Just some off the wall are I have been doing

Iv'e been busy doing some wall art. Chris Millar made these and had one in her gallery over at scrapbook outlet . Thanks for the inspiration Chris :). One is for Abbys room as she has been wanting something to go on her wall (it is going to take a bit to compete with her big trucks wall paper LOL) We are going to re-wall paper it in time LOL.
You will have to excuse the photography as it is a bit hard to photograph them in their frames and do them justice. The frames are from the Warehouse (two for $20).
This one is for Abbys room. She is funny, she sits there and tries to work out which papers belong together (for the double sided papers). And yes, the one butterfly is meant to be on a angle. :)
This one I did before I had the butterfly punch and I have put it on the wall in our lounge (Lionel loves it :) )

This letter I did at my very first scrap camp with Nic and finally I have a frame for it :)Thats it for now. Hopefully I get some more layouts done soon to share with you all :)

Snowing here today

I can't believe it. 18th of April and we had snow this morning. The kids were so excited seeing it snow. They thought that there might have been a day off school so they could build snowmen LOL. Unfortunately for them and fortunately for us it dissapeared with in 5 minutes of landing. It is just too early for that really. It is still cold though and we have a fire on tuked up inside after being to music this morning. (Glad DH had bills to do and had the fire going so it was nice and warm indeed.) Me and a friend went out for lunch also as it was her daughters 5th birthday the other day and she was sick so we never got to go to Dunedin. I made this cool wall hanging for her birthday. It is one of those deep photo frames (can't remember the proper name of them). I put a photo of the birthday girl and Abby and called it best friends. Also had a flower etc in it. Unfortunately I didn't get a photo so I can't share it with you.

Now some layouts to share.

The following layout is for scrapbook outlet . It is based on Trinas sketch for this week (12.4.08). It is a great sketch and I enjoyed doing this one, using the grungeboard (arrows) and Felt for the first time ever (title). Also used my new star punch that I won through Fiskars. I love it, nearly as much as my new fingertip knife :)

This layout I did for Laras challenge on scrapbook outlet . To do a "harvest" layout. It was due a while ago and I never got it uploaded in time, so here it is for you to look at.
And this one just because. Photo was taken a while ago. The photo actually lifts up and there is journaling underneath it.Well I'm off to put some more coal on the fire. Take care

A quick layout I did

This is just a quick layout I did for the number 8 wired NZ dares competition this week. There was a add that you had to base your layout on and this is my interpretation of the add.

Last night we went to a Karate evening down at the local hall. There is a gentleman who teaches Karake, Mixed Martial Arts (MMA), Tai Chi, and also a self defence course. We'd talked about getting Jake into Karate for quite a while now and we were going to have to take him through to Milton (20 to 30 minutes away) and we got a newsletter to say about this. So last night they had a informal get together and he showed us what each one entails and we could see for our selves what we wanted to do. So for the last 27 hours I've had two boys doing their interpretation of Karate/mma/Tai chi/selfdefence. Trust me, it isn't pretty LOL. Any way we came home and now I think there is going to be four of us doing something LOL (Only four because AJ is too young LOL). It is very resasonable and run during the school terms so it certainly fits in with us. To make it even better we just go to the bottom of the hill (all of 5 minutes drive). So we will just take it term by term and see how it goes. Personally I'd like to see the boys to Karate for two years and then onto the MMA, but time will tell.

Till next time :)

Forgot to mention. I had my computer in at the computer Dr last week. What a difference it has made. I now have a external hard drive (don't know how I lived with out it) (160gb). All virus are gone, all spy ware has gone. I didn't realise how bad Nortons was, I've now got a better one and best of all it is "free". I had 200 odd spy ware on my computer plus all the virus's. And I thought it was going to be clean. My computer doctor lives down the hill so it was very handy and he is very reasonable. Not only that but my computer is now 100 times faster, so look out :)

Quck update

Just some photos to share of Olly in action at the rugby last weekend. Tomorrow they have their first round of the draw. Only problem is

Jake is playing in Balclutha and Olly is playing in Herriot. About an hour apart and playing at the same time :) Luckily we now have two vehicles so we can go in opposite directions LOL.

