Another 2009 Round Up Post.

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2009….

Sitting here, staring down the barrel of new years, I’m thinking that I didn’t even come close to achieving this year’s theme.

2009 The Year of Balance.

Oh how I suck at balance.
There is nothing at all balanced about my life.
Balance was a dumb idea.

But it wasn’t all bad.
Looking back down my list of goals for 2009, I may have sucked at the balance one but it wasn’t all a total disaster.

The girls did have a wonderful year at kinder and continued to love ballet. They are not the most social kids in the world and didn’t make any really good friends at kinder but they were happy, very happy, which makes me happy.

The Small Boy did talk… eventually… and now we can’t shut him up, of course.

There have been no renovations. There were good reasons why 2009 wasn’t year for renovations. I don’t like those reasons, they make me cranky and disapointed, but they are good and right reasons. I have my fingers and toes crossed that this time next year the photo above of the back of our little house will look much, MUCH, different.

The garden has been good and bad this year. We grew winter veggies for the first time this year and managed the permanent part of the garden pretty well. The spring/summer garden is late and slow and a bit disappointing, but there will be produce, eventually… maybe.

I’ve already confessed the lack of balance on my part this year. I tried off and on but I don’t think my heart was really in it.

Same goes for growing my design business. For a while there I was right on track and doing great. Then things got crazy and I’ve let it go completely since getting pregnant, and I’m actually not sad about that at all. It’ll all come good again eventually.

I did redesign the blog and I actually still like it almost a year later (though I do want to tweak and redesign a few things here and there). There are still so many things I’d like to do with my blog, but there’s still time.

We all stayed pretty healthy this year – apart from a few head stitches, the odd lingering cold and me wrecking my back. No one went to hospital this year which is a huge bonus!

And as for the something magical happening….. well I think we got that covered with baby4.

So really, 2009 wasn’t a complete flop after all. Sure we’ve had to change our plans and re-negotiate ideas and adapt as needed, and at times that has frustrated the heck out of me and made me miserable and angry…. but it hasn’t been that bad, in actual fact it’s been quite good.

And one failed yearly theme isn’t going to stop me coming up with another one…. It’s good for me to have something to work for and even better for me to be able to look back and be happy with the even the un-perfect stuff.

Balance may not have been my best idea, but I’m coming up with an awesome one for 2010, so stay tuned!

I hope everyone has a safe and happy celebration tonight, whatever you do, and that 2010 is a fabulous year for us all!

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Boy or Girl?

We are not finding out the sex of this baby.

The Baldy Boy desperately wants to know, but I’m the one doing the puking and peeing and lugging around of the beast so I get final say. We are not finding out.

We didn’t find out with any of the others either. Despite the fact that I always want other people to find out the sex of their babies, I am firmly in the ‘wait and see’ camp for myself for a hundred reasons which make sense only to my warped and pregnant mind.

I’m really not that phased either way, boy or girl, doesn’t really make much difference. The girls, on the other hand, have a very strong preference. In the straight forward and attitude filled words of two six year old girls…

Zoe – “We want a sister.”

Izzy – “Yeah. We asked for a boy last time and he hasn’t turned out to be as good as we thought”.

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Christmas… and all that.

Christmas Day was busy but lovely….

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Of course there were presents…. lots of presents.

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The Barbies have multiplied…

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..so have the trains…

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..and a budding Chemist was born.

And then it was Boxing Day…. Boxing Day, a whole lot of nothing with just us… bliss.

Hope you are all enjoying some holiday bliss.

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In Lieu of a Christmas Card…

Instead of a Christmas card, this year we sent this email to friends and family…

Don’t expect a Christmas card this year. There will be no fancy animated emails, or gorgeous kid photos or even braggy Christmas letters. Life is too crazy and I have been too busy growing this….

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Baby number four is officially due two days after Muski’s birthday but is likely to show up any time it damn well wants if past experience is anything to go by.

The girls are keen on a sister, but Muski is hoping for a car….. or a dinosaur. The Baldy Boy is just hoping not to be sleeping in the shed by then, but it’s not looking good on that front.

So if you didn’t already know, now you do. The sleeping and vomiting has curbed my blogging a little of late but I’m hopeful (oh please let it be so) that things will be better on that front after Christmas and life will be back to normal. But I don’t think I’ll be blogging again till after the big day so now is the time to say –

Merry Christmas from all of us here at the Pickle Farm.
I hope you all have a happy and safe holiday period doing whatever it is you like best!

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Making a List…

If I keep saying it over and over again and writing it down a few times maybe I will remember all the things I want to get done between now and Thursday lunch time when our guests arrive….

- Clean the house (and that is one HUGE task let me tell you)
- Put away washing (love the Baldy Boy for washing a million loads but now I have to put it all away somewhere!)
- Finish the crafty presents we are making (sounds like a lot but it only an hour of easy painting with the kids)
- Make bread for Thursday’s lunch
- Make pancake mix for Christmas breakfast
- Wrap the last few presents

There that doesn’t sound too much does it… ok if you knew how much of a disaster zone our house was you’d probably disagree, and I probably will too when I am looking for somewhere to hide ten baskets of clean laundry on Thursday morning! Lucky for me our house guests aren’t too picky about these kinds of things!

What’s on your to do list?

In other news… the Nutcracker was fabulous, but the fancy Christmas light show at the Casino totally freaked Zoe out and she and I had to leave. Slowly slowly learning what Christmas traditions we’ll do and which we’ll avoid like the plague!

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