MERRY CHRISTMAS EVERYONE

I'm a little late with my festive message, but we hope that you all had a great Chrissy filled with good food, good drink, good cheer and not too many tantrums, hissy fits, tears and squabbles (and that is just for the adults!!). No seriously, we hope you had a fabbo day.

We had a great day here at the farm, although one of our milkers was late on the job. And he doesn't even have an excuse of a hangover as he is only 15. I hope Santa bought him a whopping big alarm clock! Sadly, we said goodbye to one of our long term workers. Jarrod Hall had his last milking with us on Christmas morning and it was all I could do to say thanks, give him a kiss and get out of there before I dissolved into tears. Jarrod has been with us 1 month shy of 4 years and we have watched him grow from an awkward teenager, to a strapping young man with a bright future. Jarrod leaves us to join the navy, and since his missed the March intake, we might see him sneak around for the occasional milking to get some money! So heartfelt thanks go to Jarrod for all his work, committment and reliance over the past 4 years.

Jarrod & Mark

Back at the house, the kids were chomping at the bit to get stuck into the pressies! Mum had done a wonderful job of keeping them out of the lounge room until Mark and I got back from the dairy. Of course, they were both spolit rotten and Mark made the commentthat they had more stuff in just their Santa sacks than he usually got in a whole Christmas. It's a fair comment as I think the same was true for me!

Biddy 'relaxing' in her new camping chair with her Dora sunnies!

But the kids had a wonderful day with the main presents being:
Tom - a V-motion console and games, a Tag pen and books, a battery powered Jeep (courtesy of Nanny and the Butler family), clothes, books, the usual array of dinosaur merchandise, a dino quilt (from Gran) and a stack of Hot Wheels racing tracks including the dinosaur tracks.

Biddy - a rocking horse (horses are her FAVOURITE thing at the moment), variety of dolls, tea-set, a crayola table with pens and playdoh, books, clothes, goggles, and a camping chair.

Mark - a set of RM Williams canvas carseat covers, a mini Webber (for the caravan), and Top Gear DVDs and books.

Sam - a water fountain for the garden, a couple of metal garden ornaments including a HUGE spider (loving that one!!), a Soda Stream, the New Moon CD and a rolling table to use near the BBQ (this was handmade by my mum in her woodwork course at U3A and is simply fabulous!).

Unwrapping the Soda Stream

Lunch ran late of course, but luckily, none of us had to milk, so it was no biggie. Had the usual - ham, turkey, pork and also poussin (baby chickens), followed by pudding and another sweet treat. We only had 5 adults and 2 kids for lunch so it was pretty relaxed. Dinner was at my SIL and the whole Billing family got together - LOTS of kids at this one!

Of course, we can't forget that it was also Biddy's real birthday, so on top of all the festive celebrations and food, we also had a birthday cake and a birthday song for her. Every year, Mark and I are buying her a small crystal figurine...this year it was a cat.

Blowing out the candles for her 2nd birthday!

Are we mad?

For those that haven't caught up on the news yet, Mark and I are expecting our third baby in June next year! Yes, Tom will be a big brother x2 and Biddy will finally get the opportunity to terrorise someone younger than her! Things have not been smooth sailing (already...I am 14+ weeks now), but hopefully everything will settle down into an uneventful pregnancy.

Things have been flat out here of late and I feel like I am not even keeping my head above water. I am struggling a little health-wise (pregnancy related), and with Mark still out of action due to back surgery, everything has fallen to me to do. I have had to cancel an event I was organising for Saturday afternoon, purely because I am not able to get everything done in time.

The kids are winding up various activities and now we are facing the run of Christmas parties. As a bit of a run down on what I have booked in:

10th: Back surgeon appointment and OBGYN appointment (both Melb)

11th: free-ish. Have hairdresser appointment!

12th: cancelled event, but now have 6yo party to take kids to

13th: Larpent CFA Christmas BBQ

14th: Kids have their daycare Christmas concert. Judging for HICO on-farm challenge sometime in next 3 days

15th: Swimming group breakup and then Mark and I are celebrating our 8th wedding anniversary (in Melb)

16th: Spot of Xmas shopping in Melbourne then home

17th: Cockies picnic (day), dinner with female family members (night)

18th: to Geelong for remainder of Xmas shopping??????

19th: Craiglands staff Christmas party

20th: free

21st: OBGYN appointment in Melb

22nd: Food shopping

23rd: finish cleaning house

24th: to Lorne to pick up seafood

25th: yes I know that you think this is Christmas, but remember, for us, it is also Biddy's REAL birthday, so we have that as well!!!

Phew! December is just crazy isn't it?

Also, I have neglected to mention how we went in the various shows that we took cows to. Colac show was not a great success for us. We did get places (a 2nd and a 3rd), but I was hoping for something a little better, particularly for the Luckystrike cow that we took to the shows last year. My personal opinion was that she was a much better cow this time out and should be in with the mix. At Colac though, she wasn't. However, at Noorat, things were a little different. The cows settled into the different surrounds very quickly and that always helps things along. The Luckystrike (Craiglands Luckystrike 3111) performed exceptionally well taking out Reserve Champion Dairy cow and Supreme Udder in the interbreed sections! This was a terrific result.

Sam with Craiglands Luckystrike 3111 (wearing her ribbons) after just taking part in the Grand Parade

This time round, Carl Moon was unable to join us, so I thank Mike Huth (from BOS Trading) for coming along to both shows and helping me put the finishing touches on the cows, particularly with kids in tow! I also want to thank our farm staff who put up with me juggling cows around, preparing cows whilst they are trying to do their normal duties, helping me with various little jobs both before and after the shows (such as applying sunscreen to clipped udders), and generally supporting my 'hobby'. Thanks guys!

He's back and recovering

Monday week ago, Mark had his back operation. It turned out that the prolapse was much worse than first anticipated and he ended up being in surgery for nearly 2 hours. But the surgeon (Greg Malham) was very pleased with how it all went and was happy with how the remainder of the disc looked.

Mark remained in hospital until Thursday when he came home in an ambulance - because he can't sit at all - he either has to lie, or stand and not for very long. Casting no aspersions on the ambo driver, he said it was like being in a washing machine!!

Mark with the 2 ambulance medics who bought him home

The kids were rapt to see him and immediately got into bed with him. Much supervision is needed when they are with daddy though, although one on one, they are ok. But together, they think that the bed is an amusement playground and jump all over the place.


Recovery is going well except for a slight hiccup Monday morning. Sunday night, Mark complained of being a bit itchy on his back. To me, it looked like a bit of a rash where he'd been lying for a while, and I thought he may have needed a pressure mat or something. But come Monday morning, he was covered from head to toe in a raised itchy red rash. I have never seen any thing like it (just remembering it is making me itchy right now!!) So off to the hospital (slow trip in the car!) to get it checked out, plus taking the little girl with us because she also had a rash on her legs and body.

Turns out it is urticaria (or hives) which has resulted from a reaction to the digesic (painkillers) he was on. Hence, no more painkillers - although he was nearly finished them anyway. So now he is on big doses of antihistamines and cortisone to treat the itchy rash. Today, it is slowly going, which is good. But the itch remains. Biddy, on the other hand, simply has bug bites (mozzies) and she has made them worse by scratching at them. But we have also discovered that she is highly sensitive to the sticky on bandaids (which I used to cover up the bites) and now she has broken out in rashes from them! Sigh.

So the back is good - so far - and he is bored, so all is well on the homefront. I, on the other hand, am run ragged from running after the kids and Mark. LOL!

Sun, silage and shows

Hold on tight everyone, because this is a CRAZY time of year.

Yes, silage season has hit us and a little bit early this year too. We are into it now, with most of the home farm cut and raked and waiting for the contractors to arrive tomorrow morning. The paddocks over the road will be started tomorrow and the contractors will be in them and most likely finished by Friday. I remember when I first arrived at Craiglands about 9 year ago, that silage used to take nearly 2 weeks. Now, if we get good weather, it is all over and done with in about 3 - 4 days and that includes covering the stacks. Improved machinery, different technologies and management have attributed to this. But it is a crazy 4 days still!

