What We Do on Our Weekends Away, Part II

One of the very common activities that takes us away from home on the weekend is visiting friends and family. One weekend in September we went and visited some friends who live on a property near Young, NSW about 2 hours away. Their property backs on to Iandra Castle, which was having an open day that weekend.

The "castle" was build by George Greene, in the early 20th Century. Mr Greene had emigrated from Scotland, and pioneered share farming in the district. He built this house for his family, modelled on the English fuedal system. There are some thirteen bedrooms (all of them upstairs), including the"orange room" and the"blue room".

The room upstairs to the left is "Mrs Greene's sewing room". I suspect that it is easier to stay serene and quiet when one has a entire room purely for sewing.

Downstairs there is are morning rooms, dining rooms, a smoking room, studies, withdrawing room, fernery, conservatory and games rooms. It's all very Austen-like with the men going to the smoking room and games room and the women sitting in the "withdrawing room". (Notice how out of place David looks?)
The house was at one time left to the Methodist church and was a home for boys. Unfortunately it therefore does not have many of the original furnishings. More recently it was in private ownership and there has been some attempt at restoration. The hallway with it's panelling (v. Federation) looks pretty good.

There are other buildings on site, including a Managers residence, and chapel. John was particularly impressed with the stable and electricity generation building.

The day we were there it was v. v. stormy with rain on and off all morning. The friends we were staying with we very happy about the rainas they are wheat/sheep farmers. Alex also thought the rain was fun (or maybe that was running with mummy in the rain that was fun.)

We had often driven past this "castle" on our trips between Canberra/Goulburn and my-in-laws but we had never actually been inside. It was good to finally see when we had read about before. (The house features in a book called "Grand houses of Australia").

PS It was also fun to catch up with our friends ;-)

UFO's

No - I haven't been visited by creatures from another world; I'm talking about UnFinished Objects. I was tidying up the linen closet (it had been visited by a 2'8" visitor!) and found a stash of UFO's - projects that are partially (or even nearly complete) but not quite.

[As an aside, I was also quite good at the grand plan - eg designing study plans for the entire semester - but the execution has always been less than the plan!]

I found

1. a pile of mending - missing buttons, dropped hems etc
2. an embroidered lavender bag - embroidery done, sewn up - just missing the lavender!
3. A cross stiched height chart (that I started at uni for one of my nephews) - I have done the cross stitch and just need to sew the backing on
4. Two mulittextured mats. I started this before Alex could crawl. I have cut up all the offcuts and worked out how to put them together. I even sewed one side up - just three to go.
5. Tea towels to make cutlery keepers
6. Crochet baby rug (plan to make two, but have only started one!) which I am making for friend.

I have decided that I need to actually complete these before I can start on any of the UnStarted projects (projects I have the equipment for, but haven't started) or before I buy any materials for any more projects. Hopefully I can complete most of them before I start an extra day at work in January.

I plan to

1. do the mending in the evening after Alex has gone to bed
2. acquire some lavender for the bag
3. pull out the sewing machine sometime next month when Alex is asleep, or when we are on holidays for projects 3 - 5
4. Once the mending is done, crochet at least one square for the rug/s a night.

It would take less time, but I still have to finish getting ready for Christmas (cards, presents etc) so I have given myself about 8 weeks. I will try and post updates each week (and maybe even photos as I finish!)

Wriggly Boys

Why do little boys have to wriggle? And why do they have to do it at the most inopportune moments? (I presume little girls wriggle too, but I wouldn't know about that!)

This evening - post dinner, post bed, post pyjamas, and post story - Alex needed an urgent nappy change (he must have been having an excrement day, because it was not the first of the day!). He willingly submitted to having his nappy come off, but then he insisted on wriggling (before i had the chance to clean up...) - he wriggled right over, tried to stand up and then slipped on the cot! In the process he managed to soil the changetable, his pyjamas, his feet, his legs, his sleeping suit and me. Needless to say I was not at all symphathetic to the banged head!

If anyone knows of a failsafe method to stop little boys wriggling then please let me know!

For the want of a nail...

Have you ever had something go not quite as well as you wanted it to, for reasons which were entirely understandable and completely out of yor control? I had that this morning.

I haven't led a bible study for a while (I think the last time was leading devotions at a kids club type of activity about 3 years ago). This morning, I was leading the study at KYB (Know Your Bible for those unfamiliar with the acronym - a ladies only bible study) to fill in for the leader who was away. It. Did. Not. Go. That. Well. (or as well as I had hoped it would). There were a lot of factors (none of them any body's fault), which all added up to a less than satisfactory experience.

