Thanks wa police!

...so D spoke to his squad supervisor and he has organised for duncan to work monday at a station instead of on saturday night so he can come to Graces concert... I cant believe how much effort they are willing to go to. Today i am very glad the WA police promote and actually live up to being a family friendly career choice.

Today i am not so stoked to be a cops wife...

The first real downfall to being a cops wife strikes. We have just realised that Duncans squad have been assigned to an event on the 19th of this month, which is the same night as our (nearly) 4-year-old's first dance recital/ballet concert, which the whole family has already bought tickets for. She is so excited and dances around the house after every saturday practice.
How are we going to explain the empty seat where her Daddy should be. "Daddy has to work so we have money to buy all the things we need" just isnt gonna cut it on this one :(

Not (my child) Monday

Before i start, i will say, i must be a little ahead of the pack because I have done a couple of these, but just as not me monday from the point of view of Jaeda, my youngest. This post I will write about what my children have (not)done.
Daddys Bible-

Need i say more than this was not my youngest child... certainly not

It was not my oldest child who thought it appropriate and warrented to wake up the whole house before the sun came up on the only sleep in day we get each fortnight, by yelling and crying because she couldnt find the little plastic dinosaur she got in a party bag at daycare that day! Nope she is much more reasonable and considerate and not that attatched to ridiculously unimportant and inanimate objects.

The childrens church have been learning a a song for the fruit of the spirit. Grace is the youngest in the 'big kids church' but loves it. They have been learning the song that goes...the fruit of the spirit is love, joy, peace, patience and kindness and goodness...etc. It was most certainly not my child singing the whole week " the fruit of the spitit is love-your-peas, patience and kind-of goodness". Nope she is the child of leaders in the church and would most certaily know these things properly by now!

After dinner out at a silver service resturant, it was not my child who, while waiting for her dinner, properly declared "i need a towel" while looking haughtily down to her lap where the napkin had been placed for her by the waiter at the resturant. Nope not my child. She certaily knows the difference between wait staff and her mother... RIGHT?

Miss confidence, Grace also did not suffer from stage fright at the beggining of her ballet routine either! not my child! i wish i kept videoing, because if that had been my child she might have kept that up for about a minute and a half and it would have been funniest home videos worthy!

One proud mama (and papa n granny n grandpa!)

WARNING- pointless boasting about my own child ahead...


Grace has been doing ballet lessons for one term. She is the newest and youngest in her class but miss proper has to get it right so formal lessons suit her- she loves it and she is doing really well. i didnt realise how much they are learning.. i was so absorbed in watching her perform that i forgot to video when she did her solo (i dont know the french terms) where she did a skip along on toes, a turn and reach out with one arm and one leg pointed back. She did it perfectly (without bias parent opinion) Lord only knows what she wll be capable of when she is 10, or evn 4 for that matter.

...well I did warn you.






They all got a trophy for passing thier first exam. Grace wanted to sleep next to it last night!



one unfortunate thing about ballet is the whole fairy magic theme is like impossible to avoid, but it has become a bit of a teaching point. Grace now understand we dont need to do magic, God can do miracles and we must pray not try and do things in our own strength or with the help of any magic etc. I didn't really want to expose her to magic type stuff, especially becasue it is hard to teach about one thing that is real that you can't see and say another thing you cant see is pretend. Cant shelter them forever i guess. But the dancing is cute!...

A catch up post

I have been meaning to post for about 2 weeks and there has been so many athings to post about but just not enough time, so now i am going to play catch up and post a little from/about each thing.

Life has been very blessed in the Conradt household lately. Dont get me wrong, not all roses or anything, Gods grace has just been all over everything, you know?

Grace has been loving her ballet lessons, and even though she wont show us what she is learning i have caught glimpses of her walking with toes pointed forward, and practicing controlled breathing. Oh and i find it highly amusing trying to put her whole like 8 strands of hair in a little bun :)

We have been SOOOOOO blessed by the course we are doing- Growing Kids Gods Way. It is the same as the books babywise/childwise that I read and doing the course and the group support has been so positive in reinforcing my commitment to doing the best I can for our kids. I am so loving the boundaries and the respect and honour that it instills in the kids.The structure in our dayand limits to her social freedoms have all but cured J's little (more like chronic) biting habit, just have a peak at how well te girls are getting along now...

Don't be fooled though, they still try and push it. Jaeda's new battleground is holding out on saying 'ta'. She has missed out on dinner once, and now it only takes me reaching to take which ever non-appreciated item it is from her and she will say 'TA' or sign 'please' like crazy. I wonder how long before she quits trying it...Ah the joys of discovering we have a will.



We have just started a star chart which Grace gets for leaving 'blanky' on her bed. Once blanky is making absolutly no day time appearences we will start with night times. It is time for the blanky and by default the thumb sucking to go. I feel a bit sad for my big girl though, she really loves that thing. I mean she hugs it and says bye when she leaves the house and hugs it when she gets home... I know! my kid is a little cuckoo but what 3 year old isn't in some way? I would let her keep it until she was 40 accept it triggers the thumb sucking and i said 3 was where i would draw the line on that... I have even gone past that because i feel so sad taking her lovey away but she is going to ruin her teeth! Good thing Jaeda's fingers are getting too big to be comfortable to suck so i am hoping her little habit will resolve itself.