I had Abby in the car with me after being at Mainly music and after 1o weeks they get to keep their chart with stickers on to take home and put on the fridge. Anyway I was driving along and Abby was trying to tell me about something on her chart. I said I can't look I'm driving. To which Abby replied, "Oh thats all right mum, you look at this and I will tell you when there is a corner coming up." Thats a bit scary.

Lionel had a appointment at school yesterday, with the lady who was observing Jake. he said it was great and got this 4 page write up on it all. And they have discussed things and she is coming back one day a week until it is all sorted, even if it takes 3 years. So that was great to hear.

There is a big scrapbooking retreat happening in Queenstown at the end of June. Click HERE for more details. It is going to be a fantastic weekend with lots being organised behind the scene. All the money raised is going to a Nominated charity. So if your interested follow the link there, or through scrapbook outlet .

I had a fantastic parcel arrive on my door this week. It was from fiskars (a prize I won) and in it there was the fantastic squeeze punch (star shape Large), scissors and the new fingertip knife. To be honnest I wasn't sure on the knife when I first saw it, as it looked a bit different. Well I guess it is different. It attaches to the underside of your finger and you hold it like a pen, but it is attatched to your finger instead. The accuracy of it is amazing. It is my new favourite tool.

Well that is about it for this post. Hope everyone is behaving ;). And be careful.

Oh yea

Forgot to mention. The layout in the post below this entitled " through the generations" that I made at scrap camp for nz dares website. Well with it I was selected as being their guest designer. Unfortuanately with the computer problems I was having, I didn't find out until the night before it needed to be in. I managed to get a layout done and really enjoyed doing it. The hardest thing was finding a photo of a favourite child hood memory. Once I'd done that it was fairly easy. But anyway, here is the layout that was a result of the panic.

Thankyou to everyone

Who either left a comment emailed me or rang me with regards to the school bullying. We have finally made some ground. The principal was telling us that we were over reacting and the bus driver was too. But after a day observing we got a phone call from him with a big appology saying that he didn't realise the problem was as big as it was. They have called a lady in to observe (which probably won't do much after a huge bollacking from the principal and the other teachers.) But she will come back with a report that she will bring to us and ask us about and then take to the principal and other teacher. So it is promissing. and I have to admit that Jake is enjoying school now. It has brought huge changes. We are now taking them to school (about 8 ks) and we leave now at 10 to nine instead of the usual 7.30 (they use to be at school at 7.45) and we are home by 3.10 instead of after 4. That has made a huge difference and the kids love it. But in doing this we have had to buy a new car. The Falcon has over 200,000 ks on the clock and if something happened to it we couldn't get the kids as you have to go across the main road. So we have brought a 2000 Mazda 626 with 62,000 ks on the clock. It goes really well actually and the kids love it because it has a CD and tape deck LOL.

Any way moving on. Today we had the opening 7 aside tournament (rugby). Only Olly was playing and boy he did well. He scored 6 tries and came away with the fair play award. They were going to give him POD but they said that the fair play award only happens at tournaments and they thought that it was more honnorable. The coach came up and said to Olly that they couldn't believe he hadn't played before. He said " you might be a All Black one day" to which Olly replied deadly serious, " No, I AM going to be a All Black." The coach said " well don't forget me when your playing for them." Olly said " Na, I won't" LOL, don't ya love the confidence of it all.

What else has happened????? We have been busy shearing agaiiiiiin. It does get fairly tedious. Monday Abby and I are off to Dunedin with a friend whos daughter is turning 5 the following Monday. They are going to the movies and chipmunks. Only 3 adults and 3 kids are going so it should be a ball. Other than that there hasn't been much going on. So till next time.

