Mum Life & Parenting Archives - Page 3 of 6

January 9, 2020June 26, 2021

Is All of Australia on Fire?!? What Australians Abroad are Worried About.

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Hellooooo! Here we meet again, on the other side of New Year’s Eve! Happy New Year! Welcome to 2020 and your new decade 😊.

Last week I was so pumped up, so excited to think about the past year and write down some concrete plans for how I wanted my 2020 to look. I wrote all about how I’ll be having a great year here, do you remember? Now my questions for YOU: did you do that activity I recommended, about writing down 10 proud achievements from last year and 10 new goals for this year? If you did, well then *big hug* for you. What’s on your list? Are you excited about it too? If you didn’t, well don’t fret. There’s 51 weeks of the year left for you to work on your goals 😉.

I am absolutely serious about my intentions to have a brilliant 2020. But there is also a flip side to all celebrations and festivities at this time of year, despite me throwing around words like “brilliant” and “great” and “pumped up”.

I am Australian but have been living in Germany with my German Hubby for 14 years now. And Germany is a looooong way from Australia, right?…

That means every Christmas and New Year we can spend with only one half of our families and friends; either the Aussie ones or the German ones here. And of course, a hot, summery Australian Christmas spent outdoors is an entirely different thing to a cold German winter one!

I have written quite a few posts before about the internal conflicts experienced by most expats (including myself!), such as this one here, but this time of year can definitely be a bit tougher for us expats so far from “home”. Living in a foreign country may sounds glamorous and fascinating, but not every real life day is like that 😉. (Don’t let social media fool you 😉.) Even more than the usual fluctuating, mildy homesick, funk over Christmas and New Year has been affecting me these last weeks though.

Why? Because my “home” is burning. And I can’t be there.

australia, bushfires, fire warning map, nsw fires, nsw rfs, new york times, kangaroo, wildlife — You’ve probably seen this photo in every newspaper article and on all your social media the last days.
Photo Credit: Matthew Abbott for The New York Times.

Sounds odd, maybe? Why would I want to be where those fires are and not a million miles away?!?

December 30, 2019June 26, 2021

Get Ready, Set Goals & Go into the New Year!

pin, pinterest, goal-setting, motivation

Christmas is over and New Year’s Day is upon us. People the world over are reflecting on the past year, preparing celebrations for New Year’s Eve and dreaming up New Year’s resolutions and goals for the coming 12 months.

Not only will this be the start of a new year, 2020. But it is also the start of a new decade! Wowsers! Can you remember what you were doing 10 years ago? A helluva lot can happen in 10 years!!! Can you remember even 20 years ago, when it was a new year, a new decade and a new millennium all wrapped up in one fateful night? (Remember the much-feared Y2K bug that was surely going to bring the world to it’s knees… but then didn’t?!?).

New Year’s resolutions are always seen as being this big thing. Another 12 months full of endless possibilities! New year, new beginnings, new habits…

You know, like signing up for a gym membership and then going hard at it for about, um, 3 weeks. And then quitting ☹. Did you know, in December 2018, “exercising more” was the New Year’s resolution for 2019 for 59% of surveyed Americans? And how many then go out and pay for gym memberships that they don’t end up using? Over 5 million! That’s about $1.8 BILLION wasted on wonderful, dreamy, unfulfilled resolutions! **gasp** That really is a insane amount of money! SO many big dreams and cool hard cash wasted.

fitness, gym, gym membership, motivation, exercise

I find the idea of New Year’s resolutions to be a little bit wishy-washy. Sort of, “I am sure I want to go to the gym more this year” or “I really want to stress less this year”. Admirable ideas? Absolutely! But with no plan behind those vague statements to support your resolutions, it’s no shock when you can’t actually say with clarity at the end of the year that you succeeded. Perhaps making an entire year dependent on some well-meaning resolutions made whilst tipsy on the last day of the year is not the best way to go about reaching your goals in the next one…

December 5, 2019June 25, 2021

Let’s Celebrate This Birthday Together!- My First Year Blogging

Wowsers, has this week been exciting! Well, OK, I’m not sure how it was for you (feel free to tell me in the comments section below 😉). But for me, mega! Why?

Because this past week my baby turned one! No, not a real live human baby. (Three kids is plenty enough for this Mama.) My blogging baby! My Everything’s Famtastic.

