Sub Marine Baby

Here's the Baby Angel and her stepmum Susie getting suited up.
Baby Angel solo.
Father and daughter.
A family of scuba divers!!!!!

I am so impressed.

My Baby Is Back

.........and she's braided her hair!!!!!!!! At $1.00 Fj per braid!!! there are 56 of them!!!! I reeeeally hope the Fijian dollar is worth 10c. >:-(

She thinks she looks fantastic. I think its awful. I guess it's a generational thing. But where's my baby blonde?

She's picked up a bit of sun.....but not too much thank goodness. She's so fair.

I am having trouble with this camera. I need to read the instructions again. Sometimes the flash goes off and it doesn't seem to reach far enough. Then if I use natural light the shutter speed is too slow and I wobble all over the place. My PAS was much more reliable...if lower resolution...but really, this photo is AWFUL ; I had to fiddle with it in my pitiful excuse for software because it was basically taken in the dark. I wouldn't even dare show it to Himself. *sigh* Sometimes I find this whole photography thing really frustrating.

I'm looking forward to seeing all her photos tomorrow. Hopefully there'll be some good ones. I'm especially interested in the underwater stuff! Apparently she was doing The Macarena and The Chicken Dance whilst on the ocean floor, and in so doing, scratched her arm on some coral. It is really peculiar looking and we have antibiotic cream to put on it but I think whatever the irritants are, they are trapped beneath the graze. It is raised and looks a bit like excema.

Tonight she wanted me to lie down with her at bedtime like I used to do when she was little. Every time I tried to sneak away she hung onto me and murmured "No, Mum....don't go yet," in that sleep soaked voice kids have. I snuggled up to her and thought about all the nights we had done this when she was small enough to fit in the crook of my arm or the hollow of my shoulder and waist. I thought about how she used to smell and how soft she was and then I thought about how uncomfortable the beads from the braids were trapped under my cheek on the pillow. How do they sleep with them in????? It is worse than the Princess and the Pea!

So our family is all back together again. I guess her Dad and Stepmum must be feeling a bit lost without her now after nearly two whole weeks. On the other hand.........maybe not :-D

I had better get on now and try and get back into school mode. Only two days until we're back in the Salt Mines... :-(

By the way, does anyone know what happens to your hair when you take these braid things out? Himself says it stays all crinkly and won't wash out and you have to use the Number 4 clippers!!! Please tell me he's just scaring me. I've said she can wear them to school for one day and then they're coming OUT!! They are definitely not part of the school uniform.

I Love and Miss My Mum!!!

It was great talking to you this morning Mum and I can't wait for you to get here in December!!! You're the Best!
Tell Dad I love him too but I know he doesn't read blogs so he shouldn't feel too bad :-D

Theme Thursday: Walk

The soundtrack for this picture goes like this:

I LEFT my wife in New Orleans (step on left foot)
With 45 kids and a can of beans
Cause I thought it was
RIGHT (step on right foot)
RIGHT ( " " " " )
RIGHT for my country (etc)
Whoop-si-do (leap up in a skipping motion to change feet)

How to keep a 9 year old entertained during a hike!
Notice Baby Angel is nowhere in sight? Never had ANY trouble with her walking!!

Note to self: Never let anyone take a picture of my butt in those shorts EVER again!!

Click over to Picture This and see where The Walk takes everyone else.

Wednesday Round-up

Phew! What a day.
Wasn't that how yesterday started? Well...in a moment of deja vu....
Phew! What a day!

8.30am saw the property valuer arrive with his little measuring wheel. Why was that intimidating? I have had whole classes of sixth graders out on the Oval with their measuring wheels and never felt quite as intimidated as I did at the door this morning.

Scene: The front door, lower level of the house consisting of entrance hall, garage and Den and Second Son's double bedroom with ensuite ($20 000).

