The end of summer is almost here....

Hmmm, so much for being back in a few days! Obviously I'm not that great at keeping this updated lol.
So much has happened since I last posted!
My brother got married a month ago and I now have the best sister-in-law ever!! That was a beautiful day and everyone had so much fun! Speaking of weddings, we're off to a friend's wedding on Friday then to Sydney again in a couple of weeks for Dave's cousin's wedding. I was a bit stressed about having nothing to wear but Mum bought me an awesome summer dress that actually fits!! I am now no longer wearing any of my old clothes (even tops!) We will be 28 weeks on Thursday so not too much longer now!!
We've got a heap of baby stuff :) I have 35 more days of work left (not counting weekends or school holidays). That doesn't sound like very long!

Dave and Dad have gone up to Dargaville for the day to look at a couple of tractors since that will be our next big purchase. We worked out that it will be cheaper in the long run than getting someone in to mow our place regularly to keep it topped and looking nice after hiring one for a day a few weeks ago. Our place now looks amazing!! They should be back fairly soon, they left early this morning :) We've also put in a few yuccas which we were very kindly given and they now line our driveway, so even without a house our place is starting to come together! The next job (probably over Easter/near the end of next month) will be planting our shelter belt along two sides of the property so I need to get my A into G and do some research about what would be appropriate to plant!

We're thinking about selling the little car and buying a four door as we are having issues with the first carseat already (and that's without the baby lol). Its only a little car and climbing in the back seat to get to the carseat is a real mission! Of course we're keeping the 4wd though :)

Mum is helping me research Dave's family tree (I've got my information as far back as both sides go lol) in our quest for names. It is proving very interesting, and the Maori side is quite difficult but we're getting there slowly. We're not really close to making any decisions yet, although we do have a list and Dave has his definite favourites :)

Well, dinner is in the crock pot and I've just made some fudge which should be cool enough to sample now :) If I remember I'll be back before we go to Australia, otherwise my next post will be in a month or so, maybe with some photos!!

Enjoying the long weekend..

So Mum and Dad went to Brisbane to surprise Hannah and Dave and I went to their place :) Man, it was great having windows and doors and air circulating through lol! we love daydreaming about one day when we have a house... ha ha :)
Dave had a very busy weekend painting and doing some jobs that Dad needed done, and I ummmm, didn't do much at all. The weather was beautiful!! Perfect beach weather! I didn't go to the beach, just enjoyed laxing out at Mum and Dad's with no cellphone reception. It was surprisingly peaceful :)

So we're back home now, preparing to go back to work. Dave is in charge of one of the boats for a week or so while the head engineer is on leave so he's got a lot to do, but is really enjoying the extra responsibility :) Its about time I started thinking about work too, I really need to set up my classroom and I still haven't figured out when school actually starts! Lol. Pony club starts again tomorrow so I'm looking forward to that.

We're past halfway now!! 20 weeks and 4 days. We have our scan coming up on Thursday and are still to decide whether we'll find out or not. I kind of hope the baby is uncooperative and then I won't have to choose ;) Although if we did find out we could buy lots of styly baby things! I've got lots that I should be doing right now, so should really go and get organised. Be back in a few days... :)

The domestic Goddess strikes again!

Yep, that's me at the moment. Possibly has something to do with the fact that I'm still on holiday and Dave is back at work. I've been on a mad cleaning spree (we now have a 'room' in the barn for baby stuff now) and have even been slightly adventurous with cooking (don't tell Dave I haven't been following recipes though, shhhhh).

We've done a little bit of shopping for baby stuff and its starting to become very real and exciting. I've been looking for bargains on trademe and scored a pushchair that converts to a pram with a reversible handle. That was a great buy and Dave had a play with it when I brought it inside. Ha ha, it was so cute watching him play with all the bits and pieces! We also have a little bouncer (yes, another trademe bargain - brand new with all its tags and still in the box! Gotta love other people's unwanted gifts!).
I've been shopping with Mum and we got a few basics, some vests and stretch n grows and stuff. When I say 'we', it was Mum who did the spending. I've also been given the outfit I wore home from the hospital. Its sooooo tiny! Mum has washed and given me a few other things that Nana Siebert knitted for us too.
Our best thing so far is a present from Mum and Dad. We are going to have the styliest nappy bag around! I'll have to upload pics to the laptop and show you. It is sooooo cute!!!



This is what we will take everywhere we go!!! There's even a smaller waterproof bag for wet nappies...



We also got a portacot for Christmas for the baby from Glenda and Keith. That is going to come in very handy!! Ha ha, its funny to think that its not even here yet and its already getting presents!! Just think what this Christmas is going to be like!!
We are having cloth nappies (yes, I'm well aware a few people think that's crazy) and I've bought 36 from an online shop (I figure that's a good number to start with). I've already washed them a couple of times already. Apparently that increases the absorbency and they're all nice and fluffy now and packed back into their box.
We're really starting to get a little collection of things, which is why we needed somewhere to put it all :)
I've got my third midwife appointment on Sunday and the 20 week scan next week :) OMG - we're almost halfway already!

