It's 7.30 on a Sunday morning and himself had to get up at 4am and go to work, so after a little doze I decided that it was about time I got back into all of this.  It doesn't matter that no-one else reads it because it actually feels quite good to sit down and express myself.  I was laying in bed thinking what on earth can I write, at times my life seems almost boring, but then I went through all the things that have happened in the last few months.  Himself has got a job driving trucks and is also doing a training course which hopefully will mean a teaching job at the end of it so that the rest of his working life will be a little easier on the old body.  Our eldest daughter, who you will know from her blog, Inspired Kate, has done remarkably well with her photos.  She's won the top prizes at our local fair and has got a lot of interest off the net, does local school and family photos and for a girl whose photography claim to fame was taking lots of different shots of her feet and the sky, she really has achieved.  Our youngest daughter has managed to come out the other side of a bad breakup and come home, save up and has bought herself the most gorgeous little cottage in our little town.  She's incredibly excited and moves in on the 20th December.  Pretty damn proud of both of them.  So all is good with husband and daughters.

The beautiful granddaughters are just sensational little human beings.  Chloe, now 7, is gorgeous, confident, loving and just a treat to be around, the little one Summer, or Pingu as we call her (she has her very own "pinguanese language") is just a huge character, very independent and is soooo cute!! We are blessed I can tell you.

Then there's me and after all this is ALL About Me!!!! Well I've come to the conclusion that I'm a little boring.  I need to get off my backside and do something so I'm thinking next year, that I shall look into doing a language and trying to learn the piano.  I've had all these plans for ages and then something else happens and I have to put them on the back burner but not this time!!  I had the big 60th this year so time marches on and I need to achieve a few things.

Two things I'm very excited about is, going to a couple of concerts.  The girls bought us tickets for Bruce Springsteen, who I last saw in 1985 when I was 31 and he was 33 I think.  Well a bit damn different this time I can tell you but I'm really looking forward to that and then Ladies and Gentlemen it's the Rolling Stones!!!  It's cost us 3 weeks food money, (I told himself if he had just taken me in 1995 it would have been sooooo much cheaper!! ) but who cares.  For Gods sake they're accumulated age must be nearly 300 years, and I'm never going to see them again, while I can still stand anyway!.  I shall be Iboprufenned up to the eyeballs that night let me tell you, like most of the audience I would think.  It's no good smoking anything, we just go to sleep on it at our age, so painkillers it is.

Don't think there's much more to say except that Haven Hill is still going well.  Sometimes I get restless but the thought of actually walking away from my little house snaps me right back, so I guess I'm here for the long haul.  I have friends who are talking about moving into 'Lifestyle Villages' and that's pretty scary.  It feels a bit like saying 'well that's it life's over for me I'll just wait here for the call up ' and I'm afraid I'm not ready for that.  I look at the number 60 and all of a sudden it doesn't look that bad.  I'm feeling pretty good, and I'm enjoying thinking about all the things we'd like to do.  We had talked about getting a caravan and doing the old Grey Nomad thing but the son-law, a Harley rider with himself, came up with idea of a Harley Spider and trailer. Might be worth a thought, we'll see.  Do like the idea of a van with everything setup though, just walk in and grab a drink and everythings there!! We'll see.

Nan's Big Day OUt

Glorious day on Wednesday so why not take my gorgeous 5 nearly 6 year old grand-daughter out for morning tea.  Being a creature of habit we decided to go to our little local Cafe in Meadows which Chloe loves.  I have to say when I went down to pick her up she brought a tear to my eye.  She had got herself dressed in one of her prettiest summer dresses, brushed her hair back and put on her pink headband with the flower on it, had on sparkly black shoes (you would love them Jodes) had her pink and black handbag over her arm and her very pale purple (more lavender actually ) lipstick on.  She looked absolutely gorgeous and what made it more special was that she had done it all herself to go out with Me!  So off we go and she picks the tub chairs in the corner of Balance Cafe where we have an Iced Chai and out of her bag she pulls not one of those games the kids all play but a pad and pencil and starts to draw things that she can see.    Then we have to write down the menu for Pa's tea that night in order.  She's a corker let me tell you!!!

Well it was all too good so back into the car and off to the pictures.  We had a great time and afterwards she wanted to come back to our place for tea and then go home to Mum and Summer.

What have I been doing you ask??? Well.....

Since my last blog in 2012, yes I'm slack, so many things have happened within my family.  There's been a relationship breakdown, not himself and me thank goodness, one grandaughter turning 6 the other one turning 1 and starting to walk, jobs lost and then gained and then lost, another knee replacement, that makes four (no I don't have 4 legs it's 2 on each ) lots of rain then  no rain, daughters getting another year older and a big one looming for me!!!  I think that will do don't you?

Apart from all of that, we are all still reasonably healthy even though himself and I creak a bit more , and make that awful grunting noise when we bend down to pick something up.  We seem to have lost control of some of our bodily functions too.. What the???

I just love the way we force ourselves to stay up until 10pm cause we're all grown up now, even though we'd really liked to be tucked up by 6.30-7pm.  We stay home if it looks like rain or it's a bit cold, I stop drinking after 4 glasses because the hangovers last for a week now. And guess what I LIKE IT like that!!

