Thank You.

I just want to sincerely thank everyone for all of their kind thoughts regarding Mum's passing. It has been a month today, and though it is a difficult thing to deal with, there have been some good days.

We gave her a very fitting send off, with some 'lighter' moments, and I am sure that she would have loved it. When we saw Priscilla, Queen of the Desert last year, we all wore a feather boa, so we wore them to the funeral, mine was special, as it was the one that Mum wore. We also had a song from Priscilla, Color My World, during which we let go green and purple balloons. My three sisters, brother, Dad and I were pall bearers, even though it was a difficult thing to do, we were able to draw strength from one another and showed a sense of unity between us all.

At the viewing two of my sisters placed a dollar coin in Mums hands and proclaimed that Mum was right to play the pokies (slot machines) in heaven, it was wonderful to be able to have these lighter moments, there are a few others, but I will savour those.

I wasn't sure about going to the viewing, but I am so so glad that I did, Mum looked absolutely beautiful and so at peace.

My Dad is doing okay, he struggles when he goes to the shops in his small town, as so many people stop him to ask how he is etc, he says that when he can answer them without breaking down, he'll know that he is doing well. He and Mum were planning a trip to Queensland, to visit relations, and Dad is still going to go, he flies out next Wednesday for two weeks. It will be wonderful for him, and we will see him there as we are going to be there for holidays at the same time.

Onto some stitching news.

Suzanne had a blogaversary draw in July, and I was one of the lucky winners. I received a chart by Cherished Stitches called A Sentimental Thimble Case and a lovely note. I am looking forward to stitching this, Thank You so much Suzanne.

I also thought that it was about time that I posted a wip picture so here is my CdC, over half way now,

Some time ago, in a moment of weakness, LOL I made a small start on Miribilia's Lady of the Mist. She is stitched in green and is embellished with purple beads. I have decided to dedicate her to Mum and I have been mostly stitching on her since Mum's passing. Her skirt is HUGE, there are huge amounts of beading to be done but she will be beautiful and she is in Mum's favourite color, GREEN.

My long service leave from my job finished at the end of July, and my employer is now saying that I have failed to report for duty. They have given me until the 6th of October to report for duty, about five hours away, or they will terminated my employment status. It was initially 1st of September, but they have given me an extra month due to what I have recently been through, how nice of them (heavily sarcastic). We have the union helping us with some strategies at the moment, so we will see what happens.

Well must go now, thanks again for all of the wonderful support.

Touched my Heart

Holding Hands

This picture shows a line of little girls holding hands facing the immensity of ocean waves. Alone they might be washed away, but together they stand strong. Thank you for holding my hand somewhere along the way when I was facing a wave of my own. I hope you will reach for my hand when your own wave threatens.
All of us girls...
Old and young... Near and far...
Hold special memories of good times we've shared.
We've had our share of hard times when our friends were there to make us feel better.
We've shared...
our hearts...
our time...
our secrets...
our fears...
our hopes...
and our dreams...
Let us never break the chain of friends!

MUM

Just to let all of you know that Mum passed away peacefully tonight. She had a heart-attack at around 5:30, and by about 6:30 all of her pain was over. It all seems to be unreal at the moment. But she doesn't have to struggle anymore.

I received the call tonight at church during Luke's confirmation, which his Nan was mentioned during his little speech.

I am going to be with my Dad tomorrow, and I am not sure when I will be able to post again.

Thanks for all of your kind thoughts and prayers over the past week.

A Mum update, and an Award

I saw Mum the weekend after her stroke, and I must say that I was a little shocked, but also surprised at how well she seemed to be coping.

Her speech is slurred, but she is able to be understood.

She has regained movement in her left leg, but is not standing as yet. Her left arm is pretty much immobile, but she is able to shrug her shoulder. All in all she is making progress and some progress is definitely better than none at all.

Her spirits are amazingly high, she is giving cheek and complaining about the food she says that the food is 'S#!(' LOL. Her swallowing reflex has been affected and her food has to be the consistency of honey to prevent it going straight to her lungs, this is highly undesirable as she has a lung infection on top of everything else. She is very thirsty and is always asking for a weak black tea with a dash of cold water, or a beer LOL.

She has been dehydrated and has had a nasal-gastric tube put in place to increase her fluid intake, and the silly bugger pulled it out. It has been re-inserted, along with a trip to the hospital, she is now in a place that specialises in re-hab, for an x-ray to ensure that the positioning is correct and her right hand is now sporting a sock which has been taped on to prevent her from pulling it out again.

