I always appreciate the patience of the lovely Graphic 45 team.
September
For me September is all about the Father’s Day celebration, so it was an easy choice to do a layout on Malcom.
We have been married for over 32 years. We met through our Church youth group, I was a city girl and he was a country boy. We dated for nearly three years before we got married.
We have five children so life for us while they were little was very busy. We both are very active members of our church so there is always a lot happening in our lives. Malcolm works very hard at his day job and has been with the same company for his whole working life to date, having started as an apprentice at age 17. He also helps me with my two businesses in his not so spare time.
The secret is to not take each other for granted and to put the other person first. With everything happening in our busy life this doesn’t always happen every time, but we both are committed to our marriage. I am so grateful for having Malcolm in my life and I do love him very much. We have so many things in common, our children, our faith, love of music and more. We are now starting another stage in our marriage with our grandchildren starting to arrive and old age becoming something we are starting to think about and plan for.
I am very grateful to have Malcom alongside me and for
his support in everything I do. Without
him, my life would be so much harder and without his love – a lot lonelier.
October
Well, October is my month; I was born on the 26th of
October 1962 in New Zealand.
I wasn’t even sure if anything happened of any great importance
that year, so I googled it.
I discovered the following:
The winner of the Nobel Peace Prize was Linus Pauling.
The USSR announced that it was going to build missile bases
in Cuba until Kennedy ordered a Cuban blockage which he lifted after Russia
backed down.
The Yankees won the World Series over the San Francisco Giants.
Rod Laver won the men’s single title at Wimbledon.
The Oscar for best picture went to West Side Story.
The song of the year was Moon River.
Marilyn Monroe passed away.
I am sure there were many other important things that
happened that year, but these are just some of the high lights I chose.
My life so far has been pretty easy. I didn’t have a
great time at school though, due to being dyslexic and my teachers telling me I
was just lazy. I knew I wasn’t but a lot of what I was learning just didn’t
make any sense. I wanted to be a school teacher, but with my learning
difficulties I would have found UNI too hard. So I worked in retail and really
enjoyed helping & serving customers.
I grew up in a Christian family and from a young age
attended everything happening at our Ecclesia.
I met and married my husband over
33 years ago. Have 5 wonderful children
and now have three lovely sons-in-law. My
grandchildren are now starting to arrive and I am loving this next stage in my
life.
I have had some interesting events in my life and some
challenging ones too, but with my faith and support from family and friends
nothing has been too big to handle.
So on the whole it has been really good and I am so
grateful for this. Not everyone can say that about their lives like I can. Through scrapbooking I have met some lovely
ladies who have had not so good lives. Some have really sad stories to tell and
I am always touched that they feel they can share with me. I always hope they
feel better for sharing and not so alone or at least that their load feels
lighter afterwards. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if everyone had an easy life and
could be grateful like me?
I know we need to
have sad times in our life so we appreciate the good times. I always think of
our lives as quilts or now a scrapbook layout – that we work on as our life
happens. The highs in our lives are the bright colours – the reds, yellows and
oranges. The lows in our lives are the blues, greens and browns, and the really
sad events and tragedies are the greys and blacks. A quilt or layout in bright
colours is too much to take in. It’s the lows and the sad events that give us
the shadows against which our bright colours really stand out and make our
quilt or layout really beautiful.
So I am grateful for how my layout is turning out, at
this stage it is very bright but with a little blue, green and brown. It has a
touch of grey but thankfully no black.
Hopefully there are still quite a few more years for me
to work on my layout. It will be interesting to see how it changes as time goes
by.
I would love to hear how everyone else’s quilts/layouts
are going. Please share in the comments
so I can read them all.
November
We are so blessed – our first grandchild has arrived
safely with all 10 toes and fingers.
Harry James is just beautiful and I know that you may
think I am biased but I did ask around at church and everyone assures me that
he really is beautiful and I’m not just imagining it.
I didn’t think I would be such a doting Grandmother, but
I am. I had taken 200 photos of Harry by day 4! I have to keep stopping myself
from showing everyone I meet all of them!
I can’t go more than a couple of days without a cuddle
and I can’t believe how fast he is growing. It’s going to be so hard next time
around as our second grandchild, due in March, will live in a different state. I won’t be able to visit this little treasure
as often as Harry. Hopefully we will be able to skype and watch this one grow
daily.
Babies are a miracle and not to be taken for granted. I
didn’t really understand how precious and fragile babies were until at age 22 I
had Anna. She was so sick and needed
major surgery to live, we were given the option of not having the operation and
leaving her to die in the hospital – unthinkable now, but we were given that
choice back then.
I didn’t even consider it – she was mine and our
responsibility. She was given to me for a reason and I just needed to work it
out. Well, after so many years, I have worked it out; she teaches me more about
myself and life than I have taught her. She teaches me to be compassionate,
patience and loving. Not to take life
for granted anymore and to treasure each day. Her life is quite simple, she
doesn’t worry about too much – she leaves that to me. She doesn’t want much,
her needs are quite simple – she has no concept of needing everything she sees
or what brand names are. She has her
likes and dislikes and she doesn’t bear a grudge. If she is angry with me, she
forgets quite quickly and forgives even quicker. She finds delight in little
things and loves sharing. She’s not an angel by any means and sometime drives
me batty but we love each other and at the end of the day, that’s all that
matters. If I had my time again I would not change anything.
So my November month started out with me being grateful
for my first grandchild. Feeling so blessed that he arrived safely with
everything as it should be. Watching my daughter take to mother hood, like she
has been doing it all her life, has been so rewarding. Watching my son in law
being so protective of his first child is a real delight. But I know that it
isn’t always like this for everyone and from my own experience I know how hard
it can be when it doesn’t go according to the plans we make.
In our family, we have so much to be grateful for. My
children are quite close to each other and supportive. They keep in touch and
watch out for each other. They help each other out and they all know that they are there for
each other when needed. For that we are very grateful and with another
grandchild on the way there is even more to be thankful for.
Thank you for viewing my blog. For more inspiration make sure you visit Graphic 45's Blog.
Jane
Jane
