A debrief of the past few weeks

Life has been hectic for a few weeks which i am not quite used to. I have had a friend who has been on holidays for the last month and has been with us everyday of her holidays. It was great to have her with us and she has been such a blessing and a help to me. Having her with us has been excellent except with the extra pair of hands i have tried to do twice as much in each of my days, which has been exhausting. As well as doing twice as much during the day, we have stayed up later talking and catching up. I have loved having her with us but during the last week, i was longing for my life back so i could go to bed early and stay home some more. I realised how much i enjoyed my routines and the controlled environment at home (well, not really controlled but all within my control).

On top of this, i have become involved in the youth group here in Pt Augusta. This has been excellent but i have not had my 9.30 bedtime on Friday nights! We have been renovating the youth room which has involved lots of physical work, even more so with my kids helping us.

Throughout all my busy period, I have had a longing to get home and just be at home with my kids. Aswell as being so much easier to manage the kids at home, routines are so important. Interupted sleep times, meal times and not as much attention from mum as i've been to busy with other projects has had a toll on my kids (and on me). I am reaffirmed in my role as a stay at home mum, and even though i was not leaving my kids at home whilst i was going to work, i was still leaving the home and my kids security wth me.

I was listening to focus on the family on vision fm yesterday and one of the guest speakers was a woman with 7 kids and she homeschooled them. She was quite inspirational, but one of the things she said and i agree wholeheartedly with is that with having your kids at home, you can have the most influence on them. We as parents have a responsibility to our kids to instruct them in the ways of the Lord and to teach them how to live their lives.

Homeschooling is something that i have been thinking about for a while, and even though it is still a while away, i think it deserves some consideration now. I have never ever thought that i would homeschool my kids, and i have not made a decision either way, but i have been thinking and challenged a lot on it this year. I can probably say now that i am willing to consider it as an option now, whereas before, i just thought those who homeschooled their kids were extreme and over protective. We'll see what God has in store.

Church membership

For the good part of this year, i have been thinking of becoming a member of the church. Not just an attender but a proper official member. I hadn't thought it through very hard until this weekend but i have thought about it maybe a dozen times this year. I am unsure as to why i wanted to do this but i am settled here at my church in Pt Augusta so it seemed like the right thing to do. The subject of confirmation came up at a bible study i attend and it was then that i discovered that in the uniting church that is the same as church membership.
I asked the question, what is the point of being confirmed or becoming a church member as it seemed to me that it should be a fairly obsolete thing. Well, i opened a whole can of worms as far as my bible study group was concerned (It consists of the minister and the church council chairperson). Apart from being able to be on church council and vote on church council matters, there doesn't seem to be any other benefits apart from the pride of being a member of the uniting church.

I asked the minister if i could join his confirmation classes the following week after discussing it with Simon and he was very, very pleased to have me involved. I have since been given some reading material and have talked about it with a few different people.
I am not one to commit to anything if it is not absolutely necessary but perhaps i thought that maybe this was something i could change about myself.

Our congregation is a member of the Assembly of Confessing congregations (ACC) which as far as i can tell is a group that split from the main body of the uniting church when the church decided to ordain homosexual people as ministers. Now personally i believe that the bible is the absolute truth and we should use it as a guide for living our lives and i also agree with the views of the ACC
BUT... i do not agree with the promotion of the ACC and all the time and effort that has gone into establishing it and building it up to become a separate body. I don't have exclusive allegiance to the uniting church either, it just happens to be the church that we are part of at this stage in our lives.
All the energy and time that has been invested into dividing the church once again, this idea of we are right and you are wrong seems to miss the point clearly. Who are we as people to think of ourselves greater than anyone else just because we think we are right about a particular issue. Shouldn't we be investing this time and energy into loving others, the hurt and lonely and poor, feeding them, clothing them, showing them who JESUS really is, not who the church is.
I think a major problem with the church today is that it is trying so hard to get back its reputation and fill pews that it has lost the big picture. It is more about getting bums on seats and money in the offering plate than loving those who need it most. (I know this is not the exclusive objective of the church but often it seems like it)
Now i know that i suck at doing these things and because i was raised in the church and am surrounded by church people, i have a tendency to get caught up in this way of thinking but i am trying to be more like Jesus, i am trying to make a difference or at least wanting to.

