has gone by, slowly! Honestly, nothing out of the ordinary was achieved. The usual housework was done, baking, reading, walking. I didn't go anywhere until Friday and that's only because the munchkins had their school music concert so I made the most of going to town and grabbed some groceries, bought some nonessential magazines at the newsagent and posted some parcels and letters at the post office, town is really exciting :P

The weather has been off. Windy and wet for the most part. I did manage a bit of weeding and found concrete edging along the back yard fence that borders a 2 foot wide garden bed so my mission this week is to get it completely weeded and plan for some apple trees to be espaliered along the fence. I can't see a proper orchard in the near future so making the most of what I do have and can manage pn my own is what i'm aiming for. I asked my garden guru aka my mum if it was a good plan and she whole heartedly agrees :) She even suggested espaliering stone fruit trees down the side fence, we'll see, one step at a time ;)

The man of the house seems to be liking his job. He's got himself into a routine. We're looking forward to seeing him, not sure when though.

The animals are all happy and healthy. We've come to the decision we'll sell all the pigs with the aim of starting over again in 2014. This will give us time to build proper housing, fix the fences so they're pig proof and most importantly while the munchkins are still young, give us the opportunity to see more of this beautiful country. Having animals and taking holidays don't work!

Here's to week 2. It's already started with lack of sleep. Last night we had a brilliant thunder storm that rocked the house a couple of times. The munchkins ended up in my bed although to give myself some space, I dragged B3's mattress into my room and we all spent the night rugged up thinking up all sorts of theories as to why thunder happens, it lightened the mood :)

School holidays start this Friday. We're not planning on travelling anywhere. I would have liked to visit my parents but it's just not going to happen. Not sure what we'll do, I guess we'll play it by ear and enjoy the sleep ins ;)

Until next time
~x~

I'm glad I woke up with a positive frame of mind at the beginning of the week! The weather played havoc here with 90km wind gusts that nearly saw our portable chicken coop upended and could have hurt our pony who is currently chomping down the knee high grass in the same paddock.

I honestly didn't think the coop would move. It's big enough to walk in and currently houses 9 chooks. It's made of frames made from c section which isn't light and tin and heavy gauge wire and was firmly, albeit shallowly embedded into the ground. Luckily I can see the coop from the lounge room window and saw it moving about. I went out armed with all the rope I could find and tied the coop to fences and stakes and placed heavy rocks on the roof to stop the tin from flapping around. It's didn't move after that! 5 of the chooks took the chance to escape so I left them to wander the front yard with the thought of putting them back in the coop before dark but when the munchkins came home from school, they gated off an area were I plan to have a garden and enclosed the 5 wanderers so they won't wander too far or become dinner for foxes and they are now happily scratching the earth and weeding the soon to be garden bed! Clever munchkins I have :) We'll continue to move those chooks along the garden bed so they can clear it right to the other end.

yes the pony is sticking his tongue out at me!

Until next time
~x~

One thing I forgot to mention in my previous post was the man of the house changed jobs when we moved. Driving trucks would be a distant memory. Yippe! His new job had him home every night :) and weekends were ours to do what we wanted without having to rush through the days just to get everything done before he left again. We got used to having him around more, you could see the small changes for the better in the munchkins with having dad home to do things with them, it was good :)
Then, it all changed. He was offered a job, within his new job, driving trucks up north of Australia, not a bad thing you might think as we'd done it for the past 13 years, but this time it's different, he's away for 3 weeks, home for one, for the next 4 months at this stage :( I've gone from a weekend wife, to a full time wife to a, hmmm, 1 week a month wife? all in a short space of time. Can I do this? is the question I've been asking myself for the past 4 days since he left, my answer has always been the same, no, I don't want to, I shouldn't have to!

This morning when I woke, my answer had changed. I can do this, I will do this and i'll enjoy it! There is so much to do here at home to keep me occupied. I want to get the garden established, the vegie patch formed, the pigs sent to a new home (my main mission in the next 3 weeks), the kids rooms painted and organised so they don't just think of it as a place to sleep with bare walls to stare at, pictures hung all around the house, pack up more at the church so when hubby does come home we can move a little more of the big furniture. There's bound to be more on the to-do list, it shuld be a never ending list!

We have a couple of big weekends coming up, one in October and one in November and I want the munchkins and I to have a few days in QLD with hubby instead of him flying home and the 2 eldest munchkins haven't been to QLD so it'll be an adventure for them. A couple of day trips thrown in to get us out of the house will be planned too now the weather is warming up.
So many plans and things to do, I won't have time to sit and think, which is a good thing for me as I over think things then the anxiety sets in.

So, i'm off to plan my list and hopefuly get some things crossed off or atleast underway by this time next week :)

Until then,
~x~

Another month slips by! I have wanted to blog but I've been keeping a secret for a couple of months and me being me, find it hard to keep my own secrets lol, I can keep everyone elses secrets, just not my own. I can now let you in on this news but not just yet, I have other stuff to blog ;)

The munchkins had a quiet and relaxing 2 weeks of school holidays. Amusing themselves at home, playing together without the usual sibling fighting! We did visit my family for a couple of days, enjoying some much wanted op shopping, coffee at a gorgeous café, birthday celebrations for B3 and myself (my mum sure knows how to make us feel like we don't need to eat for a month after visiting her lol) and general catching up on all the happenings with everyone.

