Kangaroo Point

Welcome To Australia

Grandpa Richard arrived safe and sound and looked remarkably fit and healthy for someone who has just endured 24 hours of flight travel. He did of course come loaded with gifts one of which is this hat.



The others were Twuck Books. Henry was instantly in love.

Oh, and the seemingly hundreds of Hershey Chocolate Bars which have instilled a sense of euphoria

Brotherly Love

Sometimes siblings can love each other.....as long as they don't get too close.

Clean Kuks

For the 20th time today and it's only midday.

Delicate and graceful versus slimey and evil

Ben's dad is coming for a visit next week all the way from America. I hope he'll cope with Australian life. I was just looking through some photos and found these that Ben's dad had sent us taken outside his house. I can't help but think how very different these peaceful and graceful creatures seem to be in comparison to what we have here.


Like this for example which we found slithering in our very own back garden.

Ring a ring a Posie

Meet Posie. Posie must be the most gentle cow on the planet. She's currently pregnant with her fourth baby and I think it's starting to take it's toll. She's no spring chicken and she's tired. Posie likes to hang out around the doorway to my sisters' house hoping that if she bellows at the door long enough someone will feel sorry for her and give her a snack.

And this picture is too darn cute not to post here.

Bunny cakes, bunny cakes bakers man....

In this case the baker was a woman called Nana

The laying line up

Patiently waiting their turn

My sister has this cane planter basket which sits on top of her BBQ. This is where her chooks like to lay their eggs. They line up making a racket while they wait their turn in the basket. Sometimes they just can't wait any longer and drop their egg right where they're standing. Sometimes they even go inside the house and lay them among the old newspapers my sister keeps stacked up on top of the antique freezer box or in the kids beds. Anywhere nice and cosy will do. It's a bit like chook peek hour. The one that happens to be in the basket gets annoyed by the racket the others make as they demand she makes her lay a snappy one. They even go so far as to jump on the side of it and start pecking at her if she takes too long.

When Easter comes to an end.

The power nap that boosted his energy levels so the ride-on mower could get his undivided attention.

Our Easter weekend went all too quickly. The packing and the drive are unwelcome necessities but it's always worth it in the end. Henry coped remarkably well with the trip up and even managed to sleep just a little. Of course when we got there he spotted the ride on mower and didn't leave it alone for several hours. This and any other piece of machinery far outweighed the excitement of the "choccy eggs" the Easter bunny brought. In fact the choccy eggs barely caused a stir. On Saturday we went to visit some friends of my sister who own a huge working cattle property. My nephew, Patrick, spends a lot of time out there with the owners helping them at muster time and keeping the dingoes at bay. Ever since Patrick was Henry's age he's been obsessed with all things farming and if ever there was a kid who was born to own land and run a cattle station Patrick is it. It was at this farm that Henry got to sit on his first "farm tractor". He spotted it as we drove up to the house and as soon as he got out of the car it's the first thing he ran for. He couldn't believe his luck. He pulled all the gear sticks and made tractor noises and inspected every inch of that thing.






The photo above is Patrick and Henry inspecting the chooks and geese. After Henry got over his obsession with always having his feet clean he was just like any other kid who grows up feeling the earth between their toes. When he slept he slept like an angel but he was so worried he might miss out on something that he fought sleep each and every night we were there. My other sister came with her two children and so we had 13 people all staying in the one house but the house is so huge it's hardly noticeable. There was lots of laughter and wine drinking, gossiping, and mechanical repairs the entire weekend.

A taste of things to come

And God came to him in the form of a farm tractor!

Salon Fined

I'm back from my Easter sojourn but I'm way too tired right now to tell you of all the exciting things we got up to because I feel like I've been awake for 5 days. I haven't had much sleep but that is not my own fault. It's because of my adorable children. Henry had so much fun he decided not to sleep much and then he had a night of fighting off a fever and then last night, after getting up at 4am to drive home from Maryborough I spent most of the night at the hospital with Maya who had screamingly bad stomach pains which could not be explained. She seems fine today but I WANT SOME SLEEP! The fun stuff will come later but in the meantime I had to share this with you.

