richard for a great night!!!

Amazon Associate

Hi there - you may have noticed a box on the right hand side of the blog with my Amazon store. I decided to put it there at the urging of my husband (the same man who once bought me a long string of pearls with money he made selling Pokemon cards on ebay). It is simply a list of items available on Amazon that we've enjoyed and you just click on the featured item and it will take you to my store. Apparently if you buy something from it I get a very small percentage of the sale. So, if you're shopping Amazon and want to link through this site I can get a bit of money put on a gift card, and that makes me happy. I just love getting boxes of books in the mail, it may be a very small part of the reason I homeschool. . . by the way, I use a variety of curriculums but most of our literature comes from Sonlight. I haven't listed any of those resources in the store because you can purchase them by clicking here and buying directly from them.

Thanks!! 

I don't have updates on the Morrison fellows - Lloyd starts his bone-marrow transplant tomorrow, Rob is there as the donor and our thoughts and prayers are with them and Hugh is going to be staying in the hospital over the weekend just in case he has another episode. 

Lots of love to all!!

Hugh

Just a note really - life is busy as always and I have to make sure tonight's dinner of salmon doesn't overcook!!

We all went to Palmerston North last Sunday to offer our help to Margaret, Dugald's mom. His dad was in the hospital having had a pacemaker put in a little over a week ago and then having some fainting episodes. We stayed there to see Hugh brought home on Monday and left late Tuesday with Hugh looking well and we thought all sorted. We did make sure that we didn't leave until Kate arrived from Auckland on Tuesday afternoon as we were told the first week after getting the pacemaker is the most difficult as the bruising precludes being on anti-clotting medication. 

Unfortunately Hugh had a lot of pain in the night and then another episode today (Thursday) that turned out to be a small heart attack, so he is back in the hospital. We are planning on going back to Palmerston on Sunday unless we are needed sooner. All this to say that we would covet your prayers for him and for wisdom for the doctors as they get all this sorted. Andrew is on his way from Sydney tomorrow so we'll get to see him Sunday and we got to see Debs before she left last Sunday having helped Margaret through Hugh's surgery and first return home.

I have to say my admiration for Hugh and Margaret just grows and grows - Margaret is so capable, so willing to serve, so loving to us, in the midst of a crisis she still looked after us well. And Hugh was his usual funny self, very loving towards the girls who couldn't really reconcile the fact that he was sick with the jolly man joking with them and drinking wine in his bed. I particularly enjoyed overhearing some of his conversations with the various medical staff over the phone - on one I heard him give his address, pause, "that's right", pause, "Where all the best people live." So glad his sense of humor is intact!

One more thing - I wrote about Stellan awhile back and how we are praying for him, I also have a button on the sidebar that will link to his mother's blog, but click here for a link to a great story Fox did on the family, very encouraging and inspiring. 

I hope to be back in full blogging mode soon!! xoxoxo

Touching

Writer's Block

Despite a severe case of writer's block I am making myself get back into updating the blog. . . 

Thankfully Dugald is home now after spending two weeks in Seattle with Lloyd. Things get underway for Lloyd's bone-marrow transplant next week with Rob as the donor. Dugald was really glad for time with his brother and the girls and I were well looked after by sweet friends, but two weeks is a very long time. Ellie asked me daily when Daddy was coming home. He got home last Saturday morning armed with requested "gifts" from the US, we've been eating Life cereal all week, I've enjoyed a secret stash of Hot Tamales and People magazine, the girls all have a new Webkins stuffed animal and I got a Wii Fit for Mother's Day!! I also got a pile of new books that I'm plowing my way through - I've just started The Help and I LOVE it. I would be a lot further along in it if my hubby weren't still jet-lagged and waking up at 5 am so by the time I crawl into bed at night I can't for the life of me stay awake despite absolutely glorying in the quiet and time to myself. . . 

My wireless internet connection has been spotty to non-existent of late and neither Dugald nor I can work out the problem, it's so very annoying!! His new laptop works fine all around the house, but my desktop consistently has a very weak signal that breaks. Physically moving the desktop is not a good option, not even viable as far as I can see, so we've got to come up with another solution. Needless to say I've not been online much - I use his computer to check emails and Facebook, and now Twitter, but my blog reader is completely full and I've obviously not been updating much.

