mega catch up

How quickly I get out of the habit of scribbling away here at night! maybe busy-ness and tiredness have something to do with it. . .

Ray's foot was so swollen on Friday morning that he couldn't even move his ankle - the swelling had gone almost up to his calf muscle (totally gross). Off to the doctor Friday afternoon (that is a whole nother rant - the doctor we were seeing last year has moved on again!) - and Ray ended up with a whole bag of medications! Dr Wong (he's British LOL) suggested Ray carry two different types of over-the-counter anti-histamines with him, and if he is bitten, to swallow one of each straight away to try to reduce his reaction to the ant-bite. He also had a course of antibiotics, and some steroids (there goes his Commonwealth Games chances LOL).

I ended up making three trips to town and back on Friday. First trip at 9.15am to do the shopping (got the kids started on schoolwork, Ray on the couch in the schoolroom to supervise), the second trip for Meals on Wheels at lunchtime - Kate came with me, we took a bit long cos we don't know our way around town so well yet, and the third trip to the doctor with Ray. I didn't really seem to get anything much done around all that, and running after Ray (at least there was cricket on TV for him to watch).

Saturday was exhausting. We sprang out of bed at 7am to round up the 'mums and calves' herd - the agent was coming at 8.30am to mark some bull calves and check a couple of cows for us. Ray had to drive the ute around the paddock to keep off his foot as much as he could, so I got to do the running. And I forgot to grab the stick out of the back of the ute, and had nothing to go at the bull with - I really don't like this bull, and will be glad when we send him off (should be done with him by next month). So we managed to get all the cows and calves into the pen - and one of the internal gates had come off its mounting. Every single time we go to work in the yards, we say "we must fix these up". One time we actually will, but the whole thing needs rebuilding, not just a little renovation. So we sorted them, got ear tags into the new babies (I'm a calf wrestler too on my resume LOL), and penned the older bull calves for Greg, let the others go, and headed back to the house for a quick cuppa. It was almost 9am, so we called Greg, who hadn't made it, as some of his own cattle had escaped onto the road and he was trying to round them up. So we had breakfast while we waited. I had a shower and washed the stinky cow smell off me while Ray went down to help Greg. I was pooped!

I was ready to start on the household chores by about 10am, then lunch, and a few hours to myself on the pute. We were invited to Ena and Peter's for a BBQ on Saturday night, and Dutchie and Kerry bought their girls too. They live further up the Tarra Valley, and the river trickles right past their front door. We ate on the patio, with the sound of the river, and the kids running around the shady yard - totally wonderful! We had a lovely evening, Isaiah went to sleep on the couch while the others romped through the house (why do kids love to play on stairs?).

Rather tired kids on Sunday, but Caleb and Josiah went off with Michael's family after church, and Ena and Peter were taking their grand-daughters to the beach, and invited Grace along too (they didn't have room in their car to take Kate too). So we had a quiet afternoon with just 3 kids in the house! I got some more school stuff organised, and even fitted in a little powernap.

Monday was back into school, we are getting more settled into routine now, although still a tiny bit of grumbling - what kids would choose bookwork above playing anyway?

Kate's eyes have pretty much cleared up, but Caleb and Noah have both got conjunctivitis now, although not as severely as Kate had it. Ray's foot is back to normal

More rain, and no more horribly hot weather, although the kids would still like to go to the pool, and are a bit disappointed. The paddocks are responding to the rain already, with the grasses springing through, and even some clover re-appearing. Maybe we will finally get a good autumn break - everyone tells us about them, but we haven't seen one since we arrived here.

I've been scrapping like a crazy woman these past few days. I've had lots of DT goodies to play with - even a whole cd! Ash has created a cd with Dawn, and it's fabulous (of course). So I've been trying to get a few layouts done before the launch crop. (Don't miss it!)

There are a couple more layouts on my scrapping blog (link at top of left sidebar), but this is probably my favourite from the cd layouts so far - I did this for the It's a Chicks Life challenge at the DigiChick this week. Another landscape A4 layout, it was lots of fun pulling together all these photos and cutting up bits of paper - most of this is from the free kit on the cd, with a couple of alpha bits from the elated kit.

It's so good to be scrapping again!