Love, bubs and life on our little farm

So since the house extension finished, our front driveway has looked a little sad - it was a major worksite for 5 months and had tonnes of crushed gravel etc dumped on it. The horse fences had all been pulled down to let the big machinery have access to the house and we had just put up temporary wire and star pickets, not a great look. Not to mention that we added new cut and fill to the edge of the house pad, which needed finishing off.

Jase and I walked the site for months, planning (and arguing as we always do about landscaping!) until we had decided on where to position the new post and rail fencing, where to put the fill, where to put new retaining walls, positions of new gardens and what we wanted out of resurfacing and changing the angles on the existing drive around driveway. We finally took the leap a month or so ago, as we wanted it all sorted before the Spring-Summer storms played havoc with mud and drainage.

A nearby neighbour, who is a dab hand on his earthmovers did the resurfacing and addition of fill to the edge of our house pad so we could finally access both bays of our new carport (yay!!). We had to change the colour of our decon-granite driveway as the old quarry had shut down but we are happy with the new colour thankfully.

And Jase has been working hard every weekend after his crazy long weeks of work and work trips (such a good sport) to construct lovely post and rail fences and new retaining wall/planter boxes to terrace the new fill drop off. Next on the list are a set of steps, a new garden and yet more retaining walls. If I am lucky, I get a horse wash bay built too - lovely!

It's looking good but there is so much more to do (not to mention the new entry fences Jase has also built for the top of our property that still need painting) - its always a work in progress really isn't it!

Here are some great Before and Afters - can't wait till the planter boxes are all filled with soil and planted in and the new garden is started!

I am a sucker for dusty pink and anything ladylike. So I am loving this sweet but elegant look from Witchery. I have some amazing pearl earrings that my Mum bought from the Met in New York and they would finish this look off perfectly. (I am not a fan of the bag though, I just can't do too matchy matchy).

This look is reminding me that I want a new crisp clean white button up shirt for Summer - the sleeveless look makes it that little bit less dressy which is always fun.

Thanks to mamamia for sharing these images from South African Marie Claire on body image. Of course the magazine completely ruined its good by using a model photoshopped to hell on the cover and had bikini diets and liposuction as topics *rolling eyes*

But some of the ads included inside were pretty good.

Saatchi

The Jupiter Drawing Room

Be kind to yourself today.

So its been a few months since I sold my competition horse and started training up my other horse, only to find that he has bone issues in his feet that means he can't be used for dressage or jumping. That left me with, well, no horse! So its been horse shopping time - a tough emotional journey, let alone expensive. You need to get to know the seller as well as you can, so that you can understand the horses background, the reasons for sale and all the little tidbits of "truth" that can be spotted through the sale pitch. It takes time, a lot of correspondence and in a lot of cases, you have to sell yourself also, as the better horses are normally only sold to approved homes. In all, I spoke to umpteen sellers, drove 100's of kms west and north, rode six different horses and organised two vet checks. I was reminded how small the world is, particularly the horse world in SE Qld is, where just about everyone knows everyone by a few degrees of separation. I agonised over a few horses - lost sleep over one in particular that was perfect except for one paddock vice that I ultimately and reluctantly had to decide was the deal breaker. And in the end, my farrier found my horse for me and I was only sold him due to the reference the farrier gave the seller (he wasn't even on the market yet), and ironically - he was located just 5 minutes down the road! He is all settled in here now and I am loving his beautiful nature. In a final fitting move, I had an email today from the people I sold Spech to telling me how well he is doing and how much they love him. So may I introduce Rae (yes terrible name for such a beautiful boy but he is yet to be given a show name). He is a 5 yr old thoroughbred, 16.1hh, trained for 8 months in eventing but still very young and very inexperienced which is perfect. I am looking forward to training him over the next few years and making him a lovely competition horse. He is gentle and sweet and loves the kids, although he tends to sneak up behind them, lowers his big head silently down behind their backs and blows air on them, making them jump terribly! How I have missed my horse riding - the physical muscle toning, the joy of doing something I just love for reasons I don't even understand and the mental challenge of teaching a half tonne beast to be light and responsive to the lightest touches. I am fitter and more relaxed already - bring it on!

Our first ride together

Settling in at home

So I am going to a special viewing of the movie "I Don't Know How She Does It" next week. It was a favourite book of mine, so I am hopeful that the movie will be fun.

