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Friday 29 September 2006

ups & downs

This week, particularly Tuesday, has been full of them......
I was sooooo excited that I;d received my very first wholesale order, I felt like a kid on christmas morning. I ranger Sheree and asked her to come over and help me unpack it all. Well that took about 2 minutes, lol.
While we were looking at all the goodies, I noticed an email come thru saying URGENT... great another spam email. Boy was I wrong. It was from Kerry at Grace Lodge where we are holding our November Cropfest. In the servere winds that we had on Sunday it completly ripped the roof off the main building and cause serious damage. Unfortulately the repairs will take till mid-december. CRAP!!!!!! So I made Sheree get on the blower, while I replied to Kerry's email, to ring first of all Blue Gum Lodge in Springwood to see if they have any vancancies, the odds weren';t in my favour but you never know. Well, someone must have been smiling on me because they had room - YAY!!!
So the new place is bigger, which is great and so far all our Scrap Girls are willing to travel the extra 15minutes up the mountains which is great.

So, this week has been a little crazy to say the least.

I've been trying to pack all the challenge kits and have now realised that I think I was another "boy" type kit. So I'm off to put in another order next week. I think 3 challenge kits will be enough to pick from. That will also allow for extra kits which the ladies can then purchase if they want.

On a totally different note ......... I CAN'T WAIT FOR SURVIVOR COOK ISLANDS TO START. How juicy does that look? I'm a huge Survivor fan and have even managed to get Ant addicted to it. So the kids will either be shipped off for the night or put in bed extra early even if it is school holidays.

Well, I;m off to pick up Shancie from school. Connor had a sick day as he was attacked yesterday by a hoola hoop - don;t ask, pictures and story will follow in the next day or so. Then on to a million emails that I haven't had a chance to reply to this week. c ya'.

Monday 25 September 2006

sheree can't pick on me now.....

YAY!!!! Snaps for me, lol. I finally got around and started my Everyday Moments pages for this month tonight. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute. Still got 2 more to go though.
So, Sheree, please don't pick on me now...............
It must have been the inspiration I needed to get all those photos printed.
I even woke up at 1am this morning with a lo in my head for one of the photos I chose and ran out to the playroom to sketch it before I forgot it. Now I look at it and my photos are the wrong orientation, lol. Never mind.



I just showed Anthony and he seems real impressed that I did a photo with him covered in pink and flowers, lol. Well maybe it's showing his feminine side, lol - NOT!!!!!!

Saturday 23 September 2006

2 for today......

well, actually last night.
I finished of one that I started on Wednesday at class, it just needed a photo. Thank god for getting the 200 odd photos printed. And the other one I did for a bit of a scraplift challenge.



I so need to get me some nicer looking alpha rubon'e, those MM are getting a tad bit OLD.......

What a gorgeous day today! It was so nice outside. It would have been nicer if I wasn't cooped up inside cleaning the house.
Ant took the kids to a friends birthday party and I thought YAY! ME TIME, not a chance. I did spend about 15 minutes putting away a stack of papers and cardstock from finished projects. I'm one of those lazy scrappers that sticks her left over's into a pile hoping the "Magic Fairy" will put them away for her.
Then I spent the next hour or MORE ironing - YUCK!!!! I really hate ironing. I was watching a preiview from work though, so that was ok. I watched "The Break Up", and it had me in tears becuase it was looking into a mirror - scary!

So now I'm off the listen to the thud thud of one of our "lovely" neighbours having a party.

Friday 22 September 2006

odds and sods

I've been doing all sorts of bits n' pieces yesterday and today.
I went up to mums yesterday to give her a hand doing the washing, making the beds and doing the grocery shopping. She's a lot better, but after half an hours of us being out she was sore again. I felt like I helped a bit, but I wish I lived closer so I could help out a lot more.

Today saw me running erands - FUN, FUN!!!!
I did manage to go to Big W to get my photos printed - 217 photos later. That will teach me for putting it off for 4 months. That also included all the happy snaps from when Darrell and Lynsey were her from the UK. So that 1 whole album in it's self, lol.
My grand plan for tonight is to sort thru all the photos and write little notes so I don;t forget anything.

More work to be done in the backyard this weekend. Our neighbours had a huge tree pulled down today so now there is full sun in our backyard which will be sooooo hot, thank god we're putting up a shade sail.

