Mia Wray, Little Magic Pieces and the end of Depression #littleloves

Mia Wray, Little Magic Pieces and the end of Depression #littleloves

Wow, I can’t believe it’s Friday again already. Here is our weekly round up with the lovely Sian at ‘Potty Mouthed Mummy‘ as the beautiful Morgana is off sunning herself in France.

Read

Again, a lot of blogs this week.  I don’t really ever pick up a book.  I really enjoyed the ‘Country Kids‘ round up this week over on Fiona at Coombe Mill’s blog.  I am getting excited about the Summer and seeing what you lovely lot have been up to is inspiring ideas of things we can do on our two weeks with all the children.  One of my favourite posts was the genius idea to have a ‘Farm Party‘ for their child’s birthday.  We won’t be able to do this, this year, but it is definitely stored in the memory for next year.  Go have a nosy at Let Kids be Kids, there’s also a lovely video.

Watched

I’m up to date and awaiting so many new seasons at the moment so I’ve not really had the desire to even switch on the good old Netflix.  I’ve been busy working away on video editing and my blog so I’ve barely had time to chill.  I like this though, sometimes watching lots of programs reminds me of when I was depressed.  I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with a good switch off, we certainly need it as Mum’s but this week has shown me I must be happy as I haven’t even noticed that I’ve not been watching anything.  When I break for lunch I go hang with my beautiful children, but when I have needed to zone out whilst I eat I’ve been watching YouTubers.  My new discovery is ‘In the Frow’ Victoria is a fashion lecturer in Manchester and her YouTube video on her iPhone 6 tour gave me some fantastic new apps.  I’m really excited by Moldiv.

Wore

I have been enjoying the sunshine and heading out more with the children.  I dared to let Martina have the camera whilst we were out walking this week and she captured a few of me with the babies.  When I posted them to my facebook I had a few people comment on the blue New Look v-neck and how it suited me.

Isis Mae was wearing the beautiful Watermelon headband handmade by Dovile at ‘Little Magic Pieces’ in our latest YouTube video.  She has done the ‘My Favourite Things’ tag…

Heard

We’ve been listening a LOT to the beautiful Mia Wray, she has original songs, but also creates stunning covers.  We’ve been using her for all our memory videos on YouTube.  Here is her beautiful version of ‘Shake It Off’. We’re a bit obsessed with her.

Made

A huge mistake!!!  Yesterday we headed out to meet friends as it was pre-arranged, even though the weather was forecast to be atrocious.  So the children were in their wellies and wrapped up warm with layers on.  Well, the sun shone all day, and I didn’t have my suncream with me.  It’s usually in the baby bag.  Thank goodness it wasn’t too hot, as my beautiful baby has a little sunburnt face this morning.  I guess it’s the first time Eden’s skin has been exposed to sun without protection of any kind.  The others are out the odd times in the sun.  It’s not bad thank goodness, but I just feel horrendous because my baby has a sunburnt face, so we will be staying indoors today at least whilst I slap after sun on her throughout the day and if we go out tomorrow she will have the usual Factor 50 on whatever the weather.  I will NEVER make the mistake to not have the suncream with me again.

and lastly…

I have noticed this week and I don’t want to sound too dramatic here but if you knew the journey that I’ve been on…. I FEEL again.  I don’t just FEEL, I feel happy.  I have been so numb for so long.  Not that I wasn’t enjoying life, my lovely family would melt my heart, but there is now a vast difference.  I feel as though I’m finally healing, after years of hurt and years of restoration (amidst the busyness of having children) I just feel so happy.  All the time.  I feel like I’m me again.  It has been an epic journey and if I’m honest one I never thought I’d be free of.  I’m not saying it will all be smooth sailing from now on, I’m still taking medication but I FEEL.  I am so grateful that my husband stuck by me through hard times and my draining personality as I battled depression.  I’m just grateful to my God that heals and kept me through all the heartache and never let me forget He had a plan.

Between the Blogging

Between the Blogging

So much has been happening for us lately… I don’t know why I do this but when there is a lot of change or big decisions sometimes I tend to avoid blogging.  I stopped blogging when I was extremely depressed and pregnant with Eden and I have stopped recently for no reason at all…. I seemed to miss some of my link ups, even though I had so much to write about and then… just felt out of the loop very quickly and stopped blogging.

