Halloween Party

Saturday 22nd November 2008

Now, onto the Halloween party. While the boys were out and about making good use of time and going to the pageant and doing a bit of looking around town, I was madly putting streamers up around the house and cutting out bats and witches out of cardboard and hanging them up. During the week the boys helped us put some string on glow in the dark stars and moons and they also did some great cutting out of shapes for me to hang up as well. The boys are really getting good at cutting and colouring in and love it.

I had a ball, having the place to myself and making the place look scary. I put spiders on all the power points, which this will not make Kasha happy as she hates the things, but I thought that it was funny. I also got their costumes ready and set out the table for the food that we were going to make. I made some red and green frog in the pond's for the kids with sour worms hanging out of them and also a pumpkin that you put a candle in the middle of. What a job that was but it turned out really really well.

At around 4pm, the boys came wandering through the door. All I could hear were fits of laughter and excitement as they walked into the new scary house. I think that they were pretty impressed with the effort.

We got them dressed and did a final few adjustments to the house and Jamahl started making pizzas and by this time Kasha was well on her way with the three kids. Five boys, this could be all very interesting. There were a couple of 11 year olds, then a 7 year old and 5 and 3. We figured that when all the excitement had died down and they had done some running around and eaten dinner we would put some scary (cartoon Halloween) movies on for them.

This was ok for the little guys but the big guys started to get bored. I had planned on having some games and things but that just was not going to happen. All the kids had fun though. Tao and Kai were so excited, and it had been building up all week. What a laugh.

Tao has now decided that this is what he would like for his next birthday party. "I think that we could arrange something like that" I said. The adults did not get out of anything, and in fact we made a huge effort. I did some face painting on the kids and they loved that so there was face painting all round. Kasha dressed up as a witch, I did as well. Jamahl dressed up as Dracula, with teeth and all.

Kai dressed as a skeleton pirate like the ones on Pirates of the Caribbean, he had a knife in his belt, a little money pouch, an eye patch, hat and a face full of scars. Tao dressed as Dracula with a black cape, red and black tops with a collar, and some face painting with a drop of red blood on his mouth with Dracula teeth, which he found a laugh to wear and could not talk while they were in place.

Oh yeah and by the way, it is still raining and will be for the next 5 days at least.........You would not think that it is November.

The 2008 Christmas Pageant

Saturday 22nd November 2008
I cannot believe that it is that time again. The christmas pageant. I know that Adelaide had theirs last week and this week Hobart had their turn. This year we were not quite in a hurry like last year as we knew that it was not as packed out as the Adelaide one. While the kids got themselves organised and of course watched Ben 10 before they even contemplated walking out of the door, Jamahl and I packed a bag and got ready aswell.

This year I was not going to the pageant with the boys, it was to be a boys only day. The reason I stayed at home was because I was going to be setting up the house for a very important party, a belated Halloween party.

The boys set off about 9.30am and the pageant started at 10.30am so I was a tad worried that they would even get to town on time or not. They will figure it out I thought.

At about 12noon I received a call from Jamahl saying that it had all finished and they were going to the markets at Salamanca and then they would be home. By this time I had pretty much all the decorations up and the place was looking pretty good. (a story on the party later)

At about 4pm the boys arrived home all excited about the pageant, but could not tell me who their favourite entry was. I guess there were far too many things to see.

I have put in some photos of the day.

Two new little mouths to feed

Well two more little mouths to feed scraps to anyway. Tao and Kai are now two little proud owners of their own miniature dwarf lop eared rabbits.

A colleague at work asked me a few weeks ago if I knew of anyone that wanted some baby rabbits, it just so happened to work out that during that week Tao had been asking if he could have one and we were on the hunt for a rabbit hutch.

Everyday we pass a house down the road that has one sitting unwanted in the back yard and everyday Tao kept on asking if we could go to the house and see if he could have it. Finally Tao and Jamahl went up to the front door and asked. The lady was not quite sure if they were going to keep it or not and said that she would ring back and that she did. We were allowed to have it for free, what a find we thought.

After about a week we decided that we really needed to get it as Owen told us that the rabbits were now ready for their new home. After picking up the hutch and on further inspection is was decided that we would have to completely rebuild the thing OR get a new hutch. Being that we don't have all that much time as it is, we decided in the end to get a new one.

Tuesday Owen turned up to work with the rabbits in a carry cage all ready to go. They were so cute and they drew so much attention to my office at work. One is a caramel and white colour and the other is a smokey grey and white. They are about 6 weeks old.

