Lightening Online

Our little girl turned 9 today!

It amazes me how in the weeks leading up to their birthdays you can see a real difference in your kids.  Like you suddenly realise that they are more 9 than 8 and they look and act like it (or whatever numbers are pertinent at the time).

We had a quiet family celebration today.

Presents with us this morning:

I loved seeing her face as she opened this parcel.  The dress is identical to one her friend in Adelaide has so she was really excited to get one.  She also got a sports bag for taking her change of clothes to netball in (and for when she goes on camps or away etc), a pink purse and a bike carrier for her Baby Born doll.

Followed by decorating her own cake/s:

It’s a tradition in our family that the kids choose what cake design they would like from the birthday cake books I have.  When they have a party (which isn’t every year), I usually make a more elaborate one.  When we have a family party, they enjoy decorating their own cakes.  Singstar Princess is getting quite creative with hers.  It’s a great bonding time working together on the cake/s.  She chose a cupcake design this year.

Followed by a family lunch with Farmboy’s sister and her children and his parents:

Where we assembled the cake and sang happy birthday.

And she got to open a couple more presents. 

I think she had a nice day.

Wow, 9 years!  Time flies when you’re having fun!!!! 

… I had more stitches than the doctor cared to tell me about.

Apparently Trailer Boy had a big head!  And a very small fontanelle.

I think from the very beginning he was determined to be the youngest!!!! 

Even in hospital, I knew things weren’t quite right.

I just didn’t understand why.

I told the doctor I’d been teary with all my kids at that stage.

And I had.

And yet, this time was different.  Kind of.  In a very subtle way.

Things I used to take in my stride upset me and stressed me out.

I couldn’t cope with the older 2 kids sitting on the arms of my chair when I was feeding him.  I used to always want them close.  Now I just wanted to hide from the world.  Hide from my family.

But it was the tears that drove me the craziest.  Crying at the drop of a hat.  Things that shouldn’t have been a big deal, seemed to be.

My doctor told me it was some kind of mood disorder.  Apparently the new name for “post natal depression”.  He suggested being honest with my friends about how I was feeling.

I tried.

The first friend I tried to tell laughed at me.

I never said another word.  Not to other friends.  Not to my doctor.

He never asked how I was going so I thought I was supposed to just “get over it”.

Two and half years later my brain decided to take a little holiday.  Speech, memory, coherent thought.  All gone.

The diagnosis?  A nervous breakdown brought on by untreated post natal depression.  Or something to that effect.

My poor little boy went from having a struggling mother to having no mother at all.

It’s hard to think of him as 6.  It’s hard not to dwell on the years of his life that virtually went by in a daze.

He’s fine.  He spent lots of time with daddy and his uncle and grandad.  Had a ball.

It’s me that’s not so fine.

Not so fine with all those missed memories.  Precious time together that I so dearly loved with my other 2.

It’s hard on his birthday not to remember the starting date of the mess my life ended up in.

BUT…

It’s not all bad.

I KNOW that I am now a stronger, more confident person.  I KNOW that I have dealt with some skeletons in my closet.  I KNOW that I have used this experience to come to terms with WHO I am.

And my boy?  My big 6 year old boy who was just born yesterday?

He is AWESOME!

And he has had a wonderful birthday.  :0)

The first thing he did when he opened his presents was to go around and give everyone one of the chocolate frogs he was given as one of his gifts.

Bless him. 

He was SO stoked with his gifts:

A Lego set WITH a truck of course.

And we have to have a tractor WITH a trailer for Trailer Boy don’t we?

Now that the kids are getting older, they like to decorate their own cakes.  When they were younger (and the years where we have an actual “party”) I make them something chosen from our Birthday Cake books.  For the family birthday meal, they enjoy deciding on their own decorations and doing it themselves.

I think he did a great job creating a road with the snakes as the centre markings and then filling it with racing cars.

He put so many lollies all over the cake that the icing started to fall off.  LOL.

And we can’t have a birthday post without the obligatory candle shot can we?

Happy Birthday my beautiful boy.  I am SO glad that you’re a part of our family!!!! 

January is a BIG month in our family for birthday’s. Singstar Princess on the 11th, Farmboy on the 25th and Lleyton on the 29th. So, as you can imagine, we EAT a LOT of cake!

Here is a look at our January birthday cakes.