Me: Good morning haha, come in, hahaha, what do you want to look at first? Oh THIS room?hahahahaha Well that's Sleeping Beauty.......we'll give him a chance to make himself decent and then....
(quick detour through double garage: re-emerge into hall and offending doorway to find Sleeping Beauty looking like a train wreck half way up the stairs)
Me: hahaha, oh you're up! great so we can look in your...
Valuer: Oh I only need a quic....
Me: YOU WANT A LOOK?????? of course you do...
V: well really, I only need to
Me: IN HERE NOW, LET'S SEE WHAT WE HAVE.........
V: yes, yes, very nice
Me: (for G*ds sake please look interested...do you know how long it took him to clean this room?????)

So that was first thing this morning.

After he left I think we all wanted to collapse in a pile of relief and exhaustion. In the model of the 'perfect wife and mother' I was presenting to the bank however, I felt the need to finish the liquidising and freezing of my pumpkin soup (mmmmmmmm) as well as feeding the five thousand with a variety of egg and bacon breakfasts. (none of our family simply has bacon and eggs.....there are a number of peccadilloes and this restaurant caters for all of them :-(....)

In truth, I was so relieved and yet 'powerless' (they'll let us know tomorrow) I had to do something I had control over...ie cook. An interesting paradox as Himself does most of the cooking because cooking generally throws me into a quandry of indecision.

OK. So now I am cooking....cleaning the kitchen (getting the fat out of every little crevice in the routing in the cupboards...a carry over from yesterday and more in the control freak department) and helping Small Boy enlarge/laminate and attach an original 'logo' to his scooter........when the window man arrives to look at the kitchen window winders which are essentially knackered. (like everything else in the house)

In the middle of this I get a call from another tradesman.....glazier this time. Windowman goes (back Fri)...cook Small Boy something...quick sit down to look at blogs before out to friends for afternoon tea...another phone call...........it is SISTER IN LAW...who lives in Western Australia....here for a few days and wanting to come to dinner tonight!!!!!!!!! With kids!!!!!!!

Now I have to say that I view the visits of my sister in law with delight. She is a gorgeous person; gentle, talented, self effacing, a wonderful mother and she allows me an insight into my husband's psyche. As a late in life couple, Himself's parent were already dead when I met him; he has one brother who lives in Adelaide (but whom I strongly suspect is Asperger's and fails to turn up for dinner whenever he is invited) and a sister in Perth (opposite coast...3 hours by plane) so I never see him in his 'native environment' as it were.

We were all tickled pink. Small Boy was doubly excited when he heard his cousins would be coming with his Aunt!! Playmates have been thin on the ground this week. What shall we eat??? I had already decided (boy I am brave) to defrost a chicken that night so I simply took out another. Problem Solvered (copyright) I was due at a friend's house for afternoon tea at 2.30pm, back around 5pm with veggies, Himself could put the chickens on...all seemed rosy.

Until I checked the oven. (I was in such a control freak baking frenzy, I had this MAD idea that I could get a slow cooking banana cake into the oven and be back in time to take it out of the oven!)

The oven was cactus.
Turn knob. No light, no heat, no nothing!!!!!!
We tried the usual trick which involves taking the fuse out (everyone log out of your computers; we're switching off the power!!!!!) to no avail. Quick change of plan. The chickens will be cooked in the Webber BBQ and I will take the fuse up to the local electrical store on the way to my afternoon tea date, after which I will pick up BBQ fuel as well as veggies and be back in sufficient time to get the BBQ up and running for their arrival at 6pm and dinner by 7pm. Maybe.

In typical chaotic fashion, we staggered through this process. Auntie M and cousins duly arrived, there was much rejoicing and photography, BBQs smoked, I went to do baked potatoes for the Webber only to find we had run out of alfoil (good grief), try the fuse thing again, still nothing, experimentally twiddle a manual/timer knob....oven bursts into life........great, now to bake the potatoes in the oven .......oh no, that's right, still no alfoil....OK I'll do the 'roll them in olive oil, salt and rosemary' thing........except that they're massive baking potatoes.......ok I'll parboil them and then cut them in half and do the 'roll them in olive oil etc' thing.......great....I think.....no wait, now should I put them on a baking sheet or in a baking dish?........euch all the baking dishes have rusted, ravaged bottoms........that's OK I'll line it with alfoil.......wait, that's right........still no alfoil.