After a shorter journey home compared to the one that they had in the morning they settled in to the lounge room for the night in the travel cage as it was too cold to put them outside in their new hutch and also we did not have the straw and things for their cage.

At this time we asked the boys who wanted to take care of which and Kai quickly piped up and said that he wanted to have the caramel coloured one and Tao was happy with the grey one. There were many discussions over names and after a day it was decided that Kai wanted to call his " Avatar" (after a cartoon character) and Tao's was Homey (after Homer Simpson) (which funnily enough was the name of the last rabbit that we had.

Tao also during the week had a little pet that he had picked up from school called "little matey" which was some sort of insect, we think that it was a cricket. He kept it in a container but unfortunately he died (well got out, according to Tao).

And by the way..... Tao does not spend all his time in his pj's, it just happened that everytime I wanted to take a photo of the kids Tao was still in them.

The Huon Valley Show

15th November 2008

Well it is that time again for the Huon Valley Show. Apparently it is probably one of the most popular country shows in the south of Tassie. I could believe it! There were quite a number of people and about 10,000 were expected for the one day event.

Like any other show there were rides for the kids, and the adults, show bags, lots of junk food to eat and the normal things like animal judging and arts and crafts. We headed straight for the dodgem cars first as when we went to the Hobart show we forgot to go on them and the kids had been hounding us ever since, so we promised that we would go on them next time we went to a show.

This was our second time to the show as we went last year but of course we did not know anyone so we pretty much saw everything. This year, a year on, every second person that we bumped into we knew from somewhere and that is what we came to Tassie for. Everyone is friendly and it is like a huge country town. Consequently it took us nearly a whole day to see everything as by the time we stopped and talked for a while we kept getting distracted.

The weather was ok, it was forecast for Mountain snow the night before and that it did apparently. In Tassie you have to learn to wear layers because one minute you are cold because of the rain and the wind are upon you and the next, you are hot because the sun is out. That is OK though, it is not that bad. As I am typing this though in the comfort of home, it is bucketing down with rain as per usual, which is definitely what we need so we cannot complain about that. I don't know whether it like that back home, but hopefully it is as SA needs it badly, along with the other states.

The kids had a ball looking at the animals, especially the goats, because they can relate to them now, they also liked the alpacas and thought that they were pretty funny. I learned today that we can make some decent money from breeding goats, they were selling for $350.00 unregistered, or $450.00 registered. Tao and Kai said that one day they would like to bring a goat to the show and show it and see if they can get a ribbon for it. They are really turning into country kids, which is great to see. At least they know where milk comes from, infact everytime Kai pours his milk into his bowl in the morning he asks if it comes from Emma (our friends cow that we were getting milk from a while ago.) I hope that the goats are liking this weather, they have a new house now, as the babies were kicking their mum Jill out her house the other day which meant that she was getting wet all the time.

Overall, it was an excellent day and we will definitely make a yearly event. Maybe next year we might have something to contribute to it. I have also been thinking very seriously of some business ideas that we could do for the farm and one of those would involve possibly being at the show next year. See how we go......

Even More Slow Progress On The Farm

Well we have a little more progress to report on our first straw bale structure at the block. We now have the roof in place and the frame work and the roof is also double lined with aircell insulation and builders blanket insulation that looks the same as pink bats with sisalation but do not have the same itchy factor when putting them up.

At the moment though because there is so much going on at this time of year things have come to a standstill in the building department as we also have had a few half finished jobs on the go and have decided to finish them first. This is a little frustrating as I really wanted to get into finishing the shed but never mind these things happen.

One of the jobs that we have to now finish is planting the rest of the trees that I am still keeping alive and repotting into bigger pots so that they can survive a little longer before planting them out, and also we have to whipper snip around the plants that we have already planted as now the grass is getting so high that we cannot see them. The baby goats have been having a field day eating the grass around them and also sticking their heads into the plastic bags to see what delight they can eat but luckily they have pretty much stayed away from them.

The other job that we have to finish is plumbing in the rainwater tanks as we have discovered that they are too tall to catch water. We now are going to take the tanks that we already have and move them up to the header tank pad so that we have 3 tanks up there so we will definitely have enough water to irrigate our vegies and trees when we get them going. We will then get a couple of smaller tanks to catch the water off the sheds instead.

We have had quite a lot of interest in the straw bale procedure, from people that we dont even know, but have heard about what we are doing. It is amazing, Tassie is really like a huge country town, you really have to watch what you say and do sometimes, which is not always a bad thing as word of mouth can sometimes be a powerful tool.

I am soon going to be working on our website for the business, which will be pretty exciting, so I may have to procure the services of Monte to help me out a little on this one, so watch out for it.

