Don't have a heart attack.....

Ok.  It's been a long time coming (and me promising), but I am actually going to load something of relevance on here!  Like most things in life, the longer you leave your blog alone....unloved, unattended, ignored....the harder it is to return to it.  Quite frankly, I'm surprised that this blog did not meet someone else, run off and start a new life!  I would have if it were me.

But fortunately, we have a loyal blog - and hopefully, loyal blog followers - so I am just going to jump back into it and stop making excuses.  The next few blog entries are going to be snapshots of our lives from about last September to now.  Because I dumped these pics out of iPhoto and into a file on my computer to work on, they lost their dates.  So I really don't know which order they all should go.  But ain't that the fun of it?  You're just going to get a haphazard view of our lives, which in reality, is kinda what our lives are now....haphazard.

I also should mention....because it hasn't been mentioned on this blog yet.....that I am pregnant with #4.  This has contributed in a small way to my absence on here, because I kept meaning to catch up and then post about the pregnancy and keep it all neat and bundled.  But it never happened.  So some of the pics you will see are of me are with a distended tummy.  No, they are not pics of me after over-eating.  I AM in fact preggers!

As of today (23rd April), I have 2 weeks to go.  Yes, only 2 weeks.  So for those of you that have just caught up on the fact that I am indeed expecting, this is the shortest pregnancy you will probably encounter.

Sit back and enjoy the next few pictorial posts.

xx

What's going on?

I received a Christmas email a couple of weeks ago from a friend that I don't often keep in regular contact (well....it is regular - just once a year!) and he mentioned that I must have been busy of late as our farm blog had not been updated since September.

WHAT?!

And sure enough, visiting this morning, I note that I have not been on for some time.  YEs, life has been busy, but not THAT busy.

So, I will get thoughts together and be back with an update of the last quarter of 2011 and make a pledge to  be better at updating the blog (and for that matter, our farm website that needs some work) in 2012.

Be back later.....stay tuned.

A new skill

Our 15 month old daughter has recently taught herself a new life skill......feeding herself.  Which is hugely admirable because it means that if the worst ever was to happen and I ended up face down in the shower for any reason, I can assume that the kid won't starve in the time that it takes someone to come and rescue me...or her.  At the end of the day, it is every man for himself around here and the older kids wouldn't think to assist the baby to get some food, so it is great that she knows how to do it for herself.  However, I have to preface this by telling you that she feeds herself from the scraps out of the bin.

Occasionally, I will be engrossed in something (usually the computer) and I will get a waft of a food source that I remember from the previous night....or even the night before that.  On inspection, it will be Bella sitting near me with a 3 day old chop bone in her mouth, or yesterday's sandwiches that were retired from the older kid's lunchboxes.

Maybe it isn't so much of a survival skill in nutrition as it is a recyclable ethos.  Maybe?.....probably not.  I'm guessing that I'm just not feeding her when she wants it.

I'd best go and see what else she has pulled out of the bin, because she just waddled in here and passed me the strawberry tops that I cut off for Biddy's lunch.  No doubt, the she's found the KFC that I threw out this morning.

Time just gets away

Cripes.  It seems that I have badly neglected this blog.  I'm sure that I could come up with plenty of excuses, but really...at the end of the day, I have had a million things going on and something just has to give sometimes.

Things have been going along steadily here.  I can't believe that we are closing in on the remaining weeks of term 3 already.  Pretty soon, Tom will no longer be a little prepie, but will be a big grade 1 kid.  Sheesh. Next Thursday night we have the whole school performance and I understand that it is to centre around recycling.  The preps are chooks......it will be interesting to see what is in stall for us!

Health-wise, we have suffered a little around here.  Mark torn some ligaments in his shoulder and cracked a bone playing baseball.  Biddy has had some lingering virus which has seen her have to have 2 blood tests to try and work out what is wrong (still waiting on results), and Tom has battled an ear infection and bronchitis.  Bella has been snotty and I wouldn't be surprised if she also had a touch of bronchitis as she sounded exactly like Tom.  I have been fine until 2 days ago when I came down with a migraine.  Needless to say, we are hanging out for the hot weather to make its appearance and hopefully burn some of these germs off.