It all began with a cake for Singstar Princesses sleep-over. Lleyton got to have 2 friends sleep over for his 8th birthday so Singstar Princess got to do the same. It’s not all that easy to try and arrange a sleep-over in the middle of the summer holidays but we managed. She chose to have it down the beach which worked out really well.

Her choice of cake for her sleep-over was an ice cream cake in the shape of a love heart. She decorated it herself, with the help of the 2 girls that were sleeping over.

I used vanilla ice cream and mixed smarties into it before moulding it in a heart shaped cake tin. Princess Singstar chose the decorations (although the candles were something I picked up during the year).

Her actual birthday was 2 days after the sleep over and fell on a Sunday so I made a slab cake for morning tea at church. Singstar Princess had a great time decorating it:

I drew the 8 into the icing but she did the rest. In fact, we had to stop her before the 8 became completely lost in a sea of lollies! LOL. She had fun though and enjoyed sharing a cake with our church friends, even if many were away that week (all the more for the rest of us!).

Of course, we couldn’t then have a family birthday tea without a cake. This is the one she chose:

She does love her PINK and her FLOWERS. A real girly girly!

I don’t have a ring cake pan so had to make 2 circles and cut out the centres. Trailer Boy and his cousin (who is also 5) had a great time icing the left over circles and COVERING them in lollies.

Yes, 3 cakes for 1 birthday - am I an AWESOME mum or what? ROFLOL (that’s “roll on the floor laughing out loud” for those who don’t “do” netspeak).

Farmboy was so impressed with my efforts making Singstar Princess an ice cream cake that I decided to make one for his birthday.

His favourite ice cream is cookies and cream so I bought some Oreo’s and some plain Chocolate Ripple biscuits and mixed them in with the ice cream.

This one was a lot easier because I was at home and had my electric mixer rather than trying to do it by hand like I had done with Singstar Princess’s cake.

You can just see that I added some plain vanilla ice cream to the bottom (which was the top when I was making it). With some crumbled flake and leftover chockies from another project, it was AWESOME!!!! (even if I do say so myself).

We had a bit of a dilemma with Lleyton’s birthday cake. He had already worked on his own design (all sketched out on paper) well before we knew we’d be away for his birthday. So, I got him to make his cake on the weekend before his birthday and we shared it with a few others.

We ended up with a truckload of lollies left over too!

As things turned out, our plans changed and we were home the night of Lleyton’s birthday. Well, you can’t have a birthday tea without a cake but I was feeling rather “caked out” by this point in the month. So I came up with this:

A Home Brand French Cheesecake I had in the freezer sprinkled with crushed Flake. Lleyton is a big cheesecake so it went over quite well.

All in all, we had some lovely birthday celebrations in January and not surprisingly, I’m rather “caked out”. Fitting into my jeans has been somewhat of a problem too! Ah-hem.

Image via WikipediaToday marks one year since my move to my own domain. Wow, doesn’t time fly when you’re having fun????

In that time, more than 65,000 people have visited.

All I can say is “wow” and “thank you”

Some of you I’ve gotten to know well while others remain a mystery.

But the fact that you take the time to read what I have to say means more to me than words could ever express.

I hope you’ll hang around today for some birthday cake, a cuppa and a chat. This kind of cake doesn’t even have any calories!!!!

Thank you for being a valuable part of my blog community.

Here’s to another year of fun and mayhem on Lighteningonline.com .

Thank you for all your kind birthday wishes yesterday. They were lovely to receive. I had a wonderful day, marred only by one tiny thing.

I hesitate to blog about this partly because at one point in time my mother was reading my blog (I’m not sure she does at the moment but you never know) and partly because I don’t like to say anything bad about my parents. For all their failings (and as parents we all have them), I love them dearly and don’t like to say anything hurtful to them or about them.

But I’m hurting and I feel like I need to get this out before it suffocates me.

For those of you who’ve read my post on last year’s birthday, you’ll probably get the idea that I haven’t always celebrated the fact that I was born.

In fact, I have grown up my whole life acutely aware of the fact that I was a mistake. A BIG mistake. My conception was a mistake that brought heartache to a great many people. And the fact that I was born a girl was a mistake. Or at least a disappointment.

I can’t vouch for how accurate my feelings truly are. I can only state that this is what they are.

I no longer feel this way. That I should never have been born. That I don’t matter. I am learning to accept and love myself in a way I always longed for as a child.

I have a wonderful husband and beautiful loving children. I have extended family who love and accept me and celebrate the fact that I was born. I have wonderful friends, both online and off who mean the world to me.

