What does a Mum do with forty eight hours of minion free time?

Last week five of the minions went to Grandma's house for a big sleepover. 

Two nights. 

Three days. Almost. 

Oh em gee. 

My hypothetical "What I would do if I had two whole days of no kids" became a reality. I could have wet my pants I was that excited. The only times Doug & I have had more than twenty four hours minus our minions have been when we were welcoming another little one into our tribe & a few years ago when we celebrated our tenth wedding anniversary with a two night get away. Though Will wasn't yet a year old, so our packing list included a porta-cot & a baby.

Back to last week though. 

With a kick in my step & a tear in my eye I kissed Ben, Rianan, Jack, Blake & Will good bye, squeezing little bodies tight enough to last us all until Friday afternoon, before driving Clay & I back home to our quiet, empty house.

I had planned to sap every last minute out of my {mostly} minion free days. The to-do list was nearly as long enough to rival our weekly shopping list. Furniture to sand back & re-paint, toy rooms to set up & bedrooms to change around, endless uninterrupted hours curled up on the couch reading with a hot chocolate in hand, walk in robes to de-clutter & drawers to sort through, cafes to visit & movies to watch during the day.

So what did I do with my first three hours? Be prepared to be vastly disappointed...

Dishes & Facebook.

What is wrong with me. 

Without my little anchors I was lost. Adrift in the sea of freedom. 

Even Clay was misplaced by the stillness of quiet & solitude. No brothers around building wooden block towers for Clay to swipe with his chubby little hands & his doting sister no where to be found despite how extensive he searched & how loud he tried to call out. The one on one time with Clay was precious, but it was not the same playing peek a boo with just Mummy. Kisses goodnight for only two people instead of making our way around the couches to receive seven goodnight kisses. There was no one to chase around the house or to laugh when he flashed his cheeky, toothy grin.

But oh my, the house stayed clean. No need to enter the laundry or hear the chiming end to another load of washing. The dishwasher was run only once.  The broom stood idle & the vacuum gathered cobwebs & dust instead of sucking them up. The mop even had a chance to dry before the next use.

When Doug came home from work we were able to carry through uninterrupted conversations. This is unheard of. We went out to dinner {with Clay} two nights in a row. Two nights. Consecutively. 

Friday morning Clay & I didn't get out of bed until ten in the morning. While it didn't erase the duffel bags under my eyes, rolling out of bed when the sun was already high & shining bright certainly felt luxurious & indulgent.

The old buffet cabinet I planned to re paint is still sitting in the shed awaiting it's restoration, there were no barista made latte's, bedroom doors remained tightly shut, walk in robes looked exactly the same as they had Wednesday morning & no movies were watched, day or night.

However I did manage a few uninterrupted hours of reading before the change of pace kicked back into V8 Supercar speed.

It seems forty eight hours wasn't long enough. Then again, maybe it was. Our lives were never meant to be that quiet.

Fifty in two hundred days

Guess what today is? Other than five days before Christmas. Today marks House of many Minions 50th blog entry. 

I wasn't sure what to do, if anything, to note the occasion. Especially with all the horrific heart ache in the news. There's a blog post floating around in my mind, but it's too hard to put my emotions & thoughts into coherent words. Hold your friends & family close & your babies closer people, it's a big bad scary world out there.

I considered writing something with Christmas spirit, after all we are in the twelve days of Christmas. Should I mention surpassing the fifty post milestone at the beginning or end of the post, was it worth drawing light to at all? Then right before falling asleep, when all my brain suddenly starts kicking over & keeps me wide awake for a further two hours, I knew what to do...

I present to you 50 things that make me, Me.

1. I got my first job at fourteen - washing dishes at a local popular beach side restaurant.

2. I was a hypochondriac as a child. Specifically for sprained wrists or ankles. I woulds sneak into the first aid box, grab a bandage & strap myself up then try & remember how I was supposed to limp to make it believable.

3. I spent my first year of high school at a private catholic school, where none of my primary school friends went. I begged my parents to enroll me in the local public high school, which they did at the beginning of the new school year. Of course by then all my friends from primary school had formed new friendship groups, so I was left on the outer, just like year eight again. 

4. I mispronounce & muddle up words when talking & look like an uneducated fool all the time. 

5. Following on from mispronouncing, I call vineyards vine-yards {not vinyards} & instead of pronouncing archives ar'kives I still say archives. It's a constant source of amusement for Doug. 

6. I broke my two front teeth at year 7 camp while ice skating. They are still a source insecurity today.

7. When we go out for dinner nine times out of ten I'll order either salt n pepper squid or chicken parmigiana. When you're on a good thing, stick with it.

8. I played my first game of netball at seven years old & still play now twenty four years on. With the exception of a few short breaks to grow a baby. 

