Growing Family

The Party Year

We are, by nature, inclusive people. When it comes to birthdays, we like our community to surround our kids. Why stop at a couple same-age friends when there are siblings and families and special adults to celebrate with us? 

Well I'll tell you why. Fun as it is to have 50 people in your backyard when a forecast of rain reshuffles your beach-intended party, and fun as it is to have 50 people crowding the local (grubby) Scout Hall when the forecast of rain reshuffles your park-intended party, doing that a couple times around can kind of do your head in. Catering for 25+ adults, and 25+ kids, in a change of venue, is a lot of food, and a lot of party bags, and a lot of EVERYTHING. 

We decided it was time for a new plan.

We settled on the party-every-other-year approach. 

Still recovering from the above mentioned extravaganzas, last year was our no-party birthday year. Thank God, too, because last year was challenging enough with starting out as foster carers, without adding birthday bashes on top!

Of course we still celebrated, and this is how we did it. Following my family's tradition of letting a child choose their birthday supper and dessert, we thew in the option of choosing a favorite restaurant or having me make their special meal. Lucky me, each child wanted to eat out. I brought some party hats to the restaurant, baked a fun cake, and the celebration was complete.

We have also begun to learn from experience that we don't need to give our children many presents. Initially, I thought that our children would not have "enough" presents at holidays and birthdays, since they live so far from relatives. After several rounds of ending up with heaps of presents because we bought lots, AND lots arrived in the mail and from friends, we've settled down to about one nice present for the birthday child. Now the approach to a birthday is marked with packages arriving and piling up in wait for the special day!

This year is the party year and this weekend BOTH my boys celebrate their birthdays. Small Sun turns 7 and Finch turns 3. 

After attending some really fantastic parties, and talking to friends, I am settling on the "less is more" approach this year. That is, a few close friends doing something really fun that you couldn't pull off with 25+ kids. 

For Small Sun, The Captain is going to execute the entire birthday celebration, along with another Dad who has offered to come on board. (Interestingly enough, all the Dads offered to come along as an extra chaperone, which leads me to think the party sounds pretty good.). Small Sun's friends will congregate at a nearby ferry wharf to ride the ferry into Darling Harbour. First they will stop at a pizza parlour to eat pizza to their hearts content. Next they will attend the IMAX Theatre's The Last Reef show in 3D. Then, they will spend about an hour playing at the new playground at Darling Quarter, before eating a cake The Captain ordered and will pick up in the city. Sugared up and played out, they will return on the ferry to be collected by their parents. 

While they are away, I will be home cleaning the house because on Sunday, we will celebrate Finch's birthday with three other families and their collective six children.

For this party I am inspired by a friend whose child's third birthday we recently celebrated. Her approach was to cater to the parents and let the kids play in the back yard. Of course, being married to an Italian, and being a fantastic cook herself, we love to go to their parties to eat. We usually roll home and spend the rest of the day lying about, digesting.

Who says a child's party needs to be all party games and craft activities? Having their friends over for a giant play date is pretty special when they are three. It doesn't need to be much more complicated than that!

So for Finch's birthday, I am focusing on the adult food. Since he is currently addicted to Wallace & Gromit and their moon cheese adventure, I am going with a rocket theme. I have forked out to have a professional do a rocket cake, and am planning to let the kids decorate cardboard boxes with tin foil, etc, to build "rockets". There are all sorts of crazy crafty-gamey things you can do, but I think I'll keep it simple. For party favors I bought glider planes for each child and I plan to tape lollipops to the bottom (like sweet bombs, I suppose).

I think these parties will probably cost nearly as much as the big shindigs, but I think they will be better quality. I never enjoy parties where you spend 2 hours in a kid/sugar induced mayhem, only to leave with a party bag full of sugar and toys that break in the car. I am looking for a different way to do this whole thing, and I hope this weekend is a success!

What do you do for birthdays at your place? If you have a young child and you celebrate their birthday on a different day than their "real" birthday, do you tell them when it is their real birthday as well? Wish me luck!

 

 

Community and Foster Care

This second experience with foster care has be thinking about the importance of a supportive community and how much that can impact the success of a placement.

I was dealing with some serious stress about this placement and I told my friends. I didn't tell them to pressure them into helping me. I told them because I was stressed and I think being honest is a really important key to making sure I don't end up depressed and overwhelmed on my own.

My friends have amazed me.

