He Has Fallen In The Forest...

A pall of sadness hangs over us.

We have lost someone dear to us,

and our hearts are broken.

Our hearts are broken...


~*~

Please, forgive the quiet here for the next few days.

Some Small Quiet Things.

So, the last few days have been quiet, and this has allowed us to find a bit more time to sit around and occupy our hands with small things.

For me this has been an opportunity to catch up on some needlework which was abandoned back at the beginning of the summer! And although I tend to get these made in my car while waiting for the school bell to ring, a stitch here, a stitch there, I hadn't really got back into it yet so this was exactly what I needed.

It's a work in progress as you can see, and for those of you who are new here you can have a look here to see previous ones I've made. Not nearly as many as I'd like to of course, but it's slowly adding up.

There's something about lighting the fire that inspires me to just fall back into the couch and not budge for the evening, my thought's wandering as these miniature spectacles are conjured beneath my fingers, almost with a life of their own, and I merely their medium.

And each time I start a new one I wonder to what little world I shall be taken?

And as the little voices whisper, guiding my stitches in tiny increments, like footprints in my hazy childhood memory, as they tell their story, I wonder and marvel at the muse that is my children.

And I feel blessed.

For when I have an Alice moment, and I pause in my busy day, and I creep down onto bended knee to peer and listen at the tiny doors my children hold, I remember I am blessed. To have these little keyholes to a world that I can no longer truly live in, a means to steal a secret peep, to breathe it in and for the briefest moment really feel it again.

Where The Ailing Small Family Reside.

Three days, of gloom and cold.

Yesterday I stood at my window and all day there were rainbows kissing the hills between rain clouds.

And each day began with the hope that everyone was well,

and each day someone wasn't.

It seems our long-overdue turn of a flailing household is upon us.

But as always, a point is reached where we are able to stop hoping and accept it and in some ways embrace it,

because a rest is welcome, even when forced upon us.

And so we'll continue the theme of quiet, low-lying days of snuffles and coughs,
and relish the fact that it's Friday and we can be guilt free about staying home.

And hopefully the weekend proves the tonic we need for booting the last of the malaise from our home,
and I have happy, healthy things to blog about next week!

Happy Friday!

A Heartfelt Thank You!

Wow!

First of all I am completely blown away by being a Blog Of Note! I really had no idea of the significance of this until my stats started going through the roof, and my lovely little Followers window began to multiply, and more and more comments and emails began to flood in.

So, I'd like to say Cead Mile Failte to you one and all!

In other words, Welcome.

Pumpkin's from Judith's garden a couple of weeks back.

I cannot express how touched I am by all the positive and sweet words I have been receiving for the last twenty~four hours on so many different posts. And I do hope some of you return here to Milkmoon from time to time and say hi. You have all been most welcome.

And I'd also like to say a big thank you as well to all my regular readers who keep coming back for more, and who keep me blogging even when life threatens to overtake me in chaos. And if I could be so bold as to single out three in particular who have been with me since the beginning, more or less: Lisa from What We Eat, Esti from Pintame el dia, and my recent fellow Blogger Of Note, Rima from  The Hermitage.

Thanks ladies, for without you...

So a short post it is, but I am a little lost for words for once, and I promise normal blogging will resume tomorrow.

And as I said in the comments: Nothing like the spotlight to make you polish off what's been a teensy bit neglected lately! So I have my blogger hat on at a jaunty angle, and my socks pulled up.

MilkmoonMama is back on full time duty!

A Halloween...of sorts...

Well, our Halloween this year was a strange one.

I won't say it was a non-event, but it went from being an entrenched tradition to... well, let's say a scattering and a smattering.

Every year, for as long as we've had children, we've spent Halloween at my parents. And they have the house brilliantly spooky, and the kids find money in their dinner, and a ring in the brack, and they get to knock on the same doors as I did with my brothers and sister and our friends.

But this year one was invited to a party, another to a sleepover which went pear-shaped and didn't happen.

And the oldest decided he wasn't going on his own, so went to a friend's.

So I was left with a disappointed (read devastated) six-year-old, and a two-year-old who hadn't a clue what was going on but happily went in whatever direction he was pointed in, like a little wind-up bunny!

And between everything I mentioned in the last post, and more, we had left it until the last minute to decorate the house, only to find our decorations had been decimated by a wee mouse sometime in the last year... sigh.

I think that's called the icing on the cake?

So, for the first time ever we had no colcannon, no barm brack, no decorations, and no pumpkin! And for anyone that knows me, that is a sorry day indeed.

But you know, we have friends. We have great friends, who said 'come on, come to us'. And we did (which is where these photos were taken) and for the first time ever we went trick or treating in our village.

And they got to knock on doors, and they got bags of goodies, and they all had a great time and that's what matters.

And today they all said 'Next year we are definitely going to Mamo and Grandad's...'