As a birthday follow-up, Nic ended up surprising me at the end of the night on my birthday with a little cake and a surprise gift - a TomTom One GPS navigator! Now those who know me know 1.) I am not generally 'into' technogadgets... they're interesting but I can generally think of a million things that are higher interest for me and B.) the average gnat has far superior navigational ability to me and reads maps better as well. However I have to say, I LURVVVVVVVS my TomTom!!! Ohmygosh. Coolest. Thingamawatchie. Ever. I've tried to get lost with it and you just CAN'T. Major brownie points to Nic!

Fire-wise... this is a smoke shot facing toward Gembrook - turn the other direction and it's bright, clear blue skies and sunshine. Weird isn't it?

Fires are now pretty well looking like we're out of any danger, the weather has cooperated enough they've been able to do a lot of preventative stuff though before it heats up again, so it's actually good news despite how smokey it looks. Apparently the Bunyip fire has now covered
27,200 hectares, up from 25,000!

This has been such a up-and-down one but one that despite feeling sort of stressy in points (read: fires) still has had an over-riding lovely vibe to it.

• Lots of good stuff and feeling powerfully blessed... no other word for it, we're in such a good place and so much "GOOD" is just everywhere. Which is just, well, GOOD!
  
• Feeling unexpectedly confronted by the fires, the idea of loosing our home and stuff (yeah, it's 'only stuff' and we'd rebuild but I'd still be devastated to loose the home we've built over the past few years, photos, objects we've collected from our trips together etc) and number of people we know who have both survived and suffered under them.
  
• Saddened by the loss of one of the Aussie club members who passed away when she should have been around to enjoy the world for much longer.
  
• Enjoying my day out at the Melb Pet Expo with Sierra who spent Saturday playing meet-n-greet with the public. La contributed to excitement when he went with Nic to look at other exhibits and spent time adoring the rats (he LOVES them) with one apparently crawling up his pants (!) as well as 'accidentally' nearly ending up with a snake after he touched the cage door and it fell off! Leave it to La...
  
• Fed up with someone who refuses to accept where their own choices have landed them because everyone else but them is apparently responsible but pleased with myself because it's not upsetting me as it usually does.
  
• Very much enjoying my little man - who among other things has started this really whacky singing - just randomly and LOUDLY belting out totally off-beat, out-of-tune, nonsense lyrics with the wholehearted ENTHUSIASM only 3 year olds and drunks can manage.
  
• Training on Thursdays and Sundays. Geeze that's great! Seriously- just being out doing stuff with the dogs around other people who are of a similar mindset is something I missed so much and am enjoying every minute of! LOL
• Looking forward to the next midwife visit tomorrow and also doing a bit of shopping/crafting of bubba cloths soonish.
  

Completely random but cute pic. Itty Bitty Kitty is clearly a genius - he's doing his sums!