The girls have been with us four days. On the first day a precious friend offered to bring my older kids home from school, and deliver dinner to us as well. She followed through even though her own child stayed home sick from school that day, even arranging the little details like calling the school to make sure the kids knew they were riding with her, etc. Amazing.

The next day another friend offered to bring the kids home and said she could do the same several other days.

Yet another amazing friend gave me a list of days from her calendar and said "I can do whatever you need, for as long as you need, for as many of these days as you like. Just tell me."

Another amazing sweetheart said "these are the days I can get off of work early to come and help you with the bath/dinner/bedtime routine."

Tears are coming up just writing it down.

We are so blessed.

This abundance of thoughtful helpfulness has brought me over the line from being totally stressed, to enjoying having these girls with us. 

Not everyone can or should adopt or do foster care. However, if you want to support adoptive or foster care families and contribute to what they are doing, these kinds of offers of help can make a world of difference.

Other bloggers have written thorough and fantastic posts about what people can do to help, I just wanted to take a minute to honor the stunning people I have in my life who value me and what we are doing, not just with verbal affirmations, but with actions. I have never felt so surrounded.

My friends started lifting me up even before I started to drown. Is there someone in your life doing something you admire or want to support? I'm sure you can find a way to support them. You might never know how much of a difference your help might make!

The Joy of Family at Christmas

Between Christmas and New Years

The time between Christmas and New Years is a padded cacophony of joy. The kids are playing in boxes, and climbing on their father, who lounges on the couch for a grand total of 17.8 minutes a year.

Ever since we came home we've let them run riot.

Yes, we've been gone. First we went to Nashville to spend a glorious week and a half with all of my family. For the first time in about four years, we all gathered from our global corners (Canada, Tanzania, NYC, and Australia) to sip and sup and glow together. Despite my brother being sick, we had a great time and especially for the cousins, it was everything I wanted it to be. 

Then we drove up to Michigan to spend time with aunts, uncles, and my cousins. Again, the time was so fantastic, and I'm incredibly glad that we went.

We weren't planning on going this year, but when we discovered that the whole family was convening at my parent's house in Nashville, it was too good of an opportunity to miss.

We were amazed at the continued connection with our friends in Nashville. The relationships we had there took so long to build (Nashville has a high "flake factor"), but many of them seemed circumstantial and I expected that after we moved, over time, most of them would naturally dissolve. 

Both our core group of life-long friends, and our greater circle all rallied to embrace us. Some cancelled trips to spend time with us, others travelled from neighboring cities, and in general people went out of their way at the most busy time of the year to spend time with us. It impacted me and I am still processing what it all meant for me.

The trip to Michigan was also very special. My grandfather organized a special evening to celebrate us all coming to town. All my in-state relatives made repeated efforts to see us while we were there. Perhaps more than any other time. They were so generous and enthusiastic to see us. Like in Nashville, we felt celebrated and valued.

My grandmother has Alzheimers and is was so wonderful to see her interacting with my children, and getting to spend time just being near her, even if she doesn't know me anymore.

The trip was so worth the 40 hour door-to-door effort of getting there. The only shadow was having to leave baby with another foster family while we were gone. Now we are all reunited and shaking the walls with the happy exuberance of being in our own home, in our own routine. It is wonderful to go, and wonderful to come home again.

 

It's Happening Again

It's happening again. That squeezy feeling in my throat and the tendency to stand quietly a few steps further from life than normal. 

It's happening again, the flashes of memory from times past and far away.

It's happening again, the moments of confusion when writing the date (month/day/year or day/month/year?), and the fuzziness when someone talks about "spring" (when is spring again?).

It's happening again, feeling annoyed at my son who throws his knowledge of "America" around like a red cape in front of a bull. What does he mean when he says the air smells so American? What does that even mean?

Except I do know what he means. He walked outside and the air was crackling. The day was alluring to him with promise and adventure. To him that is America, and he is right.

I don't know if I love my country or if I hate my country, but I miss it.

It is such a miserable feeling to love the South so, so much, but to not feel that it would love my children the way I want them to be loved. Maybe I am a coward for leaving and not being the change. Maybe I am brave to call out what I saw and walk away.

I miss green fields. I miss the explosion of spring that makes you think the earth is on drugs and nothing could be greener than it is already. Even the light turns green in the tree tunnels going to my parent's house in the woods. 

