Grat no 11: "See you at The House Grandpa"

Yesterday I officially said my final goodbye to my Grandpa. It was a beautiful service and I was so proud of my own Dad who had organised the service, written the eulogy and then delivered it with such composure, love and respect for his Dad.

I am grateful for my Grandpa and the life and love that he shared with us. Grandpa has really been the only one of my grandparents whom I can recall sharing such a strong faith and love of God with me. I loved how interested he was when I used to call him up for a random chat and I will always remember these times with a lot of fondness. The last time I saw my Grandpa was last Saturday night. Mum, Dad and I went in to visit him at the hospital. This was a really difficult time - I thought I would not be as emotional as I was, but watching my own Dad say his last goodbye to his Dad really hit me hard. But it was just so precious seeing how excited Grandpa was to be finally going home. "See you at The House son" he said with a cheeky smile to Dad.

My Mum described this visit with Grandpa well, she said He has one foot on earth and one in heaven already" and it was so true. All of his senses were heightened and he could see and hear us without even using his glasses or hearing aids.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to give my Grandpa one last kiss, tell him that I loved him and wish him a 'great trip'. P'haps even more precious was when he told me he loved me and gave me the most beautiful wave as I left the room. No-one else saw that child-like wave that he gave me...I will treasure this beautiful memory forever.

Today I am grateful for my Grandpa. "See you at The House Grandpa"

Love Melinda

xx

Number: 9 The Big Red Ripe Strawberry

Well today my little girl just got bigger! She is now officially 4 years old - wow!

This morning we celebrated her beautiful life with a Strawberry Party. If you had wandered through our house today you could be forgiven for thinking you had stumbled into a real strawberry patch...our house has officially been strawberryfied!!

And what a wonderful day it was!! I was so grateful to have had 5 of my closest girlfriends and their kidlets there to make the day really special and memorable. I was also really grateful that I had had the opportunity to do so much party planning with my sister in Thailand...it really helped me feel like part of her was there when I looked at all the things we had hunted out and bought together for the party. Kind of made me feel like she wasn't missing out so much as well. I liked that. This party was also the first time I had really included my Mum in the planning and I really enjoyed sharing this with her, and seeing her get really involved. I am so extremely grateful that my amazing hubby was able to take the time off work and be apart of the day even though it was on a weekday (ahhh the perks of being the boss)!

Finally I am grateful for my beautiful Bella. I am so grateful for the soft hearted, generous, loving, funny, strong willed, determined, self sufficient, fashion conscious, friendly and nurturing little person she has become over the past 4 years. Her inner strength continually amazes me. I am in awe at how her confidence has increased... how her love and understanding of God is growing and deepening. How her ability to seek and show love is blossoming. How her capacity to overcome, learn new skills and excel is developing at such a rapid and exciting rate. Her loving and nurturing spirit for animals and young children brings a tear to my eye. I feel so blessed to have been given this very special child by God to watch over and care for. Words cannot express how much love this precious child.

So my main gratitude is all about you my little strawberry girl...I am so grateful to be your Mummy...to see you grow bigger every day...to show you how to love and nurture...to introduce you to an amazing God who created you and has a plan for your life...to enjoy you and all that is Bella Imogen Hynes.

I love you Boochie-coo, happy birthday sweet girl.

Number 7: Catch me if you can!

I am grateful for the opportunity to run out to the shops today on my own. Although it was only for about half an hour I managed to get about 5 jobs done in that time- yes my productivity was incredible!! I am very grateful for moments like these, when both my kiddies are asleep and my hubby is working from home which allows me to quickly dash out.... ahhhhh so nice:)

Number 5: Keep Focused

Certain people are put in our lives at particular times by God to help build us up, lift our spirits and keep us focused on living in a God-centered way.

I am grateful for the different people I can see that God has strategically placed in my life for this reason.

I love that he knows exactly what I need to hear and I love seeing the creative way he comes up with to communicate his point.

Sometimes he provides this encouragement or direction straight from the Bible, and other times he hides it in the beauty or complexity of nature.

But so often I find he uses these special friends in my life who have a similar faith to mine, to help empower, challenge and encourage me.I am grateful that I love a God who is bigger than me and my problems.

Number 2: Shhhh

I am grateful for a chance to catch up on some jobs while my two little beauty's sleep peacefully.

Ahhhh it's so nice to do this without interruptions:)

O.k so I may be regretting this later on tonight when my eldest can't get to sleep at her normal bedtime LOL

Actually it is usually a lovely opportunity to spend some quality time alone with her, so it really will be a win-win situation I think!

Number 1: Real

Sometimes issues arise which make you laugh, cry, raise your eyebrows in utter confusion or make you a little hot under the collar. But isn't it amazing what you can learn about yourself and others, despite all that flurry of emotion. I feel grateful that I have the ability to learn from the experiences I have had in the past, to better deal with and cope with the more interesting scenarios life sometimes throws at me. I am grateful for a very level headed and wise husband and two very funny, cute girls to keep me real and sane.

