Love, bubs and life on our little farm

It has been a busy year - no where as crazy as last year with the whole having a baby and extending our house but still very intense.

It has been Year of the Career - with both Jase and I dealing with promotions and really throwing ourselves into being the best. I went back from Maternity leave to find myself made head of a lab with three scientists and one technician to manage... part time. I bumped my work days up to 4 and with overtime etc I have been working well over 5 days of hours a week. Jase has had a lot of national, international and statewide travel - sometimes on one to two work trips a week. I have learnt to juggle the two girls, long hours at my work, the farm and working at night and despite a number of people telling me it wasn't sustainable, have been fine although it has involved learning to function on 6 hours sleep a night.

We have taken our house extension/renovation from new and empty to a lovely homely house - staining decks and french doors, adding furniture, wall hangings and electrical items, putting up curtains, landscaping driveways, planting new gardens and building over 20 metres of new retaining walls. Our home and land are lovely, it is know everything we dreamed it could be five years ago when we bought it (besides the pool, outdoor woodfired pizza oven/kitchen and extended horse arena that are our next dream projects) and I am so content when I walk around soaking up the peace and quiet of the snowy gum trees waving over our dams.

Before

After (and curtains have been added since!)

I sold my competition horse as his bad hoof was just not holding up to the unforgiving hard paddocks on our property. He is now a much loved Pony Club horse on the Sunshine Coast and looks wonderful. I had a difficult hunt for a new horse, requiring 100kms of driving, vet checks and aborted sales before I finally found the perfect horse 5 minutes down the road, unadvertised, sold through word of mouth of a horse friend.

We had our first flying holiday with the girls to Sydney and Jase and I enjoyed some weekends away to ourselves thanks to my parents babysitting. I visited Tasmania for a conference, Jase had a surprise work trip to Paris. We had interstate friends come and stay and have planned a number of trips for next year already. We threw a New Years party to kick off the year, hosted our combined 30th Birthday party and had a Teddy Bears Picnic themed Birthday for the girls 1st and 3rd Birthdays.

The girls have grown and grown. Bronte has  changed from a 6 month old baby barely crawling to a independent communicating 18 month old. We have taken her through hearing aid fittings, umpteen hearing tests, endless speech pathology and a general anaesthetic cat scan on her head. She is developing on target for a child of her age with normal hearing, and that is all we can ask for. We have been through all the preparation for Elka to start school in a short three weeks - hard to believe we are that stage.

The difference a year makes

The girls have discovered what it means to have a sister - being the best of friends and the worst of enemies. I love having two little kids rather than babies - they constantly delight me with their little quirks and funny mannerisms. I am excited to watch them both continue to develop into little people in the next year.

Sisters

We were blessed with good health - my broken finger is as serious as our injuries and sickness have been. We were spared the worst of the SE Qld floods thanks to a new dam being built on our river system the year before. We did suffer some trees down in some severe storms but no structural damage.

Life has been very good to us. We work damn hard for it but we wholeheartedly appreciate all that we do have. I believe in siezing every moment and making the most of it. And I can say we truly have done that this year.

2012 is a year concentrating on our health - we want to make sure we are eating fresh foods, concentrating on balanced nutrition and taking time for exercise. We have a lovely holiday to the Great Barrier Reef planned for our wedding anniversary (7 years!) and another couples-only weekend away booked for a friends wedding. We are planning on taking the kids on a family trip to Canberra and surrounds to see old friends. We are also thinking of another short trip to Sydney. Jase and I both have work trips already booked for the first few months of 2012 and of course more to come, our careers are only advancing not slowing down. I have a number of publications currently submitted and more to write. I have two Masters students to supervise as well as all my staff. I plan to get this finger healed and get some time to compete my new horse. We have plenty more landscaping plans for the property and gardens to fill with plants. Elka starts school and I have to adapt my working schedule to accomodate this somewhat. Bronte will turn two and we will face the parenting challenges that come with that.

But right now - well its time to get off the computer and get into a party dress as we will be heading to a New Years Party very soon!

Happy New Year to all my followers :) Thank you for all of your support and great comments xoxo

So prior to Christmas I had a fall whilst showjumping - I ended up with a mild concussion that included nausea, passing out and blurred vision and speech. I also had a terribly sore and swollen finger from getting it caught in the reins as I fell. I am no stranger to falling from horses - showjumping and Cross Country tends to result in higher chances of falls during high speed air-bourne maneuvers. But I tend to land on my feet - years of practice you could say! So I was yet to have a fall on the hard clay paddocks we have here. And now that I have, I discovered two things - One, its way harder than the soft volcanic soil of the Byron Hinterland where I grew up and Two, you just don't bounce like you did when you were a teenager!