Do you remember me writing about my experience with the hair dressers who wanted to charge me more than my voucher said it would? Well it turns out another store in their chain was fined $1500 for false advertising. I can now write the name of the chain because it's been officially written in our Sunday paper. It was PROCUTS. It was the Forest Lake store who copped the fine but I feel they should all be fined.

The story goes like this. "Salon customers were led to believe they could pay $10 for a cut and shampoo but when it came time to pay the salon refused to honour the voucher, saying it was valid for a trim, not a cut". (this is what they told me....Is there a difference?)
"The Office of Fair Trading took action against the salon after receiving complaints from disgruntled customers".

Idiots.

More from me after I've slept for five days to catch up on the five days I haven't slept.

Easter Bonnet, Let's just jump on it.

Henry came home from daycare today with this. It's his first Easter Bonnet. I was incredibly excited. I made all the excited noises and if Henry could have given me 25c to call someone who cared he would have. With a little help from his carers he made this. WOO HOO! They had some kind of Easter bonnet show which Henry was apparently very bored with and spent time pulling all the toy trucks off the shelf instead of watching the stage performance. He's definitely my son.

On the Cover of Vogue

When I become a scientist I am going to invent a clothing range that comes in a bag the size of a packet of smiths chips. The idea being that you buy a bag of clothes which is big enough to fit in your handbag and when you want something new to wear you take one of the chips and pop it in the microwave for ten seconds and it becomes a full blown fashion outfit complete with accessories. At the end of the day you just screw it all up into a small ball and throw it in the bin. They'll be fully biodegrable so as not to cause any more harm to our precious planet but never again will we have to wash, pack a suitcase or wear the same thing twice. How revolutionary!

I hate packing to go away and I hate even more that only our small car is reliable enough to go more than 100 kilometres without requiring an RACQ callout.

Happy Easter

Henry didn't cry this morning when I dropped him off at daycare. What a relief! I thought it would be one of those mornings when he howled so loud I could hear him even as I drove away in the car with the stereo blasting so loud my eardrums might explode. He was clingy and quiet which is usually an indication that he's not happy about being there but when I handed him over to Amy he went without protest and kissed me goodbye like a dutiful son. As I left I glanced over my shoulder to see him climbing on the playground equipment like every good kid should.

Tomorrow we're off to Maryborough for a few days to spend time with the family. Henry's going to love it there. Three acres to run crazy on, two dogs whose tails he can pull, a cow who will knock him down just to see if he has any food and some cranky geese to peck his bum. Me, I'll be sipping wine and sharing gossip with my sisters.

Happy Easter everyone!

PS. The photo is just to show you that Henry can now fix the electrical switches. I taught him last night.

Once you start there's no going back

Yesterday afternoon Henry decided he wanted to explore the garden. He wanted to literally get into the garden and play in the dirt. Maya often walks through the garden in order to get to her flower/herb bed which most times lays dead but Henry watches her and up till now we've never allowed him to go up there. Yesterday while trying to climb over the rocks that form the garden border he had a revelation. He thought if he got his shoes we may somehow let him get in there. He ran inside and got his shoes from the shoebox and came outside and placed them in the garden and then came to get Ben and I and led us by our hands over to where he'd placed his shoes then said "shoe on". Because he was so damn cute we put his shoes on him and allowed him to go into the garden. We went with him of course. Our garden is really just a sloping weed bed but the kids think it's great. Up we went to Maya's specially boxed in weed bed. Anyone would think we'd just handed him a the biggest lollypop ever made. He walked up and down, kicked the dirt, pulled some weeds, sat on the edge and said "ah relax" and had a major fit when we decided it was time to come down because the mosquitoes were eating us alive.

This morning the first thing he did after waking up was get his shoes, bring them to Ben and pull Ben to the door saying "go garden". Once you start something you've got to be prepared to keep it up because they just don't forget.

Stop it!

Henry made it to daycare one day this week. Amazing. After he got over his ear infection and tonsillitis he got yet another head cold. Sneezing, wheezing, coughing and a tap for a nose.

This week he came home from daycare calling out all the kids names followed by "stop it". Eg. Ruby, stop it! I hate to think what he says at daycare that he hears in our house. Already he says "Oh s**t! EVERY time I slam on the brakes in the car.

I've also decided that the only way to save the furniture in our house is to deny the children access to food. At least they'll have something clean to sit on while they slowly starve.

