A Proud “Mammy” Moment!!!

Yesterday was a very proud day for me.  My second son, Ciaran, 10 years old, was featured in one of our national Sunday newspapers.  The story goes like this:

Ciaran loves books, and he has created a website for kids about books called www.bestbooks4ever.com.  Anyway, he decided that he would love to have a review of a book published in the newspaper, so he wrote one and sent it off to the Sunday Tribune.  Well, the doors opened for him!  The editor emailed him and told him his timing was perfect - they were doing a feature on kids books, and they had looked at his website and thought it was great.  She got a journalist to phone to interview him, and they sent a photographer down to take pictures.  You can imagine the excitement!

Then we had to wait for Sunday to see the paper.  I won’t forget the thrill when I opened the paper for quite some time!  There was a fabulous photo of my Ciaran on the front page, and a full-page article on him inside, complete with his book review!!!

Ciaran was absolutely thrilled - his grin was so wide!!! 

If you’re interested, you can see the article at http://www.tribune.ie/arts/books/article/2008/jul/13/no-stranger-to-fiction/.

Not your ordinary everyday Special Moment, but a very special moment all the same!!!

Wishing you countless special moments everyday.

Love,

Sharon.

Milestones in the Garden

The garden is coming along nicely.  Yesterday, I cut my first bunch of flowers from the garden.  They are so beautiful.  I have a peony, the only peony bloom this year - hopefully next year there will be lots more.  The scent is divine.  I have penstemons and alchemilla mollis and the first of my cosmos.  They are on my kitchen table and every time I see them it gives me a lift.  There is something so nice about cutting flowers from your own garden for the house.

There is lots more to come in the garden.  The annual flowers are only budding up now.  The sweet pea still seem a while off flowering.  My garden seems very late this year, but we have had so much wind that I reckon thats why everything is late.

The vegetable garden is coming along nicely.  Lettuce and spinach are fantastic.  We ate our first potatoes from the garden this week, and they were gorgeous.  Thumbs up from all the kids.  Our cabbage has been destroyed and slugs keep getting the strawberries before we do!  Courgettes, pumpkin, butternut squash and peas all coming along slowly.  I planted tall varieties of calendula in the vegetable garden and they are starting to flower now.  What a fantastic shade of orange.  They give me a lift whenever I notice them.

Wishing you countless Special Moments every day.

Love,

Sharon

www.specialmoments.ie

Update on the Chicks and Hens

Chicks really are like cartoon characters.  They fall over themselves and right themselves shaking their head just like Tweetie Pie, I promise you!

Our two chicks are fantastic.  We had to separate them and their surrogate mother from the rest of the hens, because the chicks were so loud and cheeky we reckoned they would drive the rest of the hens mad.  They are all together again now, and the chicks are fighting for their share of the food, even though their mam keeps a watchful eye and makes sure they get tasty morsals too.

Two of the new hens have started to lay eggs!  We are thrilled.  Hopefully they’ll all be laying very soon, and we’ll have 5 or 6 eggs every day.

Keeping hens is pure therapy - okay, cleaning out the hen house is not fun, but the hubby does that job! 

Watching the shenanigans as the hens fight over food, and the chicks fly into the food bowl and fall over themselves in the process has been great fun - and the eggs are fantastic too.

Wishing you countless Special Moments every day.

Love,

Sharon

www.specialmoments.ie

 

Simple Pleasures are the Best

The summer holidays have begun, and in true Irish style, it is raining!!!

Anyway, the weather isn’t bothering us.  We had a lovely walk in the rain yesterday.  Niamh couldn’t wait to get togged out in wellies and raincoat and umbrella.  Today we had a picnic in the television room, and we read some of Harry Potter. 

For me, I have had so many Special Moments over the past few days.  We are all much more relaxed because there is nowhere we have to be this week, and I am noticing countless Special Moments throughout the day.  One was watching the two boys messing together in the kitchen trying to perfect a new funny walk they had created.  Another was watching them dancing on the deck in their pyjamas in the rain.

For me personally, I have been much more relaxed this week and I have been taking time out in between work times.  I have been enjoying some brilliant novels and pottering in the garden.

I love summertime!

Wishing you countless Special Moments every day.  I hope the sun shines, wherever you are.

Love,

Sharon.

www.specialmoments.ie

Two New Chicks (of the Poultry Variety!!)

I am a parent again and I am so proud!!!  Not half as proud as my husband!!!!