And it is just as well that it will be all pretty well finished by the weekend, because Mark has a date for his back operation. He is booked in for Monday 9th November at Epworth in Melbourne. he'll be in hossie for about 3 - 4 days and then will be discharged home in an ambulance (because he cannot sit up) where he'll be useless...ahem, I mean recuperating, for a month. During this time, he is not allowed to sit in a car, do too much walking, absolutely no work, no lifting....nothing. It will be heaven for him, hell for me. After the first month,. he'll be able to start to resume some light activity, and then after another month get into moderate activity and then he should be ok about 12 weeks after the op. So, if anyone is in Melbourne on the 10th - 13th November, give him a call and drop in and see him. I'm sure he'll be grateful for the visitors.

But before he goes under the knife, we are showing cows at Colac show. We are training 3 cows at the moment; 1 from last year who has slotted back into it all quite nicely, and 2 newies. Although I must say that the 2yo we are training has already been halter broken as a calf (never made it to the show though), so she is a piece of cake. She did however stand on my foot yesterday when I was leading her around and I think she may have done a bit of damage as my little toe is PURPLE. Nice one. The other cow we have is a right tart. Is taking a stronger person than me to break her (thanks Huthy!). Hopefully she'll shape up in a couple of days.

So I am in the midst of leading cows, washing cows and specialty feeding cows as well as everything else. And I just remembered that the BAS is due at the end of the week. Good grief.

All over bar the shouting

Well, we are back home now (boo hoo) and pretty much straight back into it. But let me recap the final leg of our journey.....

Day 12
We left Albury headed for Melbourne to visit relatives (the Butlers). We had a final breaky of bacon and eggs, much to Mark's disgust as he wanted to get out a bit earlier, but both the kids and I were up for it! We eventually left just after 10am.

Heading down the Hume Hwy (one of the most boring roads I have driven on.....maybe because I have driven it MANY times), I was lamenting about all the towns that are now bypassed. Yes, I agree that when you want to get from point A to point B in a hurry, major arterials like the Hume are great. But the towns along the Hume that have been bypassed have not always done well and some are a mere shadow of what they were. I don't want to really mention any in particular, because as soon as I do, someone from that town will be on me like a shot saying how the town is fine, but I reckon you can all understand what I mean. As a result of these bypasses, great monoliths have sprung up, usually adorned with a giant golden "M" or similar. Sigh.....

We took some of the backroads and called in to some of the towns - Euroa for example, where we had lunch. Mark said we were travelling route 66 (for those that have seen "Cars" you'll know what I mean!).

We headed to Melbourne via Alexandra, Marysville and surrounds to see how things were recovering after the devastating fires earlier in the year. OMG. I hadn't been up this way for a few years (I think the last time was when played waterpolo for the last time at Alex back in about 2001) and I was gobsmaked. It was really hard to get your bearings, particularly in Marysville where hardly any of the buildings survived and all the trees are gone. As mentioned in earlier posts from this year, Mark fought fires up at the Alexandra fire and he was interested to see how it can recovered. I am no tree expert, but from what I could see from the ute, many of the trees on the Cathedral Range looked dead.

Leaving this sad, but recovering area, we headed to Beaconsfield. For the first time for the whole trip (my opinion only), the GPS did it's job. I really didn't think about how to get there from NE Vic, but it directed us to drop from Marysville through the Black Spur, down to Emerald and then to Beaconsfield. Easy!

We spent the next couple of nights with family, not doing very much but catching up. Mark hadn't been down to see the Butlers since early December last year and I hadn't been there since April, so it was nice to catch up. We just parked the van out the front and hooked up to their power!

On Sunday, we packed up and headed home. Everyone was a bit quiet and like the end of all trips, it was a bit sad to drive in the front gate.

Here it is Wednesday and the van is still not 100% unpacked. Life on the farm started the moment we drove in the gate - Mark was out to look at a cow, I was sorting bills getting ready to pay... Mark's eyes have started to play up again, and in the last couple of days have gunked up again and are blood red. Even the cows are looking at him funny. If he's not careful, he'll get pulled out for a vet treatment the next time Mike comes to look at one of the cows!!

So that's it. Our first family holiday with Biddy and the caravan. I'm happy to say that everything went better than I expected (with the kids and the van). Thanks to those that have followed my ramblings. We are now looking forward to planning our next trip which is to Darwin to catch up with the Stevenson's in mid March 2010. In the meantime, we have harvest, Colac show, Mark's back operation, Biddy's birthday, Christmas and the usually madness that accompanies our general lives!

The home run

Day 10: Wellington to Young

We started off the day by visiting one of the caves at Wellington. We decided on the Phosphate Mine and the Bone Cave as this was probably going to interest Tom the most. At various points of the tour, you got to see bones that were embedded in the clay/rock which were dated between 800,000 and 1 million years old! Pretty amazing. And at the end of the tour, you got to hold some of the fossils. The skeletons of the Diprotadon (actually not a dinosaur, but a ‘megafauna’) and the Thylacoleo (also not a dinosaur but another megafauna) were in fact not real but casts. But still, the way they were portrayed as being slightly dug out of the ground was very effective and Tom thought it was just great!

As a bit of interest, the Diprotadon was like a really big wombat with large teeth and grew to heights of about 1.2m and length of around 3m. It weighed about 2.5 – 3 tonnes. Depending on the source, they became extinct only about 30,000 to 12,000 years ago. Thylacoleo was sort of like a marsupial lion and ate other early marsupial, including Diprotadon. They grew probably about as big as a female lioness.

OK lecture over.

The rest of the day was pretty much spent travelling to Young, although we did have a small visit to Cowra to see the site of the POW camp. By coincidence, an older lady that was at the site at the same time as us told me how her father used to own the property where the POW camp was and it was only recently sold out of the family to the government to be listed as a heritage site.

We amused ourselves today on our drive by counting the number of dead kangaroos on the side of the road. 15 ended up being the final tally.

We stayed the night at the Young Tourist Park. A number of pros and cons for this park (see below), but as we pulled in late and left around 10am, we didn’t really take advantage of too much except the showers and the laundry. We are trying to run our food stores down, so everyone almost ate something different tonight. The food issue was one of the main reasons for purchasing something like a caravan, camper or camper trailer. You are able to eat what you like, when you like and cater to individual’s tastes. This is always my major battle when staying elsewhere and relying on purchasing food for the kids. Let’s face it, there is only so many times that you can (or want to) live on McNuggets, pizza and the like. Sometimes you just hanker for a good ol’ snag! Anyway, this aspect has now been largely resolved for me as we are now able to carry our own food with us. In buying the van, I opted for less bench space in order to accommodate a larger fridge. And now that we have been away for a few weeks, I am so glad I did.

Caravan park wrap up: at the time of our visit, the Young Tourist Park seemed such an ironic name as the vast majority of people staying there were of the grey nomad brigade. Perhaps it should have been called the “Old Tourist Park”! Seriously, this park has also seen better days, and whilst it is clean, is very worn around the edges. The site we had was right next to the amenities which was fine, and it was well grassed. The distance between the vans was also reasonable and the way that most people had parked, meant you weren’t looking into anyone else’s van. We didn’t use the BBQs at all (used our own cooker), but Mark tells me that the water to wash up with was nice and hot (yes, don’t fall over...Mark has been doing the dishes the entire time we have been away. Hope it keeps up!). The big downfall of this park was the kiddy friendliness. The playground was, in one word, CRAP. There were only three pieces of equipment (2 springy seesaw thingys and a strange looking monkey bar), and one of the seesaws was broken and the monkey bars would be too high for a 8yo let alone for a 4yo and 21mth old. Unlike some of the other parks we had been in, there was no ability to bath or change the kids, unless they were in with you, which is rather a PITA quite frankly. But the owner was friendly and explained everything to us, and the park suited our needs of an overnighter well. If you have kids, I would advise to miss this park unless you are only stopping for the night. It may suit older generations though, depending on how friendly you want to be.


Day 11: Young to Albury

A fairly uneventful trip to Albury today. We stopped in at Gundagai to take the obligatory photo with the dog on the tuckerbox (although, Tom was convinced it was a wolf!). When we arrived in Albury we booked into the Albury All Seasons Tourist Park. The playground here is very well appointed with the kids playing on the equipment for about half an hour whilst Mark set up the van. Biddy overestimates her abilities in many things and going down big slides is no exception. She has no fear of heights and today took a tumble off a 6” slide. She spotted it first and got to it before Tom, so she had not seen anyone else go down it. Instead of sitting down at the top, she goes down the first part standing up and then face plants on the slide and bounces off into the chipbark at the bottom. I was ready for the scream and cry, but no, she got up, dusted herself off and got right back on it again. Tough kid.

