The rules of the game get posted at the beginning. Each player answers the questions about themselves. At the end of the post, the player then tags 6 people and posts their names, then goes to their blogs and leaves them a comment, letting them know they’ve been tagged and asking them to read your blog. Let the person who tagged you know when you’ve posted your answer.

a) What was I doing 10 years ago?
I'd just gotten Cade and started in Vet Med at MSU.

b) What are 5 things on my to-do list for today:
* Dishes, clean kitchen, sweep, vac, mop, dust, laundry (wash, hang, fold)
* Bath/blowdry/groom Hope, Si and Veri
* Continuing to haul trimmings to the fire to burn off
* Errands in town (photocopy documents, post office, electronics store, stockstore, fencing contractor etc)
* Critters - feed/let out chooks and ducks, run the dogs, work them a bit and run and and play with them with La.

c) Snacks I enjoy: Apples, strawberries, dried pawpaw spears and pineapple, sesame seed 'snaps'

d) Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Pretty much what I'm doing now but would able to get all the renovations done at once, agility equipment, classes etc. Help my friends out who are struggling, set up some sort of funding for research for dog health problems and funds for schools to have enrichment programs for kids to grow things, maintain chooks etc and learn to live with a low impact, plant lots of trees and help waterways healthy again.

I tag the first five people to read this who aren't already tagged

It has a name! LOL

We're thinking Cami kind of fits her. I'm not sure La really meant it as a name or was just babbling but it's better than either of his other top choices - Nibbles or Pink Milk, both of which he's been pretty adamant make good names. ~_~ Whew!

So... pics from today. Verity has officially been dubbed the object of Puppy Hero Worship. She's sported a small red shadow most of the day. ;-)

And is introducing her to the fine art of bikkie procurement.

We've got adorable down pat...

Lazy day

Today was mostly spent trimming trees and playing with the dogs. The littlest fuzzle is settling in very easy - she's such a cruisey little pup.

Laurent thinks she's pretty neat and is fascinated by "baby puppy" but having said that, I think he'll be happy when she's older and interested in playing ball with him, Hope and Veri. LOL He "throws" the ball now and she toddles after it but can't pick it up! Gentle tuggy is good though - and at least she can't pull him off his feet!


This has pretty much been her favorite pose all day, sleepy little critter!

The puplet met the girls and Cade formally today. Cade just sighed from his spot on the couch, "Another one of those big bouncy heathens? How about another nice CIVILIZED IG??? Why can't you bring home one of those!" ;-)

Miss Hopie in the sunshine. Isn't she looking pretty??? Hope really isn't quite sure what to make of the puppy. It's the first one she's been up and close with since she was little I think. LOL

Sierra thinks it's pretty neat at times, chiefly when the puppy is sleeping. I think she's glad this one is really mellow. LOL I'm the one who enjoys the little pistol-pete pups, not her!

Verity on the other hand thinks this puppy is just the neatest thing in... well, ever! She dances around it, bowing and twirling in excitement and trying to elicit play. She's an overgrown puppy herself I tells ya!

The pup actually reminds me a lot of Sierra... a tiny bit in looks, sometimes just from a certain angle like this

but moreover in personaility. Sierra ws a very easy puppy, very placid, cruisey, very laid back, happy to follow you around and be told she's cute. I may fall for the naughty ones but I sure can appreciate the easy ones! LOL

Anyhow that's the day... ah, puppybreath is such a lovely thing!

Whats little, cute and fluffy???

She's not mine... before anyone asks! She's one of Kate's (Rozate) bubs. When she's grown up a bit she's going to fly to her new mum and dad overseas but I get to 'borrow' her until then to snuggle and show. La is enchanted, Cade is figuring this is his kind of Aussie (small and sleepy!) and the Terrible Trio think she's pretty neat because she means they get lots of cookies when she appears for behaving nicely. She'll meet them properly tomorrow. In the meantime I'm getting my cuddles in and enjoy her cute little snuffling dreams before she wakes up and lets me know how much she misses her siblings tonight! LOL

It gets better...

Electrician dude came out today. The verdict? He dunno.

Dunno if it fried because of the rain-leak. Dunno if it's something else. Dunno where precisely the problem is because he chased it around the entire house, into the ceiling and under the roof and through every house for several hours until it was pitch black outside.

The only thing we DO know is that there is a whole craploada blackwire and rubberwire up there.