Twelve months ago I finally quit listening to that little anxious voice in my head, grabbed the credit card to cover the subscription fees, faced my fears, and published my first blog post. I opened myself up to the whole wide world because I felt like I had something to share, something that might be just what someone, what you, were looking for.

Do you know what my very first post was about?

November 28, 2019April 16, 2024

Best Book Series for 9 – 12 Year Old Girls To Read Now

(as Recommended by Girls!)

pin, pinterest, books for girls, book series, book recommendations, recommended reading for girls, reading, books, 9-12 year olds

Last weekend our family bit the bullet and went to another flea market (Flohmarkt, for those of you wanting to expand your German vocabulary 😉). No, not to buy anything, but to Sell! Sell! Sell! And we had definitely collected plenty of unwanted kids’ stuff to sell.

Sure we made some money. Not as much as we had fantasised about beforehand (bathtub full of banknotes, anyone?!?), but we actually did OK. Afterwards, we reloaded the car and brought the unsold stuff home again. Do you know what constituted the biggest pile of leftovers? Can you guess???

BOOKS!

I mean, we did sell quite a few, but we just had so many that the kids didn’t want anymore.

Our 3 children LOVE books. If we left the kids alone with no demands or expectations of homework, attending school, helping out with chores, speaking to another human or having a breeze of fresh air brush their sweet faces… well, I think they would probably just lie in bed and look at books all day. Do you know what the perfect word for them is? Bookworms!

The 2 girls have been begging for months to contribute towards my blog here, as a sort of “Stuff for Kids, by Kids” offering. And hey presto! I have finally got my eldest right here, helping me put together a list of highly-recommended, tried-and-tested book series. to give you some great reading ideas!

So, why wait?!? Read on to discover these compelling, page-turning, book series for girls aged 9 to 12 years, as recommended by my girl, who is (funnily enough) also aged between 9 and 12 years old 😉.

November 14, 2019June 26, 2021

No More Being Afraid. Face Your Fears.

pin, pinterest, motivation, inspiration, face your fears

How do you feel about spiders? Hmm, not a fan? What about dentists’ drills? Eww! What about signing up for a jogging group when you’ve never run anything in your life? A little intimidated?

Everyone has got fears, ranging from freaking out over multi-legged creepy crawlies to avoiding the doctor’s reminder for your next check-up to feeling like a fool in lycra at the gym.

But is there a difference between the types of fears you feel and the level of importance you allow them to have on your life? What if there are things you wish you could try, that you dream of being able to achieve? IF ONLY you weren’t scared. IF ONLY you weren’t too nervous. IF ONLY you weren’t comparing yourself to someone else who has tried it before you.

WHAT is it you are actually afraid of? WHAT IF you faced your fears?

October 15, 2019November 22, 2021

How to Know Whether Your Child is Ready for Their Own Phone

Warning! Warning! We now have a young lady in her mid-tweens in the house! Our oldest “baby girl” is certainly a little girl no more. Our formerly-known-as-Miss-10 recently celebrated her 11^th birthday. Yay! Happy Birthday amazing, gorgeous girl! (I know you’ll be reading this 😉).

Birthday celebrations mean birthday party planning, right?!? And boy, did she have plans. A gaggle of girlfriends stayed over to dance, chatter, play games and feast on popcorn while watching a DVD. Apparently they even managed to find time for some shut-eye.

Apart from her big birthday party though, she had one other grand plan occupying her thoughts every waking moment: a mobile phone.

pin, pinterest, kids and mobile phones, mobile phone, cell phone, parenting, tips

Mobile phone, cell phone, Handy, expensive-addictive-glowing-screen-attention-sucking-vampire. Call it what you want. But that gadget was front and centre on her birthday wish list and she was darned certain she was going to get one. From us. Her parents. Her caregivers. Her guardians. The logical left-brain to her own excitable right-brain.

But what to do? The idea of giving her her own mobile phone had me feeling incredibly nervous and concerned and a thousand other emotions that all together made me feel, well, uncertain and a little uncomfortable.

Mobile phone. Cell Phone, Handy. Looks harmless enough, right?

I mean, how are we supposed to know whether now is the right time to give her a phone? How does anyone know when “the right time” is? Read on!

October 1, 2019November 9, 2024

What It’s Like to Live Plastic-Free (and How You Can Do It Too!)

