A great day...

This is a page I created last week for a challenge over at TOP 50, I just found out that it won me a Kaisercraft goodie pack from Handmade by Suzanne ! I am pretty chuffed :) Thankyou!!!

The challenge was to scrap a milestone and this moment was pretty special...

This morning I picked up a friend and headed to the Armidale markets to see what was happening... It was a great laugh, I won't mention names, (I don't want to embarrass her) but I would like to thank her for the great laugh-till-you-cry moment.... No one makes me laugh like you do xxx

I was home at lunch time and then Matt went off on his motorbike with Roy (opps, does that give away the person mentioned above?) They went off in the rain, through mud and creeks. The smiles were so wide when they made it back an hour later, so good to see!

Now Matt is at basketball training.

Shawn and Liberty are playing with a Mechano set that Matt's Dad found in his shed (so good, it is made from metal!).

I have just scrapped a page and am about to go see what miracle I can perform for dinner.

As the Zac Brown Band sings, Life is good today.... x

Newest Family Member

This is Shawn's new LEGO man. He is soft, cuddly and poseable!
Shawn has wanted one of these for awhile, so I helped him achieve his goal... he won me over with sympathy!

I have spent all afternoon and evening working on Laura and Brendans wedding photos. I am rather happy with how they are progressing... Hopefully I will have time to share tomorrow :)

Note to self: Liberty was stung by a bee a few days ago, she is not allergic! Phew!

Back 2 School

My beautiful children started back at school/preschool on Thursday. Liberty is in her last year of Preschool and will go to school next year. Shawn is in year 4....

They each faced changes and new challenges on their first day, I am so proud of them!

* Moo, that is the $2 hat we got at Target, Liberty and I made the flower, I thought it would be more recognisable to her... I like it... Liberty, not so much! LOL

Happy weekend x

How we celebrated.

Yesterday was Australia Day.

We found our place in the shade to watch the parade in our little town, then we went to the park to see a good American friend of ours become an Aussie!

After lunch we went and visited some more friends who are travelling to the USA for the first time and are a bit nervous, so they called upon our travel wisdom to help them on their way! :)

Today is the last day of school holidays... Miss Liberty is also back to Preschool tomorrow and boy is she ready to go back! After tonight she can go to boarding preschool....

11 years

This past Saturday marked 11 years that I have been married to this wonderful man....

Sky Diving

Happy Friday! Happy Sky Watch Friday!!!

This is my surprisingly brave boy on the diving board at the Grafton pool back in December. He was with Matt and I had Liberty. then I noticed him at the top of the diving board with his Dad following behind. He paused just for a short moment and then jumped!

Phone kids

A few weeks ago I called my Dad and the kids got to have a good chat. This is them, chatting.

Shawn always has a good laugh with his Grandpa, I think if they lived closer they would be the greatest of buddies, constantly pranking each other... all out of love of course!

Liberty and Grandpa have a few accent barriers, but they get there :)

Tonight I had dinner with my cousin Steve and his girlfriend Jess. It has been 2 years since I have seen Stephen. It was a good night.

Weekend water fun

Our weekend was spent mostly like this...
Shawn started this trend. Then the "big boys" had their fun.

Then Jessie had a turn. She is such a water babe!

Then Liberty used all of her swimming lessons confidence and had a go. She is loving lessons and is improving every time! So proud of her :)

Then the next day it was time for some surfing. Matt is so great with kids, not just his own but all kids. He is a wonderful man!

Today is my Grandmothers 80th birthday. She is a great woman with wonderful energy...

Love you Grandma xxx

Sky Watch Friday

Really hot days have been followed with the threat of a storm or an actual downpour. This one was just a stunning threat.
To see what the skies look like at various locations around the world check out SKY WATCH FRIDAY


We are heading away for one last weekend getaway before school starts back. Have a great weekend everyone!

Anyone know what this is?

This is a bug that I spotted at Green Oak. I only saw him when he was warning me away.

His back is like Lady Beetle wings. They lift up in that shape. Under the camouflage tops, his back is red and metallic black in perfect stripes. It was the red that caught my eye.

He has a long head that looks exactly like a Grass Hopper. He didn't try and fly away, so I don't know if he can.

I had never seen anything like him before. Anyone know what he is? Anyone want to make something up? :)

Craybobbing.

This is how we spent yesterday afternoon. 12 kids and 5 adults around one of the Doran dams with some sticks, wool and lamb roast catching these guys. Craybobs, yabbies or crawfish. Whatever you call them, between us, we caught over 20 of them. It had been a few years since I had been craybobbing. Liberty and I had a lovely time with a particular sneaky yabbie, we could not catch him! We were outwitted and outplayed and finally he outlasted us!

