Letter to Richard - 30 June 2014

Dear Richard

Half way through the year! It’s crazy how fast time is going… This mid-year break always goes really quickly too. I’ve been getting material ready for next semester, and today I finally did some proper reading for my Masters. But I spent most of the week last week not working effectively because Caleb was at home with chickenpox! Between Andrew and I and Mom and Dad we looked after him, but it is definitely difficult to be productive… Thankfully he had it very mildly because he was immunised. Hannah then had it even more mildly – 48 hours in total, and completely unaffected by it! But the school is having a major outbreak, with at least 1/3 of the school having it! Amy has it really badly, and Jesse will probably then get it too. We’re just waiting for Josh, but hopefully it will be mild for him too.

We had our final visit with Sis Marie Wiffen last week. It’s very sad to say goodbye to her, with her and Bro Gerald moving to PE this coming week to be close to their oldest daughter. Mom and I have gotten really close to her, and she is a very special lady! But it will be good for her to be close to her family now.

The kid’s reports came last week, and generally good, especially the comments. Each of them have a few things for us to work on during the rest of the year, but they are well loved by their teachers, and that makes a huge difference J

On Saturday we had another beautiful day and we took the kids to Kirstenbosch and along the new tree canopy walkway that was put up for the centenary. The views are spectacular! And quite an experience to be up so high like that. And I was so impressed with how the kids handled the walking around the garden and all the stairs. The walkway is quite far into the garden, but the kids walked on their own 95% of the time and with no complaints! Very impressive J

Because of the chickenpox Andrew kept all 3 kids at home on Sunday, and I got to go to church on my own. I love my kids, but it was really nice to be able to concentrate during sacrament meeting and really feel the spirit! A wonderful meeting J And I spoke to Dad about making my class more of a young adult class, instead of a young single adult class. And he’s happy for the young marrieds to join us as well. So that means that when Wayne gets married (next week!) he can still come to my class J As an aside, Wayne is doing really well. He’s the Young Men president and he’s doing great with them J

I took the kids to the duck pond yesterday afternoon while Andrew was at some training, and they loved playing on some fallen tree trunks, making up all sorts of games about pirate ships! It was one of the many occasions recently where I’m seeing how imaginative Joshua is being J He’s also really enjoying playing with Lego recently.

Last night we spent some time working on Andrew’s family history, after he met with Sis Pam Cerff on Saturday for some guidance. And we’ve got quite a few names that we can take to the temple with us next week J It’s really exciting to be taking some of our own names!

So next week Monday we’ll be travelling to Joburg, so I don’t know if my writing will be so regular for the next couple of weeks (not that it really makes a difference to you ;) But it will be so good to be in the temple again!

Love you

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 23 June 2014

Dear Richard

I have had quite a productive week at work this past week J A big part of that was that I made a plan for myself over the next few weeks of what I want to accomplish, and so far I’m on track :D Having a plan definitely helps to stay focussed! I peer-reviewed two papers for journals and I started working on course material for the second semester. And today I spent most of the day at a session on government structures to help with our preparation of the material for the Public Sector Accounting modules.

Last Wednesday afternoon Andrew and I took off work and went for an anniversary lunch celebration at Schoongezicht, which is an all-you-can-eat buffet restaurant. Delicious! We’ll take you there some time ;) My car also had the bumper fixed, and it’s looking great! But I still have to have a service and the tyres looked at before we go to Joburg next month. Lots to get done…

On Friday we went and visited an aftercare, the lady across from the Banfields’ that they’ve been friends with forever. We’re pretty happy with what we saw and so Josh is probably going to go to her next year. I feel like this is another example of how things have just worked out for me when it comes to me and my kids. Because of the relationship she has with Aunty Corbie, and because she was one of Mom’s patients she is taking Josh, even though she had planned on not taking any more kids. But things are falling into place. But more so that with some other choices I’ve had to make with the kids we’ve had to step forward with faith into the unknown, trusting that Heavenly Father will make things right for us. There’s a lot of trusting and faith going on right now!