I'm back

Well scool camp has ended and so too has my scrapping weekend :(

School camp was really hard for Lionel. Jake was picked on the whole time by the kids (even with Lionel there) and made to feel left out through the whole time away. Lionel said if it hadn't been for Olly going then he would of brought Jake home as he felt so sorry for him. And Lionel couldn't do much or say much to the other kids. The teacher sorted a couple of the kids out, but it was so hard. Its been really hard for us to deal with, it actually feels like someone has ripped my heart out and jumped all over it. Weve been trying to think of ways to help, he never says anything about it, probably because he can't really put a name on it. And of course its not really one little thing, it is all the little bits adding to make it large IYKWIM, and of course Jake being the quiet shy type hasn't helped much. The teacher tells us he is happy most of the time and wants to play on his own (I wonder why). Weve been busy trying to work out ways to help him. So if you have any ideas do let me know please. Of course this before scrapcamp made it quite hard for me being away. In fact I nearly didn't go, and probably shouldn't have considering the way I was feeling. But I did and really enjoyed it when I wasn't thinking about everything Jake has been through.

SCRAPCAMP
Well for scrapcamp I had the privelege of sitting beside Andrea and Janine, (thankyou ladies). These ladies are awesome, and what a great location the camp was. There was 21 of us scrapbookers and room for lots lots more. There were lots of prizes donated by fiskars, up2scrap (the New Zealand scrapbooking magazine) and make and takes donated to the retreat weekend by Andrea at scrapbookoutlet and Meg at scrapbook essentials . There was also alot of work put in by Lara and Nik . All your work was very much appreciated. Over the weekend we had quite a few challenges. I came away with 11 layouts and two minni albums and one card. This one entitled "is this how ladies behave?" was for my no paper challenge.

One that we did was write down on a piece of pp a product and the other was a a technique (I wrote down paint and distressing). We all put our bits of paper in and later on pulled one out and we had to use that technique on a layout. I pulled out paint and eyelets. This layout is the resulting page.We also had to scraplift a layout from someone else at the retreat. I chose a layout done by Lara This challenge was an interesting one. We had to pick a photo and papers and start scrapping. After 7 minutes it was passed on to the next person, and then again after 7 minutes until it was finneshed. And this is what I ended up with. A little piece of everyone at the retreat. Aint it gorgeous?And this one, we were gived two pieces of pp, journaling page and three buttons and had to produce a layout, we could include anything else we wanted but had to include some of everything we were given. The resulting layout "Loved"This one was done for Leannes challenge on NewZealand dares . A layout that had 200 words on it "throught the generations" Then there is this one of Jake on the mechanical bull at the Local rodeo

And this one just because :)

Three more sleeps

Oh I sound like a little kid waiting for Santa to come down the chimney don't I? But there is only three more sleeps till scrap camp in Queenstown. And yep, I'm having sleepless nights.

School sports was cancelled on Monday due to the fact that we had 90mm (360points) of rain over the weekend. So the school decided to go to camp a day earlier so that. Originally they were going on Monday but with the area school sports it was postponed for a day. This wasn't a bad thing, unless you were unorganised like I was. Sunday I got asked for a roast mutton (cooked) so I had to rush around like a headless chook, specially after the phone call to say "we are going tomorrow". Any way it got cooked (I think LOL) and Jake was off to camp on Monday and Lionel went up in the afternoon after getting lambs away and going to a clearing sale. We did buy a mountain bike at the clearing sale for Jake. He had been riding Lionels (he likes the gears) and it was a tad big (23 inches, after all Lionel is 6ft 2 inches). So we picked a avanti up for 50 with helmet, lock (this will be another hit for Jake). So with camp he hasn't seen it yet. Look forward to the look on his face when he does though :).

Last night I went to print some photos off, but the mouse on my puter wasn't working. I kept telling my self, don't pannic. So this morning I rang the computer expert down the road. (my computer needs abigger memory put in too). He said not a problem, but it will have to be Monday, (he is up in Northland) WHAT, this couldn't be happening. So I pulled the mouse to bits checked everything, wobbled everything, trying to think, I know what I am doing. (yea right). Plugged it back in, and hey presto it works. I have absolutely no idea what I did, but since then I've been printing photos off, etc.