9. My childhood was gaming device free. So whenever we went to my cousin's house I would beg them to play Alex Kidd on SEGA. I still love that game even though I haven't played it in twenty something years.

10. I attended five different schools - three primary schools & two high schools.

11. I have had four jobs in my life - dishwasher {working my way up the ranks to occasionally making the take-away baguette's}. As a pet shop assistant {it always creeped me out getting dead frozen rats out the freezer for our snake owning customers.} Then I worked at a well known burger & fries joint for two years before saying goodbye to work as a 3rd assistant manager for a variety store, working there for just under three years until I resigned at thirty seven weeks pregnant. Ten days later Ben gave me my current position that I have held for over ten years now. Isn't there some long service leave I'm past due for...

12. In year 9 I vomited all over my desk & the floor in morning home group. Cries of ewww, how gross, disgusting & exclamations of how they felt sick now, are still vivid. 

13. I married Doug one month before my nineteenth birthday.

14. I learnt to play the guitar for several years in my early teenage years. For some reason I stopped playing {& deeply regret it}.

15. I got my first body piercing when I was 15 years old, without permission.

16. I've had my tongue pierced, labret pierced & belly button pierced. 

17. I had my belly button re-pierced when I was 24 & still have it in today. 

18. Unless it's over thirty degrees at night I always sleep with the electric blanket on.

19. On our first wedding anniversary Doug & I won a thousand dollars at the casino on the

pokies.

20. I played soccer, netball, softball & tae kwon do in primary school.

21. I was never smacked as a child - at least that I can remember.

22. Unless I know you really well I can be shy & find it hard to make the first conversation.

23. From the age of ten to fourteen my walls were covered with Keanu Reeves, JTT {Jonathon Taylor Thomas} & Prince William. Don't judge me.

24. I kill plants, unintentionally. Despite my best efforts they always wither up on me, then I drive the last nail in the coffin {or pot plant} drowning them in love & water. 

25. Before our minions came along I loved horror & suspense movies. Now it is impossible to even be in the same room when there is anything remotely thriller like or suspenseful on.

26. I cry, easily & at almost everything. I also try to hide it.

27. I suck at long division & decimals. I never grasped chemistry either. However algebra & I are friends. 

28. I've never broken a bone, but I was bitten on the nose by a family friend's dog when I was two years old & still have the scars.

29. I love funky or pretty mugs, geisha doll & babushka doll images.

30. I'm possessive of my chocolate chip cookies & give Doug the stink eye when he gives one to our dog.

31. I dropped out of high school after year eleven, then later completed my year twelve SACE studies via correspondence when Ben was a toddler while I was pregnant with Rianan & during her first four months. 

32. I was twenty eight when I went to my first concert - You am I. I've since been to P!nk, Rihanna & Keith Urban.

33. I hoard interior design magazines like Pinterest pins. 

34. For nine years I was an only child, then my first brother came along followed by my baby brother eighteen months later.

35. I find it exceptionally easy to devour a small tin of MiLo in one sitting...without milk. 

36. I used to wish my name was Sophie because it seemed like such a cool name when I was ten.

37. I grew up listening to The Cure, The Smiths & Morrissey, Smashing Pumpkins, You am I & REM. My parents still have awesome taste in music.

38. Though I'm right handed I can write legibly with my left hand, albeit very slowly.

39. My longest labor was four hours. My shortest labor was twenty minutes.

40. I was a painfully fussy eater as a child. I'm sure many family members can remember the holiday trip when I only ate buttered rolls for lunch. I also had a two hour stand off with my Dad when I was ten years old over a croissant that he wanted me to taste. By the time I caved & realised how delicious they were there wasn't any more left.

41. I'm not nearly as profound, insightful or funny as I wish to be.

42. We nearly became foster carer's before Blake was born. This is still something I feel passionate about doing when the minions are a bit older & we have a spare seat in the car.

43. Love Grey's Anatomy & the book series Outlander by Diana Gabaldon.

44. Ever since I learnt to read I've been a massive bookworm. My library card often had over a dozen Baby Sitters Club & The Saddle Club novels out at any one time. I still stay up until the am hours reading, though my tastes have changed a little since I was eleven.

45. I used to read oracle cards. Though I've not looked at them in many years, I still can't bring myself to pass them on or sell them.

46. I hate licorice. Always have.

47. After growing up right near the beach I could never move far away from it. The salt & sand is in my blood.

48. I have two tattoo's. One is my husband's name on my inner left fore arm & the other is on my upper left arm with our eldest three children's foot prints, name & birth date. Due to almost constantly being pregnant or breast feeding over the last five years I've not yet finished off with our youngest three children's footprints & details. I have no idea where I am going to get them tattooed either - I don't think my arm is long enough for all six.

