what's New Pussy cat?

What a year it's been... let's go through it in point form.. otherwise I might ramble....
* At one stage I went from two children Master 9 and Ms 19 yrs living at home. hen suddenly I was back up to four, Master 17 and Master 23 came home. NOW at the point of this blog I am back down to Three... Ms 19 left home, and Master 23 is headed to Israel on 23rd of this month.
* my house went from "mostly quiet and orderly" to Out of control, noisy and dishevelled.. Godesss save my sanity!!
* Art has been the one constant in my life, at one stage for a few months I had my own studio and I was allowed to go and make mess and leave it laying around and switch projects at the flick of a light switch and it didt matter because NO ONE had to be involved or see it... then Master 17 moved home and I lost my Studio. I was then forced to relocate to a SINGLE cupboard and filing cabinet... wow that was a challenge for me. Tp cull through things and make my space smaller.. I really have no succeeded very well so the ART is less at present.
* Ms 20 turn Ms 21 and we had a HUGE burlesque party the whole family and house were transformed and it was a brilliant night- well ok apart from the corset which was VERY uncomroftable.
* I have lost a huge amount of weight, in an effort to look great for the 21st in July I started in March on a weightloss program called "Body trim" and so to date which is about 18 weeks I've lost 14 kilograms and a BUNCH of CMS!! dropped two clothes sizes and Im loving it.. I am about to reach a goal I set for myself to be "one hot Mama" like Trace Atkins sings.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qNPEbHoCxNg&ob=av2e
*So life has been busy and challenging and FUN, I also started a "Red Hat Society" group called "The Sunbury Sisterhood of Hatters" and we've just had our first outing on a Chocolate Delights Walking tour you can read more about that http://sunbury-sisterhood-of-hatters.weebly.com/

So I'll try and get back often and update but sometimes Life is stupidly busy!!

Another week... BACK TO SCHOOL!

Now please don't get me wrong I love the kids and I adore how Master 8 chats away a mile a minute but sometimes even I crave for some peace and quiet and so I was not too sad to see him back to school yesterday.
I walked him to his new class room, much to his dismay but the box of books was heavy even for me and so he had no hope of carrying it. I said hello to his new teacher whom I'd never even seen before and I kissed him, YES!!! much to his horror I kissed him goodbye, he'll always be my baby and that's what I keep telling him, "doesn't matter how old you are you'll always be MY baby!!" He certainly doesnt act like a baby and he doesn't look like one but being born last will always make him my baby!

He came home from school all excited he has his first Diary! wow, he had written in some of his class time table and was excited to show me which days we do art and which is music and "Fridays, Oh wow Mum, Friday's is 3/4 sport ALL morning" his little eyes sparkling with excitement. He loves school and I am sooooooo pleased about that,I think that him enjoying school well, half the battle is won right?!

The summer has been very mild and I'm also pleased about that I hate those really hot days when you can do nothing but lay around and pant, and I hate it even more when it's hot all day AND all night and that is sooooo draining!

So with Master 8 back at school I had time to get back into my "normal" routines and so I met with Master 8's best buddy's Mum Lisa and we went off to gym and did our workout. I pushed myself extra hard and worked up a nice sweat and it felt good! and so I woke up this morning not any worse for the excersize and say "bring it on again" we're going again in the morning.

Busy weekend, we had an engaement party to go to at The Old England Hotel in Heidleberg.
http://www.oldenglandhotel.com.au/
The engagement party was in the e-bar and we booked a room upstairs at the pub so we could stay over, it was so fancy and nice called "the Conder Suite" very swish let me see if I can find a photo.

It's Friday.. should I say TGIF?!

Nah I don't think so it's the last offical day of school holidays and then Master 8 will be going to school on Monday and starting Grade 3. He's very excited as we all are, I'm probably most excited because I'll get back to some kind of normalacy.... what ever that is.. did I spell that right? it doesn't look right...

Ok, so I thought since i've finally worked out how to "add" or "foollow" people on here I should up date my page more often, but right now I have a "lunch date" with Ms 19 and Master 8 so I'll be back!

Happy New Year- 2010

Here we are again another year, they are passing so quickly.. I have bveen really bad about keeping this blog up to date and yet I write in my "hard copy journal" every day.

Ok So quick update on Us.

The Bloke is working and keeping himself busy, will it ever end? At this stage no!

I have made four New Years resolutions because my one of last year was so successful that I'm upping the ante!

1- look after "ME" mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually... whatever it takes let's do it.

2- Read more pages than last year. ok let me back track a little and explain that- in Jan 2007 I started an excll spread sheet and on that I keep track of dates, Book titles, Authors, number of pages and a rating of 1-10 and then "what next"? Which is where I write what I do with that book, so in there you'll see "donated to the caravan library" or "passed onto ...." or "Sold on ebay!" So anyways I read 29,528 pages, I know this because each month I do a sub total and at the end of the year I do a total. My goal is to "read a million pages" on of many tasks I have on http://www.43things.com/person/ladyofshallots.com/person/ladyofshallot Last year I was studying and so I read less pages than I normally would read.

3- Keep current on my correspondance- emails, letters, greeting and postcards etc.

4- Work on my bucket list, which you'll find on my 43 things site. http://www.43things.com/things/view/1866962/create-my-bucket-list

So all in all I've got very do-able goals.

So far this year I've had one "Date day/night" with the Bloke.. Jan was his month and he took me to see the movie "Sherlock Holmes" and we had lunch.

The idea with "date day/night" is to go out once a month, no kids and have a date, preferably to try new things that we've not done, but when you have this many kids you take any chance to escape when it's offered and this particular day they were at the Pool so we had some spare time. We alternate months and try and out do each other or not.. I like to try and do things we've not done, so this year I'm going to try and work some of my Bucket list into Date day/night- sneaky huh?!?!

