For our family, Autumn, is our super busy season. As we head into winter in just a few short days, I'm finally re-surfacing to write about all the goings on in the last couple of months.
But firstly some pretty autumn pics to share. This first one was taken in the 'big city' as our kids call it. A random tree in Adelaide. Beautiful.
This next one is my glory vine which I've loosely trained across my pergola. Its green & lush & in summer gives us some relief from the sun & heat, but in Autumn, it turns into a big pile of brown sticks with just a few scattered red leaves. I still love it.
And this last one is the humble start of the same glory vine up the side of my house wall. I love this messy, brown stick, almost naked vine, against the white. With so much mess in our overgrown garden, little spots like these give me something nice to look at & little glimmers of hope that one day we can have a nice garden again. Perhaps when Jeff & I have some time to weed the garden beds or when 'the boy' stops pulling dirt our of the garden bed & throwing it on the fake turf. Grrrrr.
OK, so what we've been up to.....
For the kids, its probably been the usual level of busy-ness. School, home, play, weekend stuff to do, weekend places to go.... but on top of that we've had 6 birthday parties for the school girls to attend so far with more still to come.
Its also been my birthday, mothers day, both my parents, 2 of my siblings, nephews & nieces & inlaws birthdays too. Some of those with social occasions, some of them not. Whilst we always have an evening celebration for birthdays for our children every year, we certainly don't extend that to birthday parties for our kids every year. Do You?
There's been so many baskets of laundry to do, many still sitting waiting for my attention. The house has been messed up 8354839245 times and cleaned up 8354839244 times.
There's been dealings with the fencing company, the local council, a paving mob, a fake turf group & participation in marketing surveys at night. I always feel sorry for the market research people & 99% of the time take part. When I was in my late teens/early 20's I did market research as a second job to help fund my first house & my wild credit card spending. Its a good hourly rate but exhausting & demoralising work. Its incredible how rude some people can be. But I did it & I'm proud of that. As for councils & contractors, the whole thing has been extremely frustrating. I won't say any more. Except grrrrr.
There's also been face painting at parties and at weekend Bunnings trips followed by big scrub ups in the bath.
We've even turned our usual routine on its head & given it a big shake up! Jeff shifted his work hours so he's now on day shift & we are operating like a regular family. I'm not convinced its working for us yet but we are plugging along. Surrendering to the routine.
During term time of course I'm now up at the crack of dawn to get 5 little munchies & myself, all ready for school. Then I'm mostly at home with my 3 smallest munchies for the day until the big girls are home from school.
The littlest 3 are having lots of fun together throughout the day with Lachlan well & truly involving himself in all aspects of the play. But there's still squabbling over toys, lots of messing & always wanting drinks & food all day long. I try my best to squeeze in some emails, do a little graphics or get something done around the house but I feel like I'm not being very efficient at anything right now.
Buddy is still having excellent sleeps in the middle of the day. Sometimes I get some work done, other times I'll hang out in the kitchen with the twins or take the opportunity to have some down time.
Lately our kids have been costing us a little more than what we had budgeted for but makes for a few funny stories anyway so we just pay & get on...
First up we've had a broken washing machine. The culprit... a hair clip jammed in the motor. Few hundred dollars call out fee & fixing fees right there. Thanks girls. And yes, stupid us for not emptying pockets before washing.
We've also paid another $115 for a dishwasher repair because we thought it wasn't working. Turns out it is working fine & that more than likely a small person of the male variety has just been pressing buttons mid-cycle making us think its not working. Too busy ourselves to check it out properly.
And lastly, there was the car battery going flat in my car because that same small male person would keep turning on internal lights before being taken out of the car. On 3 occasions we had a completely flat battery & needed to call out the RAA. On the last occasion I had to call them out 3 times on the same as the battery actually died altogether. Few hundred dollars later....
The last time this happened with my car, the engine did actually chug over a little bit so I thought to myself [stupidly] if I just roll it down the slope of the drive, it might just kick in & start on its own. Well, it not only didn't it start but it started rolling up our neighbours driveway. I did manage to stop it bashing down their rollerdoor but goodness me, I could have put myself in terrible danger. I already managed to run myself over in a car I was driving back in my early 20's. A crazy tale of a spider & a broken foot. Don't ask.
So anyway, that left my enormously heavy car in the middle of the street. Blocking off the street in fact. Too heavy for me to push in either direction. Kids inside the car all teary thinking another car would come and smash into us. Clearly I had completely lost all my marbles that day. I did have the sense to call the RAA however and they came to the rescue for the first of 3 rescues that day.
Our eldest, little Georgie Pops, turned 7 this month and we are anxiously waiting for her front tooth to fall out. Its been hanging on there for weeks and she won't let us at it. Its starting to discolour which makes me think its clinging on to life by a single thread.
Anyway, no large large presents this year. On her wish list was lots of little things. We complied. And so her pile looks super impressive.
Lots of little dolls, arty things, skipping rope, bead making kit, junior Scrabble etc etc.
Also during the last couple of months, I've been away 3 times, Jeff has had one trip away & I've made a start on my big studio move [with mixed success] so I'll attempt to blog about some of those things soon.
Right, Buddy is awake so that's my down time over!
Kate xo
