stormy weather

Today we had a summer storm come over, & stop right over us for the afternoon.

We had a huge amount of thunder, lightening, rain & hail.

Ivy was off at day care, Brody was off at his 1st day of year 11 & Finn was home, having refused to go to day care, even though Kim & I really needed him to go so we could work, after losing a day care day to Australia Day.

When Finn decides, he decides.

The lightning hit about 35 meters from our house. It tore a tree to shreds. It was very impressive, although not at the time! I was working away on my laptop, secure in my knowledge that we had good quality surge protectors. I felt a strong tingle through my hand at the same time as I heard the incredible bang & Finn's scream behind me. I had him in my arms in a split second & we clung to each other like terrified limpets.

I saw smoke out the window & sent Kim out to check for fire, then thought , omg, is that safe? He assured me that lightening never strikes in the same place twice, well actually he assured me that that's what "they" say!!! Finn & I followed him out & took these photos of the shattered tree the lightening had hit:

I took this one not to show all our mess but to show how close it was to our house! You can see the raw split up tree in the background.


this taken from our deck.



10 meters from the kids cubby.






shreds of gum tree everywhere!


Finn with a shard of tree that was on the dirt road.



shards of tree everywhere!!










Finn playing in the rivers of water with his lightening offshoot.
We had so much more lightening, thunder, hail & torrential rain this afternoon, if was intense & quite draining! Finn was a basket case by the end of the day, ran around playing with Brody until he bashed his front teeth on a wrought iron chair. Then he was in pain until bedtime, even with a dose of Panadol. Hopefully we won't see black teeth in the next few weeks! He has such a high pain threshold, we know that if he's in pain & showing it it's bad ) :

mud fight

Every now again I get to enjoy all 4 of my children hanging out at home with me.

I love those times so much.

Yesterday was hot. I decided to empty the paddling pool, which was dirty, filled with gum leaves & 2 weeks worth of rain water, so we could refill it & get the little people cooled down. Emptying large amounts of water into dry red earth creates mud.

This is what followed.

careful of Mum's new car!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Where was Finn?? Hiding. Sensory overload, these type of activities are hard to cope with if you are autistic. After everyone calmed down, Chelsea & Kim went grocery shopping, Brody hopped in the shower & Ivy was watching a video, Finn went outside on his own & happily covered himself in mud for an hour ( :

Christmas 2009

Well it's the new year & I haven't even done a Christmas post yet! Better get on with it!

We had a very busy month leading up to Christmas.

Kim worked his butt off getting part of our deck built so we could eat outside. Our decking is recycled ironbark, so it had to de-nailed, ran through the thicknesser & then nail holes pre-drilled, it is just too hard to nail through. All this over 3 of our hottest days this year, high 30s every day. Then the change came as he was finishing & the fog rolled in.

He looks completely pissed off here but he was actually just really, really tired!

He made a new table top for my 10+ year old outdoor table out of ironbark floorboards :

It was smoking with the heat of drilling an umbrella hole.

& whipping up a dolly's change table for Ivy xmas present.

Not to mention spending several evening in a row helping me & Brody put this together:


Finn's present that we picked up at a garage sale, only all the bits were mixed with 100s of others in a huge box full of Lego. Amazingly, we completed it with no missing bits. Then we pulled it apart for him to build (with help!).

We baked several times & made Christmas cookies & white Christmas in our lovely BIG kitchen ( :

I've had Ivy's vintage apron put away since she was a baby, I was delighted to pull it out & put it to use this year!

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Christmas Eve, decorating cookies with Auntie Renie, she dunked her whole face into the bowl of 100s & 1000s, I think she knew Renie wouldn't get cross at her ( :

We got dressed up & went to the kindy Christmas party.

We bought a big Christmas tree



and decorated it










my lovely decoration from my photography forum friend Trish in the US ( :















Uncle Pete & Auntie Renie arrived on Christmas Eve afternoon, Renie 5 months pregnant with a little cousin for Finn & Ivy ( :



We hung out together


Hung up the stockings



and Ivy decided that she needed to call Santa to make sure he didn't forget them & knew the way to our new house! It was one of the cutest things I'd ever seen ( :










We put cookies out for Santa.



Finn was out of control with excitement by this stage hence the lack of photos of him, he evades the camera & doesn't sit still for 10 seconds. Not to mention the effect all the special food has on him, he becomes totally crazy!

Christmas Morning:

presents galore!!




Transformers for Finn (a new obsession)

a new 2 wheel bike for Ivy!







a big collection of Imaginext for Finn, he loves this stuff!!





A 4V lithium ion drill for Finn. What, too young for real tools?? He doesn't think so (& for $10 at a garage sale who cares).


Ivy with her dolly change table in her new princess dress.


emptying stockings with Chelsea



testing the drill in the house studs. He looks bored but he was over the moon, he doesn't show emotion readily!

We had crepes with blueberries, mango, yogurt & maple syrup, & of course champagne & orange juice for breakfast.







At lunch I asked Ivy to set the table, just to keep her busy & she loves to help. She put a big row of spoons one side of the table & forks on the other!

The kids were losing the plot by lunch time so this was the best photo I got, oh well, we all have the lovely memories. All in all it was a lovely Christmas period, my most relaxed in many, many years. The afternoon was spent just hanging about, chatting & relaxing. The kids played with their toys, & with Pete & Renie of course, they love them so much ( :

We gave Pete & Renie a port-a-cot & baby clothes for Christmas!

Brody wasn't with us this year, he went to Peat's Ridge music festival with Mario.

Chelsea was only here for a short time in the morning & then had the rest of her day with Daniel's family. So it was very quiet for us but really nice.

We have a very busy January ahead of us! We have some hefty bills to catch up on so we're selling all sorts of things on ebay, Kim has a couple of weeks work lined up, as well as a couple of weeks work in Sydney in February. We are then hoping to take a week's holiday. We haven't been away anywhere for SO, SO long & we get very itchy feet! We have a cheap holiday rental lined up at The Entrance, very close to the beach, so that will be novel! Finn & Ivy have spent next to no time at the beach, ever! We're not sure if much will happen on the house over the next month but that's OK, we're comfortable & happy.

I'm spending a lot of spare time on my photography & will soon be starting a new blog that will be purely for displaying my photos that are not house & family related. I have a couple of photo shoots lined up as freebies for friends but I'm planning on setting up my business website by the middle of the year & hoping to steer away from ebay & more in photography toward the latter half of this year, something that I'm very excited about ( :

Happy New Year everyone!!

2009 was a lot better than 2008, I'm sure 2010 will be even better again!!

PS please don't be shy to leave a comment, I always love hearing from my readers ( :