I sprained my ankle a few weeks ago and it’s been frustrating not being able to take the children out and about.  I think because of when I was depressed and bed bound whilst pregnant, when I’m not as mobile it brings back those memories and I start to feel down.  This is because… I’m bored… I’m stuck in… I want to take my children out to enjoy the sunshine but money has been extremely tight (more than usual because we are clearing some debts we’ve accumulated whilst James was studying) and now that James takes the car for work, it’s not so easy to go out and about with a sprained ankle and little money.

You’d think being bored I would’ve been blogging more, but I don’t want to write about negative things, not because I don’t want our blog to represent real life, I do, I know life isn’t always rosey, but also when I know it isn’t going to change for a while I don’t want to dwell on the present circumstance.

Writing this now I realise there were many positive things that I could’ve been blogging about, I should have set myself the challenge to focus on the positive and write about those things… goodness knows there have been many.  The girls were involved in a charity fashion show and were astounding.  I have finally seen a doctor and started a course of antidepressants which has resulted in my starting the process of HUGELY decluttering our home.  I am definitely back to my normal self and that has been great.  James is up for another promotion, I am looking at starting a job and have an interview next week… we’ve made a MASSIVE decision regarding the children’s schooling after seeing everyone’s joys and heartaches last week as primary school allocations were given… there has been so much going on… it almost makes no sense I chose not to blog about it.

I guess the truth is, we’ve been so busy doing, and I wanted to know that I was just doing it, for me and my family and not so I had something to blog about, which is an easy trap to fall into sometimes.  Especially when my PND was at it’s worst and I was forcing myself to take the children out to do something because I knew I should but I had NO desire to do ANYTHING.

So, if you’re an avid reader, or one of my most treasured blog followers I thank you for your patience but also please know that there will be many things unfolding in the near future, and I have many things to catch up on.  Some of these things you may not be interested in, but I come back again to the reason that I blog and that is so that we can have a record of what our lives were like, and so our blended family can stay connected the days in the week that we aren’t all together.

I am so blessed by our children all the time… they astound me… and I feel so grateful for our lives and health, we have had a really tough few years (not to complain I know others go through much worse) and it feels nice to be able to see the light at the end of the tunnel.  I don’t expect things to ever be easy for us, they just never seem to be, it always is a battle to achieve anything in our lives, but I don’t regret that either because it’s about the journey, and man am I changing and learning a lot along the way.  Learning to be a better Mum (I hope), definitely learning patience, to be a better wife and hopefully a better person in the process…. this is a journey I know I will be on until the day I breathe my last breath.  Right now we are still in a rainy season but we are definitely over the worst of this particular storm and I feel really grateful every day.
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{The Ordinary Moments 2015} #9 – Drama, Drama, Drama

{The Ordinary Moments 2015} #9 – Drama, Drama, Drama

Over the last few weeks we have made a huge transition for us, moving back to the church that I grew up in.  Church has always played such a massive part in our lives.  It is further for us to travel, but it is still only 10 minutes down the road, and here are the people I have known and loved for most of my life.  The friends I grew up with are still there and now raising their children there.  It is so lovely to see all these little mini me’s of the people that I love.  I have spent some time catching up with some of my nearest and dearest and trying to explain particularly the last four years of my life just feels like an episode of Eastenders.  It’s not that everybody needs to know our business but at the same time, these people know me, really know me, and they can tell that I am different as a result of circumstances that have occured.

My friend pointed out to me that James and I have been through nearly every major stressful milestone that life can dish out, aside from loss of each other of course.  We’ve had divorces, custody cases, two pregnancies (both of which I was extremely unwell for, pretty much bed bound), two miscarriages, facing homelessness, financial hardship due to James completing a social work degree whilst I was unable to work due to pregnancy related issues, work placements, depression, anxiety, TIA’s, blending a family, getting married, moving house TWICE, losing family members, family members being extremely unwell (heart attacks, falling off roofs), we’ve both passed our driving tests – wuhoo!! but it wasn’t easy, starting new jobs.  If you read the blog post I wrote ‘Our Complicated History‘ you’ll see that we didn’t exactly have the best starting point when we first met too.