This moring I did some baking, for Olly to go to camp tomorrow and to feed the hungry hoards when they return, and some for scrapcamp :)

I also took some photos of me for my dear friend. I've tried emailing them but for some reason it won't accept the photos (darn computers). So here it is. I've been growing my hair since last July, probably can't really tell from this photo.

Well next time I come back I should have scrapcamp layouts to share :).

Till then, remember

"Perfection is over rated."

Yehaaa

I can't believe it. I have just won a RAK (Random act of Kindness) off the Fiskars website. I'm so excited. When it arrives I will be posting a photo of it here to share with all you lovely people. Wahooo, :)

Well on a different note, here is some photos as promise, of the Teddy bears picnic. This is of Abby and one of her wee friends :)

This one is a photo I just love. Isn't he just a wee honey. He belongs to a friend of mine.

Ollys appointment went really well. Got a good report and still doesn't have to wear a eye patch, so that is great news. In the afternoon we had swimming sports for Olly. The poor kids, the pool was so cold for them, they had a egg and spoon race and were shivering so much they could hardley keep the "egg" on the spoon.

Well that is it for now. Hubby is off to see Nigel Latta (he is the guy on the "into the darklands" that profiles murders on TV.) The local plunket has him down for the evening and apparently he is a fantastic speaker. Will be interesting to see what Lionel has to say. So I might get some photos printed off for scrapcamp. (Only one more week, I'm starting to have sleepless nights :) )

Busy schedule coming up

What a busy couple of weeks we have coming up here. Only 10 days to scrapcamp yahoo. But before then we have Ollys eyes checked on Wednesday in Dunedin, at quarter to 9 in the morning then he has swimming sports in the afternoon, Friday Jake has swimming sports. Monday athletics, Tuesday to Friday (well it is going to be Thursday for our kids) there is school camp for Jake and Olly goes for a night on Wednesday night then there is also the usual activities in between. Today I took Abby in for her 4 year injections. She did so well, didn't cry at all. The nurse said that it will sting a little and after the last one, Abby said to her "it was a little bit more than a sting." The nurse didn't know what to say LOL.

Last week we had a teddy bears picnic at a reserve up the road. The kids had a great time. One of the ladies had hidden 10 teddies and when a child found one they got a lolly pop. When the older ones got theirs they would help a younger one. I will get some photos reduced and share them at a later date.

I've done two layouts. The first is just because I wanted to scrap them and had to do something before scrapcamp. It is down at the river. I couldn't find cardstock the colour I wanted so I painted a piece of white and left bits showing through for a bit of a rough look.

The second is for scrapbook outlet sketch that Trina put up for this week. It actually contains 7 photos if you look closely.

Some photos to share

I've been down sizeing a couple of photos to share, (But in reality I'm putting off doing housework :) ).

Today it is a bit cool (actually have the fire on). We had 23 ml (92 points) of rain on Friday Saturday and it has all soaked in. There is some pretty happy farmers around here at the moment.

Friday and Saturday night we had a friend come and stay from North Otago, who we hadn't seen since we left. He was going to the shears in Gore to get in some practice for the Golden shears in Masterton in a fortnight. He is in the New Zealand team that is competing there so has to get in as much practice as he can. Lionel went down with him for the day and caught up with alot of old mates. I actually think he would of liked to had his gear with him and have another shear, not that he would tell you that.

Now the photos. The first one is Jake riding the Mechanical bull at the local Rodeo last weekend. He did very well with it and thoroughly enjoyed it.