49. 'My Girl' is still one of my favorite movies. I dare anyone not to shed a tear when Vada is crying "He can't see without his glasses on" at Thomas J's funeral. Heart wrenching. 

50. I put off starting this blog for nearly four years. Why? Because I thought I could never live up to the bar set by all the other blogs I read frequently. Nothing has changed there, but now it doesn't hold me back. I love my little space here & all the bloggy like thoughts that run through my mind at the most inconvenient hours. 

There you go, fifty random things about me to celebrate fifty posts. Now I'm off to make myself a cuppa & cuddle up on the couch with our minions watching Despicable Me 2. I'm avoiding the news today, my heart & my tear ducts have taken as much as they can possibly bear right now.

Do your ovaries scream loud, do they ache & cry for more? Should you tie the tubes in a knot, should you tie them in a bow?

It's no secret I still consider my uterus a fully functioning organ I hope to use again in the near future. For the first time it's become a very realistic fact this may never happen...& it's cutting me up.

It's only been eight short months since Clay vacated the oven & already I'm suffering a serious case of belly envy. With several friends up the duff or in the midst of newborn haze, I get both my belly rub & newborn nuzzling hits, along with a good old whack to the ovaries & heart strings, every time I bump into these lovely ladies. 

Reading a pregnancy announcement with a photo of a positive hpt {home pregnancy test} (for those not in the ttc {trying to conceive} lingo), brings goosebumps & a fast trip down memory lane as I flash back to all those minutes spent in the bathroom during my own POAS {pee on a stick} past addiction. The stick being a pregnancy test strip, not a twig from the garden that will do nothing to foretell of any toilet bowl hugging, stretch mark itching, watermelon sized uterus to follow in the next nine months. Exposing the roots of my crazy I still have all our positive pregnancy tests from each of our minions. Including the double ups that were taken just to be certain the first test wasn't a fluke.

Then there is the guilt. With an innumerable amount of individuals, couples & families who are a hundred times more desperate than I am to feel their belly expand & fill with the nudges & stirring kicks of life. I feel like I should just be happy with our car full & ignore the sense that someone is still missing in our troop. I am deliriously grateful for our six crazy monkeys & would never think they are not enough or take our family for granted. Still I can't shake the yearnings for just one more. 

Of course, it takes to two to tango, & to say Doug is hesitant on expanding our tribe of minions any further would be a grossly dramatic understatement. A firm resounding NO can be felt even from here as I type out this post. I understand his thoughts & completely respect his opinion. Which is probably why I am so torn up, because I doubt we will ever have nine seats occupied at our dinner table every evening, despite how fiercely my heart screams for a child.

Last night as Clay was trying to get up onto his knees for the first time my eyes welled up & my chest began aching with pride & happiness. Along with despair & indescribable sadness that this may well be very well will be quite likely (even in written form I still can't put it as a final 'this will be') the last time we get to witness these first moments. Seriously, I am going to be a blubbering mess in the lead up to Clay's first birthday, even more so than with the other minions.  

Looking around our house I can easily imagine another bunk bed, another toothbrush at the bathroom sink, another body to add to the pile on movie nights. Responding with "we have seven children" when asked how many little people we have brought into this world. Seven just fits in my own little make believe world & its consuming far too many thoughts in my real world. 

For now I will just continue on as I have been - living in hope. It seems far kinder to my heart to live in hope for however many years it takes to accept that my Mama status is only applicable to six, than to cut the strings - or Doug's testicular tubes, & live a life dreaming of the what ifs & potential regret floating in the background. So many times I have read or heard first hand of hasty vasectomies or tubal ligations that were regretted three, four, five years down the track. I'm hoping after five years the intensity of my craziness will have dulled enough for me to see reason, or at least accept we won't be anticipating another little person in our family. With Clay off to school, no more nappies in the house, & hopefully enjoying full uninterrupted sleep most nights. Maybe getting out of this baby stage once & for all is what will kick me towards embracing the next stage of life. No more forty week count downs. The baby name books left to gather dust. 

With the age gaps between our kids ranging from seventeen months to two & a half years, I'm working on the theory that a five year age gap will be just what is needed to get used to calling our brood complete at half a dozen. After having less than three years between all the minions so far, to suddenly having a five year gap doesn't sound appealing to me. Especially when I've found the shorter age gaps the most enjoyable, & if I dare say it, easier, than the gaps over two years.