I called for backup and Matt came out after work... not much help to us as he was busy having his own fun.

Shawn had his mate Travis stay over last night. The 2 of them slept on the trampoline... with the dog curled up at their feet. It must have been a late night as I didn't hear them until 7.30 this morning!

* No Yabbie was hurt, it was pure catch and release. The muddy kids even survived!

This just in....

It has come to my attention that some people out in this wide world are messing with a good thing!

Now the very worst of all, this my friends will turn your stomach..

Pepsi and Yoghurt

I must say, the pepsi Fire would be interesting to try, Pepsi and Cinnamon. I do like Cinnamon flavours. The Holiday Spice was released in November 2004, so I did get to try it when we had our last Christmas in America... It didn't do much for me, but the packaging sure is purdy :)

Please, don't even get me started on Pepsi Max... Just plain, original Pepsi is all that is really needed in this world. However, Wild Cherry is OK. Since we don't have it in Australia, I add a touch of Grenadine to my Pepsi.

It was actually very interesting to read how many different varieties of Pepsi there are.

Thanks for listening to me vent and thanks Big Sean for the heads up! :)

Summertime... I do love it!

This is how we ended a perfect, lazy Sunday afternoon. Before this we hit the Gwydir River and swam (or sat in the water talking). Kids will sleep well tonight!

Sky Watch Friday

It has been too long since I have participated in a Sky Watch Friday.

I shot this image over our Christmas vacation. This is the view while I took a few minutes to relax and lay in the hammock under the very large Jacaranda tree.

My lucky girl

We had a very productive day on Monday. We moved furniture around in the kids rooms. This desk was mine, then it was Shawn's and now, it is Liberty's. She loves it! I can hear her now singing along to her Noni CD. She loves being able to reach her CD player now.
I made the flowers for her room while she was in my tummy. They just don't seem to want to stick to anything. I have had them on her walls until now, they would look cute at the back of the desk. I really don't want to use more than bluetak, but I may have to.... Any suggestions?

Monday morning I got a call from our hairdresser to say that Liberty was the winner of the Christmas Hamper they were giving away. Of course we had to go and get it, and below is what it was. About $300 worth of PPS stuff. Tonight was our first opportunity to play. First we washed with shampoo and then we conditioned and then we used the detangler foam. Miss Liberty loved it!!! YAY - she is normally not a fan of hair time. She does smell good :)

Random Green Oak Snaps

Top - Pancakes on the BBQ.....yummmmmmm :)

Middle - Shawn helped me make some bread in the wood oven... it was so delicious!

Bottom - This is how the old house looked Christmas Eve. I got a set of solar lights to take and we have had the flags for years. That is our bedroom window between Mickey and Tweety. Kitchen to the left and outdoor entertaining area to the left :)

Flooding

This is the Macleay river where we spent Christmas. On December 27th we discovered the river in flood. So ended the fishing and swimming. Normally where I took this last shot from you would only just capture the river at the far left of the image. We drive through this area. The tree on the right marks approx 4 meters of flood water.

The top image is taken from the cutting looking back on Green Oak. The house is up on right, but behind the branches.

Interesting fact: When the Macleay is in flood, the currents are the second fasted flowing in the world, I believe the Amazon is the fastest.

Happy Tears

This new addition to our Family travelled from Lancaster PA to be with us just in time for Christmas! I cried happy tears when I realised what he was, perfect! I love him!!! He sings and tells you to shut the fridge door. So very cute!

He spent Christmas in the gas fridge at Green Oak and now he spends his days keeping this Tauntaun company. We have had him in our fridge since June.

I guess it is one of those 'had to be there' kinda things :)

THANK YOU so much SaraSeanFinlee, we miss you guys!

Home, Sweet Home.

This is how Christmas looked for us. We had a real fire place and mantle to hang stockings on (I didn't take our good handmade felt stockings) and our Christmas tree was a River (She) Oak that we cut down. It is decorated with paper chain that we all made. The white flowers are from a gum that the fruit bats loved, they smelt as sweet as honey! We couldn't have much inside as the smell was so strong. The pink flowers are from the stunning Crepe Myrtle trees at the front of the Green Oak house. We thought it looked pretty perfect!

So we are home.

We had a great 2 weeks away and could have stayed for another week, easily! Sometimes the trick to a good time is knowing when it is over.

We had flooding to contend with. Catching a Bullrout and swimming with snakes. So we had plenty of exciting moments. I have captured most of them, or at least I should like so with the almost 600 photos I shot.

Today we welcome 2010... at last! I must say I am looking forward to this year. No resolutions, just some small changes I would like to make, not written down or spoken of, just in my head.

Happy TwentyTen Everyone!

xxx