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!

Watching Porn

I have the porn channel happening in my lounge room/kitchen on a regular basis.

No, it's not Michael getting randy in his old age - it's Gomez with Sarah on heat.

He keeps trying and trying to 'get it on' with her, but has had absolutely no luck. So far he's tried to hump her knees, her tail.. even her head! You've heard the expression 'wet willie', I know where it comes from now - I've seen it in action!

Poor Sarah, in the last few days she's obviously become VERY fertile, and wants it, wants it bad baby! But her porn co-star belongs in the land of the oompahloompahs! I've even watched Gomez humping Sarah whilst she's humping Jess!

Maybe I should videotape it and set up my own Pay for View channel! Or just Funniest Home Videos.

Mother's Day Present

I love it!!

A Weekend Well Spent

This weekend has been a worthwhile weekend, although busy one.

I had committed to attending working dog training days in Macarthur, about an hour's drive away on both Saturday and Sunday. The plan was to take both Sarah and Jess so both could start training.

This plan was disrupted by two things - I was still feeling ill with gastro and Sarah had decided to come on heat on Friday.

Despite feeling like crap, I decided to go to the training with just Jess, the braincell. And I'm glad I did.

It was a GREAT two days. Cost $200, but well worth it. The trainer, Barry, breeds and trains working dogs so has a wealth of experience. And any future training days I want to attend are free. There was a good proportion of practical experience with some theoretical. The dogs (some of them bred and sold by Barry) went through exercises to go back, get over, to bark on command, to run on the back of sheep, to work both yard and paddock.

Jess surprised me at how well she went. Whilst she didn't have the command skills of most of the dogs (the ability to sit or stay on command), she certainly had the ability to round up the sheep and was not nervous of them. This was all instinct, as she hasn't been trained to go around them. But with the aid of a simple garden rake, I was able to get her to go back (run around anti-clockwise) and get around (clockwise). I was also able to get her to walk (it's a relative term) behind me instead of pulling me along behind her.



Barry had three orphaned lambs (only a few days old) in the shearing shed, where we had the training, so I helped out at lunchtime by feeding them. Whilst I was doing this, Jess slipped herself out of her harness and came around to see what I was doing. She suffers from separation anxiety, if she's not with me she frets!



I was a bit dubious about the paddock work. The idea of letting Jess off her leash in a paddock, albeit with a flock of about 10 sheep, filled me with dread. It's not like she will sit or stay on command, but Barry was encouraging and said to let her go. So off she went, around the sheep, working them across the paddock. When it was time for her to stop, she decided that it wasn't ... and took off towards the second paddock, the one full of ewes and lambs! She was almost there when Barry's yelling at her distracted her and made her turn around. I ran off in the opposite direction, and she gave chase. A few minutes later and I managed to catch her. Barry had said that to get your dog to come to you, you should not look it in the eye and should kneel down. Yeah right! Not with Jess! I had to put both arms in the air, deepen my voice and stare her out. That's when the penny seems to click into her brain, you can see the "oh, shit, I'd better stop now or else" look come into her eyes.

But we had a second go at working her in the paddock. I let Stevie, a teenage girl, work her whilst I stood off in the distance. She worked really really well, moving from 10 o'clock to 2 o'clock behind the flock and pushing them across the paddock. One of the flock took off and took refuge between the fence and the donkey. Jess took chase and I was worried that she was going to end up with another broken leg care of Macka the donkey, but Stevie managed to catch her without too much hassle. It was the end of the day and she was tired.



On the drive home, Jess fell asleep straight away. She missed the rabbit I clocked doing 59km/hr beside the car, the large roo that jumped over the road behind us or the smaller wallaby that crossed in front.

(you'll have to look closely to pick the roo out)

I'll be attending the next training weekend in August with both Sarah and Jess, providing they are not in heat! I'll also take Caitlin, if she's interested - she'd find it fascinating.

Nathanielisms

On Tuesdays, I look after one of Mim's Kindy mates, Nathaniel. His mother works up at Monivae with Michael, so she drops him off here in the mornings, I take him to Kindy with Mim and pick them up in the afternoon before dropping him off at Monivae when I collect Caitlin, then drop Mim off at ballet. So, you can see, Tuesday afternoons are hectic.

Anyway, Mim and Nathaniel fight like cats and dogs when they are here. Nathaniel has a habit of saying everything of his and his family's is bigger and better than Mim's. She gets a bit put out by this, and now doesn't want Nathaniel to touch any of her toys or watch her tv or be in her room, or pat her dog, etc, etc, etc.

Last Tuesday morning, Mim was in a bit of a tizz because she'd thought Nathaniel had said she was only four, not five. Nathaniel told her she was wrong. She said she wasn't, that he'd said she wasn't five. Nathaniel came back with "I didn't! And I don't lie! I only lie at home!"

It was almost as good as his comment at Mim's party. When his elder sister E said she like a lolly bag, I told her that I didn't have any spares "but I'm sure Nathaniel will share his with you". Nathaniel just looked at me and said, "I don't want to share yet!"

