I have a new fence!

At last, we have a new house yard fence.

Dean came around on Wednesday and started. It only took him three days to complete it. It is larger than the old house yard and includes a few gates to get vehicles through.

Mim lurves Dean's tractor and wants to get her own, a fast pink tractor that she can use to chase the sheep.

Mim spent as much time as possible stalking Dean, chatting to him and Swoop (Donnie, Stewie's brother) and carrying their tools for them. Luckily Dean has a two year old daughter (and newborn son) at home, so he's used to idol worship.


It was completed (minus the front gates, they'll be ready in about a week) by Friday afternoon. We let the dogs loose and they went beserk, racing around the yard having a great time.

I let them loose this morning and watched them race off into the fog. They completed two laps of the house and then disappeared. A few minutes later I heard the barking of Jess rounding up sheep - they'd found a weak spot. I managed to retreive them and stop up the gap, but they got out again in another section. I'll have to go around and do some serious stop gapping in the near future. But it's an excellent start!

Dog Collar Works

I tried the electric dog collar on Jess. Thinking that it only went up to 10, I set it to 8 and gave her a zap (when she looked like she was trying to get through the fence. She just shook her head and kept on doing what she wanted. And I thought, "oh shit, this thing is going to be useless on her, I'll need a friggin' taser gun!"

So the next time, I got Michael to come with me. He agreed, only if he could have control of the remote. So we took Jess up to the sheep and let her go. The grin on Michael's face got bigger and bigger ... and then he said "it goes up to level 15!"

Jess decided she was bored with the sheep (they were huddled into a corner and weren't going to move) so she started off across the paddock. I called her to come, she ignored, and then suddenly she yelped, jumped sideways, turned around and came straight back to me, looking very puzzled. Michael was giggling to himself. That's what level 13 does.

We worked her for about 10 mins, she got zapped about 5 times in total, but towards the end, she was starting to come back to me when she was called.

The next time I took her out, she was reluctant to work the sheep at all, it took a bit of encouragement on my part. Gave her another 10 minute workout and then we walked back to the house yard, without having to have her on the leash!

So, whilst I'm on two weeks holiday, Michael has agreed to help me train her every day. It gets a bit difficult with two dogs and only one of me.

Read the Instructions First!

Mim brought home a package from kindy. It was one of the those cellophane wrapped parcels that included books and bits and pieces aimed at parents and kids. I didn't pay much attention to it, having seen the title of the magazine was Your Family (or something like that). I was busy doing laundry when Mim started begging to be allowed to open the package.

"Sure" said I, thinking 'this will keep her out of my hair for a little while'.

Bad move!

Whilst doing dishes in the kitchen, I could hear her exclaiming "oh good, a book about dogs...... oh, look mummy, I've got a baking book now...."

It was when I was unloading the clothes dryer for the sixth time that she came running up to me holding out an object, "what is this, mummy?"

It was a tampon. An unwrapped tampon. The special carefree one with wings!

How do you explain that to a five year old? Especially when you are laughing so hard you are almost crying. Yet still she insisted, "what is it mummy? I need to know what it is?"

"It's a tampon, Mim, and something you won't need to worry about for the next 7 years at least"

That seemed to assauge her curiosity and off she went to look at other things. I grabbed the cellophane wrapping from the package - it clearly stated in big red letters Open Under Adult Supervison Only.

Oooppppsssss.

Why children should not be left alone with dogs

Not for the safety of the children.... but for the integrity of the dogs!



Love the hair, Jess!

Karaoke rules!!

Last night was a brilliant night. It was the second Karaoke night at the pub. Michael chose not to go, suffering from an eye wound. But Caitlin had invited Ebony, so it was a real girls' night out.

The karaoke started slowly, like before, with the 'regular karaoke crowd' doing their warm ups, ie Johnny Cash, Tammy Wynette. Luigi brought along his 15 yo daughter Tamara, and she was really good. She did Miley Cyrus' The Climb.

Then the pub regulars got into the swing. Some were good, and some were awful!!! But it was all good fun. Caitlin and Ebony hummed and haaed over song choice, but finally decided on two - The Climb and Single Ladies. They put in their request about 9. They weren't called for their first song until 11.15! Luckily Mim had had a sleep that afternoon so she was still all fired up on adrenaline and Sam worship and the giant Freddo that Mouse had given her! The girls also put in a request for Jemima and Sam to sing a duet, Womaniser (Mim knows the chorus).

Mim had a great time running around with the kids, including a kindy mate, Gypsy. I saw Gypsy go running up to her mother, plonk her hairband on the table and say 'I have to have my hair out, because it makes me look sexy' and go running off. I thought her mother's friend was going to wet herself!! Gypsy also came up to me later on and asked me to read through the song choice book for her. She said she wanted to sing Sex is On Fire (and she sang the chorus) because it was her mum's phone ringtone.

Caitlin and Ebony did a really good job of The Climb. They started out hesitant, but had good audience participation and encouragement (it's great what a couple hours of liquid refreshments can do for the audience). They hit the right notes and held them. And I thought they did better than Tamara, they held the proper notes without dropping out of key.

After that, they were hooked!

Mim finally got to do her song at midnight. Sam was a bit too sloshed (and in the middle of playing pool) so Caity and Eby did the song with her. It was a hit. Mim got to sing the chorus, and improvised with her 'Oooo'. The audience loved it, and her. I think she'll want to do more songs next karaoke night.