Which is interesting, since we had a prepurchase inspection and having dealt with it in our Hawthorn home (built in 1911) I specifically asked about it's presence here and was told there was some but it was remanent, inactive and the plasticwire sound. Then again, the roof was also rated as secure. Not only are the rubberwires crumbling and craptastic but they are NOT inactive - probably the reason for the problem... two of them crumbling, touching and killing the circuit... and rather interestingly rigged with other wiring and done in a way that beggars belief.

Recomendation? While we're replacing the roof, we should replace all the wiring up there too.

*whimpers as I wave bye-bye to Canberra*

Doh!

I don't mind the renovations I want to do but I really don't need Murphy kindly handing me MORE of them!

We now have a new indoor water-feature aka a leaky roof. This did not make me very happy. Even less amusing was the lights going out, probably courtesy of the leaky roof.

Out comes the roofing guy. "Sorry to be the bearer of bad news blah blah blah no shortcuts yadda yadda yadda Archicenter really shouldn't have missed that during prepurchase inspection blah yadda blah NEW ROOF." Oh. And btw you should call an electricity repairdude to ensure your house won't go up in an electrical fire.

'S a conspiracy to keep me away from Canberra by sucking up all my savings I swear!!!

Futher renos...

It's reno-central here at the moment it seems - lately I can't walk from one room to another without tripping on a tradie of some description! ;-)

I finally got my lovely mantles up! Our place has two fireplaces (our sole heat sources) and they had functional but meh-worthy mantles. We'd brought along our lovely period mantles and the overmantle from our last place and finally got them up today! I still need to clean/polish everything but I'm too happy not to share! They're UP! TADA!!!!

(Paint is the next thing happening in this room... the pinky-red doesn't do it for me!)

And the bedroom fireplace... much more detailed carving than the pic shows, but as it's ebonized wood it's so hard to get a good picture of! Still to clean up the bricks/paint/tiles.

Fan-freakin-tastic news....

No other word for it really...

I got the phone call from my case manager today who had in turn heard from the tribunal that the paperwork snafu is fixed and the rejection has been OVERTURNED!!!!!!!!

So as of today, I'm back on the 820 provisional-permanent and in the next week or so will be granted the permanent!

To boot, Nic has been working on his weekly driving lessons and today was actually brave enough to drive us home when we picked him up from the train station after work! Yes, you all read that right! (For my more recent friends, I've been chasing him to get his liscence for FOUR YEARS so far... this accounts for a minor miracle I'm sure.... LOL)

Mothers Day

I was woken this morning with a multitude of kisses, a little pair of arms wrapping around me and a leisurely chat about all the important things of the universe... which are (and in this order) snuggles, clouds, balloons, kisses, bubbles, trees, eskimo kisses, tractors and chooks while soft little hands patted me on the face and twirled through my hair. After about half an hour of being snuggled it was proclaimed time for "cream (yougurt) an' apple an' toas' wif hunny an buttah".

After breakfast I was presented with two cards. L insisted HIS card be given first because it was painted with "trees an' birdies an' chooks" so obviously much better. Ah, the aplomb and tact of a 2.5 year old!

The afternoon was spent off plant nursery-hopping around Olinda/Kalorama/Mt Evenlyn and winding up with lunch at Kuranga's Paperbark Cafe. Then we came home with a thoroughly flopped Lala, curled up with some divine warm rice pudding and a tea and did the usual bits of evening. It's really striking me lately how I can't really call him a toddler anymore... it took me a long time to be able to call him a toddler and now he's gone and changed again! But it's such a charming little person he's turning into I can't mind it in the least... ;-)

But to prove some things don't change so much - for bedtime, I've got a sleeping little boy in my arms, snuggled up as I write. At 2.5 he often takes himself to bed by grabbing one of us and requesteding to go to bed. He did this tonight as well but then woke and came trundling back out, clambered into my lap, curled up head against my heart and fell promptly asleep. I wish I could get a picture of him - not my little bubba alseep in my arms but my little boy.

In a hollow tree at Kuranga

Bench surfing cheeky monkey child!

Okay, now I've bagged the poor Faverolle time and again as being feather-brained, scatty and flat out loopy. The upside is they're incredibly tollerant of 2 year olds hauling them all around the garden. Even when he walks away it sits in the last spot he ploinked it.

I pick a 'mah-to for you chookie. 'Ere oo go!

Mumma chookie ate a MAH-TO!!! *hysterical giggle fits*

*MU-WAH* Kissed da chookie mum!

Sisi is SIX!