Aren't you glad you're not inside my head all the time? It's very staccato in there. You can see how the whole cooking thing stresses me right out. As it turned out I lined the baking dish with baking paper and under Auntie M's soothing reassurance the potatoes turned out fine. As did the chickens but of course they always would as they were under Himself's control.

It was a lovely evening catching up on all their news. The most exciting thing for me is that Auntie M is a photographer again! She has recently gone back to work as an interior designer and taken up photography again. She has a bigger lens than Himself!!!!! (scary) She asked him if he would design her a business card or a compliments slip that she could put with the shots she has been doing recently for the school. Himself sat down and in less than 30 min had come up with a logo for her and a range of card options with a variety of colour schemes. He really is VERY clever.
Here they are poring over the task and refusing to look at the camera!

So this morning I am feeling a little low. It could be the rain (should be happy about that) and the overcast skies. It could be that I am babysitting two 9 year old boys. It could be that there are only 4 days until school goes back and I have not finished marking. It could be that the glazier hasn't shown up........or it could be that I don't get to see my lovely sister in law for another 6 months or so. I so wish she lived in Adelaide.

Cleans Like a White Tornado.....

Phew. What a day! Tomorrow we have a property evaluator coming at 8.30am and although you and I know that the cleaniness or untidiness of a property does not reeeeally affect its value in terms of bank valuations....the 18 year old and the 9 year old don't know that!!!!! :-D

Initially Himself got all excited and wanted to mulch the garden and do all sorts of cosmetic things but as I said...that only matters when you're trying to sell it! Nevertheless, Second Son was under strict instructions to clean out his area. He has a bedroom and 'Den' on the lower level of the house, with its own ensuite bathroom. I do NOT clean this. In fact I try never to go into his room unless there is a National Crisis....like when the smell of unwashed sheets and clothes starts to permeate the hallway >:-(

As you can imagine, nothing much gets done down there, so the thought of having to show a valuer around it struck fear into all our hearts. But I must say he has done himself proud. He even came up and asked us to inspect and apart from his complete failure to look up and see all the 'daddy-long-legs' webs around the ceiling, he has done a damn fine job! He also cleaned out and rearranged his Den, liberating several dozen plates, glasses and bowls in the process.

Even Small Boy has been 'on board'. He helped his dad wash all the windows on the balcony and has put everything away today with minimal fuss. Hooray. Hooray.

For my part I have washed several floors, cleaned the kitchen, more interminable loads of laundry, dried and folded, cleaned the shower recess (I HATE that job) and caught up on a bit of paperwork. I am also making a HUGE pot of pumpkin soup to freeze for school lunches next week. Oh, and I finally got around to calling the glazier, the window lock repair man and the irrigation repair man. Phew! We have had masking tape on one of the balcony windows for over six months now. (a little incident with a Small Boy and a stone followed by a door banging in the wind....=cracked glass from top to bottom.)

The place is actually almost looking respectable again.

Meanwhile, I heard from the Baby Angel yesterday and it seems she has been learning to scuba dive!!!! Good grief. I am well impressed. Aparently there are photos so look forward to some of her shots on her return. She'll be home on Friday. It has been lovely and quiet and I have had lots to keep me busy but I must admit to missing her more and more of late. I cleaned her room the other day and felt quite bereft.

Right, off to catch up on a few blogs before an early night. Mmmmmmm is that my pumpkin soup I smell........

Best Shot Monday: To The Beach

How about this for a beach house eh? 2 million Australian Dollars to build! I wonder what they live in during the week?

This weekend saw us down the coast a bit at Carrickalinga with our friends, The Dares. This is not their beach house, although theirs was very pleasant indeed, but we all lusted after it big time.

This one was taken from their balcony and shows how close to the lovely beach they are. I loved the bend in the road here. I was able to go for a walk each morning, which, added to my fantastic walk with the Bestie on Friday, means I have now walked for 4 days in a row!!! I must keep it up.