We took the kids bowling as Tom enjoyed this so much when I took him at Christmastime. We just let Biddy have some of our goes, and embarrassingly, she did just as well (or better) than Mark and I! Mark won the first game, I won the second. Tom held his own very well, scoring in the 70’s both times.

Tonight we took the kids to the Commercial Club for dinner and we told Tom that it was a restaurant. So he was on his best behaviour and he really did try. Although he did pour salt all over his meal just after being told to leave the shaker alone. The clubs are a great place to take kids as usually under 5’s are free and all it cost us for them tonight was a glass of lemonade each. Plus, there is a huge choice of food (and desserts) for them and you can almost be guaranteed that they will eat something.

Tomorrow we are really heading south and will wind up at the Butler’s place (relatives) in Beaconsfield for a couple of nights before going home on Sunday.

Caravan park wrap up: this park is very nice. As mentioned before, the playground is very well appointed and set out. The pool is nice but was too cold for us to use this trip. The showers are smallish, but the water is hot and the pressure is good and this is the first park that we have visited that has a sunken area for the shower and a raised bit to get dried on. Saves getting your pants wet in the puddles of the shower, or having to put them on in the main toilet area for everyone to see! The ladies bathroom also had a baby bath (large trough) with plenty of room to lie baby down to dry and change. And as a nice touch, there were cloths hanging up for you to dry out the stainless steel sink when finished, and also a hairdryer supplied in the bathroom. The laundry was fine (2 washers, 1 dryer) and both a reasonable cost ($3 and $2 respectively). We haven’t used the camp kitchen yet, but will give it a workout tomorrow when we have bacon and eggs for breaky. The downsides are that the vans are a bit close especially in the drivethroughs and because of the configuration, you tend to end up looking into your neighbours van. The road noise is very noticeable, but this is on the Hume Hwy (Wagga Rd), so it is to be expected I guess. This park is also a little way out of the Albury CDB but there are plenty of eateries, shops, supermarkets etc on the main road not far from the park. The only other gripe is that there is a lot of gravel around, which makes for noisy walking and driving. But all in all, a very nice park and is good enough to spend any number of nights here to base yourself out of to visit the surrounds of Albury Wodonga.

Heading south

Our night at the Warrumbungle National Park was very good. In the middle of the night, I had to make an obligatory pit stop and was overawed by the night sky. It was truly beautiful. The moon had set and without a cloud in the sky, it was like you could see beyond our galaxy with the naked eye. It has been many years since I have been somewhere that you can see the night sky in so much detail. It's at these times that I regret not knowing more about astronomy so I could better appreciate it all. I also now know why there are so many observatories in these parts!

Tom was absolutely taken with the compost toilets ("Daddy, there is NO flusher! The poo just goes on the ground!") and made numerous trips to them. Biddy was delighted in just being able to wander around at leisure and not being constantly called to come back.

A late start today due to a computer malfunction at home (just prior to morning milking) that saw Mark trying to deal with 3 people all at the same time to try and fix a computer that he could not log on remotely to. All's well though thanks to the great staff at Westfalia. I also had the makings of a migraine (didn't eventuate though..phew). We eventually left our little campsite at around 11am headed for Wellington. We decided to take a route which took us through an area where a number of years ago (1994) I worked for ABARE conducting farm surveys (part of a secondment with Dept of Ag). This route took us through Binnaway, Coolah and Gulgong. I have no idea what Binnaway's claim to fame is, but Coolah is home of the black stump (took a picture of it with the kids), and Gulgong holds the title of the 'Ten Dollar Town" as it was the town that featured on our old paper $10 notes. We grabbed a bite to eat in Coolah and whilst walking to the cafe, we passed a small general store that had the most darling nativity scene for sale. I snapped it up.

We arrived at the Wellington Caves Caravan Park in Wellington too late to do any cave tours (what Wellington is famous for), so this is on our agenda tomorrow. And guess what? They also have dinosaurs here! Typical! So we will take in a tour that shows some dinosaur fossils as well (the dino from these parts was sort of like a giant wombat with sharp teeth. I'll get the details for the next post).

Despite being in the car for most of the day, the kids went to bed pretty early, which is just as good, because the cave tour we are embarking on is 1.5hrs.

Oh, and a quick update on Mark's eyes...they are much better this evening after looking pretty bad for most of the day. I can even see some white in the whites of his eyes! The drops and ointment seem to be finally doing something for him, although I still keep my distance in case he gives it to me!

Caravan park wrap up: this caravan park is attached to the cave tours, so accessibility is 100%. It is an old park and has seen a lot of visitors, but it caters well for a range of campers (caravans, tents, big rigs) and even has motel style accommodation. Whilst we didn't use it, the camp kitchen has a great range of facilities which would be great for those in tents. The playground is modest, but our kids thought it was good, with Biddy having no trouble using equipment. The amenities are old but clean and the water (and pressure) is good and hot and the washing machines clean with the cost to use them reasonable. There is a baby's bathroom which is a small sink and a toilet, but it's downfall is that there is nowhere to lay the baby down to dry and clothe them. A change table would improve this immensely. At this time of year, you can have your pick of any site (we chose the one right near the playground so we didn't have to move too far to watch kids). This park is ideal for those that need a couple of nights to base themselves in order to explore the caves and maybe the nearby Lake Burrendong, although there is campsites on the lake for those that are more self sufficient.

The eyes have it!

Bit of a play on words there, but we can't not mention how truly, unbelievably, scarily disgusting Mark's eyes now are. In fact, they are so bad that he had to see a doctor in Coonabarabran to get some heavy duty eye drops and ointment. He tells me that not only do they look bad (and believe me, they DO look bad), but they are also painful - sort of like flash burns from a welder. With all of the pus constantly coming out of them, coupled with the entire whites of his eyes now blood red, even the chemist had a hard time looking at him. Ugh. Hopefully the medications will do the trick, but we have been told that what he has is extremely contagious and that we shouldn't share any linen and to disinfect the washing (yeah right....on a caravan trip!). Mark says that he now has a new empathy with cows that get pink eye.

Today we left Dubbo and headed for the Warrumbungle National Park. In particular, Camp Blackman campsite. On the way, I decided to count the number of caravans, motorhomes and the like. By the time we got to Coonabarabran, I was up to 52. A fair number considering that the trip wasn't all that long (180kms). A quick stop in town (to see aforementioned dr) and grab some lunch before heading out to the National Park (about 36km further along).

The winding road into the park was dotted with a number of places that had their own little observatories. This is probably due to the fact that the Sliding Springs Observatory is located in the Warrumbungles. It is open during the day for visitors, but closed in the evenings because the scientists are conducting their experiments. We might call in there on our way out tomorrow.

Being a National Park, we had to collect firewood outside the park boundaries, so after depositing Biddy and I at the camp ground, Mark took Tom off for wood collection. They came back with a modest pile - enough to cook the obligatory marshmallows that we had promised Tom. He has never been camping before, and was so excited. Unbelievably, he was great around the fire, and neither kid scorched themselves on gooey confectionery.

The kangaroos are absolutely everywhere in here, many of them with joeys in their pouches suggesting that either there were some fertile roos around, or it was a good year nutritionally. Probably both! At any rate, there are Eastern Greys all over the place. And they obviously see lots of campers, because they are far from wary of us.

There are plenty of walks around here and I'm sorry that we are not here long enough to give a few a go. The scenery is spectacular - the Warrumbungles were formed as a result of volcanic activity 13 - 17 million years ago and have quite distinct craggy peaks. But be warned; in seasons other than summer, I can imagine that it gets damn cold in here. Even tonight, the cold air simply appeared and forced us into the confines of the van a bit earlier than anticipated. Bring warm stuff.