1000 Gratitude Challenge

We're thinking about following the lead set by Ann Voskamp at Holy Experience.

But we're going to work together to make a list of 1000 Gratitudes!

Do you want to join us as we reach our goal and begin to feel more joy, less stress, better health and more connected? Email us at:

melhynes@mac.com

Boy or Girl?

Today I wanted to reflect on my gratitude for the beautiful group of girls from my LifeGroup. They are 7 of the most funny, friendly and loving people and I am so appreciative of them. Last night we had a baby shower for three of the girls who are pregnant and due in the next few months. It was such a great night of laughs, yummy food and some funny baby shower games! I personally love new babies...I love the anticipation and celebration of the new life that is growing inside these beautiful women... and I love friends who I can share the ins and outs of life with. This past year has been full of a lot of highs and lows for me and several of these girls have been there with through it. My gratitude is for their love and support and for the inspiration and encouragement that they continue to be to me. I feel very blessed with this group of girls.

Baskets baskets baskets galore

I got the best bargain today. I have been waiting for over 2 years to find really cheap nice brown baskets to match my house and today FINALLY I went to Sam's warehouse and wallaaaah I got the most perfect baskets of various sizes for ultra CHEAP! They were basically giving them away LOL. I am grateful for this bargain that has now become my mothers day present - is it wrong that I am already using them?!

Mel

All in a days work

Today's gratitude focusses on the privilege of working. I feel really grateful that I am able bodied (although maybe bleary eyed a lot of the time) am quite capable of typing, emailing, faxing, creating spreadsheets, downloading and basic account keeping - just to name a few things. Sometimes I sit in my study (like this evening) and I multitask several of these things all at once!!! Gee it feels good lol! So tonight my grat is for the ability to work, be it for our business, our personal family affairs, my admin job or even of a more social nature...it feels good to have these skills and be able to use them:)

Mel

Fairy Party

Today my 3 year got to go to a Fairy Party at a dance school. It was such a great party - very well run and I feel really grateful that she was able to have such an awesome time dressing up, dancing, playing games, eating party food and doing the obstacle course etc. Plus it was lovely to have a chance to see her playing and having a great time with her new kinder friends. I was also really grateful to see how confident she is becoming. She was such a happy and willing participant and while I checked on her from time to time, she was absolutely content to join in and follow the 2 girls who were running the party's instructions. It just really warmed my heart and again reassured me how my quietly confident child is really 'growing up'!

REFRESHING

I am grateful for the rain. How wonderful to finally have a whole stack of rain to make our garden grow, our new plants and vegies thrive and not to mention the fact that we are in a drought and desperately need the water (well in Victoria anyway!) I can't recall the last time we had 3 thunderstorms in the space of a week!! Bring it on I say - I used to think Summer was my favourite season but now I'm not so sure! I am loving Autumn:)

Fly to me

Today my grat is for having my hubby back home safely. He had to travel to Sydney for work and got home very late last night...and it so lovely to have my bestie home to hang out with again!!!!! He has worked so hard for our family over these past 2 weeks and I feel really grateful that it is looong weekend and that he finally grab a little R & R that he so deserves!

Gotta hand it to you - what a bargain!!

I am grateful for a birthday voucher I was given back in Dec. I have been umming and ahhing about what to spend it on and yesterday I got the best bargain on a lovely handbag and wallet - both of which I was in desperate need of new ones as mine were literally falling apart!!!!

It is the first time I have ever spent more than $20 on either of these items and it feel so nice to have ones that look like they might actually last the distance!!!!! Gotta love quality yay.

So I am grateful for my friends generosity, my voucher, the getting a great bargain and my stylish new handbag!!!!

Passport grat

I am grateful that today when I went to complete my 'working with children' check at the Post Office that I realised my Passport has actually just run out!!!! I am grateful that I can get onto it now and that I realised before I booked any tickets O.S!!!!! (Yay for being able to fill out the form on line and it was super easy!)

Plus I am grateful that it has made me become more organised with the kids passports and now we are all well underway to having them done:)

Kinder Grat

I am so grateful for the beautiful teachers who have made my daughters first experiences of kinder so warm, welcoming and POSITIVE! It's fantastic how much she loves kinder and while I am not saying it will never happen - I have been thoroughly grateful I have not had to battle "I don't want to go Mummy".

I feel thrilled with the way they have integrated the children into a 2 full day per week program. It has been well thought out and very nurturing.

An extra special thing I am grateful for is my Mum who has kindly offered to collect Bella each Thursday afternoon. This routine is just perfect for her and it is with such great anticipation she looks forward to Grandma picking her up... at times I can't tell which one she is more excited about! It is just lovely for me too as I don't have to rush off at 2:45pm either...making it heaps easier for me to do a big stint of work while my little one sleeps!

Definitely lots of gratitude from me when it comes to Thursdays and Fridays!!