It is fair to say that as a result of all of the above, who truly knows if I’m struggling with postnatal depression or just being overwhelmed by life in general?  As a family though we are striving to eliminate any sources of drama in our lives.  It’s not anyone’s fault that circumstances have happened, some things that have affected us have been consequences of poor choices.  We could maybe have paced things out a bit, but due to our history I think we were eager to get past all the hard stuff and try to pursue a life of peace, happiness and financial stability.  We don’t desire to be ‘rich’ per se… well we certainly wouldn’t have chosen the career paths that we have if that were our aim, we just want to be able to support our family without worrying about one or both of us having a near break down everytime the rent is due.  It is has been an interesting journey, but we finally seem to be coming out of the mire.

I have many friends who are going through difficult circumstances and my heart reaches out to them.  I want to be there for them, but we just don’t have the capacity or any room for any more drama in our lives.  Sometimes you need to strip everything back and only when you’re in a stable position of strength are you able to help those around you, that you see in need.  I’m not saying I don’t care, or I wouldn’t try and guide them to someone else better suited to help.  Recently I had a friend who literally had nowhere else to turn and so despite feeling overstretched we welcomed her into our home, because I knew she would do the same for me… I knew it would be short-lived and I would not sleep at night if I didn’t do what I could.  Sometimes, we need to stretch ourselves just that little bit further if there’s an end in sight and we know we can have a recovery period afterwards.  If we’d not had Martina with us, who knows how that would’ve turned out, but we did, and so we were able to stretch for a limited time.

We have resolved as a family to literally just deal with the basics, getting on top of the laundry, cleaning the home, cooking good healthy meals, keeping everyone clean, trying to stay well, and obviously James is working and paying the bills.  This is ALL of our goals for life at the moment.  We are not trying to add anything else into the mix.  I am aiming to rebuild my self-employed career when I have got into a routine looking after the family home (this is why we hired an aupair, to help us work from a position of strength) but by stripping back things – even such as the girls dance for a short season, we’re able to live simply, frugally and just work on being ‘us’ a secure little unit.  We may seem boring, but this is how it has to be for us in this season of life.

Once we are more financially stable we aim to put back in the girls dance, swimming lessons for the babies etc. but for now they’re not the priority.  Everyone being healthy and happy and trying to keep a loving home that is full of peace and not drama is all we are striving for.  I know this is a bit of a different twist for our ‘Ordinary Moments’ post this week but this pretty much sums up our week and the choices that we have been making as a family.

This blog is for our children, and to keep all our memories, so babies when you look back and read this, and this season may have seemed more boring, stripped back or maybe you enjoyed more family time and less activities, please know the reason was because we love you and we want you to grow in peace, joy and love, that this would be your normal, your beautiful ordinary, and when you have a family too, this is what you look for.  Our prayers are always that you would be able to take on the goals in your lives from a position of peace, strength and stability.  We love you all xxxx
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Our Great Outdoors 2015 Bucketlist #4

Our Great Outdoors 2015 Bucketlist #4

If you’re a usual reader of our blog then you’ll know that this is my personal challenge to help me on my journey with postnatal depression.  I try and take the children at least one place ‘outdoors’ each week.  Friday was one of those days where you just feel rubbish for no particular reason.  I’d had plans to do something with family for my impending birthday, but last minute they’d changed them on me.  Not the end of the world I know, but when you’re struggling with depression and it takes all your strength to build up to following through on your plans and they’re changed last minute it can be difficult to pull yourself out of the funk.  I nearly didn’t even take the girls to school, horrendous I know, but I just crashed into feeling so low.  Thank goodness I pulled myself out of that.  Once they were at school, the babies and I hid out at home having a play day.

It was so lovely outside, I knew that I would need to go out somewhere, I had promised Judah we would go to the beach.  So, I started to build myself up to face going to the beach after the school run.  All of this probably seems very dramatic but I also had a horrendous headache, and couldn’t face going to the corner shop for painkillers that we’d ran out of.  Very silly.  Just drank lots of water and tried to enjoy as much peace as I could get with two toddlers climbing all over me *chuckles*.

