NYE on the hardest year of my life

Most New Years Eve we are in bed by midnight, or we just have a quiet night at home. Some years I will take Jay out to see the fireworks from a distance while Aaron stayed home with the other boys as it was too hard to take them out so late, especially Noah if the weather wasn't that nice.

Today the weather was so lovely and we had been thinking a lot about what the new year means to us, so thought it would be nice to go out with the boys to watch the early fireworks in town. We headed out about 8.30 pm and waited to meet up with Alison.

It makes me so happy to see my boys running around, playing happily together.

Harri and Kobe had actually never seen fireworks before, so they were really excited, especially after we showed them a video of some on YouTube.

The boys loved it (after Kobe was scared at first and not so sure about it).

In the end Kobe acted all tough and said 'me wasn't even scared at all!' :)

The boys had fun playing afterwards with their glow sticks.

There is so much I can say about 2011 but I just don't have the mental energy to even start.   I have mixed feelings about the new year.  I'm happy to know that the hardest year of my life so far is over and am looking forward to hopefully a better year next year, but sad to know that time continues to move on and now I'll have to say 'Noah passed away last year'.

It's also strange as I don't really wish that 2011 was any different.  I'll forever miss Noah and wish I could just have him here to hold but I don't have any regrets about how things went.  I know that we gave Noah the best 10 years that we could, and I know that we couldn't have done things any differently.  He lived an amazing ten years and we were so blessed to have him with us for that long. He was so sick and tired in the end and it wouldn't be fair for me to wish for him to still be with us because it's not fair for anyone to live like that, but then I wish he was here because I miss him so much. Wishing that he was still here and saying it was an awful year makes me feel sad for Noah, as it was the best year ever for Noah as he's now free. I'm sure he knows how much we miss him, but I just hope he knows how I'm also happy for him and know that things are how they are meant to be, even though it's hard.

So hard.

I know that we are most likely going to continue to have another hard year, but I hope by the end of 2012 I will be able to look back and see how far we've come emotionally, spiritually and as a family.  I'm glad we decided to do something fun to welcome in the new year, especially as it would've been easy to just sit at home and wish away 2011.    I'm taking lots of deep breaths as we take on 2012.

Long Summer Days

Oh how we are loving the warm summer days at the moment. Tassie weather isn't usually so warm at this time of year, so we are making the most of the beautiful sunny days, just in case the weather decides to change soon :)

I'm loving not getting home till late and knowing it's way past the boys bedtime, but not caring as we've had such a fun time together playing, enjoying the sunshine and just being together.

I'm so glad we have all summer to have lots of fun together. It's just what we need right now.  Noah is never far from our minds while we are out, but I imagine him smiling down on us, happy that we are out together having fun.

Special Gifts

I'm never really into Christmas or birthday presents (unlike Aaron who is the biggest kid in the family and thinks about what he wants for his birthday six months in advance!).  To me I'd rather just go out somewhere special for my birthday or get a gift voucher to have a massage or something, rather than get presents.  I'm the same at Christmas time and Aaron always gets stressed with me as he's always asking what I want and I say 'nothing' which makes it hard for him to buy me anything that I would get excited about.

Since Noah passed away though we have received so many beautiful and thoughtful gifts, that mean more to me than a whole life time of birthday and Christmas presents put together.  I won't mention everyone by name, but please know how much we love each and every gift that we have been given. It means so much to us to know that so many people are thinking of us.  I hope I haven't missed any out and if I have I apologise. My mind is still mush and probably will be for a while.

A beautiful Willow Tree figurine with a star on it, to let us know that our shining star will never be forgotten :)

A fantastic book that helped a friend through a hard time. 

A beautiful wind chime with Noah's name and birth and death date on it, which is now hanging on his tree at his grave site.

Some very cute monkeys to remember our own cheeky monkey :)

Some beautiful angel teddies  - one for each of the boys with their own name bracelets on them.   Noah was given one of these when he was a lot younger, and the same friend sent the boys one each so they can hug it when they are missing Noah. Such a beautiful thought and the boys love them.