  So I tucked myself into bed expecting to feel better in the morning, like I always did. And I did - the concussion anyway! But my finger only got worse, so swollen the skin was pulled tight and shiny and it turned black and red. I have a high pain threshold but I was struggling to do things with the girls and the farm and with looming public holidays, I decided it was time to visit a GP clinic. Long story short, he immediately sent me for X-rays, where they found a fracture in the middle joint and I was sent to hospital to check for tendon damage. I was in a sling and bound up. I "rested" as much as any mother of little kids on a farm who is hosting Christmas can (ie not much) and got increasingly frustrated at the constant pain and lack of improvement in the finger.

I was asked to visit the outpatient clinic today at the hospital and the orthopedic registrar was also not impressed with the state of the finger. So off I went for more X-rays, more waits and more orthopedic consultants. Lo and behold, they found that in the top joint, the tendon had torn from the bone and pulled away a piece of bone at the same time. A "mallet fracture"
Untreated - it results in a permanent droop and bend in the finger as the tendon is over stretched and won't reattach properly. Treatment - 6-8 weeks of being splinted and taped, that CANNOT be removed, not even for showers. One bend of the finger without the splint in that 6-8 weeks puts you back at day 0 with 6-8 weeks of treatment again. Wow. This is going to be tough. It is my right hand and I am a molecular biologist - all I do is write formulas and calculations, pipette tiny volumes, open small tubes, handle highly infectious bacteria wearing tight gloves (double layers!) and write reports and documents. Nevermind that I have two kids under four and a farm full of animals, including my new young horse in training. And my birthday, wedding anniversary and two beach holidays away in that time. Aaarrrghh.

The pain of the finger being bent straight is nothing to the pain of being told you are useless and can't do anything. Sigh.

Of course, could be way worse. But definitely not what I had planned for my two weeks of holidays!

Life always has a way of throwing you something unexpected!

Broken finger and all, it was a gorgeous Christmas. It all started with a peaceful Christmas Eve (although Jase and I were exhausted from a very stressful night before - but that is a whole blog post in itself!), with family arriving all day to settle in for the celebrations. Our farm work and landscaping was completed and we enjoyed grabbing a few last minute groceries, soaking up the chaos and christmas spirit before settling onto the deck for sparkling wine and cheese platters.

We tucked two super excited girls into bed at a respectable hour before we knuckled down to cooking the Christmas dessert (me) and constructing the piece de resistance Santa present, the trampoline (Jase and the other men). I found the horses in the dark paddock to get them to leave bite marks in the carrots left out for the reindeer and cajoled my Dad into eating the bright green xmas tree biscuit Elka had left out for Santa. Jase and I marvelled at just how much we had spoilt the kids when we packed up their Santa sacks and stockings before we all fell exhausted into bed.

It was delightful to be woken by the happy voice of Elka exclaiming that Santa had bought her bubbles, but it wasn't so delightful that it was 5.20am! However, we somewhat blearily watched the girls dig through their presents, laughing at Miss Elka peering into her Santa sack and announcing that "oh Santa hasn't given me a trampoline". We constructed an excuse to get her to the back door where she stood in shock looking at her shiny new trampoline before turning to us with tears in her eyes - it was beautiful.

We had Jase's family tradition of ham and eggs for breakfast (doesn't go quite so well with my family tradition of a two course hot lunch but I guess excess is somewhat suitable at Christmas!) before finally tucking into the massive pile of presents overflowing far from under the tree. I was spoilt with a great new laptop, Peter Alexander Pjs, a one-off handmade art-deco bracelet, perfume, dayspa voucher, Horseland voucher, expensive eye cream, books and so on, so on.

My big hot lunch was a success - the lemon and garlic butterflied lamb was the biggest hit although the turkey served with roasted plums was a pretty close second, the fetta, pancetta and green bean side was delicious and the Christmas trifle was lovely. The french champagne way too easy to drink and we settled in for an afternoon of chatting and laughing at the girls playing with their million and one presents.

We finished the celebrations with Boxing Day at the sales (I scored a great Cue dress and some lovely Forever New shoes for over 50% off). And we are now throughly enjoying the quiet of our holidays, we have hit the beach, met with friends and have plans to spend tomorrow at Dreamworld as a treat for the girls. I can't believe it is almost time to think about New Years! I haven't even picked an outfit for the party we are going to!

Christmas is just magical with little kids and I was ever mindful of just how lucky I am to have such a peaceful celebration with my healthy family. Sometimes I feel like I can't contain my appreciation, like my heart is just overflowing.

Such a blessed Christmas.