Love, bubs and life on our little farm

I had a tough old day at work - learning the ropes of management when people are 30 years older than you and very resistant to.... well everything, makes for a long tough meeting that I was chairing. Being a scientist means I am great at locking myself away in a lab and researching alone or typing away writing scientific papers in solitude and even guiding students or training others in techniques is fine, but managing others careers day in day out, office politics and dealing with all the government red tape takes some getting used to.

So when I am feeling drained, shopping and fashion is my best pick me up (that and my horses but that is not such a crash hot area at the moment!). Today I treated myself to a pair of cute ballet flats with pointed toe and buckles on them (I am partial to a buckle decal on a shoe I must confess) in black. Classic and perfect for wearing with my cropped skinny pants.

And how about some cute Forever New dresses to lift the soul - I love the little white lace dresses that are around at the moment. Portmans are doing a cute one too.


And the Age of Innocence collection by Forever New has a number of dresses I would happily wear to a summer beachside wedding I have coming up early next year.


And now back to planning my wardrobe to pack for our Sydney trip - seems jeans are going to be the go thanks to some temperatures that look too low for my Qld bones! SHame as I did have some cute skirts and dresses picked out!

Unfortunately I don't mean literally. Sam is still lame despite his therapeutic shoeing - it can take longer but I was hoping to see an improvement already. I am preparing for the worst and we are in discussions about the best budget and key attributes that I might need from a new horse. I am not very excited - buying a competition horse is a pretty painful laborious process.

But I am feeling better and back to my usual self thankfully. So we spent the day soaking up the hot (!) sun and pottering around the property doing spring cleaning and jobs. We have had buckets of rain in the last week and the grass is green, a bloom has been washed off our main dam and the place just looks divine.

We started the day with home laid eggs on toast, Elka and I cooked banana muffins made with home grown bananas, lunch was full of sage picked from our own herb garden and we plucked green and red striped lillies out of the garden to decorate the house. It was definitely one of those days where living on acreage is worth every minute of the extra chores, commute and cost.

And now I am alternating between packing and panicking about our family holiday to Sydney in four days time. I have always holidayed with the girls in the car so I can pile up as much stuff as I want. But this time we are flying and confining everything to one or two suitcases is doing my head in! But the aquarium tickets are booked, the zoo is organised and we have catch ups with old friends and family sorted so its going to be good, even if I have to buy a million forgotten things when we get there!

Yes probably an alarming statement when you work as an infectious diseases scientist! But what I really mean is that I am so run down that a virus that seems to have passed through the girls and Jase has absolutely floored me.

I had the worst week at work - my two bosses above me and a fellow scientist of another section where all away so I was unofficially holding down a lot of each of their responsibilities before I found out I had three full days of in laboratory training for our new Next Generation Sequencer (yes so cool - a whole bacterial genome sequenced in three hours!) which I had to balance alongside all of my other work plus working on my second job as a uni lecturer at night. So it was long stressful days. Cue my last day of work for the week and I was nauseous, could barely swallow my throat was so sore and started shaking controllably. I had to work late regardless and by the time it came to go home, I was starting to doubt if I had the presence of mind to get home safely (disadvantage of living semi-rural and having a long drive home!). I made it home and my muscles were so sore from hours of uncontrollable shaking, I collapsed in bed and have spent the last 24 hours there resting.

And resting is what my body really needs. Its been a long couple of months and I think I have come close to falling down.

But how I adore my amazing husband who without a word of complaint has minded the girls single handed whilst caring for the farm for the last day to let me rest. Who cancelled no less than four meetings to stay home today, took the girls out for hours to let me have some peace and quiet and then came home with roses to cheer me up. There are no words to describe how lucky I feel to have that sort of love and support.

I have to confess I have still spent a few hours doing uni lecture work from bed on my laptop but I am still feeling a lot more rested and ever so hopeful that after a goods night sleep I will be well enough to get to enjoy the weekend with my little ones.

