The Morrisons

Sometimes I feel that we might as well be living in a different country rather than stuck in Christchurch far away from family.  Of course Katrina (my sister and only sibling) is in a different country (Australia) so that doesn’t really help!

Sundays are often such lonely days for me.  We come home from church feeling tired but the children are always full of energy.  Gone are the days when we could put our two or three small children to bed and then ourselves and have a lovely afternoon nap.  Upon us are the days of exhaustion and feeling lonely without family around.

Sometimes I am super-organised and manage to make a nice lunch and have the house tidy enough to invite visitors over for lunch but usually it is enough just getting our family fed and dressed for church then out the door, let along making something for lunch.  So lunch for us is often toast or toasted sandwiches.

Our church has a shared dinner (they call it tea – I just can’t say it I’m sorry, it will always be dinner for me) once a month on a Sunday evening.  I am always caught out as we don’t eat our main meal at lunch time on Sunday whereas it seems that most other people do.  If I was more organised I could put a roast in the oven…..maybe one day I will be!

So everybody brings just a little plate of food, usually some mini muffins or slices of bread or maybe sausage rolls etc.  I have seen people arrive with larger dishes of food just for a morning tea.

And then arrives Louise with an enormous dish (our banquet sized electric frying pan) of fried rice and a dish of honey-soy chicken nibbles.  It is so embarrassing tucking in to a larger-than-everyone-else’s meal while some people just eat a muffin.  Perhaps if I was skinny it wouldn’t be so bad but I am not so people probably assume that I am just greedy and stuffing myself.  Maybe it is embarrassing because even if we had eaten a main meal at lunch time I would still feel like a regular sized meal for dinner, rather than a couple of measly muffins!

It is worse being Gluten-free now too because there is usually nothing I can eat (apart from what I take) so I often go home hungry from these shared ‘tea’ evenings.

Woops, that was a bit of a side-track.  As I was saying, Sundays are lonely without family and friends to spend time with.   If we were in a different country I don’t think it would be much different, except maybe it would be more exciting with new places to visit and sights to see.

Maybe I am just feeling sad that we won’t be going to Gisborne for Christmas this year as we have done the past two years.  Katrina and her family will be coming here for Christmas so we are really looking forward to that.

I am just going to have to become Mrs-Super-Organised and keep a spotless home, always have groceries in the pantry, prepare lovely lunches ahead of time for Sunday AND invite people over to share lunch and spend time with us.  One of the dumb things about being a larger family is that you don’t get invited round to people’s houses for lunch very often!  So I will just have to get them to come to my house instead.  Now if only I had some energy……