Some days I do wonder if I'm not half nuts & completely irrational, wishing for seven. Mostly in the moments when Will single handedly manages to dump a 750ml pump bottle of baby shampoo into the bath I was running for Clay, & then unravel a near full roll of toilet paper around the house while I was giving Clay the above mentioned bath, all in thirty minutes. With Will reminding me how impulsive three year olds can be, I question if I really want another baby. Because after the morning sickness passes & the belly grows fit to burst, after the newborn squawking cries transition into a normal baby cry, when they find their feet & their independence, they grow up. And there is a lot of growing up to do between the ages of two & twenty. Can we raise another person through that heart bursting, frustrating, awe inspiring, angst ridden, tears of joy & tears of despair, food devouring minefield?

It would be easier if my head said no while my heart said yes, because then I could find reason & agree with Doug. After all, just because I feel like eating chocolate all day long, I know that I can't. It would only cause stomach aches & nausea after the chocolate induced endorphins wear off. It just sucks that both my head & my heart are screaming "pro-create! pro-create!" Even though this would also cause nausea & stomach aches after the endorphins wear off.

I fear that for me (I'm certain Doug is terrified as well) 'just one more' will never reach a final number where the longing finally evaporates. 

If only it was as easy as saying the words "we're done. No more children." 

Ahead of the trends

I heard someone remark today that large families are becoming the latest trend.

Right.

Let's just re-hash that. So people are having large families, that take a {horrifying, uterus screaming} four year minimum, because it is the latest rage. 

"Oh look, they have six children. Doesn't she look simply stunning with her three children hanging on her arms, look at the color co-ordination with those other three children running around her legs adding to the ensemble. I'm envious of the deep dark circles under the eyes & muffin top belly accessorizing her look. I must have a large family myself."

Said no one ever.

The only thing large families & the term 'rage' have in common are all nighter's. For vastly different reasons. I doubt an eighteen year old would find my 3am's as much fun as theirs. My perception of an all nighter these days is not the same one that comes to mind when the term rage is bandied about. Lack of sleep perhaps the only common denominator.

I'm sure it was just an ill thought through comment & if I'd had the opportunity to find out exactly how she came to this conclusion I would have loved to be enlightened on her thought processes & perceptions. 

As mentioned above, having a large family rarely happens overnight (except in exceptional cases usually with non-biological children. Families merging together, a group of siblings coming into the care of next of kin, etc.) Deciding to have a big family is not something that is decided on a whim. Some couples know they won't call their family complete with one, two or three little people, others perhaps find it to be a natural progression over the years & as the youngest child slowly grows. The size of a family has years of discussion behind it, not the simple minutes a whim decision brings.

I can't speak for others, but I can speak for myself & our reasons for having a large family had nothing to do with trends, fashions or popularity. I really can't see how anyone could base their greater than average minion numbers on any of those, which is why her comment has had me stumped all afternoon. 

Maybe she is confused with 'common'. In our friends & community circles or places we frequent, we often run into other families with four or more children. Perhaps this mind occupying stranger has also noticed more families that have a minimum 2:1 child to adult ratio than families of four or five. Could be the basis for her assumption is because the street she lives on has drive ways full of people movers instead of zippy little five passenger mobiles. Despite an afternoon of pondering I'm still clueless & no closer to cracking her comment open.

Who decides to commit to ten to fifteen years of continuous pooey nappies, sleepless nights & broken sleep. (That is just the 'under-five' years. I'm not going to touch the sleeplessness & anxiety ridden teenage years, the raising of six independence-claiming, know-it-all's that will span nearly two decades in the near future.) An intermittent eighteen months of toilet bowl hugging & parasite embryo induced narcolepsy. Then another inconsecutive eighteen months of back spasms, esophagus searing heartburn, fluid retention & leg cramps. Rounding off with four, five, six, seven jaunts through the labor & birth ward where the midwives know you on a first name basis on sight without glancing at your record. Potentially a week's worth of contractions & after birth pains. Months of cracked, tender nipples adding up to nearly a year. All based on a trend, a fad, a fashion, a rage, the in thing for 2014.

It's what all the hip people are doing. You'll find us in the kitchen serving up meals on nearly a dozen plates, or in the laundry putting through the eighth dirty washing load for that day. We're recognized by our little troops traipsing along with us & our great, big, minimum seven seat cars.

While big families may not be glamorous, unless your name is Brangelina, we certainly are fun. For every negative there is always two positives to cancel it out. The lines slowly emerging on my face are more from laughter, crinkles around my eyes that show a happy life. 

My wardrobe may not be full of the latest designs from the catwalk. I have no designer tags to flaunt. I've got myself something better & apparently it's the latest family trend.

Full arms, full heart & a full house. We hit the Jackpot.

In no particular order...

Even though it's not yet 'officially' the school holidays, I felt my next post still needed to be a photo-mentary - especially following on from the last post warning you all of the visual overload that was imminent. 

I wasn't quite prepared with having the camera handy all the time, especially for some of the 'busier' moments, so a few parts of our weekend are left out. I'm considering this weekend that leads into the school holidays a trial run. 

