Time Passes

Hi,

I am sitting here late at night checking my work emails as I have been off for several days; I decided to go through my list of blogs and see what everyone had been up to and realised it was August 2014 when I last wrote.

After my last blog post I travelled with several friends to France to help one of the ladies to tick off her bucket list as she has had cancer twice and no longer feels able to travel alone. Part of the trip was the Battlefields in the north of France and Belgium ultimately paying our respects to her lost uncle and being honoured in finding my own Great Uncle at the Villers Bretonneau memorial. This was unexpected and we can only thank the wonderful guide that was able to not only research and locate my uncle but also take us to the field in which he was lost to us. Paying our respects to the many thousands of lost sons, paying respect to our lost uncles, seeing those thousands and thousands and thousands of names or headstones left a deep and long lasting impression on me and I truly feel I have struggled since my return.

I have been off work because our youngest DIL delivered a beautiful little girl two weeks ago, our third little princess, but rang me in tears on Tuesday night. She had a headache for many hours and nothing would shift it; my son was away with his job as a road train driver and she needed to go to the hospital. I raced down to their home, lifted our eldest (3yo) granddaughter from her bed, packed everyone into the car and headed off to the nearest public hospital emergency room arriving at 2am. The staff were truly wonderful, accepted our DIL immediately and ran a CT scan; she was bleeding from three places in her brain; apparently the result of 'pushing' her baby out. Her blood pressure was seriously elevated and nothing would stop the pain. I sat with those two beautiful little girls for seven hours waiting for the diagnosis and prognosis and for my son to arrive. The staff were wonderful and incredibly helpful and the girls were perfect angels but it gave me time to reflect on what is important and  how fragile life is. My husband and I have been looking after their two beautiful little girls since the emergency began and have a few more days to go before they can return home. The good news is that my DIL will make a full recovery but there will be issues to deal with between now and then.
We are soon to remember our eldest sons 6th anniversary and the 5th anniversary of the loss of one of our grandson's. We have so much to be thankful for even through these losses and it is important to celebrate those every day. 'I love you' has become a part of our everyday language and although it is said every day, it is sincere every time we say it. This week we celebrate the wonderful work of our doctors and nurses, for the skill and the knowledge they have, the caring and the sacrifices they make to care for, and often save our loved ones. I have an infinite amount of respect for anyone in those professions.
Our baby girl is stirring and I need to prepare her bottle and spend the next hour looking into the face of an angel and be grateful for the miracle. Hold and hug your loved ones; every moment is so precious.
Hopefully I can get back to scrapbooking soon. Thank you for taking the time to visit, best wishes, kind regards.

Scrap Around The World - August Mood Board

I have to admit I am a total sucker for the beautiful teal in the first photo and could not resist doing a page with that colour, featuring the arch window in the background and adding the sepia tones from the from the middle bottom picture.

This family are the generation before me; my mothers siblings and their mother, my beautiful Grandmother. Grandma came from Ireland with her parents and two brothers as a twelve year old, she married Grandad in her later twenties and had two boys and a girl, two boys and a girl who were always known as Section A and Section B. My eldest uncle is on the top right and suffered badly from epilepsy so could not be left alone and did not marry until late in life; he and the tallest one in the middle who had his own family of  six were given the family farm when Grandad died and the two ran it together until a few years ago when the elder retired and the younger was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease. The youngest uncle on the left was a serving member of the police force until retirement and had a family of three.

The uncle seated on the right is almost profoundly deaf after a shooting accident in his teens and has a family of eight children, he most like our beautiful grandmother; my aunt in the middle was a nurse with a family of three as was my mother on the left with her family of four. Grandma was always proudest when asked 'How many children do you have?' 'Six' she would reply. 'How many grandchildren do you have?' 'Twenty four.' 'How many great grandchildren?' 'Thirty two.' 'How many great, great grandchildren?' 'Three!' This beautiful lady died eleven years ago at the age of ninety four and the family has continued to add  to her family since that time; she would absolutely love to be surrounded by her family as she is in this photo; everyone together.

Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.

Once Upon a Sketch - The Men in our Lives

Once Upon a Sketch for August has offered me a very easy subject; just try stopping me talk about the men in my life! I was incredibly blessed to be chosen to be the life partner to the man on my right in this photo. Regular visitors will know that we met at a monastery and have been together since we were in our teens. We were blessed again, again, again and again when each of our boys arrived.  They have grown into such fine young men each with a family of their own and we are now blessed with an additional six little boys and a little girl.

