horses

It is birthday season in our house. Over half of my children where all born within three weeks of each other’s birthdays…..*cough*

Which is good on a number of counts.

1. You get it all out of the way all in one go and then it goes very quiet for a while.

2. Thrifty relatives can send lots of birthday presents all together in the same little bundle

3. You can bank on sept/october being a pretty expensive month (tho that might not be such a good thing)

4. Chowing down on party food opportunities is limited. Isnt it better to eat all in one go than spread it out?

5. Any whinging along the lines of ‘when am i going to get some presents?’ can be met with a triumphant “NEXT WEEK!”

There are obviously downsides to it however and it has to be said that my head spins on my neck for most of the last bit of sept and October…oh and then its the C word but lets not go there…never mind that another one of my kids is 7 days after the noel event.. okay so planning not a strong point….ever…

Anyhoo…first up on the birthdays has been my oldest girl. She wanted a ‘pony party’ as in lets all have a riding lesson. So she invited some of her friends and they went to a local stable to have a riding lesson. It was an incredible trip down memory lane for me. I spent a lot of my years when i was younger around horses and going to the yard the first time, one molasses filled breathe in and i was transported back to frosty, quiet mornings hacking out across the countryside and returning home flushed with the excitement of flat out gallop across an empty field.

There was no galloping, lead rein ponies looking moderately bored, as they always do, plodding placidly round an outdoor school and finishing of with the old classic of ’round the world’ Good to see that some things don’t change. It felt so nostalgic watching her and her sister ride. Like looking back at an old picture..only the characters had changed. For now its just a one off…dont know how long that will last though.

Finishing off the day with cake, of course and then little cupcakes for party bag substitutes. I HATE party bags and will do anything to avoid handing them out. No parent has EVER been blessed by one of those tacky cheap whistles that kids then blow for the next 2 hours driving their parents to the edge of sanity…OR the other cheap crap that gets thrown in the bin as soon as possible or wedged down the side of a car seat for the rest of time.

🙂

im joining in with my blogger friends with Monday Club by the lovely Sarah Miles. Head on over and catch up on some other ordinary mums doing an extraordinary job in raising their kiddies.

Follow:

Finding the gold: When old prospectors would look for gold they would take large pan and grab up huge loads of gravel and sand, shaking it backwards and forwards to encourage the heavier gold to the bottom of the pan, at the same time the lighter materials which are worthless are worked up to the surface and swept away. This process is repeated until all that is left is the heaviest most valuable material.

My finding the gold project is inspired by this description, searching through the daily stuff of life that is ultimately worthless…the stress, the what ifs, the tantrums, the work nonsense,…and finding those valuable bits of my day, my week that are the moments i need to remember. The things that catch my eye and are just beautiful in their simplicity unbidden and untouched by the daily grind. Things that make me smile, even if sometimes that smile doesn’t linger and stay.

Some weeks it is harder to than others, sometimes the pan feels like it is only full of gravel and sand. There are weeks when its hard to keep going, searching through the detritus of this crazy, busy, frantic stage of life. Times when having time to catch you breathe seems impossible let alone stopping to look… but then you catch a glimpse, even in the darkest of darkness a small shard of gold can shine out and lift your spirits. Even if it is just one piece.

Can you find the gold in your day…?