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| Good old Police (actually a 1978 album) |
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| I still know all of the words.... |
Anyway, they surprisingly liked it all - we all sang along to Roxanne, (easy chorus) and they recognised quite a few of the other songs also
Got to Inglewood around 10pm on Friday night - the others - Justin, Claudia, Nin & Clare were relaxing in the dining room in front of a roaring fire. The other kids were in bed
Prime seats were in front of the fire, while another popular spot was on the couch with the laptops. Nin was quite interested in what the boys were up to
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| electronic entertainment |
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| some rare vacant seats in front of the fire |
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| Justin hamming it up - and Mad uncharacteristically hiding from the camera |
Fraser and Hamish (Fraser's friend from school) wanted to make sure that they were warm when they went to bed, so of course wore balaclavas and beanies - looked quite funny
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| they look a little strange - Fraser chilling in his balaclava |
Rory and Charlie were also in this room - but both elected to sleep on the floor rather than a fold up bed ...
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| boys sleeping on the floor |
Saturday morning was cold, but sunny and blue - in fact it was like this all weekend
Went to the IGA with Justin & Nin to pick paint colours for the upstairs room. J had initially wanted a rich pumpkiny colour (must have been influenced by all of my home grown pumpkins!) but we didn't see any suitable Dulux colours in this hue. Looked at a few brochures, and saw a nice looking red room with white trim - so thought we'd have that. Unfortunately they didn't sell the base paint for the red paint in 10L tins, however given Nin was dropping Claudia off at the Bendigo train station, we asked if he could go to Bunnings there - and buy a tin for us. Unfortunately they didn't have any 10L tins there either (do they actuuly make it in 10L tins?) - so he bought 2 x 4 L
Did a bit of work in the garden in the morning with a willing volunteer - Cesky (Mad came out and asked if I was forcing Cesky to help me - as she couldn't fathom any kid actually volunterring to help - oh what a sad state of affairs!)
Anyway, my 1st self assigned task was picking a bunch of flowers for the hallway. Cesky every ably assisted me with this, and then arranged them in a vase
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| making the final touches |
My 2nd self assigned task was to get rid of the spiny plants that had resurfaced near the Storm Lane fence (the bloke with the bob cat last year had seemingly bulldozed this plant into oblivion, but the roots must have still been there - Gordon had subesequently poisioned them)
I dug and mattocked them out - Cesky filled the trailer...
A key development was that Wayne had arrived early in the morning to commence work on the back veranda.
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| Wayne poking his head through the top, various children below |
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| Wayne hard at work #1 |
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| Wayne hard at work #2 |
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| Wayne hard at work #3 |
A, P & A arrived before lunch, and we sat down outside to a picnic salad/wrap /cheeses type lunch - all very pleasant
Over lunch Clare couldn't believe that we could decide on paint colours so quickly - and quizzed us - or more Justin as to how he decided - what was the decision hierarchy etc
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| Saturday lunch |
Pottered around a bit after lunch - the boys running around like savages hurling sticks at each other in a good natured way - at least that's what they said. And luckily no eyes were put out! Fraser had also brought his gillie suit - and they had a lot of fun hiding in that also
Visited the Blanche Barkly Winery (again for me) - and chatted with Arleen this time. Bought some more wine - including a box of clean skins - which were excellent ! Nin & Clare had to leave soon afterwards - as they had further plans for the weekend in Woodend
Dinner at the pub - it was crowded, and we had to wait a while - especially A, it suspiciously appeared as if they had forgotten her order.
Back home to a roaring fire again and a relatively early night
First up again on Sunday, and I thought we'd have bacon and eggs. I had lit the fire in the kitchen stove to make it nice and cosy, bought the paper, set the table and was waiting for the rest of the household to emerge so that I could make bacon and eggs to have along with my home made bread.
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| expectant table |
But I had to wait "hours" and I was "starving" before the 1st person came, around 8.45am, and that was Justin. At this stage I was ready to eat by myself, but he said that he would go and rouse the rest of the house (to be fair I hadn't said anything about bacon and eggs to the others last night - so they had no idea I was waiting)
Justin was pleased to be able to use the gong that Karen & Mark had given us. The below picture is actually staged (no really!) -as I had wanted to capture the "essence" for the blog.
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| summoning the guests |
So anyway, they did come down, I made the breakfast, and all was good with the world.
I also prepared dinner. I had bought some meat from James on Saturday - as I wanted to make a goulash in the slow cooker. Did so, but had to keep turning it off when Wayne used his power drills - as I didn't want to short out the electrics. I didn't.
I also got the boys to give Wayne a hand - by moving some bricks away from under the veranda
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| Hamish with a wheel barrow full of bricks |
And then we painted....I was even allowed to paint (usually I'm not) - but given that it was acrylic undercoat it was deemed not that important, and not that critical if I botched it up. I reckon I did a pretty good job actually and I'm quick! and I wash the brushes very thoroughly - as Justin gets rather cross if the brushes are wrecked due to poor washing! So Alex & I did the skirting, and Justin did the window. He'd painted the door yesterday
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| look at those brush strokes! |
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| Justin painting the much harder window |
After lunch we started on the red paint - I cut in above the skirting etc and Justin did the top
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| now cutting in |
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| have to be careful |
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| Alex covering the fire place |
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| Alex painting |
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| more cutting in by Justin |
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| it's rather bright! |
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| nearly finished |
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| pretty much done - but it needs another coat! |
Dinner turned out well and we ate in the dining room, with a bottle or 2 of the clean skins and the wine that Hamish's Mum had given us also
Once again a roaring fire - and less competition for seats by the dining room fire, as I had also prepared a fire in the boys room, so that they could retire in there
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| laptops by fire light in the boy's room |
And J got out his guitar again....
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| guitar by candlelight |
Monday morning I went for a walk bright and early. Wore gloves and 2 x jackets as it was freezing - frost on the wind shields etc But once again a lovely blue sky day. Whilst walking I thought it would be lovely to have breakfast outside in the new Laundry with a fire
So I did just that when I returned, and Justin joined me
While I was sitting there reading the paper, I became aware of a type of screaming noise - pigs? Did any of our neighbours have pigs? As it turned out no they didn't, but a large truck was parked out the front with distressed sounding pigs, or maybe they were just "talkative"
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| pig truck |
So I went and knocked on the door and made my enquiries and was told that she had just disappeared, and they hadn't seen her either for ages. The kids were made rather sad by this news - as Monty was a very affectionate little cat, and even I had warmed to him/her. The reason for the gender confusion is that Fraser had christened "him" Monty and then we found out that "she" was Trixie. We still preferred to call him Monty though
Of course I did some general weeding around the front (no more painting today as Justin had to do his real work) and P & A did some gardening also
However during this time the boys were getting up to no good....Fire is obviously fascinating, and they had been refuelling my fire in the laundry and also poking sticks into it, and then poking those sticks into the wood piles on either side of the chimney. Luckily Alex saw them and told them off, then Justin told them off and finally I told them off right royally!. What was infuriating was that Fraser shrugged off the offence as trivial, of course it wouldn't have burnt the shed down etc - what's so dangerous about that etc . But I was furious - and made them do some chores as recompense
Of course they chose something potentially injurious to themselves. Wildly swinging the mattock (maybe some creative licence here by me) at a stubborn stump. I let them do this for a little while under my close supervision, but then I couldn't stand it any more, and got them to stop - once again with all extremities and limbs intact
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| stump princelings |
Had a late lunch, packed up and left around 4pm - but by this stage Fraser was grumbling quite a lot about leaving so late, which in effect made us leave even later ...
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