3D Ice

Ishbel and I went with Cailey to see Ice Age 3 this afternoon after dropping Rob off to work. When we got to the pictures at Penrith it was to find that it was the 3D (and more expensive) version of the film being shown. They gave us some NHS look-alike 3D glasses and we settled down to the film. The girls thoroughly enjoyed the film, and the 3D effects. Me . . . it's too dark in there for me and all I wanted to do was sleep.

Sick people

Image via Wikipedia

We were supposed to be going to Killarney Heights today to meet up with Genevieve, Jenny and Sue that I used to work with in the Dept. Medicine at Royal North Shore Hospital but Ishbel has succumbed to the lergy now. I was thinking I'd go anyway but Ishbel didn't want me to go. Robbie wasn't very happy - he told Ishbel to 'man up'.

She was spiking a temperature last night. I can never get her to take medicine; she must deep down somewhere remember that she spent her first 12 months on daily antibiotics which we used to have to force down her throat with the aid of a syringe. Such a contrast from the boys who would take anything and if one of them had medicine the other had to have a spoonful of yoghurt so he wouldn't feel left out.

In the end last night, worried her temp. was a bit high, I got 5mls down her by mixing it into a tub of yoghurt. Even then she carried on like a two bob watch. Only the threat of having to go to hospital and have a drip put in got her to co-operate, tearfully.

Anyway, she's feeling better today, still hacking with the cough but not febrile. We all stayed in bed until after 10 this morning - in our bed - me, Ian, Ishbel, Bella and Josie (who snores by the way!) Robbie got up and dressed, all set for our day out, but then went back to bed in disgust.

Jamie is out at Graeme and Kim's at the moment at their re-enactment group. He's pleased the day trip is off or he would have had to miss it.

The winter school holidays have started so the kids are off for the next two weeks. Luckily Ian is still off post op - he has a follow-up appointment with the surgeon on Thursday - and I will take the second week off so no need for Ishbel to go to Tanderra this holidays.

Back to School

Putting the flags out because the kids have all gone back to school today. The teachers had monday off as the ANZAC Day public holiday which no one else got! Then Tuesday was a 'pupil free day' (wish we had Borrower-free days as often as teachers get Pupil-free days).

Secret Swamping

Yesterday I went on a walk to the Secret Swamp with thirteen other people for a couple of hours. We saw three swamps.

We started at Katoomba Library and took a bus to Darwin's Walk which starts from Wilson Park at Wentworth Falls.


The Aboriginal Interpreter Ranger from the National Parks and Wildlife Service, Janelle, first showed us things that aboriginal people would have used.

Janelle showing us coolamon, woomera, shields and boomerangs

Then we started on our walk. Every now and again we would stop somewhere and the Council Environment man, Mike, would tell us something about the enviroment or Janelle would show us bush tucker.

Janelle telling us about bush tucker

Mike told us about the Giant Dragonfly and the Blue Mountains skink, both endangered and about how important the swamps are, how they are in danger and how they can be protected.

Mike pointing out a yabby in the creek (Ishbel closest to camera)

We walked along until we came to a pool and a cave. Janelle had brought some ochre with her and she showed us how to wet it and make a paint which we then put on ourselves. Janelle said her daughter used to put it on as eyeshadow and lipstick so some of the other girls did the same. I made a band on my wrist with it. Janelle said ochre is a good sunscreen.

Janelle, Aniko and Mike with the Secret Swamp kids. You can't see it in this unfortunately blurry photo,
but most of the kids are wearing ochre on their faces (Ishbel front far right)

From there we headed back to the bus. Janelle, Mike, Mum and I had to walk back to the car. Mike said it would only take ten minutes and it took about twenty.

** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** ** **

This was a library school holiday activity. Aniko, our Children's and Young Adult's Team Leader, 'persuaded' me to put Ishbel's name down and then put me down as a staff helper. We had a really nice morning. The weather was perfect (it's been miserable all week) and we learned heaps. Aniko wrote a piece for our library blog:

We all met at Katoomba library at 10am. Our bus driver, Dusan, had a problem about counting the number of seats in his bus and we ended up having to take the Ranger's car as well. Of course you can well imagine that part of a ‘secret’ is going on a bus and looking back as you speed off thinking, thank goodness my mother isn’t coming! Why does she always look weepy when I board a bus? And it is even better to be sitting next to your BEST friend with a haversack full of food that you never get to eat at home!

BUT I guess from a kid’s perspective, you do need to worry about these lady Librarians . . . they are not as stern as those who get left behind in the library telling you that you still owe $5.50 on that book which was late, which you never really got to read anyway. I got to sit next to the older one. She looked a bit hip in that ‘dry as a bones’ . . . didn’t anyone tell her that you don’t wear that type of gear when you go swamping! The other one with the blond hair was a bit of a cutey . . . it would be great to have a mum like her!

Anyway we headed off and did the normal carry one in a bus . . . windows up and down, trying out to see if the back door actually opened, giving the driver lots of noise . . . good job he didn’t go on about the usual tourist jargon on your route to your destination. And yes, we got there . . . Charles Darwin Walk . . . a creek full of yabbies, skinks, dragonflies, mud glorious mud, bush tucker food, waterfalls, fresh swamp water, hills that took for ever to climb, and yes you’ve got it, we emerged with painted faces, gumboots full of water and two an half hours of ‘full on’ information overload on the best swamps in the world at our back yard.

That guy, Mike, knew more about swamps than I could have believed. He tried getting us to learn the Latin words for bush specimens but I thought it sounded like we were in some foreign country forgetting how to speak English!

The bush Ranger was a lady called Janelle. She talked about her people and ancestries and showed us how to cut large bark out of trees and swing a club, throw a spear and spin a boomerang. I liked what she had to say about her country and how her people knew better than us in how to care for the environment.

Would I do it again? . . . I sure would - even if we had to go with the librarians again!

Halfway through the holidays

It's coming up for the second week of the school holidays which began with the Easter long weekend.

On Saturday we had Karen, Dan and Xavier and Roey and Peter to lunch. Karen and Dan brought Dan's grandmother, Diana and Roey and Peter brought Pete's mum, Pat and we enjoyed a nice lunch. Roey and Pete also brought their dog, Leo, to play with Bella and Josie but he seemed not to enjoy being out-numbered by the girls and spent his time whining at the back door.

Robbie was busy on a couple of days last week. On Tuesday he arranged a visit down to the city with some of the kids he shared a bus with in Japan and the next day he met up with one of the girls he met on the way home from Japan and they went to the Royal Easter Show together. He's been keeping in touch with everyone through SMS-ing and Facebook.

Ishbel has spent quite a bit of time with her mate Zanny. Zanny has either been at our place or Ishbel has been up at Zannys. A play day here leads to an overnight stay there. Here are the girls enjoying a sleepover here. For once they were asleep before 9pm (it was after midnight last night when Britney was here!)

I had the day off on Friday and, with the weather forecast for the weekend and all this week being bleak, decided to take Ishbel to the Royal Easter Show. We caught the train just after nine and headed off to Homebush.

We decided we would take it in turns to choose what we looked at next. Steering Ishbel carefully through all the show rides, we started off at the cattle and horse sheds. We got chatting to a couple of women grooming a very pretty little pony called Special Girl. We also enjoyed looking at the cattle. There was one little calf, Elmo, who was only 2 weeks old. He must have been born at the show?

Next (my choice) we went to see the dogs. Disappointingly there were no Border Collies, Mastiffs or Irish Wolfhounds although we did see some really cute Jack Russells and some Russian Deerhounds - very snooty looking beasts.

Ishbel was determined to go to the showbag place next. She'd wanted a Saddleclub bag but got waylaid and bought a Garfield one instead.

Next door was the arts and crafts shed. We enjoyed some paintings, some calligraphy (a beautiful rendition of In Flanders Fields), the cakes and knitting. Ishbel got her name done by chinese ladies for framing later. The farming district exhibits were there too. I was particularly taken by the Central District display - this trout is made of apples with wool for the water. It was truly stunning.