Meggie is really enjoying netball, so glad I made her try it. As mentioned in previous posts she's not a fan of trying new things. She's been doing well and making new friends - mission accomplished! Today she had an after school play date with a new friend and she came home all smiles. She's also very excited because she's going to get to see her best friend in the world, Clara, when we are in the States. Clara moved to Colorado from Texas right about the time we moved here so we didn't expect to get to see her when we visited. Meggie asked if we might be able to have Clara come to Florida as her birthday present and after talking with Clara's mom, looking at flights and coordinating dates it has all come together and both girls are very excited, the letters are flying back and forth fast and furiously! 

The other three are also doing well - Josie and Katie are playing netball too, though because of their ages they just have practices on Saturdays for skills development. Thankfully we can walk to all of Meggie's Saturday morning games and Josie and Katie's practices, and they all take place at approximately the same time, so it is my new favorite sport. 

This house is feeling more and more like home though I have to say I LONG to own my own home again. I find myself more stressed about trying to take care of things than I ever was in my own house because it's not my stuff - and the kitchen leaves a lot to be desired - but I am grateful beyond words that we found this house, that we can walk most everywhere we go, that we have more room and that we feel safe here. If I could just tear out the carpet, paint the walls and update the kitchen it would feel more like me. C'est la vie! After reading this Dugald will probably never buy another house again, it certainly saves money not being able to do all those things. . . but renting isn't the best investment strategy so maybe he'll reconsider. :)

This has turned out to be a pretty long post for someone claiming writer's block - sorry no pictures but I'll get the camera back out soon. xoxo

It's Amy y'all!

My BFF Amy Grant is releasing a new album over at  itunes and I'm so stoked!! I'm also trying to win Boo Mama's contest and get said album for free so I'm linking to it  - go check out Miss Amy' s newest songs here. Seriously I grew up listening to Amy and feel like she crawled inside my head when she wrote so many of her songs - although she wrote them far more eloquently than I could. I LOVE her!! The first prize in Boo Mama's (see my sidebar if you want to enter the contest yourself, or just click here) is for Amy to call you personally. . .I have to say that would totally freak me out so I'm not hoping for first prize here, I want my friend Teresa to win that, I just want a free album. 

In Morrison family news, we are all counting the days til Daddy returns! Today is a beautiful sunny day - a bit brisk but sunny - but yesterday it rained cats and dogs all stinking day. The funny thing was I was abruptly awakened from a very deep sleep around 5 am and I couldn't figure out why, but I felt the end of some rumblings so I sprinted upstairs thinking it was an earthquake and I wanted to be near the kids when our house completely collapsed around us. I got up there and all was well and the ground wasn't moving so I headed back down to my room when there was a very bright flash. Y'all, it's been SO long since I've been in a thunderstorm I didn't even realize that is what was happening - I thought a power line had gone down. Granted I was still coming out of a deep sleep, but it took me another big clap of thunder and flash of lightning before I realized that what I had thought was an earthquake was really just a thunderstorm. That's pretty sad coming from a girl who has spent most of her life in Texas and Florida where thunderstorms are almost daily occurrences. To be fair they are not at all common here and in fact I believe this is only the second one I've been in since moving here.  Once I worked it out though I was able to crawl back in bed and go soundly back to sleep until Ellie woke me up around 7 asking when Daddy would be home. 

Hope you are all well. . . . 

Netball Queen

Meg played her very first netball game today - here she is in her "WD" bib - Wing Defense. 

Ironically the girl she had to guard is a friend of mine's daughter. I suppose it isn't really all that ironic, Karori is a pretty small town!
Anyway, as you can see Zoe is much taller than Meggie - Zoe is in the blue WA bib, for Wing Attack. Aren't you impressed with all my netball knowledge?
It's similar to basketball in that you aim to get the ball through a hoop, but there is no dribbling or running with the ball - it's a passing game.

Over on another court Josie got in on the action during a Fun Ferns netball training session. She's too young to play on a team but she gets to train and learn some new skills in preparation for when she can play. Sadly she also has ballet at 9:30 am on a Saturday, so I'm going to have to choose which one she attends. This week there was no choice as I couldn't be in two places at once, so with Daddy gone ballet had to be missed. Oh well - I think she still had fun. Josie is in the blue with the wild hair:
In other news the girls got to spend the night at Rob and Liz's last week and they were VERY excited about that. Ellie asked me daily when they were going to get to go and at last the awaited for day arrived. Meggie decided to make some dark chocolate and cherry cupcakes to celebrate - she did a great job! I'm so loving that she likes to cook!!