While we're on the subject of babies - my horse is now in foal and she's due in November. I can't wait! Although naming the foal is going to be a mission! Its hard enough finding names we both agree on for the human baby lol. Just as well we've got a while left before we need to make a decision!

We're heading back to Sydney for the first weekend in April for Sheree's wedding. I'm doing lots of extra work this holidays so that we can buy our tickets. I've got quite a bit of instructing lined up till school goes back and that should cover our fares :)

We had a great Christmas and New Year! Hope you all did too :)

So I've been very slack...

At updating my blog! Apologies to anyone who might read it.

I kind of had (what I think is) a good reason lol. On our return from Australia - just a couple of days later, we found out we are expecting our first child!! Yay!! I didn't want to update (well, I REALLY REALLY wanted to update, but not let anything out. Just couldn't think of anything as exciting to write about) till we were through the first trimester. Baby is due 11 June and I'll be 16 weeks on Christmas day! We are very excited! Dave is so cute - he can't stop smiling when we talk about it :) We're undecided as to whether to find out what we're having or not. Dave wants to know but I think I'd like a surprise. We'll probably end up tossing a coin :)



We've had two scans - one at 8 weeks 4 days when it just looked like a little jellybean, and the one above at 12 weeks 1 day where it actually looks like a little person.

There's nothing very exciting to see - I don't have a six pack anymore :( and my tummy is growing little blonde hairs on it (STRANGE!) but other than that people who don't know me can't tell.

Our house plans are on hold for the next little while at least. I can't remember much else at the moment. Actually, I seem to be forgetting a LOT right now. Apparently there's such a thing as preggy brain so I'm able to get away with blaming some things on that. Work is great! Everytime I do anything a little bit blonde everyone just blames it on that!! Ha ha, so funny. Dave isn't quite as accomodating - he doesn't believe me ;) From what I've heard it doesn't improve once the baby arrives, just turns into baby brain.

We've done a couple of things towards organising things here. We've been given a set of drawers that Dave's Dad made when his older brother was born so Dave sanded and I painted them the other weekend. I went out and found some cute little silver teddy bear knobs :)
Dave spent last weekend (or the weekend before) putting up my new shed. Its almost 3m x 3m and is for me to store all the horse gear (which takes up quite a bit of room in our storage part of the barn). I'm loving having a little tack shed! So that gave us some more room on that side so we could move things out of the little extra room off the kitchen (I call it the 'cupboard' but apparently there's laws against keeping a baby in a cupboard lol) into the storage area to make room for baby stuff.

Home sweet home...

No, not really. More like cold wet barn after lovely warm Aussie. Hmmmm. Yes, we're glad to be home and the animals were very very excited to see us but we could easily have stayed for longer.




We had such a fabulous time!! I'm in love with Ricky's bike!! If you're a facebook friend of mine I've put some photos of our holiday up. I took over 350 (don't worry, there was no way I'd bore people with that many random shots - about 40 of them are motorbike related!)

We spent our first day and a half in Manly with Rick and Shani, mostly just catching up :)

And then we went to Brisbane - that's a story in itself!! What an adventure! With arrangements to stay with my little sister Hannah, and her partner Antz, we were greeted at the airport with "There's been a slight change of plans, we're homeless now". Great! Hmmmmm, what was I going to wear!? If that sounds random its because we'd booked cheap flights to Brisbane with carry on luggage only, which would be fine except that I'd only packed underwear because my allowance was taken up by some photo tiles I was bringing over for Hannah, and my handbag. Our other bag was packed with Dave's clothes. Oh well, at least I had the clothes I was wearing. We drove around for ages looking for somewhere to stay but all the places we found were fully booked "Don't you know there's a big bowling tournament on?" Um no! Obviously not! And "That big Church conference is happening this weekend." Sure, I knew that. Not. Eventually we found somewhere not too far away but it was a bit dodgy. There was one room with two double beds pretty much end to end. They only had vacancy for one night but at least we had somewhere to sleep! We spent most of the following day looking for another place to stay. We ended up driving for miles after finding a place on the internet. Again most places were fully booked so we were prepared to compromise on comfort a bit. We did not expect to walk in to a room with one double bed!! Where's the rest? It said 'sleeps 4'. We pulled a handle on the wall and a creaky smelly single bed folded out. Funnily enough, on the other wall was another folded up single bed. The bathroom was so scungy not even the boys would go in without jandals on!!
Aside from our accomodation dramas (by the Monday Hannah and Antz had found somewhere to move into - they had to buy airbeds though so we had something to sleep on!) we had a wonderful time and it was great seeing them again. Life is always full of laughs when my little sister is around :)


I got to go for a ride with Nikki (my old NZ eventing buddy) which I haven't done since she moved over with her horse in January. That was awesome, aside from being sickeningly hot! It was wonderful seeing how settled and happy she is, and how her horse is thriving over there! He's going better than I've ever seen him go!