My brother, Jamal, has been selected to represent Australia (proud sister moment right here :) ) at the Special Olympics Asia Pacific Games which are being held in Newcastle, NSW, in December this year. He's one of 2 athletes from Mount Gambier who will be participating. Currently all the Aussie team members are individually fundraising to help cover their costs of getting to and participating in the games. Each member has the same fundraising goal, all monies will cover things like travel, athlete insurance, uniforms, participation fees etc. If you have a spare $ to help Jamal reach his goal it would be greatly appreciated by him and our family or you could simply leave a message of support and cheer here on my blog and i'll pass it on :) https://specialolympics.myetap.org/fundraiser/asiapacgames/individual.do?etapCacheBuster=1371188812248&participationRef=4136.0.845234217

We built a new letter box. Our other one was slightly on the small side and not too weather proof. Our new one is huge and no water gets in. It's made from the top of a rubbish bin (thoroughly cleaned and disinfected, although it was a recycled paper only bin). I think it would look good if we could get 3 more in different colours and replace the neighbours boxes that stand alongside ours.

Miss Pigsy had another litter of piglets. I know, it wasn't meant to happen this soon but the boar couldn't be contained. Luckily for me, there were no complications and Miss Pigsy is such a great mother this time round. 3 more weeks and we should be able to wean them off mum and this time we'll be putting a GREATER distance between boar and sow! I'm waiting on the ear tags to arrive so we can send the 1st lot of piglets to the sale yards, currently we have 17 pigs of varying ages and my gosh, they eat a lot!

 

 

Check out this mushroom our neighbour collected while out mushrooming. It's bigger then a dinner plate! Very edible but this one was destined for show and tell at school with B3. I've never seen one so big before, the munchkins wondered how many fairies would have lived under it! I do hope the fairies were able to find another home ;)

 



 



Hmmm, I guess I should tell you my news. We're moving! Only 10kms down the road and around the corner hehe. We've purchased a farmlet, 40 acres in size with a 4 bedroom house, stables, sheds, tanks, paddocks and more, everything we could ask for. I can't tell you how excited the kids are, they'll each have their own room with walls and doors! After living in this small open plan church with very little privacy and it will be a welcome change. We're keeping the church and will renovate it properly which will be much easier while not living here. It'll become a holiday house of sorts for us when I need to get away from the farm lol or visitors if they choose. The man of the house is looking forward to being a hobby farmer as am I. I'll have calves to rear again, be able to take in orphan lambs, have a huge orchard and vegie patch! So many ideas and drawings have been thrown around. Settlement is at the end of this month so only a few days and we'll be able to slowly move things in. The good thing about keeping the church is the extra storage and we don't have to rush about packing and moving :)

 

Until next time

~x~



 

to our awesome B3 :) 8 years old Saturday just gone..

No big party but it's the 1st time in a looong time that the man of the house has been home for celebrations on the actual day. As requested, we had McMummy's for lunch followed by a Green Piggy Angry Birds chocolate cake that I created, I think it looked pretty good and B3 was very happy with it.

B3 chose his own gift, lego of course and as a family we gave him a dvd player, headphones and a lego dvd, now he doesn't have to borrow his sisters dvd players!

That night we had a bonfire at a neighbours house which was a great end to a special lil mans birthday :)

Until next time
~x~

 

 

Not potatoes I've grown. These came from a spud farm not far from home and are now on their way to the Smith Chip factory in Queensland.

The joys of having a husband who drives trucks, the munchkins and I get to visit places we'd not think of visiting otherwise. Mondays excursion was to a potato farm. The potatoes are normally freshly picked but these ones had been stored in the ground, commonly known as root cellaring, for a couple of weeks, meaning, they were dug, dried out a bit in the sun for a day then turned back into the soil usually with a layer of straw mulch over them so they keep fresh.

B3 was quite excited to help with the grading of the spuds. After the spuds went through the washer he picked out the ones that had rotten soft bits or were cut with the harvest and threw them in a crate that was destined for animal feed or for the farmers dinner table. The really small spuds went into a different crate and were taken to another farm for planting. The spuds then went up a conveyor belt into the truck and off they went on their journey.

Until next time
~x~

*sigh* where do the days go? There's either not enough hours in the day or not enough days in the week, it doesn't help when we keep losing days, or is it we're losing our marble?? lol


Our B1 turned 13 this month. I still find it hard to believe I've been a mum for 13 years! She had a quiet family party at home the weekend prior to her special day and received some special gifts. My mum made a gorgeous quilt for her, not quite a single bed size but much bigger than a lap quilt. B1 has been wrapped in it ever since, it must be warm! On the actual day we had a special dinner and icecream cake with a couple more gifts from her siblings.

the gorgeous quilt

icecream cake 

Family party



Mothers day was also celebrated on the same weekend. I received some great school made gifts from the munchkins as well as a cozy dressing gown and my darling husband gave me the most gorgeous gift, a quaint 1960's caravan. I'm going to give it a big makeover, outside and in, it's something I've been dreaming of for the past 3 or so years and it will probably take another 3 years to get the makeover done! I'm forever looking through the Vintage Caravan magazines and drooling over the cool, retro vans and accessories. I have a pinterest board of all sorts of ideas I can do to my van, who I've named Eveie. I've settled on a colour, just not sure of the shade, I also have half an idea of how I want the inside to look. I'm excited!

Eveie the 10ft 1960's van

The vegie patch is growing well. The brassicas are all forming heads, onions have popped up after I thought the summer heat had been to harsh for them, we even have what we a certain is a sunflower plant growing where the pigs were, don't know how as we've not fed sunflowers to the pigs but we'll let it continue to grow and hopefully it will flower. It seems I also have sunflowers growing in the lawn out the backyard, they can only be from the guinea pig feed, it's such a muddled growing year in the Wimmera of Victoria!

Our little town has been saddened by the sudden death of one of the locals. He was a fit, not quite 70 year old, semi retired farmer. Our heartfelt condolences go out to his family.

We've had a couple of bonfires the past month, not as many as we had last year, it seems everyone has busy lives this year and it's no fun having a bonfire on your own lol.

Until next time

Keep your loved ones close

~x~