I just wish it was enough.

Why do I continue to long for the love and acceptance from my parents that they simply can’t seem to live up to?

Last time I saw my mother, she told me she loved me. But the words just felt so empty. I’m sure she does. I just can’t seem to feel that she does.

And when the celebration of my birth goes by without a word, it only seems to widen the chasm in my heart.

Not that that is actually “normal” behaviour for them. I usually get a card. And sometimes it even has money inside it. Which probably shouldn’t matter. But does.

As a child there were years when I had parties. I always had gifts (although my birthday always seemed to fall when there was not much money) and a cake. And tears. For various reasons. Most years my birthday sucked. I can’t really explain why. It just did. I just never really felt that we were celebrating my birth. More a “going through the motions of what is socially expected”.

Did I misunderstand? Did I get it wrong? Maybe. I don’t know.

But when yesterday passed without a phone call or even a text message - it really hurt. And I want to deny the pain. Because that’s how I’ve always dealt with pain. Shoved it so deep inside of me that it would hopefully never see the light of day. Which works. For a while. Until the garbage can overflows and all the hurt and crap deep inside just overflows in a big smelly mess at the most inopportune of moments.

I think to myself “hey, plenty of people had parents that were a LOT worse than yours so just get over yourself”. But it’s not as easy as that. My mind can deny the pain and rejection. But my heart simply won’t.

And I wonder if this is something that I will ever come to terms with. Will the day come when my birthday can be celebrated without the pain of rejection? Without that tiny niggle in the back of my mind that I shouldn’t be celebrating the fact that I was born. Without the reminder that my very existence was a mistake? A burden? An imposition?

I want to love myself in the way everyone deserves to be loved. I want to be whole and without “baggage”. I want to forgive and forget.

I just wish it wasn’t so hard.

Image via WikipediaI love that my birthday falls in the middle of the year. Often the beginning of January is a time for reflection and consideration of the year that has past and a focus on the year that is to come. I like to do the same on my birthday (which is today).

The past 12 months has been an absolutely amazing year for me. It’s been a year of really examining my past and understanding how that has affected my growth up until this point in my life. It’s been a year of learning more of who I am and that I don’t have to be a product of my past. That I can take the struggles and the pain and learn and grow from them. But I don’t have to stay in a state of struggle and pain. I have a choice. I have control.

It’s been a year of learning what makes me smile. A year of finding ways to care for myself. A year of learning that I am WORTH taking care of.

Last year I recognised that for the first time in my life, I could honestly say that I am GLAD I was born.

This year I’m celebrating the fact that I’ve lived another year of life. And I can honestly say that Life is Good. It’s not perfect. It has plenty of struggles. But those struggles have a purpose. They bring growth and wisdom. They bring with them great learning opportunities. They bring depth to life and a great appreciation for the good times.

I love that I can look out the window and see the sun peaking through the clouds. I can see a garden in a mixed state of production. The pumpkins are dying back while the cabbage and broccoli are embracing the cold and booming away. Seasons in life bring change. While some of us are in a season of dying back, others are in a season of growth. Without the seasons, we wouldn’t have the great variety that life has to offer. We wouldn’t have changing conditions that embrace various personalities, needs and stages of growth.

I feel like I can look back on the 34 years I’ve lived on this earth with a sense of satisfaction. I have survived much and achieved much.

A couple of weeks ago, my counsellor read out to me my life story from ages 5 to 18. I have always considered myself to be “weak”. To hear read out the things I went through and the way I not only managed to survive but somehow thrive really surprised me and gave me a new perspective. I realised that I am stronger than I ever thought.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have need for support. We all have need for support. To have the love and encouragement of family and friends.

What it does mean though is that I don’t have to be a “product of my environment”. Not only do I have choices but I have the strength to MAKE those choices.

I feel like I have made a transition from a mere grub crawling on the ground, to spending the past couple of years in a caccooned state (hiding and somewhat in need of protection from the world) to finally entering a butterfly state. Finally free to fly and be myself.

Last year my online friends gave me a very precious gift. What I really wanted for my birthday was for my blog counter to click over 1000 visitors. They worked hard to make that happen for me and it meant a lot. These days my counter clicks over 1000 visitors once or twice a week. But I don’t take any of those visitors for granted and each one means a great deal to me.