I have put in a few photos of the shed but also some beautiful sunsets and a rainbow over the windmill and the more than full dam that is over flowing still.

Our first Hobart Royal Show

Thursday 23rd October 2008
It is a very strange thing for us, but Hobart has a public holiday for the show. Show day is always a Thursday apparently, don't ask me why it is not a Friday. Everyone has the day off and then has to go back to work on the Friday for one day before the weekend, but if you are smart you take the Friday off. I will learn this for next year.

In our usual show tradition we got up early and headed into town. The weather was going to be very warm for the day and we keep forgetting though that we are not on the mainland and things over here are a little more laid back. In Adelaide if we wanted a free car park spot on the street we had to get to town at 7.30am. In Hobart you don't have to rock up until at least 9.00am - 9.30am. The first place that we headed for was the animals, not before Tao had seen the most enormous jumping castle (as pictured). Now that we have goats, I was really interested in seeing all the different types of goats and asked lots of questions, for which no one seemed to be bothered by. I ended up talking to a lady that I am going to be doing a goat husbandry course with on the weekend, and she was full of information so I was quite excited about this.

Our next stop was to look at the motor bikes who were doing tricks on their bikes pretty high up in the air. It was pretty good to see but this did not keep the kids entertained for very long before they were asking to go on a ride or two. Off we went to side show alley and chose a couple of different jumping castles for the boys. The one that Tao went on was far too high for Kai and I knew that Kai would not go on it so he went on a different one. They had a ball of course and this proved to be exhausting and thirsty work for them so about 11am we had lunch.

I must say, the show was a hell of a lot smaller than the Adelaide one, which meant that we managed to go around the whole thing by about 2-3pm. Despite this we had a great time, saw some people that we knew and the kids headed to the show bag hall on the way out.

Once we had got into the car and the kids were starting to tear their show bag apart they promptly reminded us that we did not go on the dodgem cars. We had been talking about going on them a few days before hand, but with all the excitement about what to see next we forgot all about them. The Huonville show is coming up so maybe we will go on them then.

On the way home we decided to head down to our favourite beach at Kingston. This is where we always have our ice cream at a little cafe that looks out onto the water. The beach here is awesome, white sand and a good swell but not too big. We quite often go down to the beach and make sand castles and look over to the other side of the peninsula. There are some photos included of this. We also have the most amazing rainbows like I have never seen. The most at one time I have seen have been three bands. What a sight.

Our New Car....

After much deliberation and research for quite a few weeks I finally decided what new car to get (well second hand new anyway). We have been wanting to get rid of our Magna as we don't really need the room anymore for prams and things as the kids don't have a need for these.

I decided to look for a Toyota Rav 4. I didn't want something too old and so I started looking for something that was 2000 and younger. After looking pretty hard in the paper and at car yards I came to the conclusion that Tassie was not the place to buy cars as you generally pay anywhere from $2000 - $5000 more for the same thing that you would buy on the mainland. Everyone I spoke to said they have gone over to the mainland to buy a car and so that is what I started at looking to do.

I found one in Penrith in Sydney and also one in Baulkham Hills, and set about booking planes, boats and rental cars for the short time over in Sydney. I could not get time off work to go so Jamahl went over there. He hated every minute of it, the traffic was really busy and everything was very expensive, but after getting lost a few times we finally purchased our new car.

How exciting......well for us anyway.

It is white, 4wd, and is in fantastic condition.

Spinning Wheel

I have a new toy to play with, a spinning wheel. Quite a few months ago I was looking on my friend Ebay and won a really old spinning wheel, but it was in Victoria. This did not stop me as I knew that I would be able to get it over to Tassie at a reasonable price. I won this really old spinning wheel that was made in Victoria many many years ago for a whole $50.00. Not bad I thought considering that they are normally going for about $200.00 or more in the shops over here and this one had a pair of carders to go with it. Carders (if that is how you spell it anyway) are used to comb the wool before you spin it, making it easier and keeps the wool at an even width.

I was so excited. I asked a very good friend of mine Bronwyn, who lives in Melbourne if she could go and pick it up for me. After a few dramas I dont think that she will pick anything up for her mad friend again. She lovingly wrapped it in bubble wrap for me and tried to send it by good old Australia Post but they would not touch it, so after all of this running around I decided that I would just fly over to Melbourne and bring it back on the plane with me.

After waiting for a couple of months I saw some cheap flights to Melbourne and decided to take Tao with me so that he could play with Hayley at the same time, and I also got to hang around with Bronwyn and see Connor, as he is getting so big now.

