I Ache

Did I tell you after all that gardening I ache all over. Oh I ache. Thank goodness it is all finished.

Why is it that something that is very satisfying to finish gives me pain.

Hmmm. Off to relax now.

Mid Winter Gardening

I am not a keen garden but our house sits on a sit of a approximately 1100 m sq with garden surrounding three of the boundaries. Now when I say garden I really mean plenty of garden beds, dirt and weeds and not so many plants. We have been trying to put plants in place but with money restrictions it is a slow job. So in the last two days DH, the children and I have been outside dealing to the mess that winter has left us. The first task that had to be done was to perform so serious surgery on the old and rotting Kowhai tree that decided to fall down. See this post here. 3 hours later and a seriously attended to tree is looking much more stable. We are really sad that such a beautiful tree is really on its last legs but I guess that is nature.

Here is the final part of the tree to come down. (photo by DS2 5 years old)



and another shot by DS2




So today I attended to the flattened garden, when the tree fell down, and the copious leaves that are now smothering the lawns and garden beds. Thank goodness that DH got a mega leaf blower for his birthday because it sure has been useful today.

Here is the Kowhai tree (the next day.) DD 8 years took the photo.


I still have another days gardening to go and then it will be on to the next renovation task. That is for another blog entry. Weeding to be finished, de-weeding the pavers that line our driveway, spraying for all the moss that is everywhere and finally mowing the lawns. Phew I feel exhausted just thinking about it all.

I Customised my Blog

I have had a try at customising my blog. I hope you like it. I think there are a few other things that I would like to try and do but I have run out of time at the moment so I will leave it at that.

Having a play

I am having a play with my blog. It might take me a few days so if things look a little funny it will because I have got stuck with what to do next or I need a break and will be back.

Cars

Cars...we need them but sometimes I wish we did not have the ongoing issues we are having. Now to be honest our main family car was old when we bought it and did not cost very much money at all. We had no money to buy anything else but time has come to seriously commit to replacing it. We know that it is time to make this decision because the cost of frequently repairing the car so it will stay on the road is more than the value of the car itself.

So to put us in a position to have the cash I am going to have to work more than I do. Now at the moment I do supply teaching in primary schools when my husband is home from one of the long haul flights his job takes him on. Now after much organisation of after school care, I will be able to pick up more more and be more aggressive about finding work. There is always a dilemma when working more with a financial goal and that is how many days I need to work to make it worth my while. I have done the figures and that is 8 days every fortnight up until the end of the year. I hope I can manage this among everything else I need to do, without getting too difficult to live with.

Ultimately I guess that it is a small sacrifice to make to ensure that we have reliable transportation.

Fingers crossed that all my plans work out.

Books

In our house books are really integral in our lives. My DD has an incredible appetite for reading, and not just one type of book, but everything from fiction to non fiction, drama, fairies, ghosts, traditional and modern authors. At the moment I am reading to her The Monstrous Memoirs of a Mighty McFearless by Ahmet Zappa. Boy it is a story full of imagination and drama of the monster catching variety. She is reading everything and anything she can get her hands on. It doesn't matter if she has read it before, an easy read or one that will take days to finish.

So in honour of her love of books I have created a page.



The credits can be found here.

Then there is page made with Donna Duncombes A Mothers Love kit and Vaguely Repulsive font.



I feel that books can empower the reader in some way so I hope DD finds plenty to inspire and empower her.

More drama....tooth extraction required.

Baby son, okay if he was reading this, he would be objecting to that title after all he is 5 years old, damaged a front too when he was two. It killed the nerve but stayed in his gum.

Here you can see the blackened tooth.



Well the tooth came to a dramatic end today. To cut a long story short, his tooth had been sore for some time. We did visit the school dental nurse, nothing wrong.

How wrong could she have been. The gum above the tooth has been a problem since the visit and to be honest I thought think that son is a little bit of a softy and didn't pay too much attention. How wrong could I have been. Tuesday night I took much more notice as I thought that it had been sore for some time and there at the top of the gum above the tooth was a large abscess. By large I mean about 1cm wide and just short of 5mm high. Boy did I feel like a bad mother.

So the next morning I rang the doctors and I couldn't get hold of the school dental nurse. DH made the doctors visit as I was working, then of course the he was told the dentist was necessary as the tooth needed removal.

All drama for a little 5 year old and his Dad. When I got home from work baby son told me that he had a numb gum, teeth, lips and nose, with a big smile on his face. DH tells me he had to step out of the room as blood and other such this make him pass out.

Here he is with his sore mouth



Then a close up view. Just what you all wanted to see.



A look at the disintegrating tooth. There you can see the hole that caused the problem.



Of course he still wanted to go and play hockey and won player of the day.

The Tree, the Fence and the Garden

Yes that's it. Last night we experienced a middle of the night electrical storm along with the wind and rain. This style of storm is no usual in Auckland so it was all very scary in our house as the two boys woke up to the orchestra of noise at midnight.

Up the next morning and everything was in its place and looking good despite the bad weather.

Off to work I go like on any ordinary day of relief teaching and I get a txt from DH saying can you ring me. I cant as class is in, then a message saying the tree has fallen down and taken the fence out.

So the sight when I got home was....



Of course you need the view from all angles so here they are.

The roots that lifted out of the ground.



The wide view from the otherside of the fence. Luckily it was our fence.



Then there would be no drama if there were no other plants involved.

Stuck in the olive tree.



and finally flattening the plants

If Batman can...

I was sitting thinking about times back in Brunei and an image was bought to mind about DD learning to ride a bike. Why this image came to mind who knows, but I thought it was worth recording.

In Brunei there is a perpetual summer all year. So DH and thought that we were made when we realised that the small, first two wheeler bike DD could comfortably be ridden inside. When I say inside I mean a space about 10m x 10m right in front of air conditioning. We used that space for nothing except to play cricket in with our preschoolers.....yes our house was huge but that is another story.

This particular day DD got the bike which she was so proudly trying to ride pretending Batman was having a go to. I luckily had taken a photo and thought that there was a page to be made.

If Batman can....



Credits...background paper, speech bubbles from Life365 Hodge Podge 12 kit from WW, stitching from My Favourite Things kit from WW, glitter from Chasnryan by Flerg, mat and strip from Canded Apple by Emily Merrit, tape from Signature Tape pack at WW, fonts are Roman Times and Scrap Kids

Did I ever tell you?

Did I ever tell you that I dislike being cold and can not be inside my house with all my outside winter clothes on trying to stay warm. In fact I love it so warm that I can get by with just a t'shirt and shorts some days when the fire is really roaring.

So to combat this there is one thing we must have in house we live in and that is a fire. Now I say a fire because we get access to free fire wood and anything that is free sounds good to me.

We need a warm house not only for me but DS2 has a little asthma, fingers crossed he will out grow it, and houses should be warm at night for people with asthma. The World Health Organisation recommends 18 at a minimum. Trust me we do our best to achieve this but over night the temperature drops to about 12 degree C.

So without further ado let me introduce you to my fire. It is not an open fire but in a fire box with a glass door. I got as close as I dared with the door of the fire open to take this.

Stay warm everyone.