I miss the houses. I miss wooden siding and wide front porches with hanging ferns and decks where you sit with friends and drink ice tea. 

I miss crepe myrtles electric pink on a hot summer's day, the bark smooth and cool under hand.  I miss hostas in the shade, and white picket fences holding back spills of cone flower, and black eyed susans. 

I miss the richness and ambience of the great estates, despite the injustices that occured in them. I can't help but love my hometown, my roots, my nest.

I miss the creative and eclectic self that existed there that I can't seem to find, despite having unpacked each box from the shipping container years ago. 

It is happening again. I am missing home.

 

Certainty and Substance

Tonight I went out to dinner with some mums from one of the two playgroups we attend. I sat across from a mum of one of Small Sun's classmates. She confided that after three years of "extended holiday", they are moving back to their (Australian) home town. Part of it is job related, but mostly they just know it is time to go. As their parents are getting older, they recognize that time together with family is most important to them. They'll move at the change of the year.

While I know jealousy is not an emotion to be cultivated, I did feel envious listening to her conviction. When I imagine "the future", I don't really imagine it being here in Australia. I can see us staying here for about five more years, maybe, and then moving on. 

My friend tonight had a very clear "home" to return to and the centrally important people of her life are all conveniently grouped there. 

To be perfectly honest, when I am around people who have lived in one place their whole lives and have their family all around them, I simultaneously despise and envy them. I experience a kind of explosion of emotions, wishing I was like them, and being thankful that I'm not.

The fact that I have no "home" to return to makes me heartsick. The fact that when our parents start to age and have failing health, we will confront having them on multiple continents, makes me feel anxious. 

Before we moved Down Under, we were visiting with my brother and his family. I hatched a wild scheme to keep our children knowing each other. I planned that we would all take our kids back home to my parents for the month of June. They would run in the woods, play in the streams, and spend a month dreaming and fighting their way into cousindom.

I failed to take into account the opposite seasons and the holidays that don't align. Now my parents have off and moved to Canada, renting out the house I imagined being the one rock I could tie my roots to. 

This week we had a plan to talk to my mother, sister in law and my nieces in Tanzania. My brother was to Skype in from India, where he is working at the moment, and my dad from Canada. We bought a Skype Premium day pass. We planned our day around this phone call. 

When the magic moment came, no one was on Skype. Eventually my brother got on and said he tried to get in touch with my SIL to no avail. It ends up the internet was down at their house for several days. 

Tonight I was riding home in the car by myself with the music on so loud I couldn't hear anything else. No traffic, no wind, nothing. When you have young kids in the car you never get to really blow your eardrums. I blanketed myself with sound and cried over the steering wheel.

Living abroad, when you have a family you love and miss, is hard. Not being able to get in touch or stay in contact with people you love is hard. Not having a "home" to return to is hard. Not having a continent in common with any family member is hard.

My friend tonight had conviction. She had a plan. She had timing and clarity.

Sometimes I just feel lost in the feeling that my family has been spread like a puff of dandelion fluff on the wind, and we'll never be able to regroup, or cluster back together again.  

The Time, How it Flies

The Captain has declared me to have the lowest possible threshold for internet deterrent. That is, since we moved to the new house and have been waiting for our internet to be set up, we've had to use a wifi card. I have been on Facebook twice, only read my mail on my phone, and not read a single blog. Evidently turning the wifi device on, waiting 38 seconds for it to power up, and connecting to it through my computer is just too. much. work.

Somehow, waiting for my little internet making device has reminded me of another time in my life when I spent a lot of time waiting to get on to the internet.

When I was 15 and living in St. Petersburg, I met another missionary kid in Odessa, Ukraine. We became friends, and a teenage romance bloomed and blossomed. As has been the pattern with each relationship I've had, writing played a key role.

We used to spend the evening writing tomes back and forth. I'd receive a massive email from this guy, and immediately write an equally wordy response. With each email sent I had to wait for the crunching and screeching of the modem, with its little blinking lights, and then get offline again. We'd email back and forth, up to four volumes a night, finally calling it quits about 2 a.m.

While we were never officially dating, we were missionary kid dating, which means you are having a relationship but not calling it dating. I completely thought I would marry this guy. When we both moved back to the States, and he want to Bible school in Florida, I went down to visit pretty often. He broke off our non-dating relationship and I was heartbroken. Not long after, he proposed to a girl at Bible school.