Josh has been quite emotional lately, and one of the things we try and do when he’s like this is doing play dates for him. So last Friday we had a friend over for Josh and Hannah, and this coming Friday I’m having 3 kids over, and Josh and Hannah got invited to one tomorrow. 3 play dates in 8 days! Hopefully that will go a long way to helping Josh! But there are things about having more kids in the house that is easier than just having my own 3, because they play with each other nicely, and I don’t have to do that much… But we’ll see how this mammoth one goes on Friday… If I’m still standing at the end… :P

On Saturday we had a Relief Society activity where we did sewing classes. So I made a skirt and 2 shoulder bags to fit my tablet, and one for Sis Pam as well. So that if we’re in the garden or something you can listen to something on your tablet to pass the time. I gave Heleen, Andrew’s cousin Bernard’s wife, a lift, and it was one of her first times with really spending good time with the sisters in the ward since they moved into Panorama in April,  and that went well J

On Sunday afternoon Andrew went to a meeting about the FSY – For Strength of Youth – conference that is going to be happening in December for the first time in  Cape Town. Well, more specifically for all the southern stakes, and it will be in PE or East London. It sounds like it’s going to be quite something!

During my lesson we had an interesting discussion… The lesson was on David and Jonathan, and contrasting their relationship with Saul and everything that happened with him. One of the things that made Saul hate David was the public acclaim that David got for his military success, and he got jealous. We read a great quote by President Benson, from the April 1989 conference. This is just part of it: “When pride has a hold on our hearts, we lose our independence of the world and deliver our freedoms to the bondage of men’s judgment. The world shouts louder than the whisperings of the Holy Ghost. The reasoning of men overrides the revelations of God, and the proud let go of the iron rod” The discussion actually led us to be realising that we can become dependent on other people’s good opinion of us, to the extent that we actually do lose our agency, in that our choices become based on what will make us look good to other people and not what is the right thing to be doing. It can actually be almost an addiction/dependence in the same way that an addiction to drugs or pornography can  stop us being able to exercise our agency correctly. And of course that then opens all sorts of other things that could limit our agency in similar ways. Quite something to think about! I am just loving my class still, although quite a few of my class members are being called as ward missionaries so that they aren’t coming to my class anymore L Leon, Danielle and Chante have all been called as ward missionaries now, which is great! And we’re working out how they can still be involved with the YSA as well…

So that’s it! Life is busy as always, but things are looking pretty good in general J

Keep well!

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 8 June 2014

Dear Elder Powrie

So I made it through one hectic week, and I’ve got about half a hectic week left for now J Then I don’t have any major deadlines looming for a while!

One hectic thing we had last week was that Andrew’s dad was admitted to hospital because he had black vomit, which turned out to eventually be an inflamed stomach, probably because of anti-inflammatories. It was quite a stressful couple of days while we were waiting for him to be tested and not knowing if this was the end or not… But not this time. The family has dodged another bullet…

We had quite a hectic week with Josh as well. He’s having a very emotional time at the moment, worrying about all sorts of stuff, and missing me when he’s at school. On Friday the school even phoned me at about 9:00 asking if I could come and spend a bit of time with Josh. So I went and we spent half an hour together and talked about lots of stuff. His day did go better after that, but then this evening he started saying he doesn’t want to go to school tomorrow again. It’s a continuous challenge! But hopefully with helping him to deal with all of these emotions now he’ll be better able to deal with them when he’s an adult. Great news is that he’s been accepted at Edgemead Primary for next year J That’s a very big relief! At least we can now know that he’s going to a good school, so we don’t have that to worry about on top of all sorts of other things.

I’ve worked at home most of this week, which has been great in terms of a very wet wintry week. I’ve done a lot of marking for the second assignment for the board course, as well as quite a lot of work on the new groups textbook. I just have one more of the 6 chapters assigned to me to rework. So I’m nearly there! Of course then it goes to the editor and we have to go through her changes, and then it will get set, and we have to check that everything was done correctly… Still lots of work to do! I don’t know if it will be ready for publication in August, but we’ll see.