With kids in the house we generally hate stains, but this time it was for good! We finally (yes the house extension was handed over to us by December 2010) stained our sliding french doors that splits the study and parents retreat lounge room. It was good to finally tick it off the the to-do list. Next up is getting our driveway and edge of the house fill landscaped with heavy machinery - quote is sorted so hopefully not long!

Sometimes your ducks all line up. This week has been like that for me. A reminder that hard work, little sleep and a lot of stress pays off. My ninth scientific paper was published - I cant wait to crack those double figures (my next big goal). And I did two long two hour uni lectures in an undergraduate infectious diseases course that went down really well. There is something really rewarding about having a huge lecture theatre of students looking interested in your research field, asking lots of questions, lining up afterwards to chat and ask if you will be their masters supervisor. It's nice to feel like you are getting things right and that you are across your career.

And even nicer to come home to little ones racing out the door to give you cuddles and tell you about their afternoon at the park with Nanny and Poppy. Work life balance? Yeah it exists.

Its a constant battle in our house to get the weekends right. We need to balance swimming lessons, farm work, gardening, kids parties, social outings, horse events, cooking, shopping and little gifts and splurges of family time. I can tell you what doesn;t fit in there - sleep or rest! We aren't the sort of family to have late mornings, watch tv or laze around with no plans - most probably because that is not the sort of person I am and I think everyone else follows my example.

But regardless, the weekends are recharging, rewarding and full of laughs.

This weekend was a good one - we watched Elka swim in a full set of clothes for Swim Safety week, we made our backs ache as we sanded and stained two french doors for our lounge room, we mowed and tidied the gardens preparing for the new growth of spring that is promised in the warmth of the sun. We cooked slices, muffins, creamy soup and pasta dotted with fresh herbs from the garden. We took the girls walking through the paddocks searching for wallabies and koalas as we measured up and planned new gates for our road entrance. We laughed at the horse galloping away from me with a loaded syringe of medicine. We ate out for lunch and smiled at the girls licking ice cream cones in happy silence. We took the girls strawberry picking in the golden sunshine and laughed at Bronte stealing huge strawberries from the basket to gnaw on like apples. And we delighted in finally getting some welcome rain to green the grass and fill our tanks, even if it came as the first storm of the season complete with hail, overflowing gutters and a shrieking overexcited three year old. We also had nights of work to do - Jase found me asleep sitting up with my hands in typing position on the laptop keyboard late one night. Oh how I can't wait to finish my uni lecturing for this semester -taking on a second job right at the moment was not my best plan.






Busy as we might always be, I wouldn't change it for the world (hmm OK I would throw a few sleep-ins in!)

Hope your weekend was brimming full of good stuff xo

As a mum with a career (hehe I go to great lengths to use any term other than working mother - I mean what mother doesn't work day-in day-out regardless of whether she is at a paying job or not!), life is a bit of a squeeze. I try to fit in all that I can. And for my little ones, this might mean that work days have less play and more go-go but Jase and I still try to make sure there is time to colour and learn letters and laugh and sing in there.

I think a lot of busy mums juggling jobs have those little "things" that they prioritise, things that make them feel like they are still cherishing and nourishing their children despite probably working themselves to the bone in the meanwhile. That act that when everything is exhausting and stressful, makes you feel like you are still doing alright...

For me, it is important that my kids go to daycare with home cooked food. Not only that but food I have cooked with them, so their lunch is all wrapped up with nice memories. So Sunday afternoons Elka teeters on a foot stool next to me as we measure and stir and pour. She is a brilliant cook after literally years of helping me - she can measure out a full cup of flour, she can roll out balls of biscuit dough, she loves to brush egg on pastry and she did a great job of crumbing chicken tenderloins the other night.