This photo was taken at our second son's wedding; the only one who had all his brother's in his wedding party. It was a very hot day and had rained a little during the ceremony; the boys were struggling to remain in their suit jackets but the photo shoot was not complete. Here they are sharing a joke whilst waiting for a family photo to be taken; I am surrounded by the men in my life and I love each and every one of them. My journaling is on the back
Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.

 

Kreative Koncepts #27 - Colour Challenge

 I love the colours that Kreative Koncepts have issued but wasn't sure that I could come up with a photo appropriate for it; I found this one amongst my photo stash.  It is interesting that we all chose to wear grey and black so I could add any colour without being concerned with clashes. I have also used a past Sketchabilities sketch.

This is a photo of my husband and I with my middle sister at her daughter's wedding in Sydney. The venue was my sisters Officer's mess, an old fort with views of the Sydney Harbour so the views with the setting sun were stunning. I don't normally wear make-up but managed to look quite reasonable in this photo but I think my sister looked absolutely stunning that evening. She wore a two piece top and skirt with a flare from the hip with lovely black shoes which she changed to ballet slippers for the dancing. She has such a flair with clothing and always looks so lovely. She did her daughter and the rest of her family proud and this is a precious memory.
Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.

Scrap the Girls - Texture Paste and Paint

After having blogged last month that I do not use multimedia well I found that Scrap the Girls have asked us to use texture paste and paint! I must admit that I am not entirely happy with this page, especially the yellow, paint tinted mask but I am resolved to use it anyway.

This is our only granddaughter, she is surrounded by four uncles and six male cousins; her Mum and Dad met on a road crew in the outback when working on a major road link between our remote state and the rest of Australia so it is of little surprise to see that they had found some hi viz work gear complete with her name embroidered, little work boots and work socks that repeat the pink and navy of the shirt. We had gone to help complete some paving and the little miss was determined to help shovel the sand and, with a tiny pair of work gloves, carry some bricks. 

I have completed a second page as I love the connection between our 'hi viz miss' and her Pop; we had stopped for a tea break and Pop had plonked himself down on a stack of bricks and crossed his legs whilst drinking his coffee, seconds later the little miss has stacked some bricks beside him, grabbed her drink and after checking Pops position, crossed her legs in the same way and taken a drink. 'Hard work Pop, hard work!' said the little miss. 

Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.

Once Upon a Sketch - Numbers

Another great sketch and subject from Once Upon A Sketch; numbers. I have a huge stash of photos so just went through them all and found this, quietly waiting to be scrapped; it is my first family, our family of 5. Our mother, a nurse and siblings taken in the mid 60's. Our eldest brother was in high school and a member of the Army cadets; he later went on to join the reserve army and the police force and served both well for over 25 years. I am the one at the back with long hair; I met the love of my life only a few years later; he loved my long hair which finally got cut the year my eldest son was born, my next sister is the one with dark wavy hair wearing her holy communion dress who went on to join the defense forces and after having her family went to work at a bank and our baby sister, the little blonde at the front who is now a nurse living, saving and healing lives in the USA.

I chose the quote carefully: 'The only way of finding the limits of the possible is by going beyond them into the impossible.' We didn't have a lot when we were kids but we were taught one thing; we did not need to be defined by where or how we lived, by what we didn't have and our future was only limited by ourselves and our imagination. Our family of 5 have successful careers, beautiful families of our own and enough of everything else; we made what was considered by our peers to be impossible, possible!

Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.

Sketchabilities 118

Sketchabilities always comes up with such lovely sketches that encourage you to use a lot of texture and be really creative; unfortunately I did not seem to get that gene and I find my pages left wanting... the solution is to not even try but to complete a page that makes me happy, after all, apart from family I am who I am doing this for! I am also challenging myself to use my scrap stash and scraps of which this page has many!

There are not a lot of photos of me with or without the grandchildren; I am usually the one running around taking happy snaps and often have to hand the camera to a family member and ask them to take a photo of me or they don't think of it! This is our youngest grandson at only a couple of months; his parents had dropped in to see me at work and I got to have a cuddle. I had to hand my phone to my son and ask for a photo to be taken! I must have printed it and then forgotten about it; I was looking for my photo stash for this challenge and found it; I am so happy I did. it is a simple page but I am happy with it. Our little one and I.

Thank you for looking and any comments you may leave, best wishes.