"Billy-the-skid" has finally learnt to ride and bike and so in November he become the proud owner of a new Mongoose BMX bike, and he's hardly been off it since, so The Bloke and I were forced to start riding bikes, I've not ridden a bike since B-T-Skid was a little boy in a bike seat on the back of the Bloke's bike. So there were a few days of pain to go thru but since then we've had lots of fun.

Over Christmas we took all our ikes down to St Leonards to our on-site carvan and left them down there, we hardly drove the car at all, so it's all good for the environment as well as helping us loose some excess weight, Oh and that was one of The Bloke's New Year Resolutions "Get Fit" and "Get his teeth fixed" so now he's committed because I've written them down!!

But because we have a smaller car "Jennifer" our Volkswagen Jetta, we can't carry the bikes around without some juggling and so we decided to leave those bikes down there and we all got other bikes, B-T-Skid was given a BMX and so that is down there and he brought the new Mongoose home and The Bloke and I just became proud owners of new "Appollo" brand bikes, I've got the "must have" accessory a basket!! and now we're able to ride all over town so look out Sunbury-ites!

Up to date pics

These are a bunch of pics of us all up to date and taken this year, some are cuter than others..

First one shows- Jasmin 18 and William 7 at the Melbourne Aquarium.

Then: The Bloke, Me and William, Christmas day 2008.

Next: Amber 16, Jarrah 14 and William 7. Taken Jan 10th 2009.

Next pic: The Bloke and I on the same night

Final Pic: The Bloke and I on 21st Feb 2009. Wedding at Kangaroo Ground Victoria.

More Art....

I thought I'd add some more art to this site and make this my "arty" place and send people here rather than try and send individual people emails.. makes sense I guess...

Ok, so this is not excatly ART.. but I did make it myself, I did a day class and went to Mt Martha in December last year and spent the day learning to make this tradtional Cherokee Drum.. I had a great day and my drum turned out perfectly.. yep I MADE THIS!!

Happy 2009..

Opps can hardly believe I haven't been here in this long, so let's do a quick update on what's been happening.....

Children- well they be the bane of thy life and also they be the joys. One wishes sometimes that we could freeze them so they wouldst stop growing and be children for but a while longer and then there be days when one wishes one could zap them all away and they be grown and gone and thy be free... and why am I talking in medieval speak? Ahh that's easy, I be reading a wonderful Book- called "The Ancient Future" by Traci Harding, she's an Aussie author and this book is very long but very exciting and wants you to keep reading it and reading it which is always a good thing to have in a book.

The only other books I've felt this excited about recently have been the "Twilight" series which my 18 yr old daughter got me hooked on and it turns out I read the complete series and over took her and then got my cousin and her family hooked and now my Bloke is reading part one, although to be completly fair he's not enjoying it as much as we did, I guess Vampires just are not his cup of tea, or glass of beer.

Art- I haven't done too much on that scene, although I do keep reading the books and have my easel set up, one never knows when the urge to work will strike.. I did a great Pelican piece a few weeks ago to take down to our on-site Van at St. Leonards to put on the wall.. I took a bunch of pics of the pelicans that are residents on the beach down there and then painted one for our wall.

Life in General- Over the Christmas break, The Bloke spent alot of time building new furniture for down at the Van, we lovingly refer to it as "The Love Shack", so we have a couch which has underneath storage and it becomes Star son William's bed of a nighttime. We also have some neat little matching coffee table storage shelves by our recliners, and he built a set of shelves for underneath the tiny bathroom sink to hold all the toiletries that one uses. And then as if that wasn't enough he decided that the couch turned out so well and the storage amount was quite large that he built another one slightly smaller which we'll use for the beach stuff, boogie boards, beach shade hut, you know the deal plastic buckets and shovels, that kind of thing, and the top of this one we'll paint game boards like Chess and backgammon on and make it a games table.. gee, sometimes I'm so clever I amaze myself even. In fact we are headed down there tonight to celebrate the Bloke's birthday, which is really only his pretend birthday because of course it's not a leap year so he doesn't really have a Birthday.

School- My cousin Lee and My good friend Lisa and I have gone back to school, we are studying "Certifcate 3 in Education- Intergration Aide stream" we go to school on Monday, Tuesday and Thursday- in Melton- 9.30am till 2.30pm and then in March we'll be starting in school work placements, so we'll do Wednesdays at a school of our choice, I chose Kismet park where William goes to school, because I know it and also because I do not drive and this is a short- very short walk to work. Lisa has chosen to do Secondary school and Lee has said she doesn't care where she goes but our teacher Issy is trying to get us both into Kismet park. Then Lee happened to find a job advertised for an Aide on some website and so I took it in to class to show Issy and she said "Apply for it, and if you get it we'll go on a one on one teaching program and that way you can do teaching while you're learning and get paid for it" So I wrote out my application and then took it back to class to show Issy and she was very pleased, made me add two more lines and then sent me home to apply which I did on Tuesday afternoon , applications close on 4th March so keep your fingers crossed for me and I'll be back to let you all know how it goes. I am so loving the course and you know I don't know why I didn't think of doing this earlier because I've always been interested in Education, and even home schooled Jarrah for 12 months a few years back now. I owe all the thanks for liking it to my Grade 5 teacher Mr Stuart Cooper.

So now that seems to beme up to date and now I'll have to book mark this site so that I can come back and add more news..

The above pic was taken last weekend, the 21st Feb, when we were at Rob's Neice's wedding, it was a great day, we stayed in a Motel in Eltham and made a night of it.