While I was visiting her she complained that her dentures had not been cleaned since the stroke, five days, so she asked me to clean them for her. Now, I am the only one in my family the youngest of five, that has their own teeth, and of all the people to ask, she asked me LOL. Well I gave it a shot and did the best that I could, she said that they felt better.

I would sincerely like to thank each and everyone of you that have left comments about Mum, it is so comforting to know that so many people are thinking of Mum and my family during this time. While talking to Dad on the phone one night, I told him that I had blogged about Mum and I told him about the messages that I had received, he was so touched he was actually crying and he said that it was wonderful to know that so many were thinking of us. Thanks everyone.

Ann has very kindly bestowed an award on me and my blog. On her blog she said that she was impressed with my cake decorating abilities, see previous posts where I made a Pirate Ship cake for Joel's birthday. Thanks so much Ann.

The 'rules' of the award are as follows:

1 Put the logo on your blog
2 Add a link to the person who awarded you
3 Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4 Add links to those blogs on yours
5 Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs.

I am not going to nominate any blogs, sorry Ann, but everyone who is a regular reader, or those who have left a comment regarding Mum, please accept this award from me.

My next post will include a prize, and some wip pictures.

A Gift and some not so good news.....

This has taken awhile to post about, sorry Ranae.

Here is the prize that I won on Ranae's blog. It is called Offering From the Heart and it is by Ewe and Eye and Friends. The verse says "Please now accept this little gift an offering from the (heart picture)". It is a gorgeous design, and Ranae also included some DMC Pearl thread, Thank You so much Ranae. I love it, and I am looking forward to stitching it.



















Now for the not so good news. Yesterday I was at a cafe having a coffee with some friends and my mobile rang. It was my Dad and highly unusual for him to call me on my mobile and in the middle of the day. He said that when he got back home from walking their little dog, he found Mum had fallen over in the bathroom, he called an ambulance and the driver suspected that Mum had suffered a stroke. Dad was so upset, understandably, and I just broke down crying. A friend called DH and he came and calmed me down, as all I wanted to do was get in the car and travel the five hours to go and see Mum.
Dad rang later that night, after he had been to see Mum in hospital, half an hour away from where they live, and said that her spirits were high and she had regained some of her 'cheek' while he was there. She has paralysis down her left side and her speech is a little slurred.
She will be in hospital for some time, as she has to have physio and speech pathology. But the best news is that there appears to be no permanent brain damage, there was no bleeding on the brain. Apparently Mum was brushing her hair and dropped her brush, and while picking it up, slipped on the mat. It is not known if the fall caused the stroke, or the stroke caused the fall. Either way it seems that she has fared rather well, Thank God. Now just the long road to recovery.
Please keep Mum in your thoughts and prayers as she begins her recovery, she is a strong and determined woman so we are hoping that these traits see her through this difficult time.

I WON, and some WIP pictures.

Ranae had a competition on her blog a little while ago, and I WON!!! WOO HOO!!! Can you tell that I am excited!!!! Thank you so much Ranae for your generosity and kindness. Here is a link to the post with details of the competition and a picture of the chart, http://crazyxstitcher.blogspot.com/2008/06/its-finally-beautiful-day.html. I have e-mailed you my snail mail address Ranae, and hope that the e-mail gets sent as I have been having problems, need to get DH to have a look at it soon.

Now that I have managed to compose myself, here are some long overdue wip pictures.

The first two pictures are of HAED Faery Tales. I am really enjoying stitching on this one at the moment. I am doing the forth row of ten stitches and I can see a pathway on the top of the cliff, the beginnings of a person's coat. The second Faery Tales picture only has three rows completed and I can see the beginning of a wall, of which Cinderella and her Prince are dancing on the top, and the beginning of a ship flying through the night skies. I am assuming that the ship has Peter Pan and co. aboard. Please feel free to correct me if this is not so.

My next wip picture is of a little design that I started recently, and is a LHN design from their collaboration with Crescent Colours and is called Patience. This is a gorgeous design, and the colours in the photo are pretty true to life.

I would like to thank everyone for the lovely comments about Joel's birthday cake. Yes we did eat and destroy the cake. Funnily enough not many of kids finished their pieces, it must have been the black icing putting them off combined with the chocolate cake mix that I decided on, not to worry, the chickens enjoyed it LOL.

I would also like to thank everyone who commented about Georgina and looked at her blog and left a comment there, I can't even begin to understand what her parents and siblings are going through. It just must be heart-breaking for them to see their sister and little girl going through so much and at such a young age too.

That is all from me for the moment, almost time to get the boys from school.

Hope everyone is well and getting lots of stitching done.

"Ahoy there me hearties"

Well here is the cake. It was pretty easy to make, it is amazing what skewers/kebab sticks can do to hold a cake together. Joel was very happy with it and at the end of the day that is what is important. The pirates came from a toy which Joel has had for some time and I also added a treasure chest with some of Caitlyn's toy jewellery.