It is about a career woman juggling family and her career, in the words of some reviewers, a woman "trying to have it all". Something, I can relate to and the book resonated with me for sure, particularly as her and her husband get spread incredibly thin between their two careers.

What made me laugh a little ironically, is that the pre-movie event starts at 6pm and I have been racking my brain on how to leave work early for the second time that week (can be near impossible depending on emergency work etc), juggle getting the kids home, feed the animals, hand the kids over for babysitting since Jase is on an interstate work trip and get to the venue in time to get my tickets and somehow not still be dressed in my work clothes. Somehow I am sure I will manage it but I am quite sure watching the main character perform similar juggling acts in the movie to varying success, will probably cut a little close to the bone!

So, living on a property with little kids when your partner has a busy job that has long hours and a lot of travel associated with it - well it is kind of a catch-22, his well paid career is the reason why we can own a lovely acreage and afford for me to have competition horses but it also makes my life that much harder too.

I don't come home in the evenings from a long day at work and just have to worry about feeding hungry grumpy kids and ourselves. Instead I have to convince said kids that they can wait whilst I desperately try to stop them from either screaming at the front door if they stay inside or getting into trouble/danger/water/rat poison/snakes and-or spiders if they are outside with me, while running around mixing up horse feeds, dashing through dark paddocks feebly lit by spotlights, locking up chickens and generally accounting for the state of the place and fences after being away all day. Makes for that extra fun in the evening and typically makes getting dinner for the kids that much later, its a busy couple of hours...

Ditto for mornings where our alarm goes off at 5.30am or earlier so that we can feed all the animals their breakfast and still get to work at a reasonable hour.

Other things are just that much harder too - gardening - we have so much more garden space to manage and keep clean, mowing is a good three hour job just to do around the house, let alone the driveway and main entrance.. even the groceries - we have to shop at the produce store as well as the usual grocer and greengrocer and fit bags of pellets and grain into the back of the cars.

You have to train your kids as soon as they start crawling about snakes. I must look like an idiot but with both kids I have stood in zoo snake houses, holding the kids up to the glass, repeating "yukky, dangerous, NO" ! Considering there was a small brown snake sliding through the kids shoes on the shoe rack on the front verandah the other day, this is a necessary lesson.

With Jase away alot, and my nearest family 2 hours away, I have a fear of something happening to me, like a freak accident with a horse kicking me during feed time and knocking me out in the paddock, leaving my two kids under four alone. No one would know - the kids can't ring out for help yet (we are working on Elka, she can give our address etc) and no one exactly can pass by our secluded property to notice, it worries me to think of what could happen to t he girls (Jase always points out that maybe I should be worried about myself also but I always forget that bit -aahh mothers!). So with Jase being overseas at the same time as I hve a new horse who is a bit of a unknown as far as behaviour, I organised for my parents to call me each evening at 6.30pm to check I was answering the phone and therefore safe and well inside. Worked well - except for the other day, when a storm created chaos on the roads making me very late home and my mobile battery died so my parents were getting no answer either the home phone or the mobile and were starting to get ready to panic! Whoops.

And storms - that is a whole different kettle of fish on a property - you lose the power much more often, it takes longer to get put back on (why would be we be a priority really!? never mind that we are all on tank water that needs power to deliver water into our homes) and you have bleeding big trees falling down around you. I for some reason,  always cop the worst storms when Jase is not around - including one last year where some paddocks had lost nearly every tree. So true to form - today we copped a whopper, well we had had two storms already by 3.30pm (love Spring!) and I happened to look out the laundry door to the South and saw this moving unbelievable fast right over us. It was scary.
Yeah life is that bit harder on a property but sometimes its a little bit sweeter too!

So I am over half way through my single-parenting-whilst-other-parent-is-on-the-other-side-of-the-world gig and the metal game is most of the battle. I have had this discussion with a friend whose husband spends a lot of time overseas and also doesn't have any family living close by for help and she feels the same. Your fuse with the kids is that much shorter and your nerves so much more raw, because deep down you know there is no rescue, no one to sweep in and say "you have been trying to get get the toddler to bed for 1 hour, sit down while I take over", no extra hands to pick up, wipe or tidy the messes. And that little bit of knowledge is always in the back of your mind and it makes you tired, so tired just one hour into the day. And trust me you won't understand fully, even if you think you do, if you have family living in the same town. Knowing help if just a phone call away can make all the difference.