Long story short, they got married, moved to Africa to be real-life missionaries, had three kids, moved back to the U.S. and eventually divorced in the midst of some really heart-breaking circumstances. 

When I was growing up and imagining my future, I always thought I would be a missionary somewhere. I envisioned myself single, or maybe married, living in an orphanage, taking care of kids. I nearly had that life.

This is a very odd way to blog about my eleven year anniversary with The Captain, but as we celebrated our marriage this weekend, I spent some time thinking about the life I almost had. I know some people think about what could have been, had they ended up with another partner. Whenever I look back at that relationship, I let out a sigh of relief. It was such a near miss. I could very easily have married someone who wasn't right for me, and who ultimately had some very big issues that led to the disintigration of his marriage. 

I don't know what would have happened if he hadn't dumped me. Would I have married him? Would he have asked me?

In the space left after my non-dating break-up, my friendship with the Captain had more room to grow. Eventually that wonderful and nourishing friendship developed some romantic tones and it was the gift of a lifetime to get to marry my best friend.

Eleven years in, I am amazed at how very perfect we are for each other, and how I respect him more now than I did before. I am amazed at what we are accomplishing as a team, and so, so thankful that the things that are closest and most dear to our hearts are still reflected in each other. 

Instead of living in a third-world orphanage, I am now living in a beautiful modern house. Instead of sacrificing everything to care for a whole lot of children, I am living a life of daily sacrifice for four children. And instead of being married to a missionary, I am married to a genius-brainiac-software developer with a voracious appetite for learning, the strongest work ethic ever, full of vision and passion, and motivated by compassion to live his life to benefit others, starting with his own family. 

Show me all the fish in the sea, and I doubt you could find his equal.

Eleven years in, I am so, so blessed to have a man in my life who loves me well, and keeps me connected to the internet.

Moving House

Three and a half years ago I had two children and was packing up my happy life, preparing to launch our family across the globe in search of sunshine. People on both the launching and landing sides thought we were both inspiring and crazy, and I suppose we were.

We arrived haggard, and travel weary, in Sydney. Our luggage did not. With my mother's help we found our rental car in the parking lot, piled our carry-ons and kids into the vehicle, and set off driving, on the wrong side of the road, to our temporary furnished apartment.

We arrived in autumn and I blanched at the eternally silver-gray palette. Gum trees (eucalyptus) are the foundation of the terrain here, and their silver blue was a stark contrast from the heavy and humid green of a southern spring rainstorm I had left behind about 30 hours before.

I now know that we were driving through some really ugly bits of Sydney. I didn't know that then. I felt nauseous from lack of sleep and stress. Stress derived from hurtling towards certain death (at least that's how it felt on the wrong side of the road), and panic from having moved across the globe to a drably colored, ugly place. What have we done?  I wondered, hoping my mother couldn't detect my dismay from the back seat.

We had been so sure of our plan to move to a beautiful, amazing place we had never visited before,.

All that comes to mind when I have our house in boxes and we are moving fifteen minutes down the road. Things are so different now.

When we finally arrived, safely, at our apartment, I abandoned husband, mother, and children. I went to my room and passed out on the bed, crying.

I awoke several hours later to the smell of dinner cooking. Husband had found food, and mother was preparing it. Children were settled and things were organized. Refreshed from a nap I decided to eat something and put on a brave face. It would take our container three months to arrive, so we couldn't catch the first flight home. Better make the best of it.

Three and a half years ago I had two children. They were not in school. They did not have extracurricular activities. We had a snug two bedroom bungalow and maintained a streamlined life free of extra stuff. We shipped the contents of our house and took our suitcases to my parent's for the last month. We sold our house to some friends for our asking price. The Captain finished work and we directed all our attention to THE MOVE we had so long anticipated. Our vision was clear. We were focused.

Fast forward to today. We move in nine days. I have been packing for weeks. I have spent all three weeks of school holidays packing, with four children underfoot. We have a lot of stuff. So.much.stuff. This house is much bigger than our little Nashville cottage. The rental agents have been having open inspections on Saturdays, so with the boxes stacking up in each room, we've been cleaning and putting out flowers, vacating the house with four kids and a dog.

Monday school starts back. Sprout starts a new ballet class on Saturday. I keep repeating to myself "don't pack the school uniforms, don't pack the ballet clothes, don't pack the baby gear." 