Poor Sisi... her birthday was actually 28 March but Sierra has a BAD mummy I forgot her 6th birthday all together until I was on facebook and refreshed the tickers I have there. *embarrassed* Rest assured, she'll be spoiled rotten to make up for it!

I actually really can't believe it's been six years... probably partly because she's still such a goofball! But still... six, when did that happen??? I remember going to pick her up. She was my motivation to get up and out after I'd just lost my hearing and balance/vision was crap, couldn't see straight, drop attacks, medications that did nothing but knock me out, dropped out of vet school which was devistating and relieving all at once. Thankfully I'm stable but at that point I couldn't walk and when I managed it resulted in my eyes swearing I was going straight through the middle of the door up until the point I splatted into the wall next to it and the doctors were muttering they didn't know if it'd ever get better. Cade, bless him, had a sighthounds sensibilities about going out (why, when the bed is so warm and comfy???) but Sierra, little scrap that she was quickly learned signs for cues without grumbling about how embarassing it was to be seen with someone signing or splatting into things. We went to puppy obed, agility, CGC and working with her kept me motivated to get up when I really, really, really didn't feel like it. How do you refuse a little wiggling bundle of Aussie pup like this asking to play??? I dare anyone to refuse that fuzz-face! She came with me to Australia of course and met a new country, new house, new family, new baby and new dogs with her trademark joie de vivre... such a good girl!

My first glimpse of the little fluff-puff, with her littermates. Sierra is the fluffkin on the far left.

First day home at 10 weeks... so much for the rambunctious Aussie puppy! Maybe this is why her breeder called her "Peace"???

A rare feral puppy moment, captured on film because otherwise we'd never believe we really saw it! She is the most freakishly GOOD dog I've ever met. She'd rather die than displease, lives by the spirit of the law (compared to my other shysters LOL) and if she could talk, her catchphrase would be, a very goody-two-shoes "Cuz my mummy said so!"

One of my favorite puppy pictures and a favorite sleeping pose for her in the warm days of summer... it started out with her sleeping up there and as she grew she just sort of spilled over!

Just days before she flew over to Australia I finally screwed up my courage to put us both in her first agility trials. Balance still a bit crappy but we managed and she pulled Q's and placements each time for her novice title. (This is United agility btw hence the two obsticals you can see here being different than AKC... and admittedly an super-easy course with heaps of time but still lots of fun...)

Si, being very tollerant of baby explorations... despite being a bowling ball of a dog usually, she was always very gentle with him while little.

Peeking out from under the gate... "I'm a good gurl mum, why can't I come?"

Politely listening to La's bossy "down, sit, gooooddd girl!" before he gives her a cookie.

One of my favorite "portrait" adult pictures I've taken of her - her ear always does the "one up, one down" thing!

She always looks as mad as a hatter running around! Still hyper as ever though... happy birthday (belated!) Sierra!

Visa wibble-wobbles

After a series of calls back and forth between my case manager I was told this past Friday or Monday she'd have a more updated answer for us as to what was going on.

Monday went. Tuesday came. Spoke to her, she's not heard back from her manager whom my file is with. Hopefully we'd hear back the next day or so.

Meh.

TWO MORE PEOPLE I know are pregnant. This makes them the millionty-bajillionth and millionty-billionth and first woman I know who is pregnant. I think there are maybe three people I know who have ovaries and are NOT pregnant. (So if you're one of those people and don't want to be pregnant maybe you should distance yourself! ;-p)

Were I a more superstitious person, I'd be paranoid the universe was taunting me...

OTOH the bob-tail thingie I wrote turned out pretty well and didn't need the nine tons of editing/discarding/rearranging I thought it'd need, so that went off better than I thought it might!

(Thursday, 8 May ETA - another one... milliontybillionth and two as of today...)

Beautiful boy

The garden renovations continue with more brick-up taking after a delay due to Sir feeling lousy and deciding he needed cuddles 24-7 for several days in combination with the bucketloads of rain that never stopped! I took up most of the path up to the end of the house today, cleaned up the camellia tree and cleaned out gutters. La is now having lots of fun tearing around wearing out a weeks worth of energy in a weekend.

Here he's showing me his ability to shovel, after seeing me shovel to get under the bricks to break them up and telling me all about the proper methodology of "chubbling da dirt". All things gardening are currently a big hit with him as he absolutely adores Jamie, the fellow I've had here to help care for the trees, renovate and redesign the garden. The hero worship going on there is an absolute crack up!!!