Sometimes dreams do come true

I've always been a bit of a dreamer. And for as long as I can remember, I grew up dreaming about what my future, and my family, would be like. 

Some of my dreams were quite sensible. (Marry a guy who goes to church. Yep, got that one.)

Others not so much. (12 children? Um, not what we're planning at this point...)

But one of the dreams that stuck in my mind as I got older was to be a family who rode bikes together. I'm not really sure where it came from, although I do have some very strong memories of riding around the park as my Dad watched, and of Mum and I riding together. But even though I didn't ride much past the age of 9, the dream persisted. 

Today, it came true. The four of us went riding together, with SP on his balance bike and F in the trailer. Three hours, three playgrounds and a whole lot of fun and relaxation together. 

Bliss. Thank you, God. 

What were your dreams for your grown-up life? Are they coming true?

Ride for Refugees

You may remember Dave & SP's participation in the Ride for Refugees bike ride last September. 

Since then, I've got a bike and we've also got a trailer for the kids to sit in. 

Initially F wasn't too keen on the trailer, so both new acquisitions have been mostly gathering dust for a few months. Well, my bike has been gathering dust. Dave has taken SP on rides in the trailer, and he loves it. 

But on a recent retrial, F was much happier in the trailer, and we've been going on a few short rides. 

So I've set myself the challenge. Ride for Refugees here I come. 25km, in 11 weeks time. 

I'm not going to be silly about doing the whole course if it's too much - if I need to have a rest or turn around before the halfway point, I will. And I won't be pulling the trailer that day - Dave gets to pull SP & I think F will sit this one out. Dave's thinking of doing the first 25km lap with trailer, then another lap by himself, and he'll probably still finish before me ;)

It feels good to have a goal. 

You'd hide in the library

After a phone call to our local library, it appears that Press Here has been returned. It must have gone back with another batch of books and just longer than expected to process. 

Excellent. 

If you were a library book, where would you hide?

I lost a school library book in year 6. I remember it vividly. We paid for it, then I found it in a forgotten corner corner of the classroom. 

And it never happened again. Until this year. 

This year, we've lost three. 

The first was one of those little skinny Mr Men books. Yep, that was bound to happen one day. We have floor cracks big enough for one of those. 

The second was a DVD that evaporated between the car and the returns desk. 

The third was due back today. There has been much hunting. It's a reasonable sized board book, so surely it can't be that hard to find. 

Time to bring back the 'kids library books only in the lounge room' rule. We were doing pretty well at this until F found her book-loving side and now she wants to take them all over the house. 

I've looked in bookshelves, cupboards, under couches, beds, the piano... Do you have any ideas?

A different kind of book review

Whenever I read a book, I find things I would like to blog about. And I have visions of writing these beautifully crafted posts, with concise and informative book reviews. 

But it never happens. 

So I'm going to try something different. As I read, I'm putting sticky notes on things that I find interesting, and planning to post about them to share with you. It won't be organised, but it will be a way to share information. 

I really wanted to do a good review of 'Maybe I Do', by Kevin Andrews. Fabulous book, which, coupled with an article in the Brisbane Child, prompted me to write my first ever letter to an editor. But I didn't note down the best bits as I read, and it's essentially a 600+ page literature review, so I didn't have the impetus to go back through it and sort them out again. Maybe one day. 

Since then, I've read Dr Susan Prescott's 'The Allergy Epidemic', and I have some notes on that coming up. Stay tuned. 

Excitement

It's our quarterly church working bee tomorrow morning. SP is so excited he had real trouble getting to sleep. 

He'll be taking his mower, whipper snipper (aka pool noodle), wheelbarrow, shovel, hammer, saw...

Hope the outside jobs aren't rained out. I'll have no trouble finding the blokes some inside tasks, but there'd be one little boy very disappointed...