I have been rather busy the last few weeks, although you wouldn’t think so if you could peek in the window. All it would look like was that I was a super lazy mum, spending most of my afternoons on the couch while my amazing daughter plays on the floor next to me.

When actually… I am busy growing another human!!!

I am now just over 12 weeks pregnant, due October 13th and we are thrilled.

We have been trying for over 2 years with fertility treatment and feel so incredibly blessed to have finally reached this point! We can’t wait for October to arrive!

So far, I don’t have anything to complain about. I have had no morning sickness, but I have been extremely tired (hence the couch lying in the afternoons!).

So that explains why I haven’t had much time or energy for posting. Hopefully now that I’m past the 12 week mark, I will get a bit of energy again (maybe). And maybe I’ll get back into the swing of posting again :)

Hope you are all doing well out there.. oh and Happy Easter!

This is the first weekend that we have been at home and not doing too much. I has been lovely! Mr Wonderful has been pottering in the garden (mainly attacking the weeds), I’ve been able to relax on the couch and Miss Delightful has been enjoying playing in her paddling pool and sandpit!

I know that summer can’t hang around forever, and our poor garden could really do with some rain… but I do love the warmth and sunshine! It is going to be a sad day when I have to find my sweaters and jeans! :)

I hope you are all enjoying some sunshine and relaxing this weekend too!

I just haven’t found the time to sit down and right a proper blog post… and I’m not going to tonight either!

We have been away a lot, we went on a mini family vacation for 5 days which was lovely and we have spent a few weekends with my parents. And the days that we are at home seem to be so packed that I fall into bed at 9pm utterly exhausted :) But I love life so that’s ok! And things appear to be slowing down now… at least for the month of March :)

So maybe one day I’ll get a proper blog post written!

She did some fantastic dancing too!

And after dinner I gave Mr Wonderful a piece of paper that said “You float my boat”… and we had Coke Floats for dessert. They were supposed to be Root Beer Floats, but Mr W isn’t a fan :) So I improvised! Oh and in NZ, I believed these would be called Spiders rather than Floats! I got the idea from Thirty Handmade Days, she even provided the super cute printable!

Mr Wonderful made me a photo card of our cute little family to store in my wallet, every time I open it up I get to see the photo! And then he got some gorgeous red roses delivered to our house! I love them :)

I hope that you too had a wonderful Valentine’s Day! :)

We have been singing some beautiful songs the last 2 weeks.

This one makes me smile every time we sing it (can you imagine a bunch of older ladies and gentlemen singing this? I am on the younger side in the choir)! It is called “Smile” by Kirk Franklin:

And this has to be one of my favourite songs so far, it is called “Still” by Hillsong:

It just sounds so lovely when we all the harmony’s right! I look forward to enjoying more and more songs as the year goes on!

Mr Wonderful lived up to his name today. He kindly ran with me, at my pace. That is very slow for him! But we were not the only ones doing it. There was another couple doing exactly the same as us, and they were keeping a similar pace too.

I managed this week to cut 51 seconds off my race time! I’m impressed because my legs just did not want to work :) Mr W was an amazing encourager, he would give me a location we were going to reach, or a slow person we were going to pass… and somehow I managed to reach all those goals!

The track has a lot of hills (not mega, just enough to kill lazy legs like mine), but it ends nicely. Pretty much the whole last kilometre is a downhill slope. I managed to run the whole thing, gaining speed as we went… to the point that I was able to sprint (at least it felt like a sprint to me) to the finish line over the bridge. In doing this I also managed to pass the other couple mentioned earlier! I found great satisfaction in doing so… never thought I was that competitive! :)

Now I have 3 weeks until my 3rd and final race, somehow in those 3 weeks I need to teach my legs to run at the same speed as my sprint, for the whole entire 5kms! Or maybe not… maybe my goal will just be to get a bit stronger so that I can shave another minute or two off my race time! :)

Since Mr Wonderful was racing with me, we didn’t have an official photographer. So here is a photo from the organizers (Running Events). In the very bottom right hand corner you can see mine and Mr Wonderful’s backs… this was after the grueling 5km’s :)

I am thankful for:

- A little bit of rain… we got a tiny bit of rain earlier this week. It didn’t amount to much, but it did water the garden and cool the temperatures just a bit.

- My garden, the open space, the flowers, the food and the ability to enjoy it! I am loving looking out the window at my mega tall sunflowers at the moment. My neighbour even commented on how tall they were, she can see them over the fence! Glad others get to enjoy them as well :)

- Helpful people… we had a bill due today and Mr Wonderful was being organized, but accidentally put the money into the wrong account. Thankfully the lady I spoke to on the phone was helpful and lovely and sorted it all out for us. Now we won’t face any penalties for late payment! Whew :)

- And lastly I’m thankful for the lovely ladies I have in my life. There are so many awesome ladies that I am getting to know better. I love being able to catch up with them at our “mum” activities each week.

And there is one final thing.. if Miss Delightful was allowed to post here on my blog… she would say that she is thankful for her new kitchen. She is in love with it! Yesterday Mr Wonderful and I managed to read books while she played in her room with her kitchen. So lovely :)

I’m definitely NOT a natural runner. Mr Wonderful is a speeding bullet, he can run so much faster than me :)

I am doing my best, but I am currently running and turtle pace!

I have my second 5km race in a few days, and I’m not feeling any more ready for this one than the first one. But I’m sure I will survive :)

Thankfully Mr Wonderful has agreed to run this race with me, at my speed. It’s going to be interesting… especially since on my latest run I managed to pull a muscle somewhere around my hip area! Hopefully it will heal (or at least not hurt as much) in 3 days time!

And it was really easy to make… no baking needed. Mix it all up and put it in the refrigerator to set!

Here is the recipe if you want to make it yourself… although I warn you, one piece is not enough! :)

Refrigerated Apricot and Lemon Slice

Ingredients:
125g butter
1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk
250g packet malt biscuits, crushed
1 cup dried apricots, finely chopped
1 teaspoon grated lemon rind
1 cup coconut
lemon icing (recipe below)

Directions:
In a small saucepan, add the butter and condensed milk. Stir over a gentle heat until butter has melted. In a bowl combine biscuit crumbs, apricots, lemon rind, coconut and mix well. Stir in butter mixture until well combined. Press into a greased 20x30cm sponge roll tin. Refrigerate for 1 hour. Ice with lemon icing. Cut into squares when cold.
Makes 24.

Lemon Icing

Ingredients:
2 cups of icing sugar
1/4 teaspoon of butter, softened
2 tablespoons of lemon juice
1 teaspoon lemon zest

Directions:
Sift icing sugar into a bowl. Add butter. Add the lemon juice and mix until it is a spreadable consistency, then add the lemon zest.

The recipe was found in my Edmunds Cookbook.