This past weekend, we cooked fat fluffy pikelets, Bronte leant down out of my arms and carefully flipped the pikelets over with her egg-flip whilst Elka carefully moved the cooked ones out onto a plate. We grated zucchini and carrot and cracked our home-laid eggs to cook a zucchini slice for their lunchboxes. And that makes me smile when I tiredly divy up little containers of food at night, mentally counting up to make sure they each have enough food packed for the next day.

Elka's favourite recipe at the moment are these jam drops - this mix is quite shortbready, keeps really well and are delicious hot and sticky out of the oven. Plus rolling the mix and spooning in the teaspoons of jam is just great for little hands.


Do you have a thing? Something that you like to make sure gets done, that makes you feel like all your ducks are still in a row and that you are coping with it all?

Its getting springlike and I feel the need to move out of all of my stockings and knee high boots. I am instead liking the thoughts of dresses, short full skirts and pencil cropped pants - all of which are already sitting in my cupboard just waiting to be worn in this golden warm air. But of course they need some cute shoes to keep the look fresh.

And what else but wedges? I have been on the look out for nice ones but it seems most stores are still desperately trying to discount and sell their winter shoe lines first... but I was at the checkout of Kmart the other day, buying Elka socks and undies - glamorous right?! The cutely dressed girl in front of me handed over some wedges to pay for. One - they were super hot wedges and Two - they were all of $25. Well I couldn't have reversed that pram out of that checkout line faster and I hot footed over to the shoe section where I found a heap of choices. There is nothing I love more than paying bottom dollar for a fashion trend that will be out as quickly as it's in.

Even better I scored a little black dress with pleated details on the way out discounted to $12. And both my cheapo purchases got jazzed up with a blazer, belt and statement necklace for a lovely girls day out at a High Tea today. The wedges were super comfy and I only fell off them once which I was quite happy with as they are pretty high!

These aren't the ones I bought - I am too lazy to get a picture of them and Kmart hasn't obliged by having them in their latest catalogue. But hey these are cute too!


On my wish list is also a pair of cute tan wedges for wearing with floral skirts and dresses and denim shorts. I like the casual feel of these from Wittner and even better they are currently on sale!

X-rays on my horse - that is how I spent the afternoon. Almost as expensive as Bronte's GA and CT scan. Sam has been showing a mild lameness for the last month or so and since it wasn't improving, we decided to get it checked so I can decide if I continue with him or put him back in the paddock to be a lawnmower slash pet.

In good news - his lameness is most likely treatable, in bad news it is his hooves. So I have moved from one horse that had problem hooves to another. Thoroughbreds are renowned for terrible feet and my last two horses have been prime examples of this.

Oh well - at least I am already seeing the therapeutic farrier as my normal farrier, he has the x-rays emailed to him and we can only do our best to fix Sam.

Fingers crossed he is back in work in a month or so, as according to the dressage instructor and the vet, he is worth the effort...

is anything that involves your little one and hospital. Today we had to take Bronte in for a CT scan on her head to check her ear structure in light of her permanant hearing loss. The trick being at her age, she has to have the scan under general anaesthetic.

It was a tricky day, I had been dreading the logistics of it for weeks - we had to be at a hospital that is 45 mins away by 6.45am and it was nil by mouth for Bronte. It was too early to take Elka to daycare so she came along. So... we dressed them and threw them in the car by 5.45am and due to not wanting to torture Bronte by consuming food or drink infront of her, we all had to fast. Yes even Elka! But getting there was only half the battle - despite being private,we still were warned we had a pretty big wait in front of us. And wait we did, in no less than four different waiting rooms as we were shunted along the production line.

But my beautiful girls were angels, playing quietly and never once whinging about hunger or thirst despite having been awake for over four hours without anything.

I got to take Bronte into the scan and help hold her down while they put her under. I handled all that OK but having to walk out without her carrying her little shoes and socks and her beloved bunny, was painful and my chest burnt with pain and my eyes were welling. And she was under for a lot longer than they had expected so the wait was extra tough. I couldnt walk any faster to get back in there when they said she was in recovery and seeing her wailing and thrashing with her eyes still heavy could only be dealt with by sweeping her up with big cuddles despite the cords. Fortunately, they have great policies for little ones, and I got to hold her on the hospital bed for the next 1.5 hours whilst she recovered - good for her and me!