So, I have been caring for my new horse, squeezing my job into the shortest hours possible, spending the nights preparing for assessing a students PhD project, working out how to get to a 7am work function with two kids in tow, worrying over a sick chicken, dealing with an emotional little girl missing her dad and pushing the boundaries, balancing a sick one year old, running the house and farm and minding all the small but essential things like broken hearing aids and yearly hay orders. Doing this all on about 5 hours sleep and I can't remember the last time I sat on our lounge. Tired.

And Jase is staying in a $1000 night Parisian hotel, being wined and dined after his Business class flights. Not to mention that I am getting formal style emails from him such as "we will  find a mutually convenient time to phone" - seems I am just another email being squeezed into his work emailing time slots and he is forgetting to drop the professional persona. Way to make a girl feel special. Oh and then in another email, he told me that he was too busy to be missing me and the girls! Hmmm the city of love clearly isn't working on my husband...

But he is a romantic deep down - he jogged through the the the cold evening light to revisit our hotel and little restaurants we ate in, when we stayed in Paris and sent me a picture.And he told me one day, he wanted us to be staying at the Ritz, with me alighting from a black town car laden down with shopping bags. Yeah that won him a few brownie points!

Though for now the only shopping I have planned, is Kmart for some new shoes for the girls!

I hate wishing my life away but I am definitely counting down until  Jase is back - though he has numerous other work trips lined up for the next few weeks, they are much less intense when he is only 1000kms away.

I love life. I really do. I believe in living every minute and I jam as much in as I can. I can count the number  times I have napped during the day, other than being sick, on one hand, even with pregnancies and newborns. I just have too much that I want to do to sleep!

Our life is always interesting - the status quo is organised chaos generally. I was only commenting the other day, how much I love that something new and challenging always pops up. For me that day, an email with a great offer for something career related had come in - something that showed to me that I am cementing a reputation in my scientific field.

But Jase trumped that! Today he got a phone call from work - they want him to fly to Paris... tomorrow!! Business class no less and a 5 start hotel to boot. Life certainly does keep it interesting!

I would love to go with him but alas I spent a vast amount of money on a new horse only the day before...(that post is coming!) and someone has to mind the animal, farm and kids!

So the work widow gig it is for me and a dream trip for Jase. Its going to be a long week or so but I can guarantee it won't be boring!

So I just spent a weekend away at the beach - swimming in both the pool and the gorgeous teal waves at the beach. Not only that but Bronte joins Elka in taking weekly swimming lessons, like most Aussie kids, this coming weekend. So I know its that time of year when I am going to be spending a lot of time in my swimsuit.

I have a million bikinis but my most recent purchase is a red polka dot string bikini from Seafolly. However, the string factor isn't that compatible with two little kids constantly holding and grabbing onto you in the water - although my husband would disagree as he seems to quite enjoy watching me struggle to hold onto floating away pieces of fabric!

More and more I am thinking a gorgeous retro one piece would be perfect for this season. Well it seems Witchery agrees with me. Check out their new release swimsuits - drool, I will take one of each! (well not really at that price, one will be sufficient!)

Despite being a scientist who follows experimental protocols (or develops them) and does pretty well at it, I am a terrible cook. I would think that following a recipe would be much the same thing but after concentrating all day, I just tend to not take cooking too seriously and wander off recipes and change ingredients or don't adhere to times. However, I just made these (and didn't follow the recipe exactly lol) and they have turned out beautifully and are absolutely delicious!! I couldn't recommend them more.

Vanilla Chai Tea Cupcakes

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!)

So my lovely parents have swept the girls away for four days of spoiling on their farm. Which leaves Jase and I four days together as just a couple. Always nice to remind yourself how you operated as that dynamic. And just how easy life really was back then!

We were originally going to spoil ourselves in a hotel or a resort somewhere. But at some point, we realised, that we love our gorgeous home and never get to just sit and relax in it. We are always caring for the girls, working long hours and working on the property. So... we are holidaying at home - we have stacks of DVDs rented, a huge TV with surround sound that we have only watched movies on a handful of times, a cosy new bedroom with views over the dam into the misty gum trees, champagne in the fridge, fruit ready for a platter and the ingredients for a decadent chocolate mousse. Aaahh sleep-ins, DVDs during the day and over eating and drinking, tick tick tick!

And I might have to lecture tomorrow (yay last lecture for the semester!) but we are turning that into a shopping/movies/dinner out in the city evening, so even that will be a pleasure.