Moving with a child in school, a child in preschool, ballet class, a toddler, and a (recently sick) newborn is a completely different beast than the last move. There's the dog to transition from outside to inside, the plants in the garden to dig up and move to a new garden that hasn't yet been prepared. There are the numerous contact visits for our foster baby each week, and his many recent doctor's appointments. There is a very busy, and very full life to continue.

I am normally good at time management, and breaking a big task down into small tasks. But this move? When I try to break it down piece by piece and spread it out along a time line, my mind just starts spinning. 

The movers arrive at 8 am. I need to take the boys to a friend's house, and Sprout to ballet. I need to make sure the dog doesn't escape while the movers have all the doors open. I need to get all the car seats out to lay the seats down to move the important/fragile stuff. I need to move the dog to the new house and make sure he doesn't escape while the movers have the doors open. I need to move the fish tank. Geez, where am I going to put the fish in the new house? I still don't know. Will it still be bucketing rain on move day? What should I put in the "first night box"? Should I put the bassinet in my car or let the movers take it? Click, click, click, sssssssssssssssssssssss.

Meltdown. 

I guess if worst comes to worst, I go to my (new) room and fall asleep crying, and wake up to unpack. Because unpacking? I'm really good at that. 

Park Convo

We are slowly going mad enjoying our school holidays. Earlier this week I had one crazy day where Small Sun's kindy class, and Sprout's preschool class both arranged school holiday park play dates...at the same time...at two different parks. I did them both, with a newborn baby, and fresh baked cookies to share. (You may each award me a gold star now, thank you.)

Perhaps because of this extended jaunt into crazy over-extension, the baby became ill and we have been quarantined at home the entire rest of the week. I rue the day I decided to be supermom!

Anyway.

At park playdate #1 I had an interaction with a fellow preschool mom that left me a bit speachless.

I walked up, pushing the baby in the stroller, with Sprout and Finch walking with me. I had dropped Small Sun off with a friend from school, to go to the other park ahead of me. Immediately this mother (who I have had very little contact with, but know to be an expat from the U.K.), said "oh, you're the one with the foster baby!" I introduced myself and gave her my name. When she started asking about the baby, I asked her if she was interested in foster care. (This is one of my current strategies for re-directing personal questions about the baby's situation.)

"Oh no, I could never do that." She replied. "What I would really like to do is adopt."

"Oh?" I asked.

At this point she leaned in and said "I'll say this quietly because we're in a mixed cultural area (she looked around for emphasis): what I really want is to adopt a little Chinese baby."

I think I just blinked, but didn't really respond. We had only been at the park all of about 48 seconds.

"If they find out it is a girl, they just abort them! There are just tons of little Chinese babies that they don't even want. I used to live in Russia..."

"Oh did you?" I interjected, hoping to get to another topic we could relate on. "I lived in St. Petersburg, where did you live?"

"Moscow", she replied. "The Americans used to come to adopt the babies there, but they all have fetal alcohol syndrome, you know. "

My mind kind of boggled, processing so many different possible responses, and I just didn't respond. I got her talking about Russia, then preschool, and then we were safely away from the topic. 

This interaction made me realize several things. 

First, this sort of conversation used to happen in Nashville ALL THE TIME. I run into someone I don't know and have no relationship with and they tell me their opinion on foster care or adoption. Often they just haven't "done their homework" as my dad says. They don't really know much about the factors and dynamics at play, but that doesn't stop them from sharing their perspective with me. 

I suddenly became aware that I haven't had that kind of experience in a long time. I am out of practice with my reaction there as well, because I just haven't needed it. Most often here, people ask me questions about foster care and adoption and really listen to my answers. They don't seem to have a pre-set opinion. They're curious and interested. I like that. 

Second, I still just don't always know when it is appropriate to stop and attempt to broaden a person's perspective, and when to just let it go. I will jump neck-deep into that cold creek for a friend, because I can't maintain a friendship without honesty. For a random aquaintance...not so much.

I wonder if she would have felt differently about sharing, had she seen me with my brown son? With Small Sun at school, I "pass" as a mom of all white kids much of the time. I think people filter their comments somewhat differently when they see me in the adoptive-mother-of-a-brown-child role. There are so many ways for people to (mis)perceive me these days, with the Baby Ant looking passably like my child as well. 