These ones I took when I was on the trek up the Maungatuas last weekend. The first one is looking back towards Outram and from where we had come from.This one is along the top. Some of us continued to the repeater station and I stuck to the back so I could get some photos.This is my latest layout. It is for a challenge at scrapbookoutlet . The February challenge was to do a no person challenge. Then I added my own personal challenge to it by using bright colours (they are alot brighter in real life). But I am pleased with how it came out. Tells the story of our hens and the eggs :).

Yayyyyy its been raining.

We really needed it to keep our winter crops going and now we have just had 52 points (13mm). Very much needed and now my hubby has a real spring in his step.

I had a really busy weekend. On Saturday we had the local Rodeo which was great, specially as a cousin of mine and her family came down for it, it was just unfortunate that I had one of those weekends. After the Rodeo I took Molly (my horse) over to a friend of mines as we were away on a Trek on Sunday and it was going to save alot of time if both horses were at her place and I met her at the bottom of the hill. Then after that I had a catering job for the local Playgroup. We were catering for a wedding at the local hall. I didn't get home till 1am then I was up at just after 6.00 to make sure I had everything organised for the Trek. I met Jan and Molly at the bottom of the hill at 1/4 to 7 and we were off. We were on a trek through the Mangatuas (not sure on the spelling there sorry), which is just out of Outram, near Dunedin. It was a great trek and Molly was very well behaved. She wasn't as excited as last time and took it all in her stride. Luckily the day wasn't very hot, as there was a few steeper climbs. Met some lovely ladies and it was great as we all had alot in common. Afterwards we had a bbq and a few drinks and dispersed when it started raining. As you can imagine I was in bed fairly early that night to catch up on some needed sleep.

The Hens have slowed down a little in their egg laying (5) but Lionel tells me in a week they will be back up to 10 and 11 a day. When he was a kid they use to have 500 hens so he probably knows what he is talking about (I'll give him the benefit of the doubt this time :) ). I haven't taken any photos yet Lara, oh and I call myself a scrapbooker, must get my act together. I have some ideas just got to get onto it :)

Till next time, chin up :)

10 eggs

Yep. Our tally of eggs for the day is 10. We have some happy children running around and I would say we were lucky to get them all inside in one piece with out there being scrambled eggs. At least if that happened I could take photos and get a cool scrapbooking page I guess :).
Been a hot day here again today (32 oC). And we have been in the woolshed all day belly crutching lambs. Not the ideal place to be on a hot day, but at least our woolshed isn't hot (its made of bricks), so is alot cooler than most tin sheds. I'm off to sort out some more photos for scrapcamp. Getting closer all the time :)

Valentines cards

Well I have been doing a couple of wee challenges. These are only card challenges (I've been saving the sketch challenges for scrapcamp).

The first one is for scrap camp and it is a valentines card challenge.

The second one is also a valentines card challenge for New Zealand dares , but this one had to include a photo on it. So I used a photo of Lionels and my hands when we got married ( soppy I know). As some of you know I am not really a Valentines girl and neither is Lionel, but this year is different :). The second card I think I will use for our wedding anniversary as we are married 10 years this year and we don't usually do anything for that either. I am really pleased with this card actually. Came out better than I imagined. :)

Today is Waitangi day so the kids didn't have school, which was awesome. So we went to Roxburgh and brought some hens. We packed a picnic lunch, bacon and egg pie and a settlers pie and we ate it at the park there. It was fantastic and what I loved about it all was there was 8 families all doing the same thing. They all had a packed lunch (some even had a thermos) and the kids were all playing at the park. It was an awesome sight actually.

We went and picked up 23 hens (15 for us and 8 for a friend). Brought them home and they are happy as wee sand boys. Haven't got a egg yet, but no doubt there will be three excited kids running out to check so they can have eggs on toast for breakfast.

Will be back for an update tomorow on the hens :) Till then

Been blog hoppin

Wow it is amazing what you find on the internet when you have a hour to spare (LOL). I've been on and visited Trina's blog as I haven't been on line for awhile so thought it was about time to catch up.