I have to say the behavior has actually been very good when you consider the copious amounts of chocolate that have been in abundance in our house lately, mostly thanks to easter but also thanks to Carly... you so didn't have to share, but thanks a heap anyway, saved me eating my kids easter chocolate :)

One thing i was going to post on was Good Friday. A lovely lady from our church (known to my kids as Mrs Kho, as titles are one of the respect for elders principles we have been talking about in growing kids but more on that later) invited some children from church to her house for a morning tea. With help from her eldest daughter, the kids participated in a 'surprise' easter story where they each choose a couloured egg from the carton which contained a symbol such as bread, a rock, coins, a cross etc which represented elements of the easter story, they talked about it all, then went on a clue hunt to find bits to make a craft which turned out to be an easter memory verse on a 'scroll' and then did a egg hunt. t was such a beatiful morning and all the kids ages 3- 13 were involved and had a great time. I wish i had taken photos but i was so absorbed in watching the kids learning and have so much fun i forgot.
Grace didnt forget she had stashed an egg from the hunt in her bag and silently got into on the car trip home, at the end of which i found her like this...



And lastly, a little testimony of God at work in little ways...
On Tueday last week I was lying awake considering(as i often do) all the things God has spoken to me about- through prayer, prophetic words from people and his word. One thing, at least at one point, i was sure was one of the things i was called to was preaching the word. When i first moved to my husbands church just before getting married I was asked to speak a few times and did the main message once, and then nothing- like from god or church. When i would get asked to speak previously usually God had been stirring up a word in me for a few days so i often new it was coming... but nothing for a while, until tuesday, i was thinking, Lord is that something that was for then (as then myself and my husband were running our youth group virtually single (couple?) handledly so i had to preach at least every second week. So Wednesday, I get the call, can you speak on communion on Sunday... sure- the bible says to be prepared in season and out of season so I will never say no. Lord i will take it that it is not something you want me to let go of entirely just yet. So anyway i pray and get this scripture and work my whole message from the scripture. Sunday comes i give the message and totally forget to give the scripture- reading or reference, don't even realise. i sit down and Ps pete starts his message which ties in beautifully with the worship songs and the communion message and roughly halfway though, ps pete quotes this scripture his word just reminded him of but cant remember the reference- so i read it from the top of my communion message notes. The exact "forgotten" scripture, Col 1:15. GOD is Good, not that it was super important that the scripture was shared because the heart of it was already, but God in all His greatness and wonder, cared enough to show me that He was still going to use me to share His message by confirming to me that i was hearing from Him.

Pictorial Not Me Monday

I did not do lots of slightly crazy things this week, but most recently I did not make my child pretend to dance like a ballerina in her book so i could get rediculously cute pictures of her in her new dancing costume... nope...


not me...
I did not randomly teach myself to make balloon animals for my own amusement at her birthday party...



and I did not put off baking until it was necessary for me to make cupcakes at midnight... but if i did they would have turned out like this
I did not have a nervous breakdown in the car on the way to the park we were having the party at because fishpond sized rain drops started falling on my windscreen even though the sky looked like this 5 minutes later...


AND i didnt forget half the food and make my most obliging husband go back home to get it...




Or have another nervous breakdown because one particularly selfish family had unneccesarily spread their belongings under the only two gazebos at the park. Nope not me, i would not be upset over silly little thigs like that!




And one for the birthday girl... HI I AM GRACE AND I AM 3, and I did not start out super grumpy at my party,

monopolise peoples attention then cheer up and then announce to the rest of the world my sister was the stroppy one...

Well she was, but not me.

And I did not run out of space on my doodlebear that nan got for my birthday, and when really wanting to stencil a flower on i did not resort to putting it on it's bottom, and Im sure my Mama would have been far to mature to take this photo...
This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

One Last Day...

Today i savour my last few moments raising a 2 year old and a one year old. Tomorrow i will have a 3 year old and a one year old. The girls are sleeping now as we had a walk and bought some treats, and this afternoon i plan to take some pics of my soon to be big girl. It is so much fun now that she knows what is going on, but she may be a little overly focused on her present this year. the birthday conversation usually goes like this

ANYONE- So Grace it is your birthday soon?
Grace- I am getting a bike and a helmet
ANYONE- So how old are you going to be Grace?
Grace- A pink bike!

at the shops
Grace- what are you getting Daddy?
Daddy- A newspaper
Grace- Can i look in the pages to find my bike?
(newspapers and catalogues are on equal terms in the mind of a nearly 3 year old i guess but how she knows to look for bikes in there i will never know!)

bit of a one track mind, lucky for her she is getting a bike!

She is getting ballet lessons from Granny, and she knows all about that too. she say big girls who are 3 get to be ballerinas. Cant wait to post pics of her getting her little oufit on Saturday.

On another front, i may have a new job opportunity on the horizon, but i will post more on that if anything comes of it.