Campsite wrap up: the campsites here (that caravans can use at the least), are quite civilised, with some of the powered sites sporting bitumened areas. There is quite a bit of room here, but I am lead to believe that it is quite crowded in NSW school holidays. Even now, there are a few in. There is a new powered site area just opened up, but there is very little shade here (not a problem at the moment) as the trees are so small. The older area is amongst established trees and I daresay, would be more popular in summer. There is an amenities block (showers and toilets, public phone) which we haven't visited yet (it is a bit of a walk), but there are compost toilets close by to all the camp areas. You are allowed to have fires, but being a National Park you have to bring in your own wood. This is a nice place to rough it a bit whilst having some of the small luxuries around you. Great if you are into bushwalking or just lolling about, but unless small kids are into bushwalking too, you may find that they will be pestering you to 'do something' as there is no playground (that I saw anyway). I believe that there is a discovery programme for kids, but I don't know the details. I liked this place and would definitely return if around this way.

Half over

Sigh... a whole week has passed in the blink of an eye. And it has been pretty good as well with the kids taking to the whole adventure with great gusto. Today we spent a bit of a cruisy day bumming around for most of the morning before visiting the Old Dubbo Gaol. An interesting place to spend a couple of hours, peering into the past at how criminals used to be treated. There were 8 executions at the Dubbo Gaol, all of them because the inmate was guilty of murder. Some of the crimes were truly horrendous, even by today's standards.

The building that houses all the cells has a couple of solitary confinment cells and they are something to behold. They are in pitch black darkness and Tom was extremely reluctant to go inside even with both Mark and myself beside him. Even the lux feature (night vision) on our video camera did nothing in the total blackness. And prisoners spent sometimes weeks in there.

The rest of the day was spent just lazing around the caravan park with Tom spending much of it on the jumping pillow. It has been bloody chilly here the past couple of days which is a bit of a shame as there is a pool here that Tom has been bugging me to get in, but there is no way I'm getting in when the outside temp is barely cracking 15 degrees.

Tomorrow we are headed for Warrumbungle National Park, and the northernmost point of this trip.

Caravan park wrap up: so we spent 3 nights at the Parklands Big 4 Caravan Park and there are some pros and cons. For those that are looking for a quiet intimate park, then this is not for you. This is a large park with a number of sites. When we first arrived, the park was close to being full, but the past 2 nights have seen it empty out a bit. Our site - C13 - was quite spacious and allowed us to park the caravan, park the ute beside it and pull out the annex as well. Not something that can be done at all the sites. After both Mark and I struggled to shower the kids the first night, we discovered that this park has both a baby and a toddler bathroom. I can't comment on the baby one, but the toddler one has a bath and shower and has plenty of room. A definate plus in my book. I have previously mentioned the jumping pillow which both kids thought was simply fabbo. And it is. But the playground associated with it could do with a little more equipment suitable for babies and little toddlers. The jumping pillow gets a bit crowded (and rough) with the older kids using it, so the younger ones can find it a bit of a struggle. Something else for them would be good. The amenities are good - the camp kitchen is clean and has plenty of room and seating, the water is hot and there are a decent number of showers and toilets. However, the cleaning roster of the toilet blocks could be reviewed with the women's closed between 9 & 10am and the men's closed between 10 & 11am. Right when people are making their last abulutions before leaving. Whilst we never used it, there is also a small kiosk in the reception area where you can buy some groceries. All in all, I give this park a tick. It is certainly a very good place to base yourself from when visiting Dubbo and surrounds and is conveniently located almost next to the Open Range Zoo.

Quarks, pulsars and a slice of Africa

OK, time for another catch up.

Yesterday was day 5 and we left Forbes headed for Dubbo, calling in at the radio telescope at Parkes. But before leaving Forbes, we had to call into the local cemetary and see the graves of Ben Hall, Kate Kelly and Rebecca Shields (grand neice of Captain Cook).

The radio telescope is a MIGHTY structure ('The Dish" as it is affectionately known, is 64m in diameter) and is operated by the CSIRO and any number of scientist from Australia and abroad are conducting experiments with it. On the day we visited, I think there were about 5 scheduled experiments to happen, each of them looking at a different part of the sky. As such, we got to see the dish move around, which was quite amazing to see.

Because you can't actually go inside the telescope, there is a visitors centre set up right next to it with a range of static displays and a 20 minute 3D movie. Mark was hesitant about whether Tom would sit still and watch, but in fact, he was enthralled by it (maybe it was the 3D effect and he got to wear those really cool glasses ...not!). It was Biddy that I had to contain after the first 5 minutes, but then she fell asleep in her pram, so all was good!

OK. Now time for a bit of a bitch. We decided to grab something to eat at the on site cafe as we were already 20kms Dubbo side of Parkes and we didn't have stuff out and ready at hand in the van. Plus, the menu seemed suitable for the kids. So while Mark was out looking at the telescope with the kids, I ordered a caeser salad for me, a burger for Mark and 2 mini pizzas for the kids. Minutes ticked by. Still more minutes. Half an hour disappeared. The kids became a bit raucous, so the waitress bought out coloured pencils and paper. Other customers came and went and still our food hadn't turned up. So, with the clock nearing 50 minutes, and the kids being very good, I went up as asked how much longer, only to be told that the order hadn't even been processed because it was lost! Oh for God's sake! I mean, what did they think we were doing sitting there? Now, I can completely understand that sometimes the occasional order goes missing. But I can't understand how this can happen when there were only 3 tables occupied in the cafe and only 2 or 3 other customers came for takeaway!

So there was much running around behind the scenes and very quickly our meals came out. Too quickly. Part of our order was missing and when I went to cut the kids pizzas up, they were stone cold in the middle. So back they went and I asked for my money back on them, because by this time, the kids were beyond hungry and had picked at mine and Mark's. The manager tried to make amends by sending out some other food, but the kids didn't want it. We did get an icecream for Tom and Biddy's milk for free though. A bit too little too late.

So while Mark took Biddy back to the ute, I took Tom into the gift shop because he had found a dinosaur poster (of course!). Just as I got to the head of the queue, the phone lines went down and they announced that there was no credit card facilities. Grrr. I asked if they had a manual swipey thing and no. Great. Now Tom is at me to get the poster and I have no cash because I spent it all on our ill-fated lunch. After a trip back to the ute to deposit Tom and check out what coinage could be scraped up, I return to find that they can take my credit card details and book it up to my visa later on.

So whilst the grandeur of the radio telescope was fantastic, it was all marred somewhat by the other poor experiences that I had. But rest assured, the telescope is impressive.

So in the car and onto Dubbo. Because of all the mucking around over lunch, we lobbed into town around 4pm. A quick visit to the tourist information centre to pick up town maps, what's on, and various attractions, before setting up camp at the Parklands Big 4 Caravan Park. Now, as we are here for 3 nights, I will reserve my wrap up of this park until our last night. However, I will say that the fact that there is a jumping pillow about double the size of the one at Forbes has been an instant hit with both Tom and Biddy, despite the fact that there are numerous kids here that also think the jumping pillow is a bit of a winner.


Day 6
Mark has woken with a really badly infected eye. It was so badly junked up, that he couldn't open it when he woke up and I had to bathe it clean. It is so swollen that it has bruised and it looks like he has been in a fight. We think that he has caught some congunctivitis off Biddy as she had a bad eye a couple of days ago, but nothing like this. If it keeps up, he might need to see a doctor at one of the next towns, to get some antibiotics. Blurgh, it is really the worst eye infection I have ever seen.

Today we tackled the Open Range Zoo. Wow. This is great and the kids had a ball. So did Mark and I for that fact. We got there at around 10am and left at about 3.15pm. Whilst I'm sure that others have spent much more time there than we did, this was quite enough time for my two explorers as they walked a great deal of the 6km. And that is a looooooong way for a 4yo and 21mth old. We took our own car in and parked it and looked at exhibits and then moved on to the next exhibit. But because the car parks are quite close together, what ended up happening was that we all visited the first exhibit and then while Mark or I walked the kids to the next one, the other would go back and move the car up to the next point. This may seem to be a waste of time, but it worked quite well.

Tom was totally taken by the picture of the otter silhouette sign on the park map (he'd been studying it for a day already) and was absolutely convinced that the otter was a lizard, and continued to tell us that he was going to see an animal that lived under the ground. When we finally made it to the otter exhibit, the damn things were in hiding and we never saw one!! However, there were plenty of pictures around, so Tom got to see that otters were really nothing like lizard at all.