A beautiful necklace which I get SO many compliments about. It is from a Australian business who have a Facebook page called 'LoveNCherish'.  I love it so much and wear it all the time with my angel wing necklace with Noah's name on it.

Some beautiful angel Christmas decorations which represent our family...

and some wooden dolls to represent us as well.


More beautiful books.

and the perfect photo frame for us to put a pic of our own cheeky money in.

A beautiful poem written by the very talented Angela.  We love it so much.

A beautiful plant for home which is actually still alive!

A lovely surprise of a meal voucher to 'give us a night off cooking' which was such a lovely thought.

I was saying to a friend that the boys were driving me insane, so they gave us a movie ticket for each of us to get out and do something fun together.

The same friend lent me one of her 'man's hankies' one day when I needed one as there were a few tears, and I haven't given it back since and it often gets pulled out of my bag at times when I need it. I always let her know how handy her man hanky is, so they bought me a 12 pack :)

A gorgeous monkey for our Christmas tree.

The boys music teacher at school spotted this awesome giant monkey chocolate and straight away thought of Harri.  Such a lovely thing to do for him.


A gift card to get a canvas made of a photo of Noah for our home.

Another great book which I'm reading at the moment.

and we absolutely love this wall sticker which Makayla organised for us.  It's the saying that was on the back of Noah's funeral service program and is now on the wall above all of his special things in our bedroom.

It's so nice to know that Noah will never be forgotten and that people are always thinking of us.  We know how blessed we are to have so many amazing friends.

Summertime play day

Whenever our friend Justine and the kids are home visiting from Indonesia, we love catching up with them and usually get together with Simone and Simon at the same time, so the kids can all play while us girls have a good catch up.   Last time we got together in July and it was a freezing day, but the kids had such a great time playing on the giant round hay bales and riding motor bikes together.

Today we headed out to see them as they are home for Christmas and it was the total opposite today - such a beautiful warm, sunny day.  The kids were really excited to see each other.  Last time Harri decided he didn't want an afternoon off school (crazy kid!) to see them, so he was really looking forward to seeing them this time as he saw all the fun the kids had last time and saw that he missed out.

The kids went over to visit 'Rusty' the pet bull who is very tame.

He loves being fed apples. Jalen thought it was better to do it like this.

But Gus showed us how he really likes it being done - by holding the apple in your mouth first! He came out with LOTS of cow slobber all over him.

Kobe was so excited to go out to see the kids.  He kept saying all morning 'we're going to Tilly's house!' (even though it's really Tilly's Grandma and Grandpa's house:)

We had a lovely BBQ lunch sitting out in the sun.




Papparrazzi Simone was out with the camera, until her battery died two minutes later :)

The kids then spent the afternoon riding the bikes around together. 

Harri was being a bit quiet and funny at first.  He jumped on the back of the bike with Oliver but wasn't very happy about it.   He has so much on his mind all the time and this morning before we left home he said 'does Gus and Tilly's Mum know that Noah died?' as he was worried that we would have to get there and tell them. 

He later had a turn riding the bike on his own and thought it was the best thing ever.  He ended up having the best day and didn't want to leave. It was actually really nice seeing him so happy as he's had a rough few months.  Nothing we would say would make him come, so we did the old 'hop in the car and pretend to drive away trick' sure that he would come crying and running to the car yelling 'wait for me!!', but the little rat bag stood his ground and said he wasn't coming home and wanted to stay at 'Gus and Tilly's'!   We ended up having to get him into the car with big black tears streaming down his face because he was so dirty, and was having so much fun and didn't want to leave.

These three have grown lots since they were together sitting on the hay bales in July.

Felix and Kobe were so cute holding each others hands everywhere they went.

It's so nice seeing the kids all get along so well and have such a great time, even though they only usually see each other once a year. 

It was such a lovely day and we wish we could see them more often, but for now we love our play days once a year (or twice a year if we are lucky:)