On the Homefront

The Silly Season is in full swing here on the homefront. I always get to this time of year and take a deep breath in and hold it in until after Christmas where I can finally let it all out and collapse in a heap when "reinforcements" arrive in the form of the Grandparents from interstate. 

Whilst the weekdays are deliciously slow pottering around the home with Flynn (and the Twins when it's not their School days), the social calendar is jam-packed in the evenings and weekends. For the first time all year, we sat down with a calendar and pencilled in all of our upcoming engagements, after which I needed a stiff drink and a lie down. I'm not complaining though. It's simply that time of year where we say 'yes' to everything and have a jolly good time knowing that, although we couldn't maintain this level of intensity the entire year, for the weeks in the lead up to Christmas life is sprinkled with a little extra dose of crazy.  So it's "yes" to all the end of year parties, functions, and school stuff, "yes" to all the additional concert rehearsals and "yes" to staying out until 3am and after 4 hours sleep driving kids around to parties and rehearsals and then going on a Submarine.

My Little Black Dress is certainly getting a work-out. We attended a gorgeous party hosted by this lovely lady. If you love books, art, beautiful gardens and interiors and fabulous frocks, she has a blog dedicated to all of this as well as a glimpse into how she manages being a Mum of 4 with the odd stint living in France. Oh, wouldn't that be nice.

We have also recently attended the state Tourism Awards, a function we have more or less been attending for the last 15 years through Daniel's work. Going to these events year after year and seeing all these inspiring people working in their own businesses and fulfilling their dreams has been a huge motivator for us to set up our own venture. There is a lot going on behind the scenes with our Development but nothing terribly newsworthy. We are in the "fundraising" stage, slowly getting the funds together to be in a position to start the building works. It all takes time but is so far going to plan. We have set up a business website and on the front page you can see the "fly through", a little film which provides a 3D vision of how the Development will look. The technology is fantastic, a little bit whimsy, a little bit "The Sims". Blogger won't let me upload it here for some reason but you can view it here if you are interested. The interior will obviously be very different, a lot more worn and rustic with more natural elements, but the dimensions are accurate and the views are the actual views in real life.

Meanwhile, Flynn has had enough of crawling and is walking! He's been walking for over a week now and hasn't crawled since. I think he's had enough of the onsies too! He semi-undresses himself to make walking easier. He swaggers around like a drunken sailor and when he falls over he just picks himself up, giggles, and toddles around some more. I just can't believe how fast his first year is coming to a close. He's so cute and he knows it. I've been wondering what sort of a complex he's going to have with 6 other people in the family constantly telling him how wonderful and amazing he it. Everyone tells me that this is the fate of the 'baby' of a big family and they are destined to be spoiled with love and adoration and that's just the way it is. Any thoughts? 

He has also stopped breastfeeding. The other morning he just wasn't interested and so that was it. Just like that. I managed to breastfeed all of the others to 12 months before they went straight onto normal milk so I expected it would dwindle off in the next few weeks. It has always been a mutual thing for the babies and I. We all just seem content with feeding for a 12 months period and then moving on - no struggle from either party. But still. It's just another reminder of how quickly this little baby of mine is growing up. If I had more time to ponder it all, I'd probably be a bit sadder than I am but I don't and so I'm not. Sigh.

I'm knitting him an Octopus for his birthday. For someone who finds knitting the second arm of a jumper so tedious the jumper almost doesn't get finished, why I chose to knit an animal with 8 identical arms is beyond comprehension. The mind boggles sometimes. I have 5 arms to go and only 10 days before Flynn turns 1. If only I had the arms of an Octopus myself I might finish it in time! I'm getting by on the cuteness factor of the finished product. Let's hope it looks like the pattern.

Speaking of cute, we have more baby chicks! Eleanor has been busy incubating eggs to increase our flock numbers and to make some pocket money selling chicks. This has lead to some disturbing conversations like "shall we have scrambled eggs for breakfast or are we hatching baby chicks with these?". The conversations are most distressing and prompted a debate on "right to life" issues and whether we were terminating a life by eating fertilised eggs. My mind was quickly put to rest upon finding out that the embryonic development of a chick is essentially suspended until the egg is placed in the right conditions to continue developing -  either the egg is incubated by a Hen sitting on it or the egg is put in an artificial incubator. Phew! So one morning I was walking past the flower bed and I spotted one of our Silver Spangled Hamburg girls just sitting there and not moving. As I got closer she got up and 6 little chicks appeared from under her wings. So I yell "Scrambled eggs for breakfast today Daniel!". Seriously, there is nothing much cuter than baby chicks. Our girls have not gone broody since we bought them almost 2 years ago (hence the incubator) so it was such a delightful surprise.

In other news, the recent heavy rains followed by glorious warm Spring weather has caused the Veggie Garden to burst into abundance and we've been enjoying eating fresh produce from it almost everyday - Snow peas, Bush peas, Lettuces, Kale and just look at the bouquet of Artichokes!

The downside is that we suddenly live in a jungle - the weeds, grass and general shrubbery are currently out of control. Just when we couldn't fit another thing onto our overflowing 'to do' list I received this note from the Postman and literally laughed out loud.

Aside from the image of sneaky snakes just waiting to pounce on Mr Postman, the thought that Mr Postman was going to get a nice manicured piece of grass while we continue to live amongst the snakes, the weeds and the 50 acres of waist-high grass that we haven't had a chance to get to yet was just too much.  But mustn't upset Mr Postman so close to Christmas and although it's technically the Council's job to look after that section, we packed the lawn mower into the car and drove it down to the letterbox to mow the one metre strip of grass. The following day we received the backlog of mail - a million bills. Sigh sigh sigh.

That's enough news for now. Thank goodness for Mondays and weekdays where I can momentarily catch my breath while the 4 big kids are at school. There's more parties coming up, a night at the Theatre to see our friend play "Peter Pansy" in the annual bawdy Panto, a Wedding and of course Flynn's birthday. And that's just November. I'd like to start thinking about Christmas but I'm too busy being silly. How do you all cope with the silly season? Is it more civilised in the Northern Hemisphere where the end of the School year does not coincide with the end of the calendar year? I'm planning to take a leaf out of the Swan's book and be as calm and graceful as possible on the outside but beneath the surface I'll be paddling like the dickens!

If you made it to the end of this very long Post, thank you so much for continuing to read my rambles and for leaving such lovely comments, particularly when I have been so time-poor lately and haven't been able to respond to all of your e-mails and comments let alone leave my own comments on your Posts to let you know I've read them, which I have! I'm looking forward to catching up on all your news now. And welcome to any new readers, it's lovely to have you here. 

Have a great week everyone!

Mel xxx