My favourite animal would have to to be the maned wolf. These are really beautiful creatures, although I'm sure that I would make an easy meal for them if given the chance! They sort of look like overgrown foxes but with REALLY long legs. They did stink though! Overall, the great thing about the zoo is that you almost feel like you are in with the animals, because what usually seperated you from them was a deep ditch and an electric fence running thousands of volts (no doubt). But if you stood back from the ditch or the fence, it was almost like you were in the same paddock as them. And in the case of the Galapagos Tortoise, Tom did end up in the same enclosure as them!

While Mark was inside the tortoise house looking at one, Tom appears around the back of the exhibt IN WITH THE TORTOISE. Because the barrier fences are very low (I could have easily have stepped over it), he simply jumped over it, ran past a number of other tortoises and surprises his dad by being in there with them all - "Ta Da"! Mark couldn't believe it. I could. Wish he got a photo of it though.

All in all, a great day out. The kids are exhausted - as we all are.

Oh, and I'll post some photos soon. Perhaps, I'll make a final trip post (when we get back home) of all the relevant pictures.

Day 4 - Narrandera to Forbes

After saying that our kids rarely wake with the sparrows, both of them were awake before 7am this morning which did have some benefits in that we were up and about and getting organised to head to Forbes at a reasonable hour. Still, we were one of the last to leave the caravan park even though we did get out before 10am.

We headed up the Newell Hwy stopping at West Wyalong for lunch. Two fabulous things about West Wyalong; the park at the start of the main drag (sorry, can't remember the name...if anyone knows it, please let me know), and the Round About Bakery. The park was simply the best lunch stop for the kids as there was a tops little playground which was completely fenced and had a great array of play equipment that even a toddler could use, and the bakery made the yummiest pies (although the beef and pepper pie was quite spicy..but still delicious). The sausage rolls must have also been pretty good because both kids woofed them down.

The Newell was a bit of an undulating ride - something I have never noticed in the past when driving up and down to Brisbane in years gone by. But then, I wasn't towing 500+kg behind me and the car I had at the time was pretty crap in itself! Impressively, there are many truck stops and rest stops along the route which allows for caravanners such as ourselves to easily move off the side of the road when a number of faster cars (and big rigs) are behind. Maybe those in power that are in charge of the Geelong to Warrnambool stretch of the Princes Hwy should take a trip and take notes.

We landed in Forbes around 2pm which gave us a good site and heaps of time to get settled. The Lachlan View Big 4 Caravan Park is a small park but has a handy playground for the kids which includes a jumping pillow which all of us (big kids included) thought was pretty good! Apparently there has been an enormous dust storm go across much of NSW in the past 24 hours, and it seems that Forbes was not spared. Certainly not by the colour of the kids clothes after they had finished rolling around the jumping pillow!

We are still finding that we are in need of a few things for the van, so we took a trip into town to the supermarket and took the opportunity for a quick squizz around. Forbes seems to be reknown for a couple of things; 1) the burial place for bushranger Ben Hall, 2) the burial place for Kate Kelly, the sister of even more famous bushranger Ned Kelly, and 3) some amazing heritage buildings. Tomorrow we will call around and see some of these attractions.

Caravan park wrap up: the Lachlan View is a nice little park with good sized grassed sites that allow for annexes to be pulled out and still leave you enough room not to be on top of your neighbour. The camp kitchen is reasonable and clean with a few implements (kettle, toaster etc) available for use as well as fridge and BBQ (20c/15mins). A slight problem with the BBQ's starter meant that we had to go in search of some matches but this is not a deal breaker. The playground is good and toddlers can use the equipment, although Biddy needed some help getting up on the jumping pillow (which, judging by the other kids playing on it, is a huge asset). The showers are clean and the water is hot. There is a baby bath sink in the ladies, although I found this too late and had already bathed Biddy in the laundry trough, which she thought was fine as she got to chat aimlessly to a lady who was waiting for her washing! There seems to be a number of things that happen in Forbes (a Ben Hall festival is coming up), so I would think that this park would fill up quite quickly as it is more of a smaller park.

September '09 road trip

After seemingly getting prepared for weeks, we are finally on the road and headed for Warrumbungle National Park. Well, that is our most northerly destination, but we are really only staying there one night. This trip is really about seeing sites and catching up with friends and family on the way up and the way back. So I thought that I'd better keep some sort of record of the auspicious event, plus depending on what happens on the way, it might make for entertaining reading (or not!).

I have to backtrack a couple of days, so excuse that, but I'll *try* and update most days if possible (translate: internet coverage is good).

Day 1 (Monday 20 Sept)

Not a fabulous start, and certainly, not the speedy exit that Mark had hoped to make, we eventually pulled out of the drive at Craiglands at about 12pm. Right on lunchtime. We didn't even make it into Colac when Tom started on about being hungry and wanting something to eat. So in order to keep some sort of timeliness to our day, we opted for McD's and ate on the way.

Today we travelled to Nanneella in the northern irrigation region of Vic (not very far from Echuca), to catch up with friends Selina Handley, Tim Fulton and their kids. It has been years (almost 9 I'm ashamed to say) since I have been to their place, and there has been significant improvements made to what used to be a tired old farmhouse. It is now wonderful and I am so jealous (space...they have HEAPS of space).

However, before we even got anywhere near them, I suddenly thought that we hadn't packed Tom's bedding. Whilst we did have a fair range of blankets on board, this was a significant oversight as it could mean that he ended up in bed with us. Freezing. So a quick stop into a huge shopping precinct at Kangaroo Flat (just out of Bendigo) that has seemingly just sprung up out of nowhere to buy a new doona. Mark graciously donated one of his pillows to Tom for the holiday duration.

Arrived at Nanneella at around 5.30pm just in front of a huge thunderstorm which then kept up most of the night and had me thinking that we might be blown away at any minute. Everyone was very pleased to see us as we told them that we bought the rain up for them!

Kids in bed late, but went pretty much straight to sleep.

Day 2

We have always been fortunate that our kids do not wake with the birds. They certainly do not keep dairy farmer hours. So at about 8am, both kids woke and got into bed with us. A couple of minutes later, I got out. Four bodies in 1 bed doesn't really work.

A leisurely morning was spent doing 8 tenths of bugger all. Got in touch with some more friends that happen to live about 1 km down the road (Carl & Rachelle Moon -the same Carl who shows our cows) and arranged to catch up with them later in the day. After lunch, while Mark offered to stay with Biddy while she had a nap (translate: have a nap himself), Sel and I took the remaining kids into Echuca to run some energy out at the playground and to show Tom the paddlesteamers. The weather was very warm despite the big rain storm the previous night and the kids were bright red and in need of an ice-cream after the playground (and so did Sel and I....it's tough work watching them play!)

Later that afternoon, Mark and I (and kids) caught up with the Moon's to discover that Rachelle (who is very pregnant) is actually due this day!! And is looking fantastic I must say! Of course, the conversation was about cows and grass and rain and sport, with the occasional reference to kids thrown in for good measure. Carl is coming down for Colac show again this year, so it won't be too long before we catch up again.

Tonight, kids very tired and went to sleep almost immediately.

Day 3 (today)

Time to leave Nanneella (before we wore out our welcome) and head over the border into NSW. Today we headed for Narrandera mainly because we thought that any further was too big a push for the kids. To make it a bit interesting, I navigated us through Deniliquin, Conargo (where we stopped for lunch) and past the property where I jillarooed 20+ years ago. OMG. I didn't think that it was that long until I stopped and counted up the years. I now feel old. A couple of weeks ago, I tried to look up the phone number of the family that own Barrabool Station, but I had no joy. As it turns out, when we stopped for lunch and I spoke to the lady at the general store, she told me that the brother I worked for (2 brothers owned the farm; 1 worked on farm with his wife and the other worked off farm but had a active interest in it) had left the farm and was now living in Deni. So sadly, there was no-one I knew that still was at the farm. However, the road was good for us to travel on past the property and onward to the Sturt Hwy (it is a sand road for much of it) and whilst it was soft in some spots due to recent rain, we had no trouble with the ute or the van. When we got to Barrabool we got out and I had a photo in front of the sign for old times sake. I think it really hit Mark just how remote the station was that I worked on when I was just an 18yo, and I hope he was a bit impressed!!

Travelling onto Narrandera, we passed a lot of farmland, and the crops are looking pretty good (rice) and the cattle (beef) are certainly in good nick.