We have had a lot of poultry decisions lately.  We had 6 hens - one bantam and 5 rhode island reds, but they were getting very old and were no longer laying.  Well, this year, after much soul-searching (all farmers and small-holders will be laughing at us at this point!), we decided that our rhode island reds had been given a 2 year retirement and a wonderful life here, but we needed eggs!!!  Our hen house wasn’t big enough to accommodate our retired hen community as well as some new ones, so we decided to send them to their hen house in the sky.  Of course, we took the wimp’s way out and gave them to a friend’s husband to do the terrible deed!!!!

Then we went off and bought 6 point-of-lay rhode island reds and introduced them to our bantam hen and cockerel. 

So where do the new chicks come into the tale?  Well, one of the rhode island reds laid one egg before they left us, and the bantam got broody and started sitting on it.  I told my friend who is an expert poultry keeper, and she had some eggs she thought were fertilised and she gave them to me for our bantam to sit on. 

You already know the good news - two days ago 2 beautiful chicks hatched, and our bantam is a wonderful, if fierce, mother hen.  They are cheeky little devils, and they are very adventurous and very noisy!  I’d say they are driving the rest of the hens absolutely mad!!!!  Also, the bantam is bullying the new hens any time they come near, and they are banished from the hen house for most of the time.  Today was lashing rain and the new hens were all outside, drenched and miserable, so we had to take steps to set up separate accommodation for mother and babies. 

All of this is fantastic fun altogether.  There is nothing quite like watching day old chicks climbing all over their mother and nestling themselves in under her wings. 

Have I convinced anyone to get hens?  Go on - you know you want to!!!!

Wishing you countless Special Moments (and lots of eggs!) Every Day

Sharon

Didn’t Feel ‘Special’ Enough for Special Moments

Hi all,

I haven’t posted for a little while.  It has been an up and down time.  But today, I’m back on track!!!  Its lashing outside.  The weather is miserable, and its Midsummers Day, which is making everyone here in Ireland feel very sorry for themselves.  But I’ve had the best day I’ve had for a long time.

What is the difference?  Today I feel great.  I feel good about myself, and that means that I can easily notice the Special Moments throughout the day.  The very same moments have been there every other day, but for the past little while, I haven’t been feeling good enough to be aware of them.  Today, they were magical moments.

What is the key then?  Do whatever it takes to make yourself feel special.  Honestly, that’s it!!!  When you feel special, when you feel good, you are in a space to notice the magical moments, and immediately the world is a magical place - its the same world - you simply notice the magic in the ordinary!

So what turned it around for me?  Well - and this might turn many of you right off - I have been doing a course on Angel Card Reading and I am loving it.  Basically, it opens you up to receiving direction from the angels.  At the class yesterday I had a beautiful reading from one of the other students, Noreen, and from Ann O’Connor, who runs the classes (a beautiful soul who touches so many!).  It just turned me around - took the negative glasses off and returned the magical ones. 

Today could have been a really crap day.  I had wanted to get some gardening done - the beds are all planted now, but the weeds in the existing beds in the front garden are getting to scary sizes!  Also, we had planned to head off to a Medieval Festival close-by, by the rain put paid to all that.  Instead, I took my eldest son into town for lunch, and while in town I bought myself a wonderful new book about gardening.  Then we just had a lazy afternoon.  I rang a friend I hadn’t spoken to for ages, and we had a great chat.  I cooked a lovely dinner and set the table with a table cloth and candles, and we all watched Dr. Who, our current family favourite, together.

Here’s to countless magical days for us all!!!

Do whatever it takes to make yourself feel special - it will change your world!!!

Love,

Sharon

My favourite Quotes are from The Talmud

There is a quote that is my all-time favourite and it is from The Talmud.

“We see things not as they are, but as we are.”

Its all about perspective, and when I’m not feeling good I have a completely different perspective to the times when I am feeling good.  When I’m not feeling good (I haven’t been in a good space for the past few days), things upset me, and I tend to dwell on things.  My mind goes crazy.  I don’t talk very much, because my mind is so befuddled that I wouldn’t be able to choose which string of thoughts to say out loud!  Most of the talk in my head is negative, and I tend to give myself a very hard time.

So does this lead to Special Moments?  Absolutely not.  And the sad thing is that the Special Moments are still happening - I am just missing them completely.

So its back to basics for me.  Back to the discipline of my Special Moments lists.  It helps me to let go of the busy thoughts and the negative chatter, because it brings my focus back to the positive.