Late in the afternoon we realised we hadn'[t seen the cats so, via the sheep and pigs, we headed back over the other side of the showgrounds to the cats. Unfortunately, it is a small building and the crowds were such that it was very hard to see any of the cats. We did see a Burmilla like our Abigail though.

This weekend Jamie had an AFL game. They won their game - for the first time in 4 years I think they said!!! Jamie was planning to go to the Easter Show with some of his friends this week but they've had a late change of plan and are going to Luna Park instead.

Ian, after a month off, is going back to work tomorrow. Hoo-ray! He saw the plastic surgeon on Tuesday who did not see why Ian should need a skin graft and dispensed with all the fiddly dressings that have been on his ankle. He still has to see the hand specialist in early May and has to wear a splint until then. Meanwhile he still cannot drive so tomorrow will set off on public transport. It'll take a bit longer than in the car, so Sue has put him down for shorter days until after we've seen the hand guy.

News update

Realised I hadn't posted much news, probably because there hasn't been a whole lot to report post Christmas, except for Josie joining us. It's the long school holidays here now. Ian's work closes down for a fortnight over Christmas so he took time off then while I was part of a skeleton crew at the library. We mainly just emptied the after hours returns bins for all the branches. Now it's my turn for a break and I'm off now until 28th January. Such a loooooong time to fill in.

I was up in Katoomba last Sunday with one of my bookgroups. We put in $5 each time we meet and spend it on a nice posh lunch each year. This year we went to Echoes. Here we are L-R standing: Heidi, Kaydee, Jenny (a new member, it was the first time we met her), Di, Wendy, Melanie, Denise and Vicki and, seated, Merilyn and Jeanne. It's always interesting and stimulating getting together with these women.

Ishbel is good and often has friends over who then invite her to their houses so she's occupied but the boys would rather just XBox or World of Warcraft the day away and then forget about calling friends to organise outings, etc. Jamie has a job but he's the paper boy on the train station at Springwood early in the morning 3 mornings a week. It means he's finished by 8am and still has the rest of the day to fill in. Rob was working for a pizza place in the evenings earlier this year but they suddenly closed and he was heavily into rugby and then he was going away to Japan in December so is only now starting to look around again. He has an appointment at the Blaxland McDonald's next Monday.

We haven't done much with the holidays yet. I chilled out for a couple of days at the beginning of last week then the weather got really really hot, too hot to go out and we just sweated and tried not to use the air conditioning too much. It cooled down over the weekend but we are looking to having temperatures of almost 40C mid week this week again. Yeuch!

The only good thing is that it might spark a bush fire. Our brigade is at the top of the list to go on the next 72 hour RRG. I'm not sure what RRG stands for but it means if there is a major bushfire out of our area and they need assistance we can be asked to send a crew. I've put my name down to go as we've been told it provides invaluable experience. It would mean being away from home for about 5 days - only 72 hours in the actual location with a day travel to and from. Karen has kindly agreed that I can drop Ishbel off with her if we get called out (we'll only get a couple of hours to get ourselves organised) and then Ian would need to arrange for her to go to Tanderra for a few days.

Meanwhile we'll just keep going to training. Both boys and I went yesterday morning. It was a huge turn out - too many for the truck and the PC and some of us had to walk in along the fire trail to a place called Wogo crossing where we were going to do pumping and drafting. I'd been there on a training session about 8-10 weeks ago and there was enough water in the creek there that we were able to draft water into the truck. Yesterday, even though I would have said we've had a fair bit rain in the intervening time, the creek at the crossing was bone dry. However, a little bit of bush bashing along the track and we found a waterhole and drafted water out of there instead.