Tonight is the first night we are staying in a caravan park - Lake Talbot Tourist Park - and it is a battle to moderate the kids volume control. The majority of the other travellers are couples (both young and old) and I haven't spotted too many other youngsters. Of course, you can hear Tom clear across the park and when I returned from a quick supermarket venture, a neighbour mentioned that it sounded like someone was being killed in our van!! Great.

However, Tom thought it was a great novelty to cook our dinner on the BBQ (why, I don't know, because we BBQ all the time at home. Maybe it is because we don't put money in our BBQ) and must have been hungry because everything disappeared from his plate with very little coaxing from us. Showers in the amenities block for all of us - another adventure - and kids in bed and fast asleep in record time! Bliss.

Caravan park wrap up: at this time of year, you can have your pick of any site (we chose a drive through). However, the park is a bit tired and outside of the summer period when the local pool is open (right next door), there is very little for kids to do here. In fact the only play equipment is 2 swings and the chain on the baby one is broken. The amenities were ok; the showers and toilets are clean and the water is hot, but if you wanted to use the camp kitchen, the facilities were extremely basic and the fridge wasn't turned on for people to use. Recommend for a 1 night stop over if you are pretty much self sufficient.

Update on the back situation

Ok. We've seen the specialist again, and there has been no improvement from the nerve block injection that Mark had. So the next step is surgery.

We've been advised that the surgery will almost completely fix the pain that Mark experiences down his leg, but may not do much for the actaul back pain. This is because the back pain is more of a deflated disc issue - sort of like a dodgy shock absorber! The disc is really only half the height it should be so it doesn't flex as much as a good disc should. But this pain may very well be manageable when the leg pain is removed from the equation. Or not. Which means that down the track, other treatment may be required.

So the rundown we have been given is that surgery will mean 3 days in hospital, discharge by ambulance to home because he won't be able to sit for long distances in the car, 4 weeks of no activity, next 4 weeks would be starting to get back into it, the 4 weeks after that would be moderate activity and then by the 12th week, he should be right. If the surgery happens around the middle of November, this will set Mark up for some of the fire season (because let's face it....it really doesn't get hot and horrible until mid February), and also the start of baseball season (!).

We'll see.......

Busy couple of months

Ok.....where to start?

Where my last fairdinkum post left off, we were just about ready to celebrate Tom's 4th birthday. He had a great time, got lots of presents and yeah, there were HEAPS of dinosaurs about! He had his party on the Sunday, and on his actual birthday (Monday), he went to daycare carting a heap of mini cupcakes decorated with little dinosaurs. Then after lunch at Aunty Jo's, Mark and I took him to see "Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs" at the movies. He was in seventh heaven!! To cap off the day, we went to McDonald's for dinner because they had the Ice Age promo on and he got a couple of figurines from the movie plus one of those cups that change colour when you put in cold drinks.

the dino cake for 2009

blowing out the candles

The party in full swing

We have a rest now in our immediate family from birthdays until Christmas when it is Bridie's. Although, we will be celebrating her's earlier again in November.

We also recently purchased a caravan. There has been some saga attached to the purchase of this. As a person that has grown up camping - and I mean true camping - I wanted to get a camper trailer. A couple of years ago, we did our homework and decided on a particular trailer. But because we dithered and hesitated, the price of the trailer went up and combined with fitting it out (stove, fridge, beds for kids, jerry cans, water containers etc.. which would have put on about $3K), we ended up being up for a bit of money. In the process of looking at some alternative trailers, we happened to visit a Jayco sales yard and after seeing some of the vans there, Mark's mind was made up NOT to get the trailer. Sigh...

Having just taken delivery on the as yet unnamed van

After much to-ing and fro-ing, we have ended up with an Expander; sort of a cross between one of the original pop out campers and a caravan. Mark's reasoning was that he would be more inclined to go away in it if he had a bit of luxury about him (again.... sigh), as he has not done much camping in the true sense of the word.

Mark, Tom and Bridie

So we took it to Warrnambool for our first 'sortie' (trial run) and all things considered, things went well. The configuration we got has the beds up either end and a set of bunks, which the top bunk can be folded away. The portacot fits perfectly on the bottom bunk. Both kids went to sleep that night just as well as if they had of been in their own beds. Much to my relief as I thought we would have nightowls on our hands. But with a queen size inner spring bed, microwave, stove, flat screen tv, heater/air con, dvd, wireless internet, mobile phone coverage, and hooked up to an ensuite site, how could anything go wrong!! LOL.

Tom has a fear of heights. This is him trying to get Mark to come down from the rocks. He was 'worried' about Bridie!

All of us at Moonlight Heads

I think I may have mentioned that Mark's back has been playing up. It has gotten so bad that he is unable to work normally and has had to stop playing baseball. In the past 2 months, he has gone to see about it. He has had xrays and a CT scan and they have shown a prolapsed disc. The prolapse has gone into the middle of the disc and is pushing on the nerve bundles which is the main reason for the pain he is experiencing. We went and saw a neurosurgeon in Melbourne and the treatment was for Mark to get an MRI done, then have a cortisone injection into the prolapsed disc to see if it can be shrunk. 33% chance this will work, 33% chance it will not work at all, 33% it will give some releif but will require ongoing treatment. In the event that the injection does nothing, then he may be looking at surgery. The first injection is next Wednesday.

I managed to escape the family and head to Sydney for my annual scrapbooking retreat courtesy of Little Scrapbook Shop (or LSBS). It was fantastic (as always) and I really enjoyed having 48 hours all to myself doing nothing but scrapping and chatting. I don't think that I truly appreciated this sort of thing before I had kids, but now I am only ever able to snatch minutes at a time to myself, I relish the ability to nick off and leave everything behind!

My business - Graceful Impressions - is going well. I have held monthly classes which have been well attended and the workshops and sales are going well too. Pop over to my other site for more info on that.

On the farm, we have had a few of things going on. In mid July, we hosted a couple of vet students from Melbourne Uni for 2 weeks. I hope they felt that their time here was useful. We also flushed our big Luckystrike cow (2843) but had an unmitigated disaster. She produced 10 eggs, 5 of them fertilising and all of them duds. Very unhappy with this as we got nothing. We have put her back into a flush program, and will be flushing her on Monday. Hopefully with a better result.

Calving has finished and we have 115 heifers. We start calving again in October with the second batch of springers. Hopefully will get around 25 heifers from that which will bring our yearly replacement number to around 140.

We are starting to eyeball which cows might be taken to the show. As the big Luckystrike is still not pregnant, she is a no go, but I have to review the 2yos (1st calvers) and also check out some of the older animals that have already been to the show. 3111 is a likely contender agin this year as she has a bit more size about her.

OK, I think that might be it for a quick recap.

Almost 2 months??? No!

I have just realised that it is nearly 2 months since I last posted. Whilst I never thought I would blog on a daily basis, I also don't like to be so remiss with my recording. And now I have a heap of stuff to catch up on.

So this is to let any regular readers know that I haven't abandoned the blog. I will be back within the next 24 hours with an update. And some pics.

"For the love of God......

.....please, PLEASE choose another theme for your birthday Thomas"

This was my plea that fell on deaf almost 4 y.o ears. I suggested a range of fantastic and equally impressive party themes such as pirates, cowboys, Curious George, Tom & Jerry, underwater.....but NO. And not just a no. An emphatic, serious, "I can't believe you are suggesting something other than dinosaurs" NO.

So dinosaurs - for the third year in a row - it will be. Sigh.

The conversation went something like this:
Me: "Tom, what do you want to have for your birthday party this year?"
Tom: "Dinosaurs"
Me: "Don't you want something else?"
Tom: "No"
Me: "What about pirates?"
Tom: "No"
Me: "what about Tom and Jerry"
Tom: "NO!"
[continue on with me suggesting other themes always answered with a NO.]

a brief silence ensues...
Tom: "Mummy, you know, you don't have to make a T-Rex cake"
Me: "What do you want?"
Tom: "Well you could make a Kronosaurus cake instead"
Me: ?????????????
[insert me rushing to one of the many MANY dinosaur books we have here to see what a Kronosaurus actually is. Turns out, it is this monster underwater aligator like thing with flippers. Oh yeah, and it was NASTY.]