While I was there I started blog hopping and came across Fiskars web log . What another great place for inspiration. These guys have sketches here to for inspiration and gorgeous layouts. Pop over and have a look. There is also a blinky to the left, you can just click on there too :)

Where does the time go..................................

Wow February all ready. And school starts in two days :(. Not looking forward to that at all really. It will be nice to be in a routine again, its just there will be no sleep ins and there will be only three of us at home. This time next year there will only be me and DH. Where does the time go..................

Over Christmas I had three photos published in the Otago daily times. One was of Abby and one was of Olly and the other was a freinds of mine child. It is so nice seeing them in print.

Christmas was brilliant this year. It is one year where I felt we got exactly the right presents, some years I think "wow, shouldn't of got that, or should of got something else" There wasn't too much and there wasn't not enough, so we did well :) The morning was beautiful then about 1.00 it poured down and we got 2 1/2 inches for the afternoon. This year there was only 8, us Mum and Dad and a x-brother-in-law of ours. So it was very quiet and relaxed.

New Year we went up to Kelvin Heights at Queenstown with some friends of ours and it was supurb. Awesome night and we sat outside on the deck till 3.30am.

My eldest has now turned 8......Oh that just doesn't seem right....I can still remember the day he was born like it was yesterday.....doesn't seem like 8 years.

Olly has been back to the specialist about his eyes and we got a great report. Haven't worked out how really as he was meant to be wearing a patch for the last 3 months for 2 hours a day and we have only succeded in probably 20 times all up. But now they say we don't have to wear one till we go back at the end of February.

We have also been to see the butterflies in Dunedin. They were just supurb. Mum has just turned 60 and she wanted to take the kids to celebrate. It is a 3 story room with a swinging bridge etc and there is just thousands of butterflies. The temp is about 27 and humidity is about 75%. It was just amazing with butterflies flying around the waterfall and landing on us. Some were as big as the kids hands and amazing colours on them. If you are in Dunedin put this on your must see list.

I've also not long done my first horse Trek. Part of it went through our place and then onto Lawrence so I rode on it for about 2 hours. It was just awesome. me and a friend are going on one next weekend too. She wanted to do it but didn't want to go alone and she has a double horse float. So what could I do, I just had to go.

Now on the scrapbooking page, I haven't really done much LOL. There are these two that I did from sketches from scrapbook outlet. The first one is based on the thrid sketch and is of Olly competing in the under 7s athletics where he got first for everything except DiscusThe second is of Abby at Christmas based on the Sencond sketch. I have done a couple of others that I must photograpy. I'll put that on my to-do list.

Well that will do for now. Till next time, take care

New web site :)

Well my dear friend has her website up and running with awesome jewelery on it. You can see it all here If you have a design in mind she can make it for you or if you see a piece that you like but want it in differnt stones/material she is your lady. Her craftsmanship and eye for design and colour is exquisit. Pop over and have a look.

Well here is a photo of Jake doing his opening speech for the school concert. Doesn't he look so confident. I appologise for the photo (I was about 6 rows back and then I had to crop the photo.)

Well not long now till the jolly big man in a red suit appears. I bet everyone elses kids are as excited as mine. Every morning "How many more sleeps?" they know but just want reasurance they haven't missed a day LOL. Hopefully the weather isn't going to be too harsh on us, I'm wanting to go to the river so the kids can go fishing and take a bbq down.

At the moment my mother is up north with her family. Nana H always has a christmas get together before christmas for all the family and friends and basically anyone who wants to go, so this year mum decided to go up and only told Nana. So all the family was hugely surprised as my cousin was over from Soul with her husband two kids (and pregnant with twins), another cousin was over from Australia, so they are all having a good catch up tomorrow before she flies home.

Another cousin of mine is laid up in hospital at the moment. She had a baby by c-section on Thursday and yesterday colapsed (luckily while there was a nurse with her). She was not breathing and her heart had stopped. She is now in the hospital part hooked up to a oxygen and a drip with blood thining agents in it. She had a clot in her abdomin and it moved into her lungs. I was talking to her this morning and by the sound of it will be in there until after the new year anyway. What is worse is she isn't even allowed to hold wee Tom as she isn't allowed to bend her arms legs etc incase it causes more blood clots. So he is in the maternity hospital and she is in the public hospital. I'm looking at going down to see her tomorrow.

