Love, bubs and life on our little farm

Not a lot of blogging going obviously but a whole lot of living going on instead!

Jase and I had a great time with our kid free weekend - we spoiled ourselves with a very grown up expensive three course lunch in a favourite mountain restaurant with views to the Gold Coast ocean (So not kid friendly and it took over 2 hours to eat and drink and chat, bliss), we slept, we shopped, we watched DVDs and ate bowls of home made chocolate mousse. And we finished with a day at Dreamworld where we got to take advantage of our annual passes to actually go on scary rides and completely avoid Wiggles World! It was fun to feel young again - to giggle together and run bare foot between water slides.

And of course picking up the girls and marvelling at how much they have changed in three days (they really do!) was the perfect ending. Jase spent a week of "holidays" demolishing our entry gates into our property and rebuilding it with a lovely post and rail fence. For an executive, he is becoming a dab hand at power tools and construction.

We had our drive around driveway and new carport area landscaped and resurfaced (pics to come) and Jase has spent whatever time he can grab, starting to put up the new post and rail fences around the new house extension which act as our fences between the house yards and the paddocks. Its all coming together - but slowly as we now have massive amount of edging to lay around our driveway areas, new garden beds to plant, a huge amount of retaining walls/planter boxes to buld into the hill and fences to finish, dog wire and some to paint. I am tired just writing it...

I am also in the market for new horse - Sam has had to be retired due to soreness in his foot bones. And shopping for a suitable competition horse is hard, stressful work and we are taking big money so you want to get it right! It takes up the whole weekend, travelling hours to view and trial horses and its an emtional rollercoaster dealing with all the different owners. You get a lot more emotionally invested than say buying a car. I feel a bit sick about the amount of money I am looking at spending too but I need a quality horse. Needless to say, I might be getting not much for Christmas this year! Though I have worked my butt off working that second job lecturing this semester which has at least contributed some extra money into the pot..

Work is severely understaffed at the moment (damn school holidays) and my Masters students are nearing the stressful finishing point. Add to this the fact that just about every bit of research I am doing at the moment is now required to be approved through a human ethics committee and I am feeling a bit frazzled... But busy is how I like to be! (thankfully!)