I wondered what I could “ask” my online friends for this year (insert cheeky grin) and came up empty. Because you give me gifts every day. When you read what I’ve written, comment on what I’ve written, email me or interact with me through groups and forums you give me the most precious gift anyone could ask for - friendship. For that I send you my heartfelt gratitude. You have helped me to feel like I am a worthwhile person. And everyone deserves to feel like they are worthwhile. Yes, I AM talking to you who just had the thought “she doesn’t really mean me”. If you’ve taken the time to read these very words, I want you to know that you mean something to ME. I may never have met you or even heard from you, but you have given me the time to read what I have to say. And I’m saying right now. You. Are. Worthwhile.

Celebrations today will be fairly quiet. The kids gave a very groggy mother some gifts this morning. I was pretty weary after yesterday’s efforts (taking a day out to do something I LOVE was my gift to ME).

I ended up with the best of both worlds in my cash vs gift dilemma. Farmboy bought me a new office chair and gave me $50 to spend. Combined with some money from other family members, I’ll have $140 to spend on myself.

Tonight we’re going out for a meal with friends. Just one other family so nothing too overwhelming. It should be a nice evening.

Once upon a time I hated birthdays. Once upon a time my birthday brought tears. Now I LOVE birthdays. I can handle getting older because it means I get to celebrate being ME once again. And it’s a celebration that I’ll NEVER take for granted.

My Sister-in-Law had a birthday recently. She’s a leap-year baby so it’s not very often that she gets to celebrate her birthday on it’s *actual* day.

We usually don’t *do* presents with our adult siblings. With Farmboys family we did for a number of years but me in my perfectionist ways allowed it to stress me out far too much. I was always wanting to find the perfect gift for each person. In the end, we were the ones to say we were pulling out of gift giving for adults. We weren’t in a position to keep buying things that may or may not have been useful or loved by the recipients and neither were the rest of his siblings. It was left that people could do token gifts or whatever they liked but that no-one should feel obligated.

In my family, well, my brothers never really got into gift giving much and I decided at one point it was best to stop giving them gifts as I didn’t want to make them feel guilty or obliged to return (one of my brothers is really good at piling guilt on himself). By this stage we’d started having children and it’s much more fun to focus on the kids when it comes to gifts.

Obligation is a funny thing when it comes to gift giving. We all say that no-one should feel obligated to reciprocate but mostly people do (feel obligated that is).

It has been interesting to lift this obligation and experience the joy that comes with a more spontaneous type of giving. I really wanted to send my sister in law a small gift this year. I didn’t feel obligated to spend a certain amount of get a certain value in a gift.

Instead, I was able to focus purely on the love behind saying “we’re really glad you were born. Happy Birthday”.

Here is what we sent her.

It wasn’t an expensive gift but it was made with lots of love. I hope that she was able to see it for what it was intended. An expression of our love for her. More time was put into these than it would have taken to earn the money for quite a large box of chocolates.

What do you value more? Something handmade with love or something costing a reasonable amount of money?

How do you handle birthdays in your extended family? Do you feel you have to buy out of a sense of obligation? Do you find it hard to continually come up with ideas for adult siblings birthday gifts?

Yesterday we spent the day at a nearby (well 200km away) regional town doing some shopping for back to school and both Singstar Princess and Leighton’s upcoming birthday parties. Unfortunately I wasn’t so successful on finding back to school items (even though I only needed plain navy shorts for each of the kids) but we came home with a TRUCK LOAD of lollies.

Most of the lollies are for Singstar Princess’s birthday party. She’s having a “making” party and I’ve managed to come up with a number of crafts using lollies. The kids will decorate their own take home party bags and then fill them with their lolly creations. That’s the plan anyway. I’ll go into more detail on that in a week or so.

I haven’t been game to actually count how many packets of lollies I bought (nor how much in total I’ve spent so far) but *if* we use all of them, the kids will be going home with more than a packet of lollies each. Hopefully we’ll have some leftover though and I’ll use them for Leighton’s party which is the following weekend.

The highlight of our day though was a visit to Hungry Jacks. Some time ago I registered our kids online for the Hungry Jacks Kids Club. It didn’t cost anything to join and when their birthdays drew near they received a letter in the mail with a coupon for a FREE kids club meal. It was one time when I found it quite useful that they all have birthdays close together.

Thanks Hungry Jacks. It isn’t often these days that businesses offer something for free. The service we received was lovely and the kids thought it was GREAT to be allowed to refill their drink cup for free. They also allowed DH and I to use the “free chips with burger purchase” coupon that was sent for the kids for January without making us jump through hoops (ie have to order separately in order for the coupon to be accepted).