I Will

I will smile even when I am discouraged

I will hold my head up while I feel weary

I will remain calm though I feel windswept

I will be peaceful despite the frenzy of problems awaiting

I WILL rest my cares on the shoulder of my heavenly Father

For what else can I possibly do than this?

I WILL wake at the dawn of a new day

And choose be a reflection of the life and love that He is.

Backspace Button

Have you ever typed a sentence, only to backspace and delete it?

I do this all the time…for many reasons. Sometimes it’s because what I have written has come out the wrong way - it just wasn’t what I was trying to say. Other times it’s because it is worded badly…will anyone even understand what I am getting at? Sometimes it is just because the words are bound up inside and trying to get them out is like scratching and poking at a splinter just hiding beneath the surface of the skin. Whatever the reasons, I backspace a lot!

I wonder if I could backspace in real life…what things would be different. Would I try and backspace the things I have said that were unkind, even cruel at times? I think I’d like to be able to do that. There are even some events in this past year I feel like I would like to ‘backspace’ and delete. The strange thing is however, I know God has allowed these circumstances to occur, and he is using them to help me grow. So I remind myself, does that mean these experiences aren’t painful? Does that mean that I have no emotions attached to them? No of course not. It means that I need to learn to ask God to give me the strength to endure rather than question how can I erase what has just happened to me.

Isn’t that a challenging yet fantastic phrase “God give me the strength to endure” these challenges. This is my prayer at the moment. Each day seems to bring new challenges, new struggles that remind me that I weak, frail, emotional, full of faults and failures. Each day seems to be full of things that I wish I could ‘backspace’ and do again, hoping for a different outcome. But I am confident that as I am reminded of how fragile I am at the moment, that God is my strength, he is my Father and he will help me to ENDURE and overcome. It might not be today or tomorrow but I will begin the see the changes in myself that he is doing. I will begin to see that rather than relying on a backspace to fix my messed up life, I can rely on the real AUTHOR… the one who had plans for me before I was even born. The one who is the beginning and the end and the ONE who doesn’t need a ‘backspace’ button to write the story of my life.

BUG OFF!

It's been a huge week. My hubby and I were furiously racing around getting kids in bed etc on Friday night to finally sit down and spend some time chilling out because we had hardly seen each other this week and low and behold we found a bug infestation in our house! Well it started gradually, first we noticed them in our eldest daughters bed and room. We promptly popped her into our room and began dismantling her room bit by bit. From what we could tell it looked like bedbugs. The more we read about bed bugs the more stressed we became. They nest anywhere and everywhere, you need professional bug killers, you need to HOT wash everything and dry everything in dryer. Often people just burn things or throw them out because they are so extremely difficult to get rid of. So anyway we started doing the hot wash and dry thing to try and begin the clean up process, incredibly one flippin bug made it through alive both the processes!!!!! We were feeling quite discouraged (did I mention tired?) by 2am when we realised they were in most rooms of the house and the piles of clothes and doonas bagged up kept growing. So we fell into bed for 5 hours so I could continue to dream of squishing bugs!! I should mention too that our daughter had bug bites all down her arms which is a common place bed bugs bite. I had them on my feet as I'd been in her bed the night before to settle her. (Prob upset now I think of it, because she was being eaten by those nasty critters!!!)

Anyhoo, we had found a bug inside our pillow so we were pretty worried about the bugs being inside our new mattress (our daughters was very old so we were happy to through it out).

So the next day came around very fast and we soon realised we needed help...Nana came over about lunchtime to take the girls for us and we managed to find a company to come over and spray our house. YAY. You should have seen our house...it looked like a bomb has hit it literally. You could not walk for tripping over massive 60 litre black garbage bags full of clothes, toys, doonas etc.

The bug guys were great. They said they looked very much like bed bugs but didn't think they were big enought to be bed bugs. It took them a while to decide but eventually the verdict was given...they weren't bed bugs BUT of course it was still an infestation so we had them treat the whole house. However it DID mean we didn't have to do all the washing we had originally thought so PRAISE GOD. But since a lot of the stuff was mixed in with dirty clothes, half washed half dried, some still had bugs in it...it still meant for a bit of fun at the good old Luandrette. Now there's a place that I don't frequent very often! So we came home yesterday afternoon to our house that was bug free had very literally been soaked form wall to ceiling! Yep...all the walls, floors, mattresses, couches everything!!! By about 9pm last night after drying out the house it was pretty much all back to normal....what a huge evening it was though putting the clothes away, the rooms back to normal, and thinking man if we were tired Friday night, we are EXHAUSTED now!!!

So how grateful do you think I was when we fell into bed and realised we could have a sleep in this morning because the kids were staying at Nana's house?! YEEHA! Plus, my grat is for the fact they were NOT bedbugs but just very gross bugs that could be killed easily and for the fact that the bug people could come out on the day we called them!

Most of all my grat is that THEY ARE ALL GONE NOW!!!!!

Don't sleep through this grat.

Today my grat goes to the fact that our bed sold on Ebay for a great price!!! Yahooooooo