Beyond the Edge of Adventure

*This post contains one example of soft-porn. Please make sure no children can see it as you're reading this post. This morning it was nice to see the early morning for a change! Normally, I drag myself out of bed at 6:45am, stumble up the hall to wake everyone up for their quiet time and lay in bed for a while, doing my own quiet time. Not today - today I'd decided to attend a breakfast organised by City Women about the link between pornography and domestic violence. For years, I've been really busy - and with pretty important things like having babies and raising a family! - but I'm really tired of sitting on the sidelines. Plus......y'know.....breakfast cooked for me.....sitting in one place for the entire meal.........no-one calling my name every five seconds.........who's going to pass that up? Melinda Tankard Reist (MTR) is a blogger, author, advocate, co-founder of Collective Shout and media spokesperson on issues about sexualisation of women an...

We are happily at home more now......and have significantly fewer stressful times in our family. Hence, my need for my trademark Nanna Nap has dropped slightly. To fill the gap because of course, I need my children to have some time apart quietly for an hour a day given that we're now together most of the time, I've taken to reading novels during rest time. The local library is a great place, but the books that fit my criteria are far and few between on the shelves there. A fellow book-addicted friend told me about 'Book Bub', which is a system you can subscribe to by email that sends you a daily list of low-cost or free e-books. You can manage your preferences so that only genres you are interested in will be sent to your inbox. It's fair to say that I've been giving it a fair workout to feed my reading addiction! Here's a list of books I've recently enjoyed on my kindle. Most were free, some I paid for - but never over about $1.50! 1. Port ...

I guess the biggest change for our family this year is not the normal big news that we have in our family - a new baby is usually the first thing people think of when we say we have news! (and we have no news of that sort, thank you very much!) 2016 is our first year of home schooling! It's a common misconception that if you're a home schooling family, then you don't like mainstream schooling. That's just not true. We love our former school and are still members of the association there. We realise that home schooling is not for everyone - just the same way that mainstream schooling is not everyone's cup of tea, either. My husband as Long-Service Leave (LSL) coming up and we're blessed to be able to take a fairly decent chunk of time off from his job. This led to a discussion between us about what to do with that time - what does one do to keep a highly intelligent, go-getter man satisfied and challenged during a four-to-six-month break of.....nothing? ...

  There has always been a fire in my heart for children and women. When I was in primary school, I was always in trouble for hanging around the little children in younger grades - we had segregated areas for different grades and I loved being around little ones, helping them play and get along together. My only real focus in life when I was a young girl was to get married and have babies, everything else was a peripheral goal. As a teen, I babysat and did one year-long practicum one day a week at the local Pre-School in Grade 11. I just had a soft spot for children and their interests, plight, sufferings and joys were mine as well. Nothing has changed with marriage and motherhood. If anything, it's intensified that fire in my heart. I'm a firm believer in healthy, well-adjusted children making healthy, well-adjusted adults. Sadly, even though I was someone who loved children, I didn't give much thought to unborn ones. I had heard bits and pieces about abortion and ...

Well - I'm late. I know I said I'd post next week the pics from our trip to Melbourne........but better late than never, right? So, the big question is: did I do all that my friend dared me to? Well, no. But I  did read The Courier Mail in a swank café - as pictured above.........a nd of course, it was easy to wear my Emily's Voice t-shirt around. Did I ask a local about the lack of train from the airport to the city? YES - absolutely! He was very nice and said that I could catch a train, but it'd be a very long trip. He also said they're hoping to get a train line soon. I'm in the stripy dress - my husband was trying to be discreet about taking the pic! The closest we got to Batman Avenue was when we sat by the Yarra with a romantic picnic dinner at about 8pm at night. It was while we were there that my facebook friends messaged saying that they were in Melbourne and able to catch up - at a suburb north of where we were near Batman Avenue,...

It never ceases to amaze me, the difference in logic between American words and English or Australian words.......like biscuit. We Aussies call a typically round, small baked treat a biscuit. For Americans, a biscuit is more like a flat scone. Take car. Is it more logical to call a car a car or an automobile? What about the logic in calling jelly 'jell-o' but jam 'jelly'? Which word makes more sense? Whose system is better, theirs or ours? It's interesting to compare the two and think about where the names for things came from and which is more logical. Or take names of places like Illinois and Melbourne. I've never met an American yet who pronounces Melbourne correctly. Aussies say, "Mel-bin" and Americans say, "Mel-born". I mean, I'm just as bad - I once pronounced Arkansas how it's spelt, after which my husband nearly burst his sides laughing at my faux pas! Needless to say, I've always pronounced it "Arkinsaaaaaw...

I'm always on the lookout for ideas to make the domestic management side of my job easier. After my third baby was born, I packed up the ironing board and iron for good. I asked my very amazing husband to iron his own uniforms to which he graciously agreed. After baby number four and almost losing my life floating in a sea of washing, I did a search on 'Large Family Laundry Systems' and modified the process in which we kept our clothes clean, dry and wearable! Things have been coasting along OK in terms of domestic systems here. We have a family dirty clothes basket, into which all our dirty washing goes. I then hang it on the line, usually with help from my youngest daughters and sometimes my eldest daughter. It's meant to my eldests' job in the morning before school, but it's simply too cold for her during winter to be out there, pegging away! Our washing is hung in sections: boys, girls, mum & dads and linen. That way, when it's taken off the line...