My life as a mum

It has been a little quite on my blog lately but today I'm doing another Hello Monday post to share what we've been up to in the last weeks. Hello Monday. Hello 7 year old Yovannah. Yovannah turned seven years old exactly one week ago today. Hello birthday clothes. Unfortunately we spent all morning of Yovannahs birthday in two hospitals and on the way from one to the other and we were home around 5 in the afternoon and was so tired because I did not sleep enough in the night. So she only ended up putting her special clothes on late in the evening and we had chocolate cake afterwards. Hello to helping to Yovannah helping to make her own chocolate birthday cake. Hello to learning to ride on pony's. Hello short hospital stay for Ixora. Hello Bear doctor Ixora. Hello special Zoo time Hello to getting to sit in police cars on the way to the Zoo and back. Hello to playing on the bouncy castle. Hello se...

As you might know I went back to school to become a Montessori teacher. It wasn't a very easy year. I especially did not like being away from the girls so much. But I am so grateful to God that I made it. Unfortunately after moving back here, I have come to the conclusion that the profession 'Montessori teacher' does not exist here. In Ireland this is a teacher who has studied Early Childhood Education and the Montessori method and who is qualified to teach children from 2,5 years to 6 years old. It is quite sour that I worked so hard to become a Montessori teacher and that that's just not a possibility here. I miss working with children and teaching but I know that the time to do that will come again one day. And for the time being, I can make myself useful by helping out in the kids church of the church that I attend and I can use my skills to help my girls with their school work. It is not easy to see how little the Montessori method is used here with young childre...

Today I wanted to do a Happies and Crappies post about things that were very okay lately and things that have not been okay. Happies. The bouncy castle has arrived. After more than 1,5 years the girls finally have access to the bouncy castle again. My mum was so kind to post it to us from Suriname where we spent two months and where we had left it for the time being. We only have not been able to use it yet. Mainly because the blower has an Irish plug so I need a special plug adapter to be able to use it here in the Netherlands. I tried to find it here in Ijburg today but I've not yet been succesful in finding it. So the girls will have to wait a little bit longer before they can jump on it again. After spending the whole weekend without a bank card, yesterday evening it finally turned up. I knew that I had left it on the table on Thursday afternoon but it was not there in the evening. Later that day the smallies had been playing close to the table with a big box which they ...

Today it is Sunday, so it is time for another fun post. I decided to do a ' never have I ever' post. Never have I ever run a full marathon .....but I ran a half marathon for women once in Dublin. Never have I ever owned a brand new car ......but I owned two second hand ones, even though I only had an Irish learner drivings license. Never have I ever had a book published...... even though I am intending to do that one day. Never have I ever traveled to the United States......., even though I hope to have that happen some day. Never have I ever gotten a baby boy........, but this would really be a dream come true. Never have I ever had a dream wedding.....,  but I am believing that this is still possible. source Never have I ever gone skiing....., but I hope to give it a try one day. Never have I ever swum with dolphins......., but this looks like an amazing thing to do. Never have I ever had a baby shower......., even though this seems very cool to exper...

It seems that I am getting the dates a little wrong when it comes to some of the topics.Oh well. I meant to do a post on photography this week. Now I realise that that was the topic of a few days ago. Since the topics are optional, I decided to post on this topic anyway today. I always loved taking pictures from a certain age, There is something about it that interests and fascinates me. I love looking at beautiful pictures too. At some time in my life I decided to work in a photo studio. I would sell photo products, book photo and video sessions for parties, handle orders and take pictures in the studio too. I also was in training for video and photo work at parties. It was actually very exciting and I learned a lot from it but at a certain time I changed jobs to help someone out and then moved abroad. I always wanted to do a photography course to learn to take better pictures but unfortunately all I did was order an online course and then never taking it because I was too b...

I have never been in favor of spanking children, even though the bible mentions it. But unfortunately I can’t say that my girls never have gotten a slap, but it has really been more reserved for special circumstances like when they kept going on and on with wrong behaviour despite warnings or they had done something absolutely crazy or dangerous or other situations where I felt really desperate enough, like them making loads of noise in the night when we were staying in someone elses house. But I normally feel bad about it. I just don't like hurting anyone and especially a child, even though it is a way to correct them.  Unfortunately, children are children and they don’t always listen or sometimes do something naughty or bad.  When Ixora was 2 and we were living on our own, I started to use the time out method. When she repeatedly would not listen, I would send her in time out in the hall. Then we moved to Ireland and moved in with others and in cases like that I don’t f...

Today's optional post topic is a letter to your younger self. So I decided to write a letter to my 17 year old self. Dear 17 year old me, I know that a girl from your school with your type of hair, has recently put those ‘curly perm’ curls in her hair and after  chemically straightening your hair for years, you also want the same curls. Don’t do it. You will end up in a hair salon where they will tell you that you can’t get the curls unless you cut all the hair off that is previously straightened and even though you don’t want that , the hair dresser will tell you, that she will start cutting your hair to make it even and she will cut so much off that everyone thinks that you might as well let her cut off the straightened hair because she has cut a lot of your hair already.  So she will do that and you will get the curly perm that you desired so much. But it is a very short do, so it will end up looking nothing like the curls of that girl. You will not like it. An...

Today I am sharing an outfit that Nevaeh was wearing a few days ago. In the below pictures, Nevaeh is wearing a pink top with long sleeves with the face of a dog on it. We got this on sale in the Dutch shop HEMA and she loves it. I also think that this top is very cute. She is wearing the top with a denim skirt from NEXT, which I really love. I love clothing from NEXT. They have cute clothing for kids in very good quality but it is not really cheap so when we were living in Ireland, I used to look forward to the NEXT Summer Sale where you can buy clothes with big discounts. This skirt is an item from the Summer sale from a few years ago. I especially love how NEXT uses a lot of denim but then they decorate it with colour, like on this skirt, I really fell in love with this skirt, which I initially got for Yovannah but has now been passed on to Nevaeh. There are a lot of cute drawings on it, for instance an orange smiling sun. The skirt is combined with leggings in hot pin...

The girls will be in school for a couple more weeks but Summer is coming soon (here in Holland it is not officially Summer yet) and I thought it would be a nice idea to start thinking about what we are going to do this Summer. So here is our Summer Bucket list for this year, so far. I chose 20 things to put on the list. 1 Visit the beach 2 Go to an amusement park. 3 Have a barbeque. 4 Get small braids plaited. 5 Play with water balloons. 6 Have a water fest with watose er guns, water slide etc. 7 Have a picnic in the park 8 Do a karaoke night. 9 Go camping and make smores. 10 Make a yummy treat and a kids cocktail. 11 Make popsicles. 12 Fly a kite. 13 Make drawings with sidewalk chalk. 14 Dance in the rain. 15 Go to the movies. 16 Go swimming. 17 Grow flowers and veggies in our garden. 18 Go to a kids farm. 19 Go fruit picking. 20 Eat watermelon What...