I watch all the ads on TV with these fabulous retired couples canoeing and kayaking, skydiving and pedalling their way around and I think "Good on you!!!"  Just at this point in time I'm fairly happy just doing my thing.  That's not to say that one day in the future I might decide to bungey jump naked from a tall bridge, (possibly suffocating myself with the layers of flesh that roll down  as gravity takes hold) or squeeze myself into a wetsuit that makes me look like a rissole in a condom, and go diving with the sharks but right now I'm all good thanks.

Turned out OK!

What started out as a pretty ordinary, windy warm day has suddenly become just the most beautiful spring afternoon.  I remember thinking as a teenager how weird it was that old people  loved their gardens so much and got excited if a flower bloomed.  Well congratulations to me.. I am officially old!!! I was just out the back and thought I must get a couple of photos of all of this.  The sun streaming down over verdant green paddocks, flowers just coming into bloom and trees into blossom.  It really is good to be alive and living right here let me tell you.!!!! Thought I'd share all this with you .. I just know you can't wait!!! (typed slightly sarcastically!!)

It followed me home ... can I keep it???

The beginning of our very own herd!!!!

Nothing like coming home and finding the back paddock has 2 new inhabitants!  2 cows from 2 different farms decided to make a run for it and hide in the bottom paddock.  Took a while and a little coercion to get them to leave.  One went fairly quietly off down the road back home, the other decided it was much better to jump through the bottom fence into next doors paddock.  They were a little fascinated by the chooks who seemed to take it all in their stride however.  You know you live in the country when there's a cow on your doorstep!!  Gotta love it!!!!

Cows???!!  who cares!

There is a Sun after all

I actually managed to kill only 2 out of 3 this time!

My wonderfully jam packed herb garden

Our own little garden path

Went a little over the top with the poppy seeds I think -
there's actually roses and probably unknown things
hiding in there!!!

A Day in the Life of........

Yes I'm aware that I don't go out to work BUT my days to seem to get rather filled up anyway. I wake up with Himself and the alarm at 5.00am and when he gets out of bed I luxuriate in having the whole space to myself.  I love him but somehow his 'side' of the bed starts in the middle and then moves over to my side where I spend 3/4 of the night sleeping on the edge of the  bed where my rather sizeable derriere threatens to topple me onto the floor.  Now our bedroom is actually the size of a normal walk in wardrobe, it has room only for a very small table next to my side as his side is right next to the door which when slammed open unexpectedly can cause Himself concussion if he's laying too close to it.  Anyhoo, next to my little table is literally the sliding door of our cupboards...yes right next to, so if I did fall on the floor, and there have been some close encounters, I could possibly be wedged for hours.

Then after about an hour of me snoring like a Massey Ferguson tractor (apparently) during which time I seem to cram lots of dreaming in I see the boss off to work and start to manoeuvre my body out of bed.  I have my early morning calls with daughters, brother, friends and others after which I have brekky, get dressed and start the day.  There's the bed to make, and I am a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to that, then the kitchen to be tidied, the bathrooms cleaned and a general house clean.  Then down to the shed to feed the still banished cat and then grab the chook food and into the girls I go.

Now I'm very fond of my girls, they lay beautiful fresh eggs for us every day and don't cause us too much distress, and they're really fun to watch.  I often dig the chook yard over for them, so they have plenty of worms and bugs and they gets lots of greens.  We had to put a fence around their rather large yard  because the foxes were killing them at a rapid rate and  it was terrible.  We have a lovely old girl who I call 'Mother" and she is one of our original girls which means she would have to be around 11years old now.  She has arthritis in one leg and so we limp around the yard together.

I think there's still room to move!!

I do love it though.

After seeing to the girls I normally either have washing or gardening to catch up on and the weather dictates which one comes first.  If its beautiful and sunny the washing goes on and then  out into the garden to check on newly planted vegies, cut back some of the overgrown bushes and just generally tidy up.  Because I love that overcluttered, overfilled look, and as people know that's what our house is like, the garden is chockas!  I threw some poppy seeds into the rose garden last year and now its crammed and the roses are struggling up through the masses. I've planted lavenders, hollyhocks, wisteria and bouganvillea etc etc.  The wisteria hasn't moved in about 5 years and the bouganvillea turned out to be a totally different type but slowly the house is being encompassed by all these different climbers until I s'pose one day we won't even be able to find the door!!! But then again neither will anyone else and as people will tell you, whilst I love the friends I have I'm not overly fond of people these days.

Again I digress ..... we now have a little dog compliments of our eldest daughter.  We lost both of our own gorgeous dogs within the last 18 months and weren't going to get another one however, this little staffy was getting a little frustrated and hard to handle so up to Nan and Pa's for attitude readjustment and of course now a permanent home.  She's pretty cool though and just follows me around all day and sneaks up onto the couch of a night time but thats ok.


So hence between housework, gardening, chooks, dogs, cooking and all other things my life can appear to be extremely  busy with those lovely little breaks in between time when you can just sit back with a coffee and look around and think .. well who's a lucky girl then!!!!