We headed on down there on Friday night, stopping at the historic Victory Hotel for a fantastic meal including Oysters Kilpatrick (my fave kind) and gourmet dim sims. After some convivial conversation and the promise of BOARD GAMES, we zoomed off for the final 20 min drive to the beach house. Imagine my surprise when we reached the house and the first thing to greet me was a cat! They bring their cat with them to the beach house and she had been patiently waiting in the car as we had relaxed at the hotel!!!!

Now the board games thing was a small victory and here is why. Himself doesn't play board games. Doesn't. Except Scrabble at a reeeeeally big push and Chess with Small Boy although this has dropped off recently. I, on the other hand, come from a family of inveterate board game players. As a child, every Christmas involved the introduction of a new board game to the family's repertoire. There was Cluedo, (Colonel Mustard in the Library with the poison) Battling Tops, Twister of course, Mastermind, Masterpiece....the list goes on. My Dad favoured the games which challenged the mind although he was very quick to commandeer 'Battling Tops' for the adults to play on those wonderful Boxing Day parties when friends came round.

Despite this seemingly endless stream of games, I was always jealous of the Bestie who had Mousetrap! She, being an only child, was always after a playing partner and in our
adult life we discovered many a game together including; Trivial Pursuit, Greed, Risk, Stop Press (one of my faves) and of course Pictionary.

Later, when I lived in the UK, my youngest sister took on the role of gamebringer and part of the Christmas routine involved the latest game she and her husband had purchased. Taboo, Balderdash and Pass the Bomb were some of these. We tend to favour word games nowadays I think. Whatever the game, my family is loud and enthusiastic. There is much shrieking with laughter and, where my father is concerned, cheating!!!! Himself has had no such family tradition.

Now if truth be told, I think it's just that he doesn't like losing. He doesn't get the fact that most of the fun is in the playing. It's all about the time your father draws a rabbit for Pictionary and leaves off the most obvious distinguishing features of a rabbit; ears and tail! Its about creating headlines in Stop Press which reference Bishops and Choirboys for every scenario. Its about making mistakes, being miles behind and good natured gloating. Chiefly it's about family and community. If you win...its a bonus.

So when Rachel announced that she had forgotten to bring her newest game but it was alright because they'd left Pictionary and Articulate up there, from last time....I was ecstatic. I was also sneakily jubilant because I knew He would find it difficult to say 'no' to his hosts :-D

Friday night we played Pictionary. Himself and I won. Saturday night we played Articulate. We won again!!! With a bit of luck, I may be able to get him to play board games in the future. I think we have broken the aversion. Of course, it may all come undone if someone beats us next time.

The other wonderful part about going away for the weekend is food. Saturday morning we didn't quite make breakfast but had a lovely brunch instead at a wild cafe in the neighboring town of Yankalilla. Lilla's Cafe is in an historic cottage with a lovely garden area containing the ivy draped ruins of the original chimney and fireplace, a corrugated iron life sized cow sculpture, many androgynous pottery fairies and a live donkey! The owner is a larger than life red head whose portrait has been painted by not one but two local artists for the Yankalilla Show's 'Yankibald Prize'. (taken from the prestigious Australian Archibald Prize). We feasted on foccacia with chicken and avocado, a steak stack topped with bacon and eggs benedict and other goodies. The display of cakes was superb but we resisted temptation.

On Saturday night we were treated to the southern American version of oysters. Rachel is from North Carolina and she was telling us about their tradition of 'Oyster Roasts' which involve steaming a bushel of oysters on an outdoor BBQ or fire in the freezing cold. In tribute to this we bought 2 dozen fresh Smokey Bay oysters and steamed them, indoors. We then sat in the warm dining room and shucked them, dipped them in garlic butter and ate them on crackers with Tabasco. Fantastic! The flavour and texture of natural oysters is retained without the nasty cold slimy sensation and, let's face it, everything tastes great when dipped in garlic butter in good company. It was a pity there were only 2 dozen!

We also went down to the beach at dusk on Saturday night and played boccie (spelt?) until it got too dim to see the jack. Wonderful.

So that was our lovely weekend. It was all topped off by the Grand Final on Sunday and, at the risk of eliciting more gloating from the Gawlerites, we shall say NO MORE about that!!!!







See what others have been snapping this weekend over at