We've had Josie up at the vet this morning for her stiches to be taken out (all RSPCA adoptees are de-sexed before you can take them home). The vet was lovely and spent a lot of time telling us - we went en masse; me, Rob, Jamie, Ishbel, Ishbel's friend Zanny and Bella - about the importance of socializing Josie well for when she is a big girl. It seems we got her just at the right time - puppies are most receptive to changes and learning before 4 months or so he said. He's going to arrange for us to get in to puppy pre-school even though we've missed a week of the current set of lessons and gave us lots of tips on what to do with her.

My washing machine has been out of action for over a week now. None of the repairers were available until last Monday morning because of Christmas and New Year. I got on to our usual repairer first thing on Monday and he said someone could come on Wednesday. That was much better than I'd expected, we usually have to wait a week, but then he found we were in extended warranty time and said I'd have to contact the extended warranty people who would then send him a fax and then he'd be in touch to arrange another time. So I had to wait until Tuesday afternoon for him to ring back by which time the earliest appointment I could get is this coming Wednesday.

Meanwhile I've had to farm out the washing. Karen came round for dinner one night and took a load back with her. She rang the next day to say not only had she put it through her washer but put it out on the line and dried it and folded it! Well, needless to say, with that service available, I took another couple of loads round!!!! I also took a load with me when I went to pick up Janet to go to Penrith with us one day last week. I'm now trying to hang out till Wednesday . . .

Ishbel had me take her shopping last week to spend her Christmas money on (another) build-a-bear. It was agony for her because we went down with Janet and Kate Addison and Kate also had Christmas money burning a hole in her wallet and took aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaages to choose something in Myers. We did eventually make it to the Build-a-Bear shop though and Ishbel chose herself a panda which she has christened Cassie. Now perhaps the nagging can stop!

OMG, what have we done?

The boys got an IOU for a "real" dog for Christmas and today we took them up to the council pound at Katoomba to redeem it.
40 minutes later we walked out with Josie.

Josie is 10 weeks old (born 21st October) one of a litter of 19 (!! yes, 19, that is not a typo). The people were able to find homes for all but 5 puppies which ended up at the BMCC pound.

Josie is a Bull Mastiff x Irish Wolfhound. Eeeek! She was the smallest of the 4 pups of the litter left. Her brother was twice her size.


Ishbel says : Josie is ADORABLE !!!!! At the pound we were getting Bella and Josie to get to now each other. One of the vet went past and she was OFF ! after the vet Robbie went after her and steped on her lead to stop her. She is Sooooooo energetic. She looks like a Tiger.

School woes have me tearing my hair out!

Before we did our European Grand Tour in 2006 we wrote a letter to each of the kids' schools to inform them of the dates we would be away. To our frustration, when we got home it was to several letters from each of the boys' schools at least (can't remember if the primary school also offended) telling us that school attendance was compulsory under The Education Act 1990 and that we were required to explain our child's absenses. The offending schools got a very terse, sarcastic letter back.

Last year we had a letter from Robbie's school asking about an unexplained absence. A quick look on our calendar revealed that he was on a school excursion on the day in question.

Last night I was visiting my friend, Joanne, in hospital. I mentioned the above experience and we laughed about the possibility of it happening again. Guess what! Yup! When I got home, there was a letter asking us where our son was! We got another one tonight! He's on a school-related trip ~ if they don't know where our son is are we in trouble?

I was only at the school earlier in the week, collecting Robbie's School Certificate. I explained I was there because Rob was in Japan. Today Ian got a phone call asking him to come to school to collect an award!

Not impressed!

Next week - school holidays

Friday is the last day of term 3 for our kids then they have 2 weeks holidays.
I am away at a conference in Canberra from Wednesday 3rd to Saturday 6th October. Good timing!! Ishbel will be at Tanderra all that first week and the boys will no doubt be XBoxing themselves silly. We are trying to encourage them to find gainful employment. Unfortunately, neither my workplace nor Ian's have work they can do. Robbie has applied for a job in a pizza place in Springwood - his favourite takeaway!
I am taking Monday to Wednesday off during the second week so we'll try and do something nice. There is an exhibition of Princess Diana's clothing on at the Powerhouse Museum in town but it might be quite expensive . . . and I'm sure only Ishbel would have any interest at all.