Mistaken Identity

I forgot to let people know how I got on with the lady that I accidentally invited for lunch last week (see post below for the details).
She (no names) came over for a cup of tea Friday morning. I did recognise her once she arrived. I felt the conversation was a bit stilted, but we did talk and get to know each other a bit better. She also bought me some very beautiful flowers. I was so nervous that I would let slip about the situation that I talked a lot. I'm not sure she is someone I can connect with, but she is a nice lady. And I will definately be a bit more careful what phone number to use for others!!

Well I better go, getting on to tea time and I still have no idea what we're having.

Blessings to all

Connect

On Friday 14th March, I went to the ladies night at Church that they call 'Connect'. They are organised by a team of ladies that are good at finding creative things for us to do and see. This particular time was the theme of Roses. We made a sand saucer and had to do a quiz about roses and each team was awarded points. One of the questions was what is the name of a fairytale that had a rose in it. Our team (called the Sexy Rexy's-Maureen's idea) wrote down the "Beauty and the Beast". The team that acted out the fairytale got extra points, so we decided to do that. Well, I ended up as the Beast, Jo was the narrator and Maureen was Beauty. It went well considering we only had 10 minutes to come up with it. Well at the end of the night when we were walking out the door, we got given a scroll with a parable on it. It's very touching and quite true, so I decided to share it on this post.

The Parable of the Rose

A certain man planted a rose and watered it faithfully and before it blossomed, he examined it. He saw the bud that would soon blossom, but noticed thorns upon the stem and he thought...

How can any beautiful flower come from a plant burdened with so many sharp thorns?

Saddened by this thought, he neglected to water the rose, and before it was ready to bloom, it died.

So it is with many people. Within every soul there is a rose: The God-like qualities planted in us at birth growing amid the thorns of our faults. Many of us look at ourselves and see only the thorns, the defects. We despair, thinking that nothing good can possibly come from us. We neglect to water the good within us, and eventually it dies. We never realize our potential.

Some people do not see the rose within themselves; someone else must show it to them. One of the greatest gifts a person can possess is to be able to reach past the thorns and find the rose within others.

This is the characteristic of love...to look at a person and know their true faults. Accepting that person into your life, while recognizing the nobility in their soul.

Help them to realize that they can overcome their faults. If we show them the rose, they will conquer their thorns. Only then will they blossom many times over.

The End

Hope you got something out of this like I did. Better sign off as TJ has just walked in. Blessings to all.

Well, here’s how Emily’s birthday at Science Alive went:
We started off being told the layout and what is what etc, the assistants were absolutely fantastic, Very impressed. It was smaller than we expected, but there is lots to do and see. The major things would be the vertical slide and the gyro sphere. The other things were interactive science education. Aimee loved the ball thing where you pull up a heavy ball just smaller than a basketball, then let the rope go and it pushes air through a tube and forces a tennis ball to go up the tube and fly into the air. Emily is sitting on a pulley thing that you pull yourself up by the rope. It's pretty hard to do but the girls did really well.

As you can see from the photo's Terry has a go too. Just a big kid!

Dominique and Chrystal are on the Gyro Sphere. And then there's Emily and Megan on the climbing wall and Sarah-Jane is nearly at the top. She's just a wee monkey!

Emily's cake was from 'Devine Cakes' which our wonderful friend Gail (who works there) provided for us. The party package includes meals from Burger King across the road. Above is Stephanie (cousin), Chrystal and Dominique in the 'earthquake house'. It was rather life like! Brought memory's back from when I was in one at Granity. This is Dominique on the vertical slide. I think she went up there about 10 times before getting the courage to actually go down! But the main thing was that she did, and once she did it once she wanted to do it over and over. Chrystal also had a go. Our girls didn't go on it. Down stairs was the glow-in-the-dark mini golf; which we didn't do because it would of been too long. There was also the gallery where they do other exhibits. This time it was 3D pictures and illusions like looking into a moving spiral for 30secs then looking at your hand and it looks like it's moving. By that time both Terry and I had a headache and we were ready for the time to go. We had the parents coming at 5pm to pick the kids up, we met there at 1:30pm so it was a very long afternoon. We all had a lot of fun though, especially Emily which is the main thing.

Catch up

Well it's Emily's birthday on Monday. We're having her celebration on Saturday with five of her friends and we're going to Science Alive. We haven't been there so we're all looking forward to it. A friend who works there has been marvellous and is providing the food and cake. Em said she wants to try the big slide they have and do the wall climbing thing. I'll let you know how it goes, and upload photo's (if I remember my camera).

Our fridge has been repaired today, Yay! It's really good not to have to walk out to the garage to get the milk or cheese etc. For the first few days that it was broken we all forgot and opened the fridge to find it empty! As Terry would say--Smarten up!!

The other good news is I have sold a couple of things on TradeMe which has been a huge blessing. I think we're coming out the other side of the latest (probably not the last) financial struggle.

Tank has had his operation. His eye is looking great. For those that didn't know, our golden retriever puppy had what is called 'Scrolled Cartilage'. It's extremely rare in retrievers but unfortunately Tanks litter has had it. I can't remember if it's one or two of his siblings that has had the same problem. The breeder that we got him from has been such a blessing with sharing the cost. They didn't have to do that but did. So we owe them huge thanks. I forgot to take photo's of Tank wearing his plastic 'cone' to stop him scratching at his eye. He looked so riduculous! And being clumsy normally was extra clumsy with the cone. He even banged into the doors because he misjudged the gap and didn't allow for the cone! With how tall he is now he is constantly sweeping things off shelves etc with his tail! Imagine what he's going to be like when he is fully grown! He's so beautiful when he runs. They're such a handsome breed.