Tao and I had a brilliant weekend, we stayed with Bronwyn and Andrew and the kids and took the kids out on the Saturday and Sunday we flew back. Tao and I had a great trip together and Kai stayed at home with Jamahl having fun as well.

It was also Jamahl's b day the weekend that we went over there, so I felt pretty bad but we had a nice breakfast on the Friday morning and Sunday we went out for dinner.

When I lived over in Adelaide everyone would have thought that I was mad getting a spinning wheel but over here everyone else has them as well so it is not a big deal. A friend at work came in a couple of weeks ago with this huge tartan bag and gave it to me. I didn't know what it was at first but a quick look inside made me jump up and down with joy and I don't think that you could get the smile off of my face, she had got me some beautiful chocolate brown wool, the bag was enormous, there was definitely enough in there to keep me occupied that is for sure. All I have to do now is try it out, I cannot wait but I have not had time as yet to do it. Thank you Sue.....

Taos First Performance

What an exciting adventure. Tao had his first public performance for his Kinder, Illawarra Primary School. An art gallery in Salamanca Place was opening an exhibition about kids and Tao's deputy principle was helping in the running of it. The kids in the Kinder class had to do a performance and it was on TV. The kids had been practicing for weeks but to ask Tao about the performance before today he would not tell us, saying that he could not remember what he had to do.

Jamahl and I were excited anyway....oh yeah and Kai who also wanted to come along and watch. I took the afternoon off work and went along, it was an excellent exhibition with pieces of art and information from various schools around the South of Tassie.

The kids walked into the room in a line, dressed in all black and sat quietly waiting for their turn. They then got up in a big line and did their dance to music that was performed by some other kids in the class. What a sight, it was pretty funny and the kids did an excellent job, it brought a tear to my eye because I realised just how quick the kids were growing up.

Tao in the last picture is the 5th one from the right, Fran is his teacher in grey.

More progress at Bodhi Farm

Well I know that I have not added anything to this for a while and everyone has asked me when I am going to do another entry. I have been pretty buggered lately with my new position at work and consequently because I spend all day on the computer at work sometimes I just want to chill out, so I apologize for that.

Well things are coming along really well in the straw bale shed building department. We have finally managed to get a builder to put the frame work up for it after a few Owner Builder dramas thanks to the Council (that was before I started working there by the way).

The framework and roof are in place and last weekend I spent Sunday painting bitumen paint on the slab where the straw bale frame is going to sit and Jamahl did some piping for the drainage around the site. The bitumen paint is to prevent moisture coming up through the bales and rotting them out. I painted around the outside of the slab as well to stop any moisture sitting around the bottom of the bales. Now that the frame is up this weekend we are going to be building the ladder work to put the bales on above the slab, again this is to keep the bales off the ground in case of moisture. This will then be filled with 20mm gravel. It should only take a weekend to do the ladder work if the weather stays the way it was today.

Later next week we are having the trench dug by Wally for the electrical cable and our next door neighbour Michael who is an electrician is going to lay it for us and connect it up to the meter box. This will be pretty exciting as it means that we can put some lights in the shed that we already have built and also we will be able to use some power tools without the use of a generator. We have also had some tanks delivered so we will connect one of those this weekend as well so that means that with all the rain that we have been having lately we will fill the tanks in no time at all.

It has been raining for the last couple of weeks non stop and we still have snow on the Hartz mountains as well and today was pretty warm despite all of this. It is absolutely beautiful at the moment over here as all the spring grass is growing, it is beautiful for the rest of the year as well but for some reason it is even more so at the moment. We have nearly been here for a whole year now.

It is pretty hard to believe and in our true form we have managed to do a fair bit in a short amount of time and had a lot of fun doing it.

Tao and Kai are still loving it as much as us over here. They love the snow, the bike riding, the new friends and the new farm lifestyle which is great. Tao mentioned the other day that he wants to be a farmer when he grows up and he asks for a horse almost every day. His school is very much into gardening and he does really well at this.

Both Jamahl and I are very much into the Permaculture Association over here which is great. I have been doing alot of the paperwork stuff like redesigning the membership form and Jamahl is about to run a short workshop on Grey Water systems and then I will be helping to teach the introduction to Permaculture course sometime this year. The association is quite young and small still but interest is growing every day and hopefully new members will grow as well.

On the way to work one morning I saw the most bizaare sight, it was quite a windy day and I looked to the sky and saw the weirdest shaped clouds, they looked like UFO's in the air. I have never seen anything like it.

Hope everyone is good and keep an eye out on more news....