I present to you our last 48 hours... 

Sneaky banana thief forgot to remove the evidence.

Big brothers = 24/7 entertainment.

Love.

 3:45pm Friday afternoon - The first coffee of the (unofficial) school holidays.

The aftermath of Rianan's indoor hopscotch.

Torture objects. 

Lunch

 minus two who had already abandoned the table. 

(& unfolded washing)

Sunday morning.

Saturday night.

Will aka Mr Threenager

It doesn't fly, but that's probably a good thing.

fourteen day do over

Our last school holidays kinda sucked. Back then, when we were all stuck inside the house with no fresh air or fresh company, I blogged that the next school holidays would be here soon enough, when the sun would be shining, no one will be sick & we could make the most of getting our feet in the grass & the sun on our faces.

It has been ten weeks since that statement, & you know what that means - the next round of school holidays are upon us. Yay. No, seriously, that is a very enthusiastic "Yay" - complete with happy smiles & invisible pom poms.

I've written lists of everything I want to squeeze in during the next fourteen days. Friends to catch up with (visits that are long overdue), beaches to visit, forests to explore, bike rides to go on, trips to our local oval to kick around the soccer ball - because five onto one is completely fair & ridiculously fun. We have recipes to follow, board games to play, movie days (or afternoons) where we get to stuff our faces with popcorn. Museums to revisit, city gardens to explore, playgrounds to climb, picnics to eat, friends to sleep over & water balloon fights to have.

And you're coming along with us.

Well not really, I don't have enough room in my car to take you all. But you can come along through my camera.  I have my photographer hat at the ready, my bucket is filled with motivation & inspiration, my shutter button happy fingers ready for capturing snapshots & memories. I'll be sharing them here, a visual narration of our ventures. 

Hold onto your hats, we're going to be busy.  

Life with six

For a while I've been playing around with a post detailing what it's like having a large family, beyond having at least double the little bodies to tuck into bed at night. Really, whether you have two children or six children we all have the same daily tortures - tantrums & food battles. Mother guilt & toilet training. Identity crisis & nap time warfare. Rescuing octonaut figurines from the toilet & saving books from turning into shreds. Maintaining a facade of alertness & lucidity in the face of three hours broken sleep. Juggling one on one time between each child, date nights with our other halves & finding conversation that doesn't solely revolve around the little people.

So what is different now compared to when we just had Ben & Rianan? What does (our) life entail with six children?

The obvious one is our food budget. Over the years as we've doubled the size of our family so has our grocery bill. The only thing that's remained constant is the packets of nappies in every over full & precariously stacked trolley I take through the check out. If I knew then what I know now I would have bought shares in Huggies back in 2004. Or used MCN's - aka cloth nappies. I have a dozen excuses why we have used a disposable nappy for every three hourly nappy change over the last 85,440 hours...or nine & a half years. MCN's really only became more user friendly around the time Jack was born, & back then we had figured he would be our last baby (because 'everyone' stops at two or three children we thought there must be a universal reason why & that it would also apply to us. Approaching Jack's first birthday we knew that we definitely wanted another child & realised there was no reason not to add to our minion count.) Back to the topic at hand though. Figuring Jack would be our last there wasn't much point in selling my left kidney to fund an MCN stash for just one child. Then Blake came along. At this point I seriously considered abandoning the nappy aisle at Coles & going the environmentally friendly way. But with four children aged four years & under time was a little scant & our little washing machine was already spinning at a 1000rpm 16 hours a day. So for my sanity & our poor washing machines last legs (that managed to hold on for a further 18 months. We've never had a more faithful washer, 8 years & 5 children later she finally gave up. Bless her 5kg white cotton socks) So lack of time & a surplus of washing dictated we continue our regular walks down aisle eleven. 

Clearly my attempts at appearing alert & lucid are falling a little short today, I've gone from talking about food budgets to justifying (to myself more than anyone, even after all these years) why we have used a hoard of disposable nappies instead of doing our bit to neutralize our carbon footprint & go the alternative way. 

Back to food. Our quota of bread & milk has reached ten loaves of bread & often eighteen litres of milk a week. Forget the 275gm boxes of cereal, which barely stretches between five bowls on a good morning. I reach for the 800gm suckers - half a dozen of them at a minimum. We've dedicated an entire pantry shelf just to house our weekly breakfast cereal requirements & even then I have to employ my tetris skills to get them all on the same shelf. You will never find a single box of cracker & cheddar dip LeSnacks in our house - you'll find several. Even then they rarely see the school week out. Our weekly fruit quota is equal to the combined weight of our six minions. By now you've probably gathered that we buy double or triple of everything. Extend that line of thinking a little further & we come to cooking. Dinnertime is not unlike a catering event. A 30cm fry pan & two 4lt saucepans are barely adequate when cooking a basic meal in our house. At this stage we can manage, but give it a few more years & I will be sourcing catering sized cooking equipment to try & keep up with the nutritional needs of several growing pre-teen bodies. I don't know what we're going to do yet when they are teenagers, devouring & digesting more food than a herd of elephants.