My Dad warned me about getting involved in church politics, he's been there done that. I don't know what his opinion on all this is but he just said "Don't get involved unless it's absolutely necessary" This has caused me to reconsider whether to become a church member or not, but on the other hand there is this niggling going on saying do it, you might need it for what is planned for you in the future.

Cloth nappy mayhem (not quite)

Well, i am starting my own cloth nappy business, something i have been thinking about for over a year now. Things seem to be going ahead quite nicely. I have been in the setting up phase for about 3 months and finally am going to just go ahead, register my business name and get started. Many people seem very keen to see my nappies and are very interested in modern cloth nappies. I put some of my samples in an album on facebook just to show my friends who were interested to see some of the fabrics that i had been using. I never in my life expected that it would work as a kind of advertisement. I have had several messages about people being interested and possible wanting to order some. This has thrown me a bit but in a good way as now i have no excuses but to get on and do it. I have been making them for myself and some friends for over 12 months and i really enjoy doing it. I'm not at this stage doing it as an income for myself but rather i thought that i love to make them and people seem to want to buy them, so why not make a little money out of a hobby. The market is very competitive though, only today have i really looked into how much people charge for similar products and how much it costs me to make them.
There seems to be a cloth nappy revolution taking place and there is a lot of interest in them, and why not. Apart from the small task of washing them, there are far more benefits for using cloth than disposables. Firstly there is the landfill that is saved, I am still amazed to this day about how many nappies (particularly newborns) use in a week. Secondly, disposable nappies are so expensive, even the cheap ones are expensive. A Reusable cloth nappy system has saved us thousands of dollars, especially since we set them up to be unisex so as to suit any child we might have in the future. I cannot understand how anyone can afford to use all disposable nappies. Thirdly the benefits to the environment and to the babies skin. Josiah has never had a nappy rash, and Anna only occasionally since using cloth nappies. Arguments against cloth nappies say that they use a lot of water in washing but in reality, just as much water is used in the manufacturing of a disposable as is used in the washing of a cloth nappy. The washing would be worse if you weren't using nappies at all!
SO i am a bit inspired by the amount of interest in my nappies, it is always a risk doing something like this, what if no one is interested, what if no one wants to buy any, what if, what if, what if...... I think this will be a good thing, and in reality, i don't really mind if people don't buy my nappies, as long as they think about using cloth.

The first of many

So, i have finally given in to the blog community, not that i have had any pressure though. I enjoy reading other peoples blogs and thought perhaps i might sort some things out in my head if i wrote them down. We've had a rough week this week with a funeral of a 15yr old and an assortment of other insignificant things going wrong. They all compound with lack of sleep and short tempers to make our household not as pleasant as it usually is. This week i have spent a lot of time on facebook and noticing that everyone else in the world seems to be happy and having a party, is it just me who stays at home all day cleaning bums and clothes. This week i feel as though the world is going on around and i am just at home making sure we are all fed and cleaned. I realise that this is an important job, and that raising my children is the most important job anyone can have but sometimes i feel perhaps that the world wont really miss us if we disappeared for a while. I am torn between "who cares if spend the whole day in an apron, looking like i'm from the 1950's" because it saves me from washing my clothes all the time and "i want a pretty dress and an occasion to go out too". I suppose it is all part of the challenges that i face being a mother and sacrifices that are made for the benefit of our children. So my outlook this week is changing, chin up, stop whinging about what i could be doing and start concentrating on what i am and should be doing! God has put me in this position for a reason and who am i to argue that i should be socialising and having a good time if it is His will for me to be the most important person in 3 peoples lives.