When not to share!

As mentioned previously, Mim had thrown up on Sunday morning. She also threw up on Monday afternoon at the hospital playground whilst Caitlin was looking after her. We assumed that it was a combination of a BIG weekend, tiredness, a packet of chips for afternoon tea and possible excessive playing on the playground.

Or maybe it wasn't.

On Tuesday, I took Mim to Kindy, but mentioned to Merryn (the teacher) about the vomiting episodes. Merryn advised that gastro had been going around, with three kids at her Balmoral Kindy struck down with it. She agreed that it sounded more like Mim's exciting weekend was the cause but we agreed that I should take her home just in case. Mim was disappointed, especially as I cancelled her ballet lesson as well, just in case. She showed no symptoms of feeling unwell, although she did say that her tummy hurt a little. I assumed that it was because she hadn't defacated for 48hrs and hadn't drunk a lot of water either, so I made her drink more.

On Wednesday night, Michael made tuna mornay for dinner. Then at 9.30, we heard Mim cough...only it wasn't a cough - it was a barf. She managed to get sheets, pillow, beside table and carpet! There's nothing like trying to hold your breath, comfort an upset little girl, whilst not standing in barf, get her changed into fresh pjs, change the linen on the bed and keep two interested dogs out of the room at the same time. Despite mopping, vacuuming, spraying, incense, keeping windows open - the room still smells like vomit!

Then, at 11.30pm, Caitlin coughed, sorry, barfed! At least she had the skill to get it all into the barf bag. She ended up throwing up eight times that night. I stayed up with her until 3.30am, watching TV. She looked at me sadly, saying "the fish are swimming upstream tonight!"

Michael won't be making tuna mornay again in a hurry.

I took Thu/Fri nights off work, didn't want to carry any gastro bug onto a surgical ward - wouldn't be popular. I came down with the gastro on Friday and felt like crap all that day. Michael waited until Sunday to get his bout. Caitlin threw up again on Saturday night, after eating chicken ("the chicken has flown the coop!"). Luckily this was at the pub, and allowed me to escape under a Willie Nelson night (with willie willie bad music) by bringing her home.

So we've not had a healthy week by any means!

Over 48 hrs of BIRTHDAY excitement

The birthday weekend started on Friday. Not Friday afternoon when Tom's party (another Kindy kid) was scheduled, but on Friday morning when I had to endure hours of 'how long until Tom's party?'

Luckily, Friday afternoon rolled around quickly enough and Mim was able to get dressed for the party. I dropped her off at the allotted time and hardly saw the back of her for dust. She was off and playing with the other kids, eating chocolate cake, chocolate biscuits and chips. When I picked her up, she was high on sugar, luckily it was to the pub for dinner where she could work off the sugar running around the bar (scabbing jellybeans off Mr Kaine). And Ebony was staying the night, so Mim was functioning on adrenaline and sugar. By 9pm, she'd crashed and burned and was asleep.



But she was in Ebony's bed bright and early the next morning, waiting for her party. I picked up the cake in Casterton at 8am and came back to collect the big girls to prepare the playground. The weather was not smiling nicely at us, little squalls of fairy rain kept coming over, but that didn't affect the kids playing on the playground.



Mim had seven kids join her, she played hostess for each arrival, getting off the playground, welcoming them and thanking them for the gift. The kids were very well behaved, apart from one incident with one particular child pushing another over. Michael went into full teacher mode, it was funny watching the other kids' eyes go wide and watch them take two steps away from the naughty child as if to say "we don't know him". Naughty child burst into tears and was sent into time out, but by the end of the party, was Michael's new best friend.



I'd only organised one activity, Pass the Parcel, for the kids as I figured they'd be happiest on the swings and playground facility - and they were. We had a short intermission for eating the food and cake (it's very difficult to light candles in a strong breeze) and then the kids were back playing.


I think it was a successful party, I know Mim really enjoyed herself which was the main thing. In the afternoon, we drove Ebony back into Hamilton and then went shopping. Mim was exhausted by the time we got home, but still very excited that tomorrow she would be 5.

(who do we know that folds his arms like that!) (oh, it must be genetic!)

I was woken at 4am Sunday morning by Michael telling me that Mim was calling me. I staggered into her room to hear "I threw up!" And she had. Neatly onto her sheets, luckily missing the floor. That was cleaned up (by me) whilst Michael changed Mim and took her into our bed. She was awake again by 7, she rolled over and said to me "I'm five now, I can go to school". She was rather disappointed to realise that she'd still have to wait another six months before she could start prep. She wants to grow up so fast, so she can be as old as Caitlin NOW!

We did presents about 9.30, which was about the time we could drag our tired backsides out of bed. Mim loved her undies, her bras, her polly pockets, her Wii games, her wheelbarrow and gardening kit.. and especially the stool that Caitlin had made for her at school.



For dinner, Mim had requested arni lemonata lamb shanks, so that's what she got. And boy, they were yummy! She went to bed about 9pm, a very happy little girl.

So Happy Birthday our beautiful little five year old.