The Mathematics Learning Institute

In November last year I wrote a post about how Ellie from the Mathematics Learning Institute had been calling me trying to get one of their representatives to come and show us how their fantastic learning program works. Well just a few weeks ago she called again. I had forgotten all about them by this stage but she obviously had some notes on her database about how I was busy at the time or something. Anyway I decided to book a time to get this thing over and done with so they would just leave me alone. To put them off though I said I would only be available on Sunday. "No problem, we can have Craig come around on Sunday morning. See you then". I can only say that they mean to sell if they're prepared to do that.

Sunday morning came and we were on the phone to Grandma Mary when Craig arrived so I had to cut that conversation short. Craig must have been all of about 21 but ready and willing to do the hard sell. After a half an hour of touting his product and regaling us with stories about how poor, single parents are so committed to doing what's best for their children that they're prepared to live with second hand patio furniture in the loungeroom just to pay for this product, he got to the nitty gritty. Suddenly he was all business.

"Now you have to commit today. If you truly care about the future for your children you will find the money to pay for this. We only recruit 100 people in an area and I have several more people to see today so if you don't commit right now you will probably miss out". (this was interesting since they've been chasing me since November so they can't be filling up that fast since it's now March the following year).

I asked the price.

"Well it's a line of credit and what you pay is only $45 a week and with that you get all that we talked about here. You also get the phone tutor who is on line until 8pm nightly to help you through the difficult times and to set work for your child to do".

Right. So what's the bottom line price?

"As I said, it's a line of credit, if you truly care about your children this will seem like nothing. It's (writes the figure on a piece of paper and turns it in my direction to emphasise his point) only a small figure of $5995.

I gasp and ask him what happens if I no longer want it. Can I just cancel?

"Oh no. You've bought it. You've borrowed the money from us and you have to pay it back. Remember this is a program you can use for the lifetime of your children's schooling lives"

I think to myself "yes, until you go bust and the receivers step in". What I actually say is "I'll have to think about it. I'm not prepared to commit to this right now. Can you leave me a trial CD?"

He says, "I'd have to call about that. I'll go and give you some time to think about this and find out about the trial and be back in a few minutes".

So out he goes. He comes back in several minutes later. By then Ben and I have decided that no way are we turning over that amount of money which he can't give us any testimonials about, no trial period, nothing. We tell him we're not interested.

"Well if you went to buy a car you couldn't get a trial period with it" he said.

We agreed with him but we would have time to do some research, give it a test drive, get it mechanically checked out etc before committing to spending that kind of money.

He got a bit shirty after that and tried harder and the harder he tried the more frustrated and determined we got. Eventually he realised we weren't going to take the bait and he left muttering something about regretting our decision.

I guess it was his hard sell tactics that turned me off. His use of anecdotes about wealthy parents not caring enough to invest in the product but poor single parents doing anything they can to ensure their child has the best possible chances in life. What right does he have to assume these things. What right does he have to use these kind of selling tactics. From the little he did show us of the computer based program it didn't seem to differ much from other mathematics learning software I've seen which comes at a much more reasonable price than $5995. Like around $20. It's sharks like these that make products like this seem less than desirable.

School is cool

Henry has this thing with wanting to put on our shirts. When Ben comes home from work and takes off his work shirt Henry either wants to put it on or put it away for him. Lately he's wanted to wear Maya's school shirt.

Monopoly Scandal

Maya's bored and wants me to take her out somewhere. Somewhere that requires we spend money. Since we dont' have any I've been using that to back up my argument against going to the shops. She says she's happy to go window shopping but I know she won't be. I suggested we play a game of scrabble but she chose monopoly. There we were having a great time with Maya acting as Real Estate agent and me as banker. I racked up a huge debt with the bank buying properties in the first 15 minutes. As Real estate agent Maya thought she would deprive me of the deeds to the properties until all debts had been paid off. I argued that she was essentially withholding my potential to earn an income and therefore my ability to repay my debts. I talked her into handing over a couple of them and of course once she started landing on them and having to pay me rent she decided she was bored with the game. Sigh! Back to the shopping argument. In a huff she went to the kitchen and pulled out the jar of pickled onions and a toothpick and scoffed the whole lot. Who wants to go shopping with her now!