Ah well, food for thought. I might need to brush up on my responses. Yet again, I feel blessed to be in Sydney where my day-to-day interactions are ones of respect and open-mindedness. 

The Problem With Australian Winter

It has only been officially winter for nine days and I am already over it. I'm such a flake!

Before we moved here I gave away my fabulous collection of vintage and modern coats. I went to REI and bought a simple, black jacket. I had read the temperature averages for Sydney, and they said the average coldest temperature in the winter, in Sydney was around 50F. 

There are palm tress there. 50 must actually be kind of breezy-cool. I told myself. I put on the REI jacket and walked, shivering in the Nashville winter night, to my car. As I drove I checked the temperature gauge on my dash for comparison. 52F it read. But 50s must feel warmer in a place with palm trees. 

It doesn't.

I still think about those coats.

Houses without insulation or central heat and air aside, there is one major problem with Sydney's winter: lack of holidays. 

The other day I was in a parking garage unloading my shopping cart into my trunk. I shivered in the cold and had that little thrill "it's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas" spark through my mind. Ever since I was born the cold weather heralded the beginning of a parade of exciting holidays. 

      
It all starts with Halloween, which my family didn't (doesn't) celebrate. For us it meant fall festivals and farm parties. Bonfires, corn mazes, bobbing for apples, hay rides behind a tractor, candied apples and toffee, marshmallows and hot cider, all herald the beginning of the excitement. 

About one month later we do the drive up north to Pennsylvania, without fail, to join my mom's family for Thanksgiving. The 14 hour car ride is absolutely routine and we pack in blankets and pillows and novels, along with the laden cooler of mom's trip goodies for the drive. 

In Pennsylvania we rendezvous with my mom's six siblings and all their children - too many cousins to keep count, and still popping. Now there are great-grandchildren in the mix. Even though we lost my grandfather in a horrific car crash, the family continues our tradition of gathering for a Thanksgiving meal, the plank wood table supported by saw horses groaning under the weight of turkeys and pies, succotash and potatoes. There are still monetary awards for scriptures memorized and then the family talent show (which always involves several of my male cousins break-dancing or doing a push up contest). Last but not least is a mad rubber-band fight you have to wear layers of clothing and goggles to survive, and then eating the second-hand feast before falling asleep in a pile of cousins every which way (perhaps after a game of scrabble where grandmamma smokes everyone).

   

   

A month after that we climb into the car again, each trip north holds the hope of snow. This time it is only eleven hours to Michigan to my dad's side of the family. He has five siblings but there are only reasonable amounts of cousins and everyone has "normal" jobs and lives. The car is packed with presents and grandpa has waited for us to arrive to trim the tree. There's a dancing santa and stockings with our names on them, mysteriously bulging at the toes. We play pool in the basement and do the twist with my grandparents, choosing records from their collection. Pictures of the whole family's modeling careers look down from the walls, ancient oriental rugs serve little protection from the freezing tile floors. Sometimes we are blessed with snow and we sled and toboggan down the hill at Our Lady of Sorrows. We used to go carolling in the neighborhood, even though most of us couldn't sing.

   

Back home for New Year's there is an endless parade of memories. Different parties at different places, mostly blending my brother's friends and mine as the groups intermarried. We went to Mexico one year.

Eventually winter, as mild as it is to start with, peters out and spring comes with a riot of rainstorms and daffodils. We don't even really mind winter because it is just the backdrop for all the fun. The weather needs to be bleak so nature isn't in competition with our celebrations.

That's the problem with Sydney's winter. Other than one day off in June to celebrate the Queen's birthday, there's nothing to color it up. People go to the Blue Mountains to celebrate "Christmas in July", but I have the same issue with that as I do with faux-finish antiquing on walls - it's not real. You can't put a wash on walls that were put up five years ago and make the inside of your house look like an ancient monastery. It just isn't. Christmas isn't in July, even if that's when you can get a bit of snow in the Blue Mountains.

Living here I am still trying to re-create the life I want. My friends and family are scattered across the U.S. and the globe so I cannot have what I had. I have managed to create summertime Christmas traditions but the winter is still bleak and underwelming.

So, to combat the gloom and depression that is hanging around the boundaries of my house these days, I think I need to invent some Australian winter holidays of my own. We can make our own traditions! Welcome to doughnut making, cider simmering, scrabble playing, June-tide! 

PS- the first photo is from my parent's place in Tennessee. We don't really get frost like that here.