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.