Bath & shower time is reminiscent to running a gauntlet on a Japanese game show. Dodge the sweaty, putrid socks discarded haphazardly around the bathroom, narrowly avoiding the dirty & stinky undies as they are thrown in the air with gleeful abandon, while launching forward to catch the two year old as they attempt to bomb dive into the bathtub. Only to be foiled by the tube of toothpaste on the floor & end arse up in soggy towels. This is only round one, there's still more bodies to reach a state of cleanliness yet. Then the real fun begins, cleaning up the bathroom & revealing the floor tiles once again beneath all the water logged clothes, soaked towels & soap bubbles.

The amount of washing our crazy tribe creates these days is more than enough to keep me struggling to maintain a hold on the cotton-poly blends that procreate by the hour. Not unlike us - so we've been told. Our washing machine works harder than I do, often churning through four loads on a good day, or ten loads on a bad day. The amount of dishes we go through isn't much better either. I thank my lucky stars for our dishwasher everyday - because it wasn't all that long ago I was still doing them all by hand. The dishwasher job I had in my early teenage years at our local popular restaurant gave me a valuable skill set that I never dreamed I would be needing again once my dish-lackey days were over. Back then I also never imagined I would be a Mother to six.

Between our minions they have enough shoes to rival a Betts & Betts shoe store. A couple of those shoes may be a little lonesome, with their other half swallowed up somewhere. Probably where all our socks & teaspoons have ventured off to. There's often little point of packing away clothes that have been outgrown, instead they simply get shipped from one wardrobe to the next. If I can't find a specific shirt of Blake's in his drawers inevitably it will be found in Will's - sometimes even I can't keep up with what item belongs to who. I think it's only a matter of time before we're entertaining thoughts of a communal wardrobe for the boys. Maybe not, that's a little to extreme larger family style for my liking.

Always a hot topic when it comes to families greater than five, cars. Clearly the average family sedan is too small. Heck, even the people mover we drive at the moment is still too small. My automobile dreams are not filled with Dodge's & Jeep's, but mini buses that don't look like a childcare or community bus. Given that's the next step up for us after the people mover category to have any spare seats available.

Twelve seats, ten child restraint anchor points, tri zone air conditioning & enough boot space to rival any wagon, plus all the bells & whistles included in any luxury vehicle, on top of tinted windows & any paint job that isn't white. Oh, & doesn't come with a Mercedes Benz price tag. Surely I'm not asking for much.

Family movie nights with bodies strewn haphazardly around the lounge room, with piles of pillows, blankets, teddies & little people taking every available space. Weekend family soccer or cricket games with enough people to make teams bigger than two on two. Knock knock jokes at tea time coming from all sides of the dinner table - some making sense & others just adorable as they make no sense at all, but have us all giggling regardless. Every Mothers Day & Fathers Day see's our bedside tables covered in drawings of round bodied, stick legged families, love hearts & smiley faces & homemade card upon homemade card filled with misspelt words, back to front letters & being their favorite Mummy & Daddy in the whole entire universe.

My heart feels like it has grown bigger than a full term pregnant uterus. Each time both my heart & my belly expanded beyond belief with every tiny body we have bought into this world & each time I never imagined I could love any more than I already did, or fall deeper in love with Doug as I watched him hold his new son or daughter. I figured after three children it would all feel the same, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

We may be busy, whether we're busier than others I honestly couldn't say. Regardless, in no way does it compare to the happiness, pride, love & memories our family is filled with. Every now & again Doug & I will say to each other "Can you imagine if we stopped after Ben & Rianan, or after Jack. Not having Blake, Will & Clay in our family." 

I can't imagine it, I honestly just can't. Impossible. Unfathomable. Unthinkable. Inconceivable to think they may not have been conceived. Life truly would be so different if they weren't here. Which has me thinking, who else are we missing in our family? What will the future look like if we call our family complete now, or what would it look like with another not yet conceived little soul. Can we imagine our lives without them, even though we don't know 'who' they could be? 

Seeing five toothbrushes lined up on the kids bathroom sink this morning made me a little mushy & indescribably grateful for each & every one of our little minions. Imagining seven toothbrushes all lined up made me a little clucky & has Doug genuinely questioning my sanity. 

Not that this would surprise anyone. The cluckiness that is, not the sanity.