1. I was feeling rather unenergised. OK this one probably was my fault - we stayed up to late watching a Stanley Kubrick movie, and then Alex was grumpy this morning (really wanted Mum for some reason) so I didn't have a lot of inspiring energy.
2. There was nobody to run creche so we had ~ 8 toddlers and preschoolers in the same room. This does not make it easy to run a study as they want your attention, need your intervention, - or possibly the intervention of more than one mother - or just play noisy games! This made it v. v. distracting.
3. About 1/2 the people had not done the questions to the study (for quite good reasons!) and combined with the distractions of the children found it difficult to keep up.
4. There were a few people missing, so there were less people to spread the questions between, especially if there were already a couple of people missing who had to run after children
5. I was leading a study from a book. This is not my preference. I don't mind the KYB study format, especially as it is split into 7 days, and it is written for a range of understanding, but I find it difficult to run a study someone else has written, especially if it is a "20 questions, answer round the circle, finish the study in an hour type". [This means with six people they can answer <30 secs per question...]. I would have much preferred to write my own study, as I could tailor it to the people that I thought would be there. It would have taken longer for me to prepare, but it would have been better, because I would have thought it through more.
[For the record, I had actually semi-planned one out. We were studying Ps 105 and 106, which are complementary history recounts, so I was going to do an annotated time line down the middle of the page and then we would have marked on each side the relevant sections from each Psalm. I may have even gotten creative with some sort of colour code]

So all up it did not go as well as I had hoped.

But - we did get through the study and have a good application and discussion re how we are in danger of doing what Israel did 'mingled with the nations and adopted their customs', and we did share and pray for each other. I think that I shall have to learn to be content with what God desires to come out of the study rather than my personal plans and ambitions.

Always hide the chocolate!

Last Saturday, Alex was playing in the pantry (that is where the baking trays are) while I was getting lunch. While there he managed to find my chocolate stash - he had a nibble before I caught him at it and confiscated it.

The next day, he had a v. late morning sleep (that's what happens when you don't sleep during church) so was starving when he finally got up. I put him down after changing his nappy and he scurried off while I was washing my hands.

About two minutes later I went into the kitchen to get his lunch, and found Alex had returned to my stash of chocolate (the pantry door must have been left ajar) and was again nibbling - although this time with much more gusto.

That much 70% cocoa chocolate must have given him a headache as he was whingy and out of sorts for the rest of the day.

Now I have to find another hiding place for the chocolate - one that's out of reach of the small scavenger and out of the eyeline of the large one!

What we do on our Weekends away, Part I

For the last few months, it seems like we have been away nearly every weekend. Unfortunately we rarely get to share what we have been up to so I have decided to post some stories and photos here in a semi-regular fashion .

At the beginning of August we went skiing at Perisher for three days with my dad and some of his colleagues (Mum was working and after tearing a ligament last time wasn't keen on skiing again). Our little family was fortunate enough borrow snow-gear from some relatives - even some for a nearly one-year-old. Alex spent the days happily playing in the childcare centre while we skied (or attempted to...). The poor little mite couldn't really move in the snow gear though - it's so thick that he can't bend which makes carrying him a little awkward. In fact it was impossible to carry Alex and a pair of skis and stocks!

We all had fun and our skiing improved, so that after a grand total of 4 days skiing (total time in life) we were actually on blue runs. There was much more snow than there had been the last time we were there, and it snowed overnight making it good to ski the next day. Dad had so much fun that he is planning to go to Japan skiing early next year. (Needless to say, this was not his second time skiing).

Alex wasn't quite sure what to make of the snow - he wanted to touch it but it was too cold and wet! It is amazing how much difference a few short months can make - here he couldn't stand by himself, and now he would be attempting to run on the snow and copy what we are doing!

The only blight on the few days was that Alex decided to not sleep properly for two of the three nights - which was just what his parents and grandfather wanted after they had been busy skiing all day! The must have been something wrong though because he definitely made up for the sleep once we got home. Maybe he got cold in the night ;-).

Here are my two boys - both of them tired after a long morning, and both bothered by the bright, bright, sun. Alex is so rugged up that you can't see much of his face, while John obviously didn't wear enough sunscreen and has the start of a skiers tan!

We're not sure if we'll be able to go much again - it is prohibitively expensive, but we both enjoy it and it is the sort of skill that is easier to learn young rather than old so we will have to see what happens for the next few years.

Spring Cleaning

Last week we had a tenancy inspection from our real estate agent. This has been looming over our heads for over a month, as for various reasons it had been postponed twice. This meant that we had to have the house clean three times in the last two weeks.


And when I say clean I do mean clean. One of the differences between Sydney and Canberra is that here they do rental inspections six-monthly rather than yearly and there seems to be a higher turnover of property managers here (we have now had six property managers in less than three years). This means that the new property manager has no idea of the condition of the house was before you moved in, and we have no idea of the standards of the manager in question. Some managers walk in the door, check that there is nothing requiring maintenance and that you aren't punching holes in the wall; others check every nook and cranny for spiders webs, only just stopping short of running a white glove along the edge of the skirting board to check for dust! So we had a clean house just in case.


The only good thing about this inspection is that it did coincide with the need for spring cleaning and after three clean-ups it is actually finished. Alex is very interested in the vacuum cleaner (it has an 'on switch', it makes noise, there is a fabulous cord and there are parts to put together so I don't blame him.) and he was attempting to "help". I am tempted to train him to use the machine properly only his father says that he doesn't want his son to be a janitor!