Back to Sydney on the Tuesday afternoon and out for dinner down at Manly wharf. There's little baby penguins nesting there - soooo cute! We weren't allowed to take photos though.
We had such an awesome time with all of Dave's family. He's so much like his Dad! Same mannerisms and everything, but in saying that Ricky kind of reminded me of my Dad too :) Have I mentioned the bike? I looooove it!
Shani taught us how to play Skipbo and we had fun playing this several times during our stay. Really great time waster :)
We caught up with Glenda's sister Sandra and her daughter Sheree. They're so much fun. Sheree's gorgeous son Hunter entertained us with his animal impressions and just his general cuteness! He talks sooooo much. I didn't want to put beautiful baby Anya down - she's so tiny she could easily have fit into my hand luggage lol.
We also got to see my friend from high school who's been living in Sydney for the past few years and ate kangaroo!
I could write pages and pages about our stay in Sydney but I won't. We had the best time ever and are already looking forward to going back at the beginning of April for Sheree's wedding.
When the time finally came to say goodbye we put it off as long as we could (just under 20 minutes before our flight was due to leave lol). We rushed through the other side and everything was empty. It was so weird! They were waiting for us and everyone was already seated on the plane by the time we got on. Whoops! Probably just as well we didn't leave it any longer :)

Thinking 'bout things...

It's been a while since an update. So much has happened since my last post.

On Monday we attended a very sad but amazing funeral for my friend's youngest brother. He was 21 years old. The place was packed! There were young guys lining the walls all the way to the front, people crowding the foyer and even some outside. It was a stunning send off! I remember many years ago spending nights at her place and having to get her Mum to stop him annoying us. He'd grown up a lot since then. He always loved practical jokes :) I heard some funny stories during the service which really was a celebration of his life, rather than a mourning of his death. My friend was absolutely amazing and so strong during the few days beforehand. I have been totally inspired by her courage. What a remarkable young woman! I love her :)

On another note, we've changed our minds (again) about the house. At this point in time we have other priorities and if we get a house soon then great, but if not then it will happen when it happens.

We are off to Australia next Friday!! We land in Sydney at 7.30am and will spend the day, night and half of the following day with Rick and Shani. I hope we get to see Dave's cousin in that first little while too. She had a baby on Saturday and I can't wait to have cuddles! We're heading to Brisbane on the Saturday afternoon to have a BBQ at my sister's place and crashing there for the night. She has exciting plans for us on the Sunday and we're spending Sunday evening with Muz - a good friend of Dave's and ex flatmate of ours :) On the Monday Dave's going to have 'boy time' and I'm going for a ride with my friend who lives over there. We're also going to catch up with another cousin of Dave's while we're over there before heading back to Sydney on the Tuesday to chill with Rick and Shani for the rest of the week.
We are so excited now! Can hardly wait to see everyone!! :)

9 days to go!!!

6 months in a leaky boat...

Hmmmm, well not exactly a boat - more like a barn, and quite a lot longer than 6 months! Lol. We've had our fair share of dramas with this weather bomb! Dave was at work on the first Saturday of the crazy weather when I realised that there seemed to be a lot of water inside. The floor was wet, the table was wet, the dresser was wet... I looked up and saw that an entire join in our roof was wet! I couldn't find a bucket, so put measuring jugs and mixing bowls and anything else I could find out to catch the drips. One of the ones in the bedroom was the worst! The measuring jug was half full in an hour and a half!! I texted Dave and told him not to panic but to bring home as many buckets as he could find :) Once he was home, things were looking much prettier - we had matching red buckets stationed throughout our living quarters!
The road to get to our house from State Highway 16 was underwater for a couple of days. Check out the photo! Fortunately that's not our only way to get to civilisation - yay for back roads!! It was quite amusing when we had visitors coming up to visit in the rain, texting that they couldn't get past the flood!

On another note... we have final plans and contracts for our house! It'll be feeling real soon... probably more so once we've handed over the first payment lol! We've got to actually read them though, so far we've only looked at the pictures! Then we'll get a lawyer to look over them before we sign. Hopefully we'll have a house not too far away from Christmas. Ideally it will be finished while I'm still on school holidays (just to make moving easier) but we're not going to stress if that's not the case.

We've booked our holiday to Australia and are very excited about this! We leave here in the early hours in the morning of Friday 26 September. We have to be at the airport at 3.50am so it'll be a VERY early start for us. I'm so excited I'm crossing off the days on the calendar!! 52 days to go!