Before the Minions

Very quiet & unexciting week here at HomM. Just to prove how mundane our week was, I present the top four highlights of the week -

1. The washing has been conquered! A fight was waged, & what a dirty battle it was. Alas I have emerged the victorious winner...this week anyway. I couldn't have done it without my illustrious sidekick, an appliance worth more than it's weight in Milo. 

2. Catching up with some friends over a caffeinated beverage, or four. It was deceptively revitalizing to get out of my own headspace & re-connect with others & find out what had been going on in every one else's lives. 

3. Enjoying an entire week of sleeping in our own bed, & not a fold out arm chair. Never again will I take for granted my own mattress, no matter how lumpy it seems, & the comfort it holds. 

4. Clay has a chest infection. Poor little mite can't catch a break - though he's proving more than adept at catching everything else. 

That's it, see like I said, B. O. R. I. N. G. 

We also had exciting plans this weekend - including a night minus five minions, to celebrate our twelfth wedding anniversary. But once again immune systems have tripped us up.

Given this week was uninspiring & a little lean on blogging material, in honor of our wedding anniversary I'm going to take you all back to the very beginning before we were a family of eight & our names didn't extend to Mummy & Daddy.

It was the summer of '69, sorry had to be done - whenever I hear 'it was the summer...' my mind jumps ahead & breaks into the Bryan Adam's classic. But I digress. Our story really starts back in the summertime of 2000 during December, when a friendship was struck up over a common commodity, sunburn, short change & a little yellow scooter. I don't think either of us imagined just what destiny had in store for us when we first started chatting over that counter. But boy am I glad that our fates intertwined. 

I was on my way home after a day at the beach & stopped in at our local petrol station to fill up the fuel tank on my bright yellow moped scooter. Doug's familiar face greeted me as I went in to pay & hang around for our customary chat. The difference this time was the painful scorching sunburn I was sporting on my upper legs all the way up to my bathers. To this day Doug can still clearly remember the moment I showed him half my butt cheek. In my defense it was simply to show just how bad I had unintentionally gotten burnt, moving a portion of my bikini to flash the white skin compared to the fiery red skin.

The next visit that clearly stands out in both our memories is the day I was twenty cents short when paying for my fuel. Forgetting that I only had the handful of change on me & no bank card I filled up my scooter, coming to a grand total of $2.80. Yep, the small size of the fuel tank meant that a) I had to fill up frequently, & b) I had ridiculously low running costs. Walking up to the counter, smiling sheepishly as I emptied out my coin purse & explained I was a smidge short, asking was there any chance Doug could lend me the twenty cents & I'll bring it in sometime over the next two days when I was sure to need petrol again. To this day it is still a running joke between us how I flashed him some leg & bought my way out of paying for my fuel. Nice to know my legs are worth so much. 

The weeks went by & our friendship continued to grow. Then the beginning of February 2001 saw me hospitalized with pneumonia & the day I was finally discharged the only person I wanted to see was Doug. From that point, each day that passed found us spending more & more time together, when inevitably our friendship turned to romance at the end of February when Cupid struck his bow.

Even now, just as it was back then, one of our ideal ways to spend time together is with a bag of hot chips down the beach watching the sunset. We spent so much time together down at Silver Sands beach, sitting on the tray top of Doug's Holden ute, often with his dog accompanying us. More accurately, JoJo was accompanying Doug & merely putting up with my presence or glaring at me through the back window, where she was relegated to the ute tray after I took 'her' front passenger seat

It's a little cliched, but I soon knew that Doug was 'The One'. Even though I was yet to hit my twenties. We just clicked on so many levels & I can't describe it beyond it was a soul deep knowledge, the jigsaw was complete we just had to paint the images together. (Sorry for the sap.) He was the first person I thought of when I woke in the morning, & the last person I would think of at night. For me there was no doubt that I would marry this man. Evidently Doug felt the same, proposing a few months later on a large rock one afternoon while we were walking along the beach. When I saw him go down to one knee, take my hand & begin talking about the future we would have together...The memory still makes my heart flutter just as much as it did that day. Pretty sure I was saying Yes even before Doug had finished asking me to be his wife.  

Fourteen months later & to the lyrics of 'How do I live' by Leann Rimes, we said "I do".

These last twelve years have been incredible & beyond belief. We've had our roller coaster moments of euphoric highs & devastating lows. We have a magnitude of memories together, from our early friendship & blossoming romance, to our honeymoon of spa baths, chocolate m&m's, monopoly, champagne & chinese food. From six positive pregnancy tests & all the experiences the following pregnancies & births held for us. To just this week, when we've both been grateful to be back in each others arms again after a stressful experience.

Twelve years of unconditional love...& I owe it all to that glorious, life changing summer.

A bit of perspective

I stayed up late the other night reading. I am glad I did, as I caught a show on abc2, which just about broke my heart. About children who were born to prostitutes.

