I have been pretty good today, no snacking and eating healthly meals. I decided against starting pilates on the off chance I may be pregnant again, so I decided to get on my exercise bike instead. I only lasted 10 minutes, but that is better than nothing and I’m going to aim for 12 minutes tomorrow.

Rob came home tonight with some chips and biscuits, luckily they are not my favourites, but I am still going to have to fight the temptation to have some tomorrow.

One thing that I have noticed tonight is that I’m not in a very good mood. It isn’t heIped by my headache. I think that perhaps I didn’t drink enough water today, so i’m going to have to watch that and make sure that I get enough to drink. I’m also going to have to watch my moods and try not to take everything out on my family.

So the plan for tomorrow is to:

1. Not eat junk
2. Not drink Coke (even coke zero)
3. Drink more water
4. Get on the exercise bike for 12 minutes (and peddle, just sitting there doesn’t do a thing:)
5. Watch my mood

I weighed myself today and arghhhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!! The scales said 77kg…. this is the heaviest I have ever been and it’s scary!

I have decided that it’s time to do something about it, I know, I know, I’ve said it all before, but this time I really mean it!

So starting tomorrow I am going to keep junk food out of the house, I am going to eat small healthy meals and I am going to exercise. I will do pilates during the day while Riley is asleep and get on my exercise bike at night when the kids are in bed.

I’ll write tomorrow night and let you know how I go

I was listening to the latest episode of Simple Savings on World Talk Radio today and they were talking about training babies to go to the toilet on demand.
At first I thought “You have got to be kidding!”, but the more I listened it became quite interesting. Basically the guest speaker was talking about training your baby to go to the toilet when you give them a cue, for instance hold them in a certain way or make a certain sound.
Imagine the money you would save not having to buy nappies!.

I have never heard of anything like this before and would be interested to hear from people who have used this technique to toilet train their babies!

Yesterday a friend and I held another garage sale at my house and we met an amazing woman. She had come looking for baby clothes and we found out that she is a foster mum. She takes in the newborn babies born to drug addicted mothers. These babies go through a 5 day detox program at hospital and then this remarkable woman takes them into her care and continues to wean them off methadone until a permanent home can be found for them.

I hope that when my children are older that I can be selfless enough to foster babies too.

The girls started back at school today after 2 weeks holidays.

I made up 2 loaves of bread into sandwiches and put them in the freezer last night, so each night I’ll just take 2 sandwiches out for the next day.

I had the girls school uniforms ready last night, so I didn’t have to worry about finding them this morning.

My routine went really well today, I have set up reminders on my computer to prompt me to do chores throughout the day. It means that I’m not doing housework for 2 hours straight but doing it in 10 to 15 minute increments throughtout the day.

My house was nice and clean until I picked the kids up from school this afternoon and now it’s a bit of a wreck again but at least I know it was clean

With a large family school holiday activities can cost me a fortune. It can cost us over $70 to go to the movies.

During these school holidays I have found a few free or low cost activities that you can do with your kids.

Check out your local shopping centre and neighbouring towns centres for school holiday activity centres. Our local shopping centre held a plaster painting workshop one week and a mask making workshop the next week. Another shopping centre is holding a Madagascar activity centre which I would like to take the kids to.

Look out for shops open days. We have had a Bunnings Hardware open up here and they have had free face painting, fairy floss, a jumping castle and kids craft workshops.

Clubs and pubs often hold free entertainment for the family during the school holidays and some smaller cinemas will reduce their prices for kids movies during the holidays.

Check out your local newspaper to find whats happening in your town!

I can’t believe that it has been 8 years since I gave birth to my first child.

What I really want to know is what did I do with my time back then when I only had one baby and a house to look after. What did I do for the rest of the day?

Oh that’s right I sat and cuddled my baby girl and watched soapies all day!!! Yeah right!!!

I remember Rob getting home from work and I’d be cooking dinner and rocking Chloe in her bouncer. The laundry would be full of dirty clothes and soaking nappies.
Nowadays most of things that need to be done, are done by the afternoon and I have time to spare to spend with my 4 kids.

If nothing else a large family helps you to build time management and organisational skills. Even if some days you forget how to use them!.

Happy Birthday Clo Clo!!!!!!!!

The first week of the school holidays has flown by. On the first day I took the kids to Go Lo and gave them $5 each to buy colouring in books, crossword books, pencils, textas and craft things. It’s been great, everytime anyone says they are bored, I just tell them to get their ‘fun stuff’ out

Our local shopping centre has an activity centre set up where they were doing plaster painting. So we went there on Thursday, the kids had lots of fun and it was free to paint the small plaster casts. Next week they are making masks there, so I’ll take the kids back during the week to do that.

Today we took the kids to Bunnings Hardware which has just opened up near us and to our surprise they had a playground, free face painting, free fairy floss and a free jumping castle. They also run free craft workshops for the kids, but we were a little late for that. So we’ll be going back next weekend so that the kids can do some craft. We had a great fun time for no cost at all.

I’m going to set myself a homework assignment to research other fun free things to do in our area. I’ll let you know what I come up with, it might give you some hints on places to look in your community

I am very impressed with myself, my garden is going really, really well. Much better than I expected it to go. The pak choy are growing the best and the fastest. The only thing that didn’t do well was the zucchini, but I think that was my fault, I broke the roots when I was transplanting them, so they both died. So I planted another couple of seeds and have had them in my greenhouse. Today I transplanted them into the garden, being very careful not to break the roots this time, so we’ll see what happens

One thing that I did just learn was that tomatoes and parsley are good companion plants. My parsley is growing really well in the herb garden, and I have a few tomatoes in my big garden and some more still in the greenhouse. So I might put a tomato plant from the greenhouse in the herb garden with the parsley and see how it goes.

I am very impressed with myself, my garden is going really, really well. Much better than I expected it to go. The pak choy are growing the best and the fastest. The only thing that didn’t do well was the zucchini, but I think that was my fault, I broke the roots when I was transplanting them, so they both died. So I planted another couple of seeds and have had them in my greenhouse. Today I transplanted them into the garden, being very careful not to break the roots this time, so we’ll see what happens

One thing that I did just learn was that tomatoes and parsley are good companion plants. My parsley is growing really well in the herb garden, and I have a few tomatoes in my big garden and some more still in the greenhouse. So I might put a tomato plant from the greenhouse in the herb garden with the parsley and see how it goes.