If you are a religious person could you please keep this young girl, Georgina, in your thoughts. She was struck down by a mystery illness over a year ago and was placed in a medically induced coma. Whenever the coma drugs were eased off, she would begin fitting. I learnt of her blog at our old church not long after she became ill and have followed her plight via the blog set up by her father and a family friend. In his most recent post her father has particularly asked for patience.

Such a long time.....

Where did the rest of April and May go? Are we in June!!!!
WOW, so long between posts, huge apologies everyone.
I have been reading your blogs, my bloglines is a very manageable 72 feeds at the moment, just not posting on my own.
So what has been happening!!! Joel had his birthday on the 6th of June and is now 6 years old. He is such a delightful little man, and so funny. (His antics deserve a post all on their own). He is the class comedian and seems to be very popular amongst his peers and teachers. He had a small accident on the slide at school and managed to put a cut on the back of his head, the school rang me, I took him to the hospital emergency department, and while he was describing to the doctor what had happened he said that he had "broken his head". The doctor was quite amused at his description. All is well now, they didn't stitch his wound, just used some glue, which is still in his hair.

Joel's birthday fell on a long weekend for us in Oz, and since he has never had a birthday party before, we decided that his first year of school would be a great time to have one. So Sunday is the day, about 12 kids are coming . I just keep on telling myself that it is only for two hours. I am attempting to make him a pirate ship cake, first time for everything, and will post some pictures of it if it turns out okay!

I have been stitching and made progress on Faery Tales, A Love Song, Celtic Banner and VOHRH. I have another new start, just a small one, a LHN design from their scriptures series, would eventually like to stitch them all and make them into a quilted wall hanging, one day!

We replaced the chicken that died. The bird that we got is quite young and she is so tame. Just as well, as she decided that she like our neighbours yard better than ours and kept on 'flying' yes 'flying' over our fence. We trimmed her wing and some of her tail feathers, and she still manages to escape by first flying onto part of our compost bin and then on to the fence. Rotten bird. Where she came from she was free range so she just doesn't like being in the pen. Now we have roughly covered the pen with some bird netting and this seems to be working so far. And after the trauma of some time ago, they have started to lay again, YAY fresh eggs again.

We have been to our beach house and while we were there we took the kids to the Scienceworks Museum, they had a wonderful time. We went into the planetarium where we watched a short film about our southern skies and learnt where we could find Mars and Saturn, and some constellations.

Well I had better get to bed as I have a cake to make tomorrow, and a house to make presentable.

Hope everyone is well and getting lots of stitching done.

Sorry everyone.

A few people have asked me in the comments if 'chooks' are our chickens, yes they are indeed our chickens, sorry about that.

Time to drop the children at school and kindergarten and then I have a day to me me me. It will involve some stitching, perhaps a walk and some horrid house work. Oh well, house work does need to be done sometimes, doesn't it?

Stay safe everyone.

Trouble with chooks, and Faery Tales

I would like to thank all of you for your kinds wishes and comment on my last post, stitching bloggers are some of the kindest people I know, I smile inwardly every time I read comments that you make.

Last Saturday night when Luke fed the chooks, he unfortunately neglected to lock the chook pen properly, and on Sunday morning while we were at church one of them apparently became adventurous and wandered into the back yard with the dogs. Our neighbour heard all of the commotion, jumped our back fence and managed to lock the chooks away. When we came home we saw all the feathers and checked on the chooks and they were all huddled into their shelter. Our neighbour told us what he had found and we thanked him for all that he had done. We kept a close watch on them, put water and food in their shelter, but unfortunately one died through the week. The other 3 have survived the shock and are now venturing out of the shelter for food and water.

Poor Luke he felt so bad, but there was little anyone could do, so we just gave him lots of hugs and reassured him that we knew he would never do this intentionally. If you remember I was struggling with a medication change and got quite upset over the poor chooks, but am now relieved that the 3 remaining chooks are now alright. I think it will be some time before we see any eggs from them, a person at hubby's work said around a month.

A stitchy update: here is Faery Tales.

Hopefully the photos are clear enough on your monitors. In the larger photo, the brown blobby bits are the beginnings of something exciting, something other than sky and water that is LOL!! The second photo is from the blobby bits to the bottom. I have stitched ten rows from top to bottom and this totals 4530 stitches all up.

I am going to do the same with Land of Enchantment, so all you can see at the moment is lots of black tree, and then I would like to go back to VOHRH.

I hope that everyone is getting in lots of stitching, stay safe and happy.