A couple of days later I mock up an invite to his party. I found a Jurrasic scene, which has numerous dinosaurs on it, on the web and I put it on the invite along with the details. Tom happens along and sees the trial version.
Tom: "What's this?"
Me: "Well, it might be the invitation to your party. Do you like it?"
Tom: [thinking and studying the invite closely] "There aren't any T-Rex's on it"
Me: "Well what's that?" [me pointing to what I believe looks like a T-Rex]
Tom: "Mummy, that's not a T-Rex, that's an Allosaurus" [with a look of contempt]

Needless to say, that version never really saw the light of day. So here is the final version that has been given the all clear from the little paelentologist. I gotta say, we are getting remarkable use and value out of all of the dino decorations!


And do you know what was the first animal sound Bridie made? Yep a dinosaur roar! Could be a cycle starting all over again.

Tom actually enjoyed being photographed for this. He even managed to pretend he was "standing" under the dinosaur!

Just a quickie...

I have just updated the farm website with:

1. new farm staff member
2. updates on the calves born from last years flush program
3. another flush program
4. things that are happening on farm right now

I really must get off my rear and get some more photos on the site. I really have been taking a few of late.....

Some 'heart stopping' news (pardon the pun)

That really is a poor choice of a post title. But it is very apt. Over the past couple of weeks, Mark's dad (Alan) has suffered a number of heart attacks or heart issues. It all stemmed from a bit of a blockage in one of the arteries, but after having a couple of stents put in, he developed a clot which put him back into hospital again. Since, he has found out that there is another clot and the doctors are madly working to dissolve it so he is 'fit for duty' (so to speak). In reality, I think both Mark and Judy will be keeping him wrapped up in cotton wool for a while (much to his horror no doubt!!).

So he has spent the better part of the past 2 weeks in either Shepparton, Royal Melbourne, Colac or Geelong hospitals. And for a man that rarely admits to being unwell, I'm sure that this has been an arduous experience for him.

Mark has been to see him today and reports that he is in better spirits than he had been, and was looking more like his old self. Most welcomed news!

Ok...farmwise, what else has been going on?

We are well into calving now with almost a full calf shed. I am doing none of the rearing this year as Mark felt he could manage it. And so he has. I miss it though. As of yesterday, we have had all our recip cows calve (the ones that were impregnated with embryos from the flush last year) and we ended up with 4 bulls and 3 heifers. One of the heifers is huge and is a potential show cow herself.

We welcomed a new staff member to our business in the past 2 weeks. Terry Baulch is a 16yo student who is going to be doing some weekend milkings and the occasional week day milking. He is also doing his work experience with us and possibly in the future will complete a school based certificate II traineeship. We hope that Terry enjoys his work with us.

We have just reviewed some text for an article that is being written on us for a breeder profile for the Holstein Australia magazine. I have to admit to being a bit embarassed about it as we have not been in the registering game for very long and there are heaps of breeders out there that also deserve recognition. But we agreed and we took some photos last night to accompany the article. Surprisingly, Tom was very accomodating and took some lovely pictures. We got a few rippers of him with one of the ET heifers who's name he informs us is 'Kelly". So Craiglands Megaman Kelly it is!! This is one of the shots of him holding on to her. Maybe he will be interested in the show circut after all????? (me smiling to myself here!) .

In a couple of weeks we will welcome the Azzopardi family to our farm as part of the Farm Day activities. They hail from one of the western Melbourne suburbs and I'm not sure how much they've been on farms before, but an email from them the other day tells me they are looking forward to coming. They also have a 4yo boy named Thomas!!! LOL. It may get confusing over the weekend!!!

Calving season has started

We are into calving season 2009 already. From memory, we have about 20+ calves already in the shed. So far, Mark is rearing them all by himself. This will last for as long as we get a sick one and he wants me to take over!! Seriously, I miss doing them, but the super early morning starts for me last year just about killed me. Burning the candle at both ends and all that. Hopefully though, this year, I will be able to take the kids over with me at a later time in the morning (rather than 4am like I did last year). I'm not 100% convinced that Tom's concentration and interest will last the time that I need to be over there, but we'll give it a crack and see how it goes. But for the meantime, Mark is happy to plod along with the babies.

And today we had a bit of excitment! Remember the flush program we did on our show cow back in August? No? Well, suffice to say, one of the recip cows calved today. And it's a bull! LOL. Bugger it though.... I'm keeping it. This is the first of the bull calves to be reared this year. Fingers crossed that the remaining six recips give us some heifers.

We are gearing up for 'Farm Day' where a city family comes and spends the better part of a weekend with us. This year, the dates are May 30 and 31. We haven't got our city family's details yet, but I would guess that they will have kids, as the organisers try and match us all up.

My Stampin' Up! business is starting to pick up a bit of speed. I have a number of workshops in front of me, a class that has been confirmed, and a couple of customers that may turn into long term clients. I attended the SU! convention in Canberra last weekend and I have to say that I have returned all excited and inspired! I can't wait to get right into it. This coming Friday night, I have a 'party plan' evening at a local kindergarten. A number of direct sales companies will be there basically showcasing what they have as far as products and what they can offer prospective hostesses. Fortunately for me, we have a lot of 'hands-on' stuff that tends to capture the attention of bystanders. I am hoping to secure at least one workshop booking from the evening.

First shoes

Just a quick update. This is Bridie in her brand new dress and wearing - for the very first time - SHOES!!! And just how damn cute are they?? Black patent leather shoes. A staple of every little girls wardobe!! LOL.

Bridie has been properly walking now for about 5 days, and this photo of her was taken on our way to her cousin's birthday party. As we were going to be out and about, I figured she'd better have some shoes now. Bridie was fascinated with them and I had trouble getting a decent picture of her because all she wanted to do was look at the shoes.

Such a girl!!!

VALE: Bluey

Very sad news today from Craiglands. One of our dogs was killed this afternoon when the milk tanker ran over him. Poor Blue. It was only a matter of time though...Mark had pulled him out from under the wheels of the stationary tanker a number of times. In the past year, he has become deaf and almost blind. He wouldn't have known what hit him (literally).

We were only talking about Blue the other day and wondering how he was going to make it through another winter. Arthritis, poor bladder and bowel control, his senses dimming (or dimmed)...we really were facing having to make a difficult decision in the very near future.

Our concern now shifts to Tottie who is Blue's litter mate (sister) and has been with him for always. Her health is also not 100%, so we now watch her to see how she will react to him not being by her side constantly throughout the day.

Mark just came in from burying Blue. We haven't mentioned anything to the kids yet, but Tom already understands about birth and death in animals, so I don't think he'll take it overly hard. After all, Blue was a very old dog to Tom.

RIP Blue.

Graceful Impressions

My new business - Graceful Impressions - is up and going! This is my new business name and it is derived from Bridie's middle name (Grace).

This business is predominately the face of my Stampin' Up! demonstratorship, but in the future may be used to extend my business dealings.

I will be keeping a seperate blog/website of all things "Graceful", and you can read about it here. On this site, I will be doing a few things:
1. SU! specials
2. my own personal specials offered on SU! products
3. promotion of SU! products
4. tutorials and tips on how to make the most of your stamps
5. sketches and templates for you to use
6. regular pics and product listing of various projects I make
7. calendar of upcoming events
8. arranging a regular newsletter to be sent out either via email or mail

I can offer a range of services, starting with a party where you and a number of your friends/family get together for a couple of hours to have a bit of fun, make some cards and/or scrapbook pages and have a lot of laughs. Of course, the hostess of this party is able to earn free stamps and products to either kickstart her new passion, or to add to her existing stash!

I am also going to offer a regular workshop or event where for a nominal fee, people can come and make a range of paper crafts, learn different techniques and have full use of my proucts. This also leads into offering "Stamp Clubs" which I will be discussing in detail on the Graceful blog.

Of course, I can also accept orders from anyone by phone, email or in person that wants to order some of the vast SU! range, but doesn't want to hold a party.

So bookmark my site (http://www.gracefulimpressions.blogspot.com/) and pop over regularly to check what I have on offer. Orders can be sent right around Australia (via Aust Post) and are delivered from the warehouse directly to you. This means, less waiting time for you to get the stamps and product that you ordered!

If anyone wants any further information on any of the SU! products (including the newly released 2009- 10 Ideas Book and Catalogue), drop me an email at sam.simpson@bigpond.com

Questions, questions....