If I'm not back before Christmas (or your not back before Christmas). Have a safe and merry Christmas and New Year, and drive safely, watch out there are idiots on our roads :)

Yayy holidays are nearly here

Yayy nearly school holidays. Only one more day at school for the boys. I am so looking forward to the holidays its not funny. It has been a fabulous year for the boys at school. I was so proud of them at the school concert. Jake opened the concert and had a speech that he had been practicing for about 6 weeks. They get a year 3 too and all the others said no they couldn't do it. Jake put his hand up and said he would. Well for those of you who know Jake know he is the shyest little boy. If he talks too someone his head goes down and he talks to his feet. Well not Monday night. He stood up there in front of a full hall, looked to the back of the room (with out a mike) and belted out his speech. It was loud and clear and everyone heard him. I tell you we were the proudest parent in the room (and grandparents).

Well not long till christmas now. Too be honnest I have put my head in the sand a bit over it this year. I have only just posted christmas cards. For me that is terrible, usually have them out by 14 November. So you can see that head was well and truely dug in the sand!!!!!!

We are drenching lambs at the moment and they are doing really well with the recent drop of rain and a lot of heat. I was out mustering last week and we had some NZ falcons doing their bit in the sky and they were just beautiful. I actually sat and watched them for about 10 minutes until DH came over the radio "What are you doing?" He had never seen them before so then he sat where he was watching them too. I think they have taken up residence somewhere as they have been around a bit and a neighbour said he hadn't seen any here before. So when I get time I go on my horse for a ride and make it a mission to find them :)

Last weekend we had one of DH's brother come down. To be honnest it really threw us. We hadn't heard from him since we shifted (after he did a bit of S**t stirring). He was bringing the guy down who brought our place but DH put his foot down and said he wasn't welcome on our place after the way we were treated (He wouldn't let us get all our gear) and the amount of money he cost us in gear he demolished (about $10,000 worth). So it wasn't unreasonable at all. Not sure what they thought of the place but to be honnest we don't really care. We love it here and too us it is our little piece of paradise.

The weather has been so hot here lately 30 odd degrees and we have done a fair bit of swimming. Both at the pool and down at the river. It is supurb.

Till next time take care

What a beautiful day

It is truely the most beautiful day here today. Not a breath of wind and not a cloud in the sky. I still have Jake at home sick, he is certainly better but doesn't have much energy. I'm being a bit causious too as the teacher was telling me this bug has put one of the kids in Jakes room into hospital. That was a bit of a reality check. I feel guilty when Jake goes and plays with a toy or something. Keep thinking he should be at school, then he will go and lie down on the couch and you think, good thing he is at home LOL.

Lionel is working down near the river today so we took a packed lunch down and had a picnic beside a wee contributory creek and the kids had a wee play in there after eating. It was so nice, the only noise was the kids catching fish (rocks) on their fishing lines (a stick). It was so nice to see them playing with whats around them and enjoying each others company. Abby even brought a goldfish home in a cup with water (a red coloured stone) and it is sitting on the bench as wee speak, although the water slopped out on the way home and we had to put tap water in when we got here LOL. Now they are out side hunting out birds nests (just the blackbirds ). Will certainly keep them occupied for a while. Well I'm off for my last (hopefully) physio appointment now and pick Olly up from school a little earlier. Till next time take care. :)

Oh before I forget, I have a friend who makes jewelery and it is just divine, she caters for formal, informal and just plain casual wear and will make things to order. There is necklaces, bracelets, earings and even other things like jewelery boxes. I have some differnt articles and they always draw a compliment. She is getting a website made up that displays some of her stuff so when that is available I will let you all know.