A busy 10 days!

Well its been a bit cold up here at the moment,  The locals keep telling me it's not cold yet but my body doesn't seem to agree with them.  As you can see from these pics  its we have had a few frosty mornings.  I know we had green pasture here when I went to bed!

We have also had a little bit or rain, and what else do you do when your 7 and its wet and rainy - go an play in the mud!  Akielah was having a ball playing in the mud, she looked so happy it made me miss being young on a rainy day, Ian wasn't real sure about her playing in the mud on the driveway so I figured he wouldn't have been to happy if I joined her!

I have been knitting up a storm.  I finished Akielah's Steppe Ahead jumper that I was doing on the long weekend.  She loves it and now I have to convince her to take it off so I can wash it.

I have started a vest version for David and a Jumper version for Tycarni.  The down side if having 5 kids is that they all want one and I am sort of over knitting this pattern and am ready to knit something else. 

I have also been spinning as well.  What started out as this corridale fleece from a sheep called romeo

became 210 metres of fingering weight, yummy squishy soft yarn and now I need to decide what to make with it. Any Suggestions?

We had a bit of a messy week this week,  The good was on wednesday when my compustion fire went in.  Ian had thursday off to fix up the fences so we can get the sheep on the property but when we got up in the morning there was no water to the house.  There is at least 3 weeks of water left in the tanks, so we figured it must be a pump problem.  He spent the day fiddling with the pumps while I was down in the city taking Akielah to speech therapy. 

Her latest assesment report has come in and she has a severe speech delay (well I knew that) but it has her at about <0.1% of her age group.  Then it was off to the pediatrician.  That didn't go much better, he is not sure about her, on paper she presents as Autistic but he said watching her in the room not so much, however he is concerned that because of the work we did with both David and PJ for their Aspergers to help them with their eye contact and social skills and because we worked with them as a whole family, that we may have hidden or "coached" her how to act and therefore makes it hard to see some of the things he is looking for - although this is good for Akielah it makes diagnosis that much harder.  So now we are on the waiting list for a child development team assesment which wont probably be until April next year! We ae however going to try and sort it out privately.We will go and see the phycologist from the team privately and our pediatrician is the teams pediatrician, she has a speech therapist and we may be able to sort it out this way.  We shall see.

So then I headed home to arrive to Ian in a snoot.  He had spent $1500 on a new pump to find out that its not actually the pump but the actual placement of the pump.  Because the water level was now lower than the pump it couldn't get it out and up to the house.  So we ordered a water delivery in and now we have water again and Ian's list of things to do just got longer (have to move the pumps).  Ahhh well its all funny after the event.  We will get there and we still think that a bad day here is better than a good one down in the burbs. 
Catch you next time!

Dell

A Long Weekend

Well we have had a lovely Queens birthday longweekend.  We spent Saturday pottering around making decisions about what to do with our fences and which ones to do first.  I then spent the afternoon engaging in some ehausting work as you can see from my photo below.

This is a Steppe Ahead Jumper for Akielah, I have used this pattern before for PJ's Farm Play Jumper.  Only the sleeves to go now, and of course for such serious hard work you need a cuppa and chochie!

Sunday Brought with it birthday celebrations for my baby boy, PJ, who has now turned 9. We had a family lunch with us and both sets of Grandparents. PJ asked for a sheep for his present and a lovely neighbour has sold us a lovely natured ewe a few years old. We need to sort the fences out before he will be on the property but PJ did get to walk across the road to met her (her name is pricilla but PJ is thinking about changing it). When she arrives I will get you some picies to see and some more details about her. We had a lovely afternoon with good food, wine and family visiting, the kids spent the afternoon playing with their grandparents and dogs down in the paddock.

Monday as brought with it a day of jobs, we started taking down a wrought iron fence at the end of the pergola that we aren't sure why its there and it blocks the view of the property, so down it needs to come. Of course what seemed like a job that would be just a matter of undoing a lot of bolts hit a snag when we realised that the tap in one section has the pipe on one side the goes through the fence and there is the tap on the other side. So now we had to do some plumbing work too!. We did manage to get 1 section of the fence down and the tap is now all sorted, so the other section will be done some other time.

We also have been procrasting about emptying our concrete water tank for cleaning, which was full but the water was dirty. Ian thinks its about a 40000 litre tank, It is definately more than double the size of the 2 big tanks that service the house. Its one of those jobs that you know needs to be done - but wasting all that water just goes againts the grain. Well we pulled the plug today and lett the tank drain out into the paddock, at least the paddock will get a good water and grow some lovely pasture for the animals.This kids had a great time chasing the water all over the paddock to see where it was running too (little blighters wouldn't stand still for me to get a picture of them chasing water). 

So this brings us to the close of a lovely weekend. 

Hope you had a lovely one too

Catch ya next time

Dell