In case you have been living in a dark cave for a looong time, you have surely noticed the ever-increasing amount of news surrounding climate change, food production and wastage, plastics polluting the oceans and much, much more.

Now I don’t know about you, but a lot of this news scares me. And to be honest, it’s intimidating. What are we humans doing to the planet? To the environment? Why is it that so many goods are needed for our ever-increasing consumption, while at the same time landfill is stuffed with ever more food and plastic waste? And what can I, what can any of us, do about it?

Have you ever heard terms like “plastic-free” and “zero-waste” before? I am certainly aware of these concepts. Ask my whether I actually live plastic-free though, and I would probably um and ah and say how desperately I wish I did, but that I haven’t started. Yet.

I’m all for upcycling (such as in these sewing projects) and recycling (like giving new life to old toothbrushes). But still…

I needed to find some more information, something which I could latch onto and quickly implement to kick-start a plastic-free way of living. What does it even mean to live plastic-free? Would it be hard?

I decided to speak with my friend, Birgitta, as she is one of the only people I know who really does live plastic-free. And has done for a while. She would surely have some ideas for me!

Lucky for all of us, she was happy for me to share her story and some of her top tips with you! Plus, she shares one of her favourite recipes with us 😉. Read on to find out how Birgitta got started and how she successfully maintains a plastic-free household.

September 24, 2019June 26, 2021

The Art of Creating Special Memories

This week I am not going to dilly-dally around. I’m going to get straight into it. So… Who doesn’t believe in love? And romance? And beautiful gifts from your special someone?

This past weekend was Hubby’s and my wedding anniversary. Our 12^th to be exact. Which, whether you like it or not, we are just going to pat ourselves proudly on the back. Anyone who has ever been married knows that despite loving someone with all your heart, there are times when there can be other, not-so-poetic ways, to describe your feelings for this person. Marriage can be great. But it can also be hard work.

So when another years passes by and you can honour the fact that yes, you are still together, you are still in love with each other and you still want to stick by each other, it’s worth celebrating. Am I right?!?

So when we celebrated those 12 years together, it was the most magical, romantic, memorable day of the year. Or was it?….

**cue suspenseful music**

September 1, 2019June 26, 2021

Back to School Time

Here we go for another round of Everything’s Famtastic, with your happy host, Jenny!! How were things in your part of the world this past week?

We’re doing OK here. School holidays finished. Early school mornings have started again. It’s going to take some getting used to. We need some time to find our “groove” again. It was only a 3-day school week to start the school year off with. You know, the type that everyone likes, where you don’t have to face a full 5-day uphill battle of re-resetting your circadian rhythms after a 6-week hiatus 😉.

But seriously, these past few days of school and kindergarten [preschool] actually flowed surprisingly well. Not once did the kids complain about being woken up. No grumbling during breakfast time. No grouchy faces when it came time to walk out the door. Even no protesting when it was homework time in the afternoon.

**High fives all round dear family!**

What happened to my kids?!?

August 18, 2019June 26, 2021

What’s So Great About Photos?

Halli Hallo! Here we go again, another round of Everything’s Famtastic to enthral and delight you. Last week’s post about dealing with grief was kinda heavy and not my usual thing. But then again, the passing away of so many friends and family in such a short time is also not “my usual thing”. But nobody is ever alone in their grief. I just hope that my post reached the right person at precisely the time when they needed some reassurance, comfort and strength after losing someone special.

One of my “usual things” however, is photographs. I take a LOT of photos. Just ask my Hubby. Or my kids. Or pretty much anyone who has known me for a while 😉. I take photos with my mobile phone. I take photos with my big fancy-pants SLR camera.

I not only take a lot of photos, oh no. I collect photos from my Hubby’s mobile too. And when we get together for special occasions with friends or family, I like to check out what photos anyone else took too. Which means that I have a fairly large collection of photographs.

Ahem. *clears throat* I don’t think that I have been quite clear enough. I have a REALLY LARGE collection of photos. I haven’t done a hard-core sorting and cleaning out of photos from my laptop in years. Since approximately 2014 to be precise *buries face in hands in shame*.

Ok confession time. I take a LOT of photos. I have more than 40,000 photos stored on my laptop dated from 2014 to present. I am a photography addict.

There is just so much to do with all those photos… *wails*