Kids certainly make you appreciate the little things and oh how I am loving these little things :)

My big little one, Miss Elka is growing up. She has her school orientation day on Thursday and we can't quite believe we will be there discussing uniforms and school bags.Just to confuse you - it is the Qld system which is "pre-prep" or "kindergarten" according to the new national curriculm and we took the step of enrolling her as the youngest in her year as she is born on the cut off month.  Since she can already write and read the alphabet and basic words and is a confident bright little thing that daycare already puts in pre-prep a few times a week, we are comfortable with this decision. She will probably be less impressed when she is the last in her year to be able to drive,get into nightclubs and so on. But Jase and I were young in our years and survived (admittedly for me with a fake ID!)

She is so excited about "big school". I am less so - her private school is about 15 mins from our place but in the opposite direction to my work and Bronte's daycare. Its going to make my morning and afternoon commutes even sillier, sigh. But I am not really complaining as making sure she is there and safe is of course so important and I feel blessed that I can drive her to our choice of school.

Most of the time she adores being at daycare 4 days a week and asks to go more days sometimes.  I do as much as I can to give lots of love and attention in the mornings and evenings, and I love picking them up and being hugged and kissed and dragged around to look at the new art/baby chickens/new friends.

But tonight, I was whispering "secrets" in her ear to distract her into the bath, like "Bronte's nappy smells" and "I love you", well she pushed the hair back from my ear and leant in and whispered "I wish I could have a day off with you" with the most vulnerable little look on her face.

Ouch. I mean she does currently - we have our lovely Fridays together every week. But with school looming as 5 days a week next year, it did pang a little in my heart.

Growing up is hard. And its only just beginning for her.... and me

Our two male ducks we were sold to keep our old pet duck company turned out to be a breeding pair. Oops! So Snowy is now sitting on a nest of eleven eggs in our geranium planter box in our laundry courtyard. I am pleased that she has the instinct to pick something so close to the house and reasonably sheltered as she will be safer from the foxes and spring storms. But at the same time I am a little overwhelmed by the thought of that many new ducks and the amplification over the next few years directly caused by introducing new male and female ducks into the mix. So as reluctant as jase and I are to do it, we will selectively clear her eggs tomorrow morning, leaving her with four. If they all hatch and survive, then three to go to my parents farm and one for us.

You have a lot more tough decisions to make when you live on property and sometimes you wish there was someone to do the hard stuff for you. But then you suck it up and do it. And you only get stronger and more grounded for it. Dealing with venomous snakes, dispatching rat bodies, organizing for your horses body to be buried by an excavator (no cardboard box under the flower garden for a half tonne horse I am afraid), tracing feathers and drag marks to work out where your pet chicken has been taken to it's death by a fox. You are a little closer to death on a farm then the suburbs most days. But it's just that reminder to live life a little harder and little fuller and with more love very day. And my girls are growing up learning that from the get go.

And I wouldn't have it any other way. Spring time fluffy ducklings hatching in their back garden are just one of the many bonuses!

We normally have a few getaways to our family beach house and get a few nice long weekends in but in the last few months life has been hectic and we haven't been able to find the time to justify a weekend away. Sad but true.

So we were in desperate need of a break. Fortunately we had snappled some cheap flights to Sydney earlier in the year and booked a nice central hotel with lovely buffet breakfast every morning. Nothing super fancy but definitely a refreshing getaway! It was so nice to be at the airport with my loved ones, rather than the usual flying away from them on a work trip, that we both tend to do.

It was the girls first time flying and they both had a ball. They were great little travellers albeit quiet and wide eyed looking a little country mouse about planes and trains!

Of course Elka loved the hotel pool most (remember how exciting a hotel with a pool was when you were little?) so we had to swim every day. But we also found time for yum cha in Chinatown, the aquarium, the zoo (complete with ferry ride or "fairy" ride if you ask Elka), the Powerhouse museum, the David Jones marketplace (yum!), shoe shopping for me, sparkling wine with a harbourside lunch, catch ups with friends and family and gorgeous dinners at Darling Harbour. We managed to keep the kids out late one night having dinner with some old friends and they got to see their first live fireworks - a little scary and both wanted their ears covered but overall a winner!

Jase and I even managed to watch a movie at night and score some "sleep-ins" (parent style ones not real ones).

And isn't it nice to come home and appreciate it - for me the space and lack of crowds and bustle is a blessed relief. I am home looking after a sick Elka today and I am soaking up the endless green grass and trees and unobstructed blue sky.

Refreshed indeed. But already keen to plan another holiday!