I still have physical struggles since having Eden and I know my weight doesn’t help, I started to pack the car up with all we would need (change of clothes for the girls, baby bags etc… also made sure I had my camera, the light was lovely) and my back was causing me tremendous pain.  I thought, how can I take them to the beach when I can barely walk.  When my back plays up it’s difficult bending to strap them into their car seats.

However, we were all packed up and I set off on the school run.  I told the girls as soon as they came out of class, that we were going to the beach and they were very excited.  So that was it, decision made, and off we went.  We went to the beach round the corner from my parents house so that if my Mum wanted she could join us a bit later.

I love seeing how happy the children are just being outdoors, wherever it may be. They just love the freedom to run around in the sun and fresh air. It is so good for them. I was really pleased that we’d waited for the girls and they were able to join in the fun. This wasn’t really an option a few weeks ago. It would be practically pitch black by the time they had finished school, but the days are getting longer, and we’re having daylight longer. So lovely, to be able to steal some time after school has finished.

I used to live near my parents, I often forget how lovely it was to be able to just go out to the beach everyday, which I did do all year round as I had two little dogs when I lived there.  You take simple things like this for granted when they’re always there, but I definitely miss being able to just be on the beach within 5 minutes of walking.  Judah was so excited, he’d been telling me the whole way in the car ‘you’re going the right way Mummy to the beach, good driving.’  This would be repeated multiple times throughout the drive there, and an occasional, ‘we’re going to make sandcastles’ in the poshest little Southern accent that I have no idea where he gets it from sometimes.  Of course his Dad is Southern but even James after being up here all these years doesn’t say ‘sandcastles’ the way Judah does.  (Probably from Peppa Pig, who seems to have raised my son despite my trying to avoid too much technology time *oops*).

Isis and Shayla-Rae started collecting shells.  Isis was especially excited by a little clam shell.  She was explaining to me what little creature may have lived inside.  It was like a mini version of the shell Ariel was supposed to sing from at the start of ‘The Little Mermaid’.  We took some beautiful photos of them all together that you’ll be able to see on this months ‘Siblings‘ shoot … there’s also a taster over on my Instagram feed.

Nana came to find us and we started to walk over to look at the ducks on the beautiful lake before we needed to head back.  My Mum invited us to hers for ham and cheese toasties and the children were very excited about this.  Little did I know she’d also bought some goodies and a little birthday cake for me.  Here are some photos of the children with Nana.  I love following behind snapping photos of them all together.

My Mum literally lived around the corner so she walked back with the buggy to save my back putting it back in the car at that point (I was glad for the delay), the girls wanted to walk with her, and Judah and I walked back to the car.  His little legs were getting tired by now.  He is such a funny character.  He spent most of our time at the beach telling us to be careful of the water as it can be dangerous.  He’s currently into Fireman Sam and is therefore extremely safety conscious.   He told me that he could see a fire in the distance whilst we were walking back.  I handed him my phone and told him, ‘you know what to do.’  He rang Fireman Sam and told him to come and put out the fire on the beach.

Do you see how his back leg is turned in when he’s walking?  This is exactly how his Dad walks.  Aren’t genetics funny?  He loved how because of where the sun was in the sky, our shadows were giant and long.  He is currently a big fan of shadows.  Excitedly telling me repeatedly that it was Mummy and Judah, really big shadows on the floor.

I love hanging out with my little man.  He makes me laugh constantly.  I love our random conversations he is so much like his Dad.  It’s funny how James doesn’t have the patience for his constant repetitiveness.  My mother-in-law informs me how James would have her climbing the walls with his tiresome ways.  I think what James fails to realise is I have had plenty of practice from him.  I always thought I was a chatty person, until I met my husband.  I have definitely learned to be quiet a lot more since meeting him.  I treasure silence most dearly these days *heehee*.

All in all we’d had a lovely time and I was so glad that I had pulled myself out of the misery and faced the day…. even if it did take me til about 2 o’clock to do it.
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