Sam apologised to Mim for not doing the duet, and made it up to her by dancing with her.... a lot. Luckily, his girlfriend isn't the jealous kind :)

Eby and Caity got to do Single Ladies at 12.30. Again, they did very well - although it was difficult to hear them above the singing of the lubricated crowd. Annie, the woman we bought this house from, was an excellent singer at the beginning of the night, but by midnight her vocal chords (and co-ordination) were a little too lubricated!

In between bouts of singing, the emcee would put on some dance tracks - I finally learnt the steps to '5 6 7 8', as well as doing nutbush and chicken dance.

After the girls had finished their last song, we decided to go home. Mim was definitely flagging by this stage (and at almost 10am this morning, she is still asleep).

Can't wait for next karaoke night!

Casterton Kelpie Muster

Caitlin and I went to the Casterton Kelpie Muster on the long weekend. It was a typical day for the long weekend, showery and cold.

We watched the dog high jump, last year's record was 2.91m, this year it was only 2.3m.


Despite a field of approx 20 starters, the main contenders were Rosie, winner of the last three years, and Mack, a beautiful quiet dog.

(Rosie)
(Mack)

Rosie tried valiantly to hold onto her title, but Mack just beat her.

Rosie's last attempt

And Mack's the winner

After the high jump concluded (and we'd had a hot chocolate to defrost somewhat), we headed over to the hill climb, via a quick look at the stockman's challenge.



The challenge was for a stockman and his dog to complete the course on horseback, including opening and closing gates, and then drive a mob of sheep through the course and into the drafting area on the other side of the course.

Photos cannot accurately show how steep the hill climb is.


It is steep!! And the dogs work it hard to run up the hill. A few got half way up and decided that it'd be more fun to turn around and come back. But most of them continued up the top to their owner.

Will certainly be going back next year (maybe I should enter Sarah in the high jump), but hopefully the weather will be better:)

It's been a while

It's been a while since I've posted. Not because nothing has happened, but because I've spent most of my spare time on FarmTown, cropping and harvesting and building one hell of a farm.

But to recount what has happened in the last few weeks of our lives:

Waitressing:
A few weeks ago, a colleague mentioned that she had had 48 RSVPs to her husband's birthday party (a sit down dinner), and was wondering how she was going to serve the dinner as well as play hostess. I volunteered Caitlin and Ebony (her friend) and myself to act as waiters.

We arrive at the house the appointed night.... and the girls' jaws hit the ground! The house was gorgeous, the sort of house you expect to see in an Australian period drama. It was stone and huge, you walk in the front door and there is a large foyer area, a large dining room (which comfortably seats 50 people) on one side, a 'cloakroom' on the other side, three rooms which make up the kitchen area, a large lounge room... all with their own fireplaces. The ceilings were about 15 foot high. As Sara said "when you buy a property, you just have to take the house that's on it... and we got lucky". I imagine that it was the original property in the area, dating back to the 1880s.

The girls did a good job with waitressing, serving pre dinner snacks, followed by preparing and serving the dinner and then dessert. We also had a fair amount of help from Sara's 15yo son, Harry. Absolutely lovely genuine young man, who seemed to like being in the company of two young ladies, rather than outside with his father's friends. (And at the end of the night, he asked Ebony if he could have her phone number, how sweet!)

Chooks:
I finally finished doing the new fencing on the chook pen, and we got ourselves six more chooks. Hopefully these ones will last! The fence is higher, the wings are clipped but still at least one of them as flown out. Still, they seem to want to stay together more than they want freedom, and I try to put them out on the grass in a makeshift wire cage for a few hours a day... so maybe they won't go near the dogs!!! And one of them has started to lay. Jemima insists it is her chook that is laying (goodness knows which one it is!)



Winter:
The weather has turned cold now, with the onset of winter. The first day of winter was rainy, as was the second and third and fourth. At last the water tanks are enjoying the rain. The dogs are enjoying the mud, and tramping it inside the house. I've given up trying to keep the laundry tiles clean, as long as they get done at least once a week I'm happy. Between the dogs, mud, grass that never dries during the day and dust from the fires, it is very difficult to keep the house clean. Add to that the various illnesses the household has undergone (we've had at least one person ill at any given time since Mim's birthday), it has not been a relaxing few weeks.

Mum's Visit:
The highlight has been Mum's visit last weekend. The girls were soooo excited to see Nana again, and Mim slept in the spare bed with her every night. The weather was not at its best, it was cold and grey two days, cold and windy one day, and on her last day the sun started shining at long last. We did a trip to Casterton one day, and some yard work another... but apart from that, we spent most of the time inside, just chilling (in both senses of the word).

Mum started helping me prune the plum trees. I looked on the ABC gardening website and got specific instructions for pruning plum trees. I carefully selected the branches to get rid of to maximise light and minimise the height of the tree. Two of the branches were a bit too thick to manually cut with my pruning saw, so I made the mistake of asking Michael to fire up the chainsaw. BIG MISTAKE. My plum tree is now 3 foot high!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And Michael is grinning. He then attacked the pear tree. It is now one foot high. Luckily he hasn't touched any other trees..... yet.

Kindy:
I had a parent/teacher interview with Mim's Kindy teacher yesterday. Mim is well adjusted, enjoys 'reading' books, interacts well with other children, and is a delight to have at Kindy. I didn't expect any different!

Dogs:
My electric dog collar arrived yesterday as well. As soon as I've finished posting, I'm going to go and try it out on Jess (I've had requests from people to try it out on Mim and Michael as well). Our fencing guy should arrive in the next week or so to redo our house yard fence, that will help with the dogs as well, allowing them to run around the yard without having to be chained up. Of course, Sarah will be able to jump the fence, being a Kelpie/Bluie cross, but Jess can't - and she's the problem dog!