This afternoon we went to Milnerton to see Joshua B getting baptised. There was a really good turnout, because now that they’re in Milnerton ward they’ve got friends there, plus a really good contingent from Panorama (and the entire program was Panorama members…) plus there was family and some people who went on the temple trip recently with them when the family got sealed. A really special event! But then they’re special people J It was quite nice to be there and think that that is where I got baptised. It was the first time that Caleb has really seen a baptism, so after Joshua and his dad went to get changed Caleb stayed with his nose against the glass barrier for a bit and I got to speak to him about what had happened. He’s a very special little boy, that one!

And in my YSA class today we had Tamzyn joining us for the first time, with her just having moved up from Young Women. She’s not overly excited about the gospel, but it was great to be able to bear testimony of how great my life is, and really it’s because both Andrew and I try to live the gospel. I don’t know if she’s ready to be hearing and listening, and I’ve got to be careful not to alienate her. But it’s great just to know what a blessing the gospel is to me!

Well that’s it. The rain is pouring down outside right now, and it’s definitely time to snuggle under our quilt and get warm! Hope that your house isn’t too cold!

Love you lots

Shelly

Letter to Richard - 1 June 2014

Dear Richard

Hopefully next week I’ll be looking forward to a slightly easier week ahead… This week is certainly still going to be hectic! I’ve got tons of marking to do, both for the board course and for my course (my students wrote their test on Friday), plus I have to finish off the chapters we’ve been reworking for the new groups textbook. I made good progress on the textbook this past week, getting to the end of 4 chapters, but I’ve still got 2 to go. But I think that they’ll go a bit faster than the last 2 that I did, so I’m hopeful J

On Tuesday morning Hannah woke up and immediately wrenched her neck L She couldn’t actually move for a while! She looked so pitiful and sad lying on the couch, all miserable… But once we got her medicated and mobile she got back some of her usual spark, and by the time we were leaving for school she was bossing everyone around! So it still took a couple of days to come completely right, but she made quick progress on some things!

We’ve been having a tough time with Josh this past week though, with him feeling all sensitive and his self-esteem seems to be quite low… And it’s one of those things that was just taking us ages to realise what was actually wrong! But thankfully now that we’ve isolated what the problem is we’ve been able to help him a bit, and he’s doing better, although he’s not quite our normal child again. And part of the problem was that he was being very disobedient, and then when he was reprimanded he felt like everyone was hating him… So it’s been a bit of a challenge to also be showing him how his own behaviour is influencing everything and try to help him be more obedient. We’ve had limited success on that front, but there have been a few glimmers of hope, like the fact that he was a huge part of us tidying the entire house while Andrew was at a High Priest Quorum meeting this evening J

Then on Thursday morning one of the other parents reversed into my car while I was inside the school dropping off the kids L It’s just my back bumper, in almost the exact same place as last year when I reversed into someone on campus! But what was great was how I managed to stay completely calm throughout! I think that my accident last year was still very fresh, and I know just how easily it can happen! And such a relief that I had no blame this time!!! So it was going to the police station immediately, and then on Friday I went to the panel beaters to get a quote to repair it. The other parent is accepting full responsibility, so except for the schlep we won’t have any cost at least J

I also had my meeting with Head of Department last week to talk about my performance over the last 4 years. He’s very happy with my “conscientious way” that I do all my work, and he said he’s very glad that I don’t cause any trouble ;) Like I responded – I try not to! Really the big thing is that I need to just get my Masters done. That’s the only big thing that’s holding me back at this point. But I should be able to go on sabbatical next year and then I can really get into it!

Yesterday we were invited, together with another family, to go and visit one of my colleagues at home for afternoon tea/snacks. Our kids don’t get a lot of chances to visit other people because we’re not that big into socialising… But we had a good time, and we took their two little dachshunds for a short walk. The kids have been talking about it ever since! That certainly made a big impression on them!

Today was fairly normal, including lots of craziness… Which is part of normal… We’re so enjoying having our family home evening on a Sunday afternoon J Andrew was in charge of the HP meeting this evening, and he says it went really well, and that Pres Kruger was happy and complimentary about it J Andrew’s still struggling to figure out his exact role in the presidency, so it’s so great that he’s having these successes J

And that’s about it… I’m writing today (being Sunday instead of Monday) because I’m expecting to have work to do tomorrow evening, like I have had the last few nights. But the nice thing about this time of the year is that I’m planning on working from home most of the week at least J

Have a good week!

Shelly