As a marketing strategy, I thought this was a good one and while we only indulge in fast food as a treat, I am much more inclined to lean toward HJ’s than their competitors right at this moment. So it’s a marketing strategy that may well pay off for them. Now, if they would only improve the toys they give with their kids meals…….

If you’d like to register your own children for the Hungry Jacks Kids Club, you can do so via their website. For those not in Australia, Hungry Jacks is pretty much the same as Burger King. I’m not sure if they offer a similar thing but it might be worth checking out their website to find out.

If you know any other companies that offer a similar type thing, please let us all know in the comments section.

This week’s Smiley Saturday post was going to be about my Singstar Princess turning 7. Kids birthdays are usually a great time for smiling and laughter. Well, it still is about her birthday. But not quite in the same way I had originally planned.

Something happened yesterday morning that almost made me cry. Happy tears though. Leighton, who is soon to be 10, asked if he could give his sister his gift first. I had some idea of what his gift might have entailed as he’d asked me where his wallet was first thing this morning.

What I wasn’t prepared for though, was him handing her a $5 note. To put this into perspective, he basically gets $7.50 a month which is his to spend in whichever way he would choose (there is another $7.50 a month but that is allocated to various other projects - like his untouchable bank balance etc). So he gave her nearly a month’s worth of his spending money!

It kind of blew my mind and part of me wanted to say “no, don’t do that, it’s too much”. The other part of me was just sitting in awe of how wonderful and generous my son is. We’ve seen signs of it before and yet he still manages to leave me speechless at times. The world needs more people like him. I hope it’s a trait he continues to show his whole life. It certainly was what I’d call a “proud mummy moment”.

Now, back to the birthday girl. She got a new bike for her birthday. It’s a Disney Princess bike. You can’t see it in great detail here but it is a beautiful bike. It actually has pictures of Disney Princesses along the main frame!!! And a gold bell!!! (And does her mummy wish she had a bike just like this when she was a little girl? ABSOLUTELY!!!!! )

I really wanted to give you a larger picture this time around but I’m still learning when it comes to editing in this program. Please click on the picture and it will take you to a larger view. Doesn’t the look on her face just make you smile???? The bike came with the tiara that she’s wearing. Oh, and she’s just about to leave for swimming lessons which is why she’s wearing her bathers!

Friday night we had a family birthday tea together (just the immediate family). My children get the choice of what they’d like to have for tea and they generally choose to have a “party tea” which involved party pies, fairy bread, salad platter, chips and whatever else I come up with at the time. I remember as a child if my Grandma asked me what I’d like for a special birthday tea I’d always choose the same! I’m a HUGE fan of fairy bread!!!! We had a lovely time together in the afternoon baking her love heart shaped birthday cake. She then went on and iced and decorated it herself.

Come tea time, she wanted to set the table and was very busy throughout the meal serving others and making sure everyone had what they needed and wanted. It was so special to watch. Not “wait on me, I’m the birthday girl” but “I want to make sure you have a nice meal”.

Not to be outdone by his older siblings, our 4 year old has been very kind and thoughtful lately, sharing some lollies he had leftover from Christmas. Tonight when I complimented him on his good use of manners he says to me in the most grown up voice “you’re welcome mum”. It was very cute. Then after tea he informed me that he and his sister had made sure they’d left some chips for “the boys” (meaning his father and older brother) and for me. I was awed by his thoughtfulness.

I am a very blessed mother indeed. I sure have a LOT to smile about! Some days my kids have me tearing my hair out. Then you get days like yesterday where your heart could just burst with pride at the way they behave and treat one another. It was certainly a day worth remembering!

If you wish to participate in Smiley Saturday, feel free to leave a link to your post below. And as always, link back here so your readers can see what others are smiling about this week.

Here is the first birthday cake I made for DS’s 4th birthday. He chose what colour I put in the icing (yellow seems to be a favourite at the moment). The lollies on the top are little lolly cars. (Yeah, I know, they look like frogs don’t they? At least, that’s what DS thought they were lol). Chucking a few lollies on a number cake is my idea of a birthday cake - nice and simple!

I had to include this photo as well (carefully edited to remove as much of my “first thing Saturday morning hairdo” as I could manage lol). Doesn’t he look so excited when he sees the Lightning McQueen Beach Towel?

I love kids birthdays - they’re so much fun!!!! I’ll be back tomorrow with some photo’s from the party.