My second favourite quote is also from The Talmud:

“Every blade of grass has its Angel that leans over it and whispers “Grow, Grow”.”

I can just imagine our angelic cheerleaders up there, rooting for us! 

Wishing you countless Special Moments everyday, and a clear mind to enjoy them.

Love,

Sharon

www.specialmoments.ie

Traffic Reports - Oh Happy Days!!!

Here’s the picture.

We were lying in bed this morning, listening to the traffic reports after the news.  Oh, what a good feeling!!!

There were all sorts of diversions being put in place on one of the approach roads to Dublin for various reasons, and we knew what kind of traffic hell that was going to cause for commuters this morning.

Did that affect us?  Oh no, except of course to make us feel fantastic! 

Four years ago we moved from Dublin to a rural area in the South East.  Traffic no longer plays the major role in our lives as it  used to do, and today I was reminded of that, and boy was that a Special Special Special Moment!!!!!

Wishing you countless Special Moments every day,

Love,

Sharon

www.specialmoments.ie

 

The Countdown to Summer Holidays is On!

Well, its not really in keeping with the whole Special Moments philosophy, which is to celebrate the ordinary every day, enjoying the now rather than wishing your life away, but the kids got in the holiday spirit today by making out a countdown to summer holidays poster.

It gave me a few Special Moments because I love when they work together on something that I feel is good for them.  They were using their initiative, designing something, and they were working together.  Okay - there were a few blips, a few tears, a few rows (sometimes their negotiation skills would be classed as - dare I say it - bullying!!!), but in the end, Ciaran and Niamh produced a poster that is pinned up in our hall, and they can mark down all the school days til the summer holidays.

Tomorrow we are going to start our annual tradition of making our list of things we want to do over the summer holidays.  The list will take a few weeks to evolve.  It will include things like a trip to Fota - a zoo in Cork, a trip to Tintern Abbey in Wexford (a magical place), a day at the beach.  You get the picture!  Every year we make a list like this and put it up on the wall, and over the 8 or 9 weeks the kids are off school, we do them all. 

Its a brilliant way to make sure we make the most of the summer holidays, and everybody gets to say what they want to do.

Today, however, it is lashing rain and the wind is absolutely howling.  My new plants are taking a battering.  I had a VERY sad moment today when I saw that my new Peony has been hammered by the wind.  I haven’t investigated full yet, but it may be fatal!!!  Oh well, maybe there’s a Special Moment in store for me tomorrow when I find out that I have been wrong, and it might actually flower this year after all.

Wishing you countless Special Moments every day.

Love,

Sharon.

www.specialmoments.ie

 

Mountain Day 2008

Once a year, we have a family tradition where we all take a day off and head for the hills to play!

The origins of the Murphy Family Mountain Days is a great one.  When Tony was young a couple of times his dad was driving him to school, and he passed the school by, went to the shop, bought a pint of milk and a packet of biscuits and the two of them headed off for a day together.  These were some of the magical times Tony remembers with his dad, so we have our own family version now.

When we lived in Dublin, it was called a Mountain Day because we headed for the Dublin Mountains - now we live in Kilkenny, and we head for the beach, but the name Mountain Day has stuck.  It goes like this - Tony and I decide on a day and we clear our diaries so that we can take the day off.  We DON’T tell the kids.  Then when the day comes, we all get up as normal.  We will have a picnic packed and in the boot without the kids knowing about it.  They get their uniforms on and we will make some excuse or delay them so that they miss the school bus.  We usually make a great show of giving out that they were too slow getting ready or something, and we drive them to school - only we pass the school!!! 

At this point there is great yahoos from the back seat - rhey have realised that it is a mountain day and the singsong begins!!! 

This year we went to Duncannon Beach in Wexford - a favourite haunt of hours.  We spent a couple of hours paddling, and climbing rocks and having a picnic.  It was heavenly.  Then we headed for Waterford to see the new Indiana Jones movie - it was great - a bit scary for Niamh in places, but she loved it.

It was a brilliant day, and I think that in years to come, we will all remember our Mountain Days.  I hope our kids continue the tradition with their families.  The fact that it happens on a work and school day is really important, because it feel;s great - like a bonus day - a gift.  The time is really special because we are all aware that we have captured this special time together.

Try it for your gang.  I highly recommend it.

Enjoy!

Love,

Sharon

www.specialmoments.ie