Shanice had a great day today. She brought home her broad bean plant her class has been growing, it broke a little in transit, but grandad should be able to fix it. We have decided to take it up to nan and grandad's on Sunday for Grandad to plant in his vegie patch and look after it for Shanice. It's a good thing me and dad both like broad beans - yes I know - strange!!!!
Shanice can top that, she came home with not 1 but 2 awards today. She got one for receiving 10 tokens in class, and she got a big merit certificate at assembly too for great improvements in maths. I am so proud of her I could just cry.
For those that don't know, she may be dyslexic, and really struggles at school. I have her booked in for an assessment in a few weeks to give me more of an insight.

I shall leave you with this lo I did on Wednesday night at Scrapabout with Alison. They are using yummy AMM papers that are just too cute.
These piccies were taken last week, Shanice and Kaitlyn both got classes within a week of each other and just look too darn cute in them.

Tuesday 19 September 2006

the never ending backyard saga....

well that's what it seems like anyway. Last November we bought one of those pools from KMart for $100, well it's still in it's box with the original plastic shrink on it. Becuase of the dog we were too afaid to leave it up in the back yard thinking we'd come home to a back yard underwater cause the dog would have clawed it and broken it. So we decided to put up a fence were the old cubby was, well this became the never ending saga, it seemed get put off at every opportunity, but finally got finished a few months ago.
Winter was here so what was the point! So last weekend Anthony started to unpack all the pavers we'd collected and bring them round the back to start the mamoth job. But it looked like a little jungle on the other side of the fence, lol. So the past weekend Ant spent diggin out the weeds, grass and whatever else was in there.
I am starting to believe that Shanice and Connor may get their pool this summer. It's not huge (2.4 metres) but enough for them to cool off and thats all they really need. Hey if get that hot I may sit in it, lol, I doubt it will ever get THAT hot!

We had a lot of rain last week which was fantastic, and Ant had left the wheel barrow out, I think to catch some of down pour, well it was chokers. So when it fined up, I let the kids out to play and what was the first thing they go to - the water. My initial reaction was "get the camera!", not often this happens, normally I'd start yelling for them to get out of it, but they must have done it on a "good day", I just figured, hey if they get wet they can get changed.
2 days in a row they did this before the water in the wheel barrow got too muddy to play in.

Monday 11 September 2006

stuff

It's been a long week! You know that saying it doesn't rain is pours, well that's how it feels in this house right now.
It was my and my mum's birthday on friday, but as you get older you realise that it's not the material objects you may be lucky enough to receive but the time spent with family and friends. The best birthday present I received was my dad being here.
The news aint so great with dad, its' a matter at now waiting and seeing if the abnormalities found change any. Dad hates playing the waiting game, lol, so it's going to make for an interesting month.

Sheree and I went scrapping at Sue's from Scraploot on Saturday. It was like being a kid in a candy shop, there is sooooooo much stuff packed into there double garage. Now I wonder if I can persuade Ant to do that here, it'll no doubt have to stay the kids playroom and my scraproom.
Sue stocks great new product and always has heaps in stock so there's no worries about a credit coming up on your account when your goodies arrive and "look there's an item on backorder".
I managed to do 2 layouts which turned out pretty well.
And all I bought was the new (not so new now, lo,) Elsie book. Yep, I'm a bit slow on the uptake. I just wanted to have a look before I bought as I hat spending that much money on a book and not liking it.
Speaking of me and Sheree - SHEREE UPDATE YOUR BLOG!!!!!! LOL.

We had some friends over for a bbq on saturday night, which was fine. By midnight after they had all left and Ant and the kids were in bed I had a little meltdown. With everything going on in my life right now just some silly little things that were said about me just pushed the wrong buttons. I left me feeling like a lazy wife who sleeps in too much, a lazy housewife who's house isn't imaculate, and a bad mother cause my kids have issues tiding up.
If you know me better, I don't sleep in the night cause my kids still get me up between 3-8 times a night, I have 3 kids (ant included) that don't clean up their mess so I have too and I work, but mu house is never that messy at all, the only person that thinks it's messy is me, AND my kids try and clean I just get sick of the fighting and yelling so I do it.
But enough waffle about that before I start getting bitchy.