For Emily's birthday present we bought two tickets to the High School Musical Ice Tour. It comes to Christchurch in the beginning of June. She keeps talking about it and has told me which friends of hers are going. In fact she has just finished telling me that our neighbor is taking her daughter to it. We've told her it's too much money. Which it is so that is the only gift she's getting from Terry and I. I so cannot wait to give it to her. We will wait till Monday which is her actual birthday. She gets her friends gifts on Saturday. I will be going to the musical with her. Which I am really excited about! I did say to Terry that he could take her, but for some reason he didn't want too! :-))

I've had a mucky sort of day and have really only achieved cleaning the freezer ready for the guy to fix it. Mum Smith came over for lunch which was nice, other than that I've done nothing except to nearly fall asleep on my bed while doing a crossword and Aimee sitting on my back. She stayed home from school today due to having a cold and being very tired. She had gone to a wee friends house (also called Amy) to play, when she was dropped off she proceeded to cry and shout and scream at me for the next hour and a half. And it was all over her being hungry but not wanting what I said she could have! Much to say she was in bed early and asleep 10 minutes later! So I kept her at home to have a quiet day. She is most definately going to school tomorrow!

I have a lady from church coming tomorrow for morning tea. There is an extremely funny story about how she was invited. It started last Sunday, we have been slowly getting to know a young couple in church with a wee baby. So when I got home we decided to phone them and invite them for lunch the next Sunday. I found their phone number in our church phone directory, I ended up leaving a message on the answer phone. Then we waited for them to return our call, we waited and waited. Then I happen to see Gill (the young woman) at church yesterday (Wednesday), I asked her if she had received our invite, to which she replied "No", to which I said "Do you have an answer phone?", "no" she said. Then I said, "oh, I wonder who we invited to lunch then!" When we looked in the directory she realised it was the wrong number and gave me the right one. When I got home later that day I had a message on the phone, yep, it was a lady from church returning our message of invite on Sunday! She said that she couldn't on Sunday but would love to come over for morning tea on Friday. In a quandary of what to do - mainly because I had no idea who this lady was, I didn't phone her back. Only to have her phone this morning and catch me at home. So without telling her what really happened, I did invite her for morning tea tomorrow! Guess I'll find out which lady she is when she arrives!
When I told Rach she laughed a lot and wanted to share this story with Neal! Of course we don't want this other lady to know it was by total accident that she was phoned!

Well I better sign off. This has been a longer entry than was intended! Hope everyone is well, and blessings to all.

March - here already!

Gosh, how time flies! We had the cancer fundraiser (Relay For Life) on the weekend. It was great fun even though it rained all of Saturday. There was mud for miles and everyone was glad of the tents. The weather didn't deter anyone from walking the track. We made new aquaintenances and had a few laughs. There were a select few that stayed through the night - Terry being one of them - and they did well to keep up the walk/run. Terry brought me home about 11pm and I had a good sleep, picked up by friends in the morning to return, Terry decided to head home to sleep and everyone finished with a big cheer. Being a part of something like this was great, sad to see photo's of all the people/kids that cancer has taken so far, it's good to be reminded that there are always people worse off than me. Below is the banner I made for our team name. It worked out really well, but I didn't think about the rain which was not good as I'd only stuck the letters and stuff on with double-sided tape! Good thing I had a bag of safety pins with me! To those that don't know Jo, she was a lady/friend at Church that had cancer and is now up with her heavenly father. She loved all colours and was sparkly and bubbly and we all miss her. Hence the name of our teams. Most of us knew others with cancer too, Terry and sister Sue had a photo of their Dad scanned on to the tee shirts.

Onto other events, I had another seizure on Monday night, halfway through Aimee's bedtime story. I felt extremely sick with a migraine afterwards and it felt like my head was going to explode. Many thanks to Mum Smith who dropped everything to come round and help with putting the girls to bed. Terry was halfway through staining our bedroom window and couldn't stop so he set me up on the couch (where I came out of it) and had to carry on. The girls handle it well now, guess they've seen a few now. I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow so will talk to her about the seizures. It means not being allowed to drive till August now instead of June.

Unfortunately I think I hurt my shoulder again, and have a bump on my head. I'm still very tired and had Aimee home from school today after having a rough night with bed wetting and a snuffled nose. She's most definately returning to school tomorrow!

Tank has his eye operation tomorrow, the vet seems very nice and has explained the surgery very well. Terry is dropping him off early in the morning and will pick him up when he gets home.

Well I think that's all the latest news. Emily is turning 10 in 12 days. She wants to go to Science Alive, I'll be sussing that out tomorrow. And our fridge is still not fixed - we have to wait for the finances to do that one. Thanks to friends we have a fridge in the garage, although we are getting sick of having to walk out there to get the milk every time we want a drink!

Anyway I hope you're all having a nice time and are all healthy no matter where you are in the world.

P.S The windows look great!!! Terry has discovered a new talent, although he isn't exactly itching to do more :-)