Snap shot reflections on this blustery Autumn day...

Autumn colours from today

Bujana with her tennis racket in the garden this afternoon

Eliyan's rose. Still Blooming.

Sweetcorn flowers, shivering haze of misty lilac and gold upon elegantly poised green stalks.
Below.
A snapshot of the dining room table laden with voyages to undiscovered lands and distant horizons.

We have started to read the new testament from beginning through during morning prayers.
This morning we reflected on the journey of the magi.

From their simple yet profound trust in God's guiding star, the following of it out of their own culture across their own boundary lines. To the dream that warned them not to go back to Herod.

The gifts they gave and the deep meaning within each of them, and of course, the taking of a different route back to their own lands. Each segment a testimony, a lesson, a journey in itself.

And there is a profound truth here. For don't we all take a different route back to ourselves, our ways and our lands after meeting with Jesus? Somehow after finding Him, we too, find ourselves a little way beyond the boundaries we've built, both internal and external.

Even on days when every sinew seems tightly wound, twisted into unnatural shape, when conversations go on in my head as a kind of background noise, and I can't even finish a sentence without losing the thread or even the very next word I was going to say in the melting pot that becomes of my brain.

A few moments with the sacred, just draws out the toxins and I am, once again able, to inhale deep drafts of oxygen.

Somehow the return journey to the world, that is my life, takes another route.
 Across the wide open spaces of gold and green.

Yesterday when we reflected on the birth of Jesus I could only imagine Mary's pain.
Taking that long journey to Bethlehem, only to give birth to her first child in the midst of strangers, in the cold, cold, air of a rustic stable.
She lived an obscure life up until the resurrection and the founding of the early church.
A life of sorrow, sacrifice, mundanity, all struck through with the faith to see beauty and life in what may seem ugly and dead to other eyes.

Today, before lunch we stopped at the park.
It was a proper blustery Autumn day, the ducks flapped about the river touting for bread crusts.
Sadly we forgot to bring any for them.

Here we have come to the end of the day.
Fina is talking to her little "pets" Mummy owl, baby owl, little owl and Egbert the chick (her favourite stuffed toys :) in her cot beside me.

Matilda and Bujana are running and laughing downstairs.

Dishes lay piled, Mashed potato curdles upon the still warm stove and upon the air lingers a small, whisper of prayer still.

Hardly uttered, yet known and embraced all the same by the One who hears without a word being spoken.

From today.... and yesterday

For some reason, I have been feeling a gradual swell of emotion come over me over the last week or so.

I just couldn't hold back the tears from the morning.

I cried about Eliyana.

Floods of tears.

I was trembling, like a stream was running through me.

Part of my body almost feels like it hasn't quite caught onto the fact that we lost her and is still waiting, preparing for something that is not going to happen.

Part of me feels torn apart that we had to go to the hospital and couldn't deliver her naturally at home.

But I have to realise that her spirit had already flown to it's heavenly home.

It's funny but whenever I think of her in heaven I see Mother Mary close by.

I feel almost like she's growing under her nurturing love only a breath away yet beyond a veil I cannot lift just yet.

Tani took me and the girls into the countryside. The older ones did some archery with him, the little ones tumbled down the hills doing roly polys!

There was such a special quality to the light, I wished I'd had the camera, but like so many times, beauty is often best captured and imprinted on the soul rather than the page.

The Autumnal colours and the fresh crisp sunlight turned everything to glass, shining, shimmering.
I drank it in.

You know somedays when you just feel like you're chasing your tail all day and never catching it?

Today was a wash with storm clouds that smelled of rain but held on tight to their own salty tears.

Sometimes the sky gets into your veins, today felt like a foggy autumn sky.

We'll become a little like driftwood tomorrow I think.

 Weather shaped but light enough to float to stiller waters, moor against the banks of this running river, till the sun peeks through the blue and the gravity of the ocean comes into view.

some of our fun homeschooling activities this week

Bujana's papier mache bowl made by lining a pudding bowl with cling film before adding layers of papier mache made with strips of old newspaper and pva glue then waiting to dry... before painting a rainbow out of it:)

Matilda loves to sew. I recently bought her a small piece of cross stitch canvas and she chose some nice big chunky buttons to sew onto it with a thick needle.