Me and kids went to Tracy's yesterday for a visit in the pouring rain. Ant drove is down because I had no sleep the night before and had been bawling all morning. It was rather thoughtful of him since I just got stuck into him.
The kids loved playing with Flissy and Alastair, even though they only went outside for a very short time in between down pours. Trac and I went thru what we want to order for the November Retreat. So all had fun!
Trac was spring cleaning, so that got me in the mood to come home and do some. Note the word SOME!!! I've cleaned the playroom and put some crappy stuff that was lying around away. You know like dvd's that get left by the TV after they've been watched and stuff.

Well, there's still washing to fold and put away, so I'd best go and get it done.

Tuesday 5 September 2006

MAI..........

I have seriously been procrastinating about this post!
So many dramas have gone on in the "crazy" Sheppard-Morris/Wright households in the past 10 days, I have no idea where to start. They do say that things happen in 3's so I'm hoping that we've now had our dash of bad things to happen to us.

I had a appointment with the Learning Developement teacher at the kids school a few weeks ago because I have been worried about Shanice progress. She really struggles, and I am not noticing any change in her progress. It turns out that she may have a form of dyslexia, but first we have to get her eyes tested at a Behavourial Optometrist, so they can check the movement patterns of her eyes as well as her eye sight. So we now have a mildly long sighted 7 year old daughter that has to wear the cutest purple glasses at school and at home while doing reading and playing playstation - which I think is hillarious cause I don't let my kids play the PS2.
I am going to wait and see how she goes with the glasses before taking the next step and taking her to a learning center where they can assess her.

Then we're on to the next drama - On sunday the 27th Aug my parents took Darrell and Lynsey up to Terrigal for their last day in australia before they flew back to England first thing monday morning. All was going great guns until all of a sudden my dad ( who is 61 but is so fit it's not funny and acts like a 20 year old) couldn't speak and wasn't making any sense what so ever. They called an ambulance and it seems that he may have had a stroke. I rushed up to Gosford Hospital which is about 2 hours away and I was so shocked seeing my dad like that.
I tried as best I could to be strong for my mum. And tried to be strong for my kids and try and explain as best as I could what was wrong with Grandad.
Dad had gotten a bit violent, which I could totally expect, dad doesn't even take panadol when he has a headache so imagine breathing stuff and needles. So they had put him to sleep. The nurse in ICU said for us to take pictures and write a journal because he will loose a few days. I had my camera with me would you believe because I wanted to take photos of all the kids together on their last day. But I didn;t have the nerve to do that to my dad. I wish I did now.
By Monday morning when I arrived with mum, he was sitting up a bit raspy, but ok. By that afternoon when I arrived with the kids he was in a chair with PJ's on - this was hillarious, my Dad had NEVER worn pj's ever! Connor thought it was the bee's knee's cause I could keep applying this really cool hand wash to get rid of the germies. I wish I could buy that by the truck load - Connor is a total germ-a-phob, he'd bathe in it if I'd let him, lol.
I didn't see dad for the rest of the week as the drive was too far and he was fine. Just running all sorts of tests. They did an EEG which is some sort of brain scan and they found some abnormalities, so what did the Neurologists do? Took dad's drivers licence off him for 3 months. HELLOOOOO!!!! they can't tell you what wrong with you and don;t know how to fix anything, but hey let's take the man's licence away because that's what he does for a living...... oh yeah! if you haven't guesses I'm a bit pissed about the issue, so just imagine what my dad's going thru.
He got release on friday, which was fantastic news. We were all so happy to have him back home. So I plodded up on Saturday arvo with the kids for the bbq we never got to have the week before. And then we were back up again for a Father's Day roast for lunch.
Thank god he is ok. I don't know what it would be like without my dad, and it's something I don;t want to picture at this point in my life.

In the middle of all of that drama, another one arose - YAY!!! On wednesday, Ant was at work as normal when he found a hidden mircophone and video survailence hooked up to a computer below the office in his works factory unit. Needless to say Ant was livid and went a little crazy. He did quit his job for about ......mmmmm...... 45 minutes, when better judgement caught up with him and thought "Hey I have to pay a mortgage and pay for the kids private school fees". There was plenty of yelling that went on, one of the partners had done it and the other one that Ant answers too had no idea. There was then plenty of excuses that went flying, but when Ant is the only one in the office - ever, it's hard not to take it personal.

So that brings us up to speed in with the dramas.
These all seem so trival in the scheme of things, but at the time they are major.

A big congrats to you if you struggled thru my essay of a post. I have piccies of the kids and stuff coming, but that may have to wait for another day