They had to keep her under for so much longer as they had to take 10mL of blood and it took five different sites on her body to get it, poor little thing was covered in cotton wool and tape,as well as the bandage for the canula.



Much to the nurses shock, Bronte recovered her (large) appetite instantly and sqawked and gobbled herself through a huge yoghurt, a full cup of water, a vegemite sandwich, some homemade savoury muffins, a cup of milk and a couple of packets of snak jatz crackers! She certainly bounced back!

We rewarded our well behaved little girls with a trip to a big nearby park and a well deserved fast breaking lunch out.

I hadn't realised how tense I must have been until this afternoon when I almost crashed from exhaustion. So glad it is all over and now to wait for the results...

Hot

My new hair - loving being a redhead again! And its so short it naturally goes wavy which means I can get away with going to bed with it wet and then not brushing it and it looks styled. Score.

Work - am just loving my new expanded team of scientists. I finally have the capability to achieve so many of my dream projects. The flipside is that as their manager I am now snowed under with admin tasks and research management to keep the lab running so I don't get as much bench time as I would like. Oh and I over reached and agreed to take on two masters students at the same time - whoops, there goes any free time I did have!

My new reading glasses - I got two pairs and they are cats eye shapes which are so cute. COnsidering my last pair of glasses were bought in my first year of my PhD 9 years ago, I think an updated frame was well overdue!

Looking forward to having a gorgeous high tea with some of my fave friends this coming weekend. I love any excuse to dress up and drink champagne!

The days are getting longer!! So excited about this - soon I may not have to feed the animals and rug the horse in pitch black under floodlights. Something to be said about the light coming early in the morning and late in the evenings.


Not

My poor bubba Bronte having to have a general anaesthetic in hospital for a CT scan on Thursday. I am dreading it - not only because of the risks of the GA and the heartbreak of putting her through that and having to see her being taken away but because they want us at the hospital at 6.45am (its a 45 min drive for us to get there also) but its then a "cattle call" where we all wait in the waiting room and get called in by age order.... so she could have a long wait or a short wait depending on the ages of the other kids. Oh and did I mention she is nil by mouth from the night before - she is going to LOVE being stuck in a waiting room with no milk, water or breakfast. Hmm maybe I will be glad to see her taken away for the procedure after that!

My horse situation - I just can't adjust to only having one horse. I have never owned just one - they are a herd animal and I love having two keeping each other company. Sam seems OK with being alone - he is a bit stoic and aloof at the best of times. But it feels weird. AND Sam has developed a lameness at the trot. The dressage instructor I was riding with this past weekend is ever so hopeful that it is bridle lameness (caused by his inexperience - which his continuing training would rectify) but I am not so confident. So I have the equine vet booked in for Friday to come and assess him - she is packing the X ray machine, so hopefully we can get to the bottom of it (sounds cheap right!? Got to love horses sigh). I am tipping an old racing injury that has probably re-emerged with the hard training he has been in since I started work on him. Competition work is too demanding for an unsound horse so alas this could be the end for him as my comp horse. WHich sends me back to the drawing board - namely shopping for a new horse (uurgh so stressful and daunting)

Why oh why did I agree to take on extra lecturing this semester. Its a horrible course (ie they want lots from me rather than just letting me turn up and talk) and the extra lectures are not even in my field of expertise. So I get to spend nights when I am normally getting extra work done for my job, juggling research for these new lectures. Forehead slap for me and my urge to always take on any career opportunity.

The fact that Jase and I just cannot get our work diaries to align so that we can take a few days off kids free to have a mini-holiday. My parents are ready to babysit, we just can;t find any days for the next few months that don't have one or the other of us commited. Sigh, romance is a tight squeeze in the life of two workaholic professionals it seems.