We all know there is a large portion of humanity who suffer incredibly. Who live day in & day out in atrocious conditions. We see the riots & wars on the news, third world countries swallowed up in poverty, hear about human trafficking, child soldiers, babies dying from dehydration & hunger, children used as drug runners. Sometimes we become, not quite immune to it, but perhaps a little 'accustomed' to it. We know it happens, just not to us. We go about our days, wrapped up in our own 'first world problems' (both the inconsequential & the life-altering). Then re-awakened to it all, to the many less fortunate than us, when another tragedy is broadcast.

Not everyone is guilty of the above. There are many wonderful people, saints, who are making a small yet consequential difference in our world, in the lives of many. 
But I am guilty. 
I'm aware that there is so much suffering going on, both on our own door step right here in Australia, & thousands of miles away all over the world. I'll have tears running down my face, ranting in my own head about the injustice of it all watching a news footage. Then within the week I forget about it again, wrapped up in caring for our own children. Putting food in their bowls, clothes on their backs, shoes on their feet. While there are other children who have no food, no clothes, no shoes. Sometimes no one.

This program, 'Born into Brothels' followed the lives of half a dozen or so children in India, just a handful of what would be hundreds in similar conditions, who broke my heart. 

"One has to accept life as being sad & painful...That's all." This matter of fact statement came from an eight year old boy.

A generation of prostitutes. A great grandmother, grandmother & mother who all work, or worked, 'In the Line', as it is called. It was an inescapable fact that soon the pre-teen daughter would join them. The girl did not want to follow in their footsteps, my god who would, but she could not see any way out. Depressingly resigned to the life ahead of her.

There was no chance of stopping the tears when it cut to the scene of a two or three year old boy who lived with his grandmother & his slightly older sister. His mother also a sex-worker, who had tried to commit suicide & could no longer care for them. This toddler naked but for a threadbare red t-shirt, chained (yes you read that right, chained) by his left ankle to a wooden horizontal post across an open aired window really hit me, as I compared this to Will or Blake who are within the same age range. Witnessing that scene undone me. I wanted to change the channel thinking I couldn't deal with seeing any more. But I didn't. If they can live in those circumstances, the least I could do was become aware of their world, rather than try to ignore the reality they live in because it is too emotional for me to merely witness.

Children working from 4am in the morning, helping to clean, cook, or carry buckets of water up several flights of stairs, & still going at 11pm at night. My hardworking husband, who works long hours, still doesn't come close to the labour these children do.

Going to play up on the rooftop of the dilapidated apartment block because mother was "working" with the man in the curtained off room in their two roomed 'apartment'.
Playing in the streets filled with mud & who knows what else, as their high, drug addicted father lies near comatose in the gutter.
One young boy told of how his mother would say to him, "I'm going to send you to London to study", desperately dreaming she could give her son a better life. He knew though, that this would never happen & simply accepted this stating "We don't have the money to live let alone for studies."

Yet here we are, thinking about getting foxtel. As if the free & readily available channels are not enough. Debating whether to buy the kids all new bikes now, or to wait until Christmas time, because if we buy them now, we need to try & think of something else that they 'want' & don't already have. Buying tabs because the screen of an ipod touch is too small. A little bit of perspective was thrown over me like a bucket of cold water.  

We do try to explain & show our kids, especially the older three, to understand just how incredibly fortunate they are, that we are. We frequently go through all their toys, donating those that aren't played with regularly, have surplus of, or have out grown. I sort through their clothes, donating what is outgrown or been replaced. The kids understand that these items are going to other children who don't have any toys, or very many clothes. Whose parents don't have a lot of money, or children who do not even have parents. We can see this has made an impact on their awareness, as on a somewhat regular basis one of them will ask if we can give a toy they don't want anymore to the kids who don't have any. They see on the news children crying in a country in turmoil from a natural disaster or conflict & ask if we can give them their clothes.

But after watching this documentary I feel like it's just not enough. How do we make a big enough impact & change for those in need when we are only but one person. What can I do to protect that little girl, the same age as Rianan, from becoming just another face in a long line of vulnerable & abused women. What can we do to provide the 10 year old boy with a basic education, an opportunity to break the cycle of poverty he was born into. 

It's devastating that these children believe their way of life is normal. What is beyond atrocious to us is an accepted reality for them. 

I don't know where I'm going with this. 

What I do know though is that I'll be taking more opportunities to try make a difference somehow. Beyond just donating what we have an excess of or no longer need. To include the kids on becoming more aware of the greater world around us. Even if a small contribution is made, a small effort, it is better than nothing at all. I want to ensure our minions understand just how loved, how lucky & privileged they are, even by Australian standards, & to share some of that love around to those who need it.

**You can watch 'Born into Brothels' on ABCiview