We have recently acquired some new "pets". The girls have had lots of fun watching their worm friend dig and tunnel through this home made worm house.

We layered soil and sand over some small stones at the bottom and covered the top with leaves which decompose into the soil over time.

It is a great way for the little ones to understand how earth worms fertilize the ground.

Saturday Sewing...

I made this little top for a friend's little girl the other day and couldn't resist trying it on Seraphina.
The front is shirred and the back has button holes to make it simple to put on and take off.

Of swallows and amazons, and kites and bird tables....

Today we went flying kites. There was not a soul on the green field. Everyone is back to school now. The children ran and ran till their legs ached.

Freedom chased at their heels as the wind blew wild. Tugging at the kites, soaring and diving against the billowing clouds in the deep amethyst sky.

Then the swallows came. Like little winged dolphins they seemed to be playing with us. Swooping low, wing tips flitting, scuffing at the flickering grasses.

They came closer and closer to us, almost as if they were playing chase. "You can't catch me, you can't catch me" was the tease of their flight.

Then the girls played hide and seek, and found themselves a swing and seesaw from the anatomy of an old and weather beaten tree. Cheese rolls and sweet tea was our picnic, using the car as a windbreak.

I fell asleep with Fina curled beside me as soon as we got home and Tani started to make a bird table with the older ones outside.

The girls love to study the garden birds.
Incorporating part of their everyday life and interests into their homeschooling is something I will try to find the opportunity to do more and more as the year goes by.

So just a few words here, jotting down a piece of the day for memories sake.
Praying there will be many more, "ink impressions" of memories made by this time next year!

Podding Peas... Finding Treasures....

This week gratitude started like the podding of peas.

One by one little blessings appearing beneath broken shells. Opened shells.

Bright green sweetness popping in little mouths.

And a mad scrambling under a tent, peas and all, when the sudden afternoon rain shower blew over!

Yesterday, thankfulness was a birthday cake for Daddy, that was meant to be blue but ended up green because you made the icing with yellow butter cream :) (It was even more delicious)

Then two hours alone with Tani on his birthday.

Talking, opening up, sharing, shedding shells, becoming real, vulnerable, making deeper connections, walking, laughing over silly jokes that make no sense to anyone else but us.

Remembering when we first met all those years ago!

How did all this happen four girls and this!

All within what seems to be a heartbeat of a time?

Slowly, steadily with His hand the opening of the protective shell we've built around our lives, our family, so to share more, give more, bring in more, abundantly, the seeds of His own harvest, not ours only.

Recognising deep within my soul that God brought me and him together from the very beginning.

How, really we are the missing pieces of each other.

Two halves of a pod around four little peas!

How I love him for his heart, his courage, his honor and honesty, his childlike spirit,
his creative mind, the sacrifices he makes for us, some little, some very big, all given as gifts, the love he has for us, the ways he shows it in small ways and big ways every day.

Then the unveiling of beauty.

 As summer fades seamlessly into the velvet hems of autumn.

That drape like an endless evening.

The golden, dappled light of late August. pools around and swells my heart with thankfulness.

If I could swim in the light of an autumn sunset!

Indigo blots on white linen, amethyst storm clouds set in platinum sunlight.

The flush of sudden rain. The sparkling emerald leaves, when the shower is over.

Little apples fresh picked from the branch, red as little sun blanched cheeks, bitter sweet delicious to taste.

Pots of jam, plum and damson berry. Shades of Autumn, bottled, fragrant, concentrated.
Perfect spread thickly on warm crusts.

Warm cups of tea beside a basket of knitting on a quiet evening of early bedtimes after a busy, blustery, outdoorsy day.

Trusting in God in the letting go.

As one season moves toward another.

...a few scraps of our home...

Says it all.

New projects!

Beatrix Potter,Still a children's favourite.

A pastel portrait of my irish paternal grandmother at 21. She lived to be 103.

Emmy's clay jug.

Kitchen windowsill. With a fircone found by Bujana on a trip to the park!

This blanket was crocheted by my Granny and has wrapped up 3 generations of babies!

Emmy's present for her littlest sister's first birthday!

Tilly and her apple!

All I can say is. There are alot of girls in this house!

And Girls = sparkly stuff!

Prayer beads for small hands