Mark's baseball team is in the grand final on the weekend.  Both the B and the B reserve Braves teams made it through which is a great effort.  The problem though, is that the B grade boys meet with Corio who absolutely THUMPED them 2 weeks ago.  Did I say thumped?  I should have said DECIMATED them.  It was a very poor result on the part of the Colac Braves with the mercy rule being invoked in the 7th innings because of the score.  21:1.  A shocker.  So from today, I am making it my mission to remind this score to Mark at every chance I get.  A sort of intimate heckling as you will.  Because if he can't take it from me in the privacy of our own home and convince ME that they are going to win, how the hell is he going to rally the fellas to face up to their biggest opponents?

The shame of it is, I have a class on Saturday, so I can't be there in person to provide some down to earth heckling if needed from the stands.  Pity.  Of course, they shouldn't need it and hopefully my one on one tirade will do its job over the next couple of days.

BRING IT ON!!!

A tragic event

A friend of mine lost her husband in a vehicle accident yesterday.  They live in FNQ and he works even further up.  Details are sketchy, but it seems it was a collision between a truck and a car.  As you can imagine, she is devastated.  So my message today is.....hold your loved ones close, tell them you love them and spend some time EACH DAY just being with them.  Because we never know when we will depart this earth and every day may be our last.

My heartfelt condolences to Helen and the boys.

Wanna see Mark's new girlfriend with her top off?

This is what has been getting Mark's juices flowing the past few weeks.  A Ford Cobra Mustang.

A more dignified shot with her top back on!  Note the REAL car in the background...go you good thing, Prado!!!

Mark has wanted a car like this ever since we drove one over in America back in 2004 when we went to World Dairy Expo.  I have to admit to pretty much forgetting about the experience once we got back to everyday life, but clearly, Mark had not.  Life just about stopped for him once he saw this advertised and in a matter of days, it went from being a picture on a piece of paper, to an actual hunk of metal that has now displaced Alan's ute in the garage!

The kids are forbidden to look at it, much less touch it, and even though MY name is on the purchase agreement, MY name is on the insurance and MY name is on the bank loan that is paying it off, I too am viewed as an intruder into this relationship!

However, as our accountant wisely said, it could have been a mistress, and at the end of the day, a car is cheaper.  I'm not sure for who though.........

All I can say is, my time will come and when it does, there will be NO arguments! So there.

Another birthday!

The birthdays seem to be coming thick and fast around here.  This time, it is for Tom.  Yesterday, he celebrated his 6th birthday by having a party at the bowling alley and pizza place with a few of his little school friends.  I felt really bad about having to make him cull his birthday list, but there was just no way that we could have the entire prep class.  We enlisted the help of his teacher to identify the kids that he played with the most and we went from there.

All the kids had a great time and there was not one kid that played up, was naughty, didn't do what they were told.  They were all so very good, it was honestly a pleasure to have them for a few hours.  Some of the kids were drop offs and pick ups and others had their mums stay for the while time.  It was the easiest birthday party I have ever hosted!  [note to self....hold all birthday parties out of the house!!]

Tom's birthday is not until Wednesday, so I will hold off on all the mushy stuff until then (!), but here are some pics of the party that you might like to have a look at.

 This was the FIRST year that Tom did not want a dinosaur cake.  OMG!!  I had no idea what else.  Fortunately he wanted a dragon birthday, so that is not so far removed from dinosaurs!!!  I created a "How to Train Your Dragon" cake which proved very popular with the kids!

 Here are the kids at the bowling alley.  Our good friends Mooka and Alfie have a son the same age as Tom, so they came along to the whole show.  We roped them in to help us at the bowling.  So we had Mark, Mooka, Alfie and myself each on a lane and each of us had 4 kids (well...I had 3!).  This worked really well and we were able to keep the turns moving.  We were finished bowling (10 frames each) with 15 kids in the hour!  Not bad.

The pizza place was popular as it has a indoor playground.  Judging by the way the kids ran screaming into the place, I guess that most had been there before!

Tom and Kyle (Mooka & Alfie's son).  Look at how old Tom looks!  Oh, and that's me in the red jacket behind the boys stuffing my face!!

Blowing out the candles

The birthday boxes we gave out, courtesy of my Stampin' Up! business!!!!  I will load the invite up in the next day or so - I gave them out before I took a photo and the one I kept for us is in pieces on my desk.