I was in the car with Tom today, and just as we were pulling out of our driveway, a man appeared in front of us. He was jogging down the highway (certainly not a usual sight around here) headed for Colac. This simple figure fascinated Tom and for the 20 minute round trip, all I got were questions about the man:-

"Who is that?"
"What is he doing?"
"Why is he running?"
"Where is he going?"
"Is he coming to our house?"
"Is he going to town?"
"Where did he go?" (this was after we passed him and lost sight)
"Where did he buy that white shirt he is wearing?" !!!!!!!!!

I guess it is better than just getting the "why?" question all the time. There is at least some context to his questioning. But boy, it gets tiring, especially when he forgets that he asked the same question and hence repeats it 10 times!

Updates (finally).

Typing this post has become one of those tasks that you end up dreading. I mean, things have been reasonably busy these past few weeks, and as such, I haven't really had time to scratch myself, much less type on this blog. But the longer it is left, the more things that happen, and then the bigger the job becomes and then you don't want to do it. It becauses a vicious cycle. Arghhhhhhh.

So I am MAKING myself sit down and do this now. Mark is away, the kids are in bed, I have caught up on bookwork....time to catch up here.

Ok. Where to start?

The heat that Victoria experienced in early February just about killed us. At one point, it reach 47 degrees in the milk shed. The cows really suffered and so did we. We had 3 days of over 45 degrees. In anyone's book and by any scale, that is just bloody hot. It was so hot that the cabbage moths were literally falling out of the sky and dying on the track. The flies couldn't even fly. They hung around in thick swarms on the floor of the dairy and on the cup remover cords. Inside the house, the air con struggled to keep up and the only room where there was any respite was the living room. The bedrooms were over 38 degrees, which made for some uncomfortable nights.

The wash up of the fires that raged around Victoria was 200+ people were killed, thousands of homes destroyed, tens of thousands of stock lost and hundreds of thousands of hectares of farmland burnt. Gone. Decimated. Something out of a war movie. The really bad ones, not the John Wayne ones.

We were almost not so lucky ourselves. On Feb 9th (now known as Black Saturday), we had a fire start about 20 kms from our place. The wind was howling right towards us and for the first time ever (that I have been here), we enacted our own fire plan. I had precious mementos packaged up, orders for mum to take the kids, the dog and the back up drive from the computer plus the box of stuff I packed and get ready to go. I would stay and deal with the cows or go and fight the fire if paged. Fortunately, it didn't come to that and the wind changed direction and took the fire direction away from us. But I was nervous.

Mark left twice to fight the fires; once in Drouin and then up at Alexandra.

So from that to New Zealand. Late last year, Mark and I were contacted by our local milk supply officer with a offer of an all expenses paid trip to New Zealand for a week. Despite the fact that this sounded very good (and did I metion free?), I had reservations about going. And as a result, Mark said that if I didn't go, he wouldn't go either (probably because I had given him a bit of curry about taking off without me and the kids for baseball and various committee jaunts throughout the year, he was not going to subject himself to another tirade!)

Of course, my biggest concern was the kids. No, I should rephrase that. My biggest concern was for whomever had to look after the kids! It is one thing to come and visit them for a day or 2, but to look after them 24 hours a day for 7 days.....might be asking a bit much of someone. Mark's biggest concern was whether we would get any more dreadful hot weather while we were away and the possible implication of that. But as it worked out, mum came and stayed at our place with the kids and between her, Judy and Libby, they all managed to retain their sanity. In fact, the reports were that the kids were fantastic. Makes me think that we should go away on extended leave more often!

Tour group at Fonterra (NZ)

Mark with his "RD1" jacket (he was desperate to buy one of these after he saw some of the kiwis wearing them).

But NZ was great. I have to say that I'm glad that we farm here and not there. The whole concept of the way they supply Fonterra (NZ) seems extremely convaluted to us, but then in Australia, we have never really had a monopoly situation like it is with Fonterra in NZ. And green grass!!! It was everywhere. Abolutely amazing to see that amount of grass in February. When we returned, we were asked by someone how many offers did we got for our farm (given that a lot of NZers are coming to Australia because of land price). NONE. Especially when they saw how much pasture we had at the moment!!

After the tour, Mark and I spent an extra day in Queenstown seeing the sights and having a generally relaxing day together. The weather was truelly magnificent and the views....unreal. I can totally understand why Lord Of The Rings was filmed around there. We flew home the following day, which happened to be my birthday (39.....) and spent about 10 hours of my birthday travelling.

Us on the Luge at Queenstown

Sam at the waterfront in Queenstown - magnificent weather (the next day you could barely see a thing because of the mist and cloud cover! We picked the day!!!!)

As we got home at bedtime for the kids, we decided to celebrate my birthday the following day. And a huge surprise was that Bridie decided to take couple of steps for the first time on my birthday!!!!! She must have been waiting for us to get home. My heart burst with pride just a little.

The folowing week was spent catching up with stuff - washing, bookwork, farmwork etc - and then the day after Mark's birthday (9th March), we took the kids down to Rye for a week for a bit of a family holiday.

This was the best week I have spent for ages. Just Mark, me and the kids. Not rushing around. Not having to do anything in particular. Just enjoying each others company. And Tom was really good on the whole. Hardly played up at all. But then, he really is becoming a little boy. He is in that period between toddlerdom and boyhood. Young enough to still need things done for him, but old enough not to be babied. I guess we will go through a few stages of this - with both the kids.

The highlights of the week away would be:

1. The ferry trip from Queenscliffe to Sorrento to kick off our trip was talked about for days before we actually even saw the boat. And then when Tom spotted it, he didn't want to get on! But once he was on, he spent the whole trip out on the front deck with Mark. And they managed to spot a dolphin as we were coming into Sorrento.

Making sure we were heading in the right direction!

2. The beach visit, where Bridie hit the sand crawling and did not stop, even when she hit the water. She is going to be the one we have to watch. she has no fear and I think she will be a child that will overestimate her abilities when it comes to physical activities. She will be the one in A&E getting bones plastered and cuts stiched. Tom is much more reserved than she is.

Bridie....doing what she does best. Going for it!

3. The sand sculptures at Frankston beach were the most amazing artwork I have ever seen. You had to keep reminding yourself that these structures were really made out of sand (granted, they were sprayed with some sort of adhesive that set them like stone so they didn't wash away in rain, but still....). Tom was running around the place getting louder and louder each time he saw a different one. Right up his alley, which we knew it would be.





4. The hot-tub at the house we rented was extremely well ustilised by Mark and the kids. So much so, that it was sometimes a drama getting them out!

Prunes!

5. The trip to the Melbourne Aquarium on the way home was a huge hit. Hideously expensive to get in ($87 for me and Mark and Tom), but plenty to look at and a good array of things that kids don't normally see. There is an Antartica display on at the moment and there are penguins there dancing on the ice and swimming around. Only a sheet of glass seperates them from the maddening crowd, so you can get quite a good look.

Mark & Bridie at the "Nemo" display

After the Rye trip, we have all managed to succumb to some lurgy. I hesitate to say that it was gastro, but gastro has definately been doing the rounds of Colac, so we may have gotten some weak version. Both Tom and I had the upchucks, Mark felt nauseous and last night - after the rest of us have gotten over it and are basically well - Bridie puked all over her cot and then has progressed to explode out of her bottom for most of today. Yuk. The washing machine has not stopped today.

So that's it. I'm caught up. I think. I know that Bridie said "mum" for the first time in there somewhere, but I don't have the dates handy. I'll repost.

Oh, the other thing that has happened is that I signed up to be a Stampin' Up! consultant. I am going to be running parties, workshops, classes etc, with the view to selling stamps, ink, cardstock etc. I am going to develop a blog/website dedicated to that, but every now and then, I'll refer to it in here. I have my first party in mid April and by mid May, I will have run 5 of them. So bookings have been good so far. I hoping to get a few regular customers under my belt and offer some ongoing classes, so that should set me up for a while. Consumer Affairs have rejected 2 of my proposed business names (although I am under SU! I am also independant, so can call my business whatever I like). The 3rd option is still being considered.....wish they'd hurry up. I'd like to start advertising locally.

Here are a couple of my first samples...that I subsequently gave away as birthday cards!

Stampin' Up! products used: Fishy Friends stamp set and wheel, very vanilla, not quite navy and more mustard cardstock, not quite navy ink. Other products: Kaiser rhinestones, general ribbon, derwent watercolour pencils, scrap pattern paper.