It happened.......

So, I come home from my parenting duties (ie. P&C meeting) this evening to discover my washing strewn across the lawn - again. I was furious, to say the least. Pretending not to notice, I called over the culprit and dragged his naughty butt to the chain and tied him up.
Forgetting about the hot chips which we bought for dinner, I then went to pick up the laundry, and all the pegs too cause that annoying dog will eat them. Laundry on, the kids are wrangling the chooks out of my garden so I decide it is time to put them to bed. Still furious, I discover the chooks have pecked the bottom off their feed dispensed and can't find the wing nut and washer to reattach it. Aaarghh.
Luckily the chooks come into the pen easily and we shut them in for the night. As they still like to sleep in the nesting box and not on the roost, I have been barricading off the nesting box at night, so I go around the pen to do this. I open the nesting box lid and the frustration from the past quarter hour washes away as I find this

 OUR FIRST EGG!!!!

It was so hard getting those two to smile for some reason, I think they just wanted to own the egg individually! I had to take it off them to make sure it did not drop on the ground!
After getting over my excitement I remembered we had 'hot' chips for dinner and ushered the kids off to eat.

Food, do we have to?

I find it hard enough some days to get the kids to eat and now I have to be cautious about the food Master 5 eats, as if life is not already busy enough!

So, to recap and bring everyone up to speed, Master 5 has suffered a sore tummy for some time now. It was noted late last year his 'burping' habit (not belching whoppers, thank goodness), which has grown into an upset tummy most days upon waking, and has turned into a frequent vomiting situation. It was not until the vomiting started I decided there was something else than a bad burping habit and off we went to the doctors to get a 'reason' for this situation.

After Master 5 bravely sat down for a blood test, and put me through some public exposure to get prepared for a tummy xray, I have had the results rechecked and our boy has a condition called GORD.

Good GORD I said to him at the doctors, and he laughed not realising what we are in for the next few months! And I could give you the proper expansion of the Gord acronym but Reflux is a much more common term for it.

Reflux does not sound that bad, and for an infant it is easily delt with (as my doctor explained), you just change their formula until you find one which is good for the baby, and medicate. Unfortunately Master 5 is no longer a baby, and does not take formula but real food! So we now have to become conscious of exactly what he is consuming. Limiting sugary, spicy, acidy, and fatty foods. Sounds easy, but practice is a little harder. He is also to avoid 'heavy' foods for a month, like oats/barley etc. What a horrible situation to put a child in come these colder days, when porridge becomes the breakfast choice.

We also have to give Master 5 medication, which has proved to work so far. The doctor asked if he would take a tablet because the powdered form is about $50 more expensive, I said yes and Daddy can deal with it! Master 5 has decided that chewing the tablet and drinking it down with water is the best way to take it. So far so good, the bucket he has had his head over the past week has disappeared and he has more life in his little body! The only tricky part of the medication is it has to be taken 1hour before food and 4hours after food. For kids whom usually eat every 3 or so hours, this I fear will become difficult. My only choice at the moment is to give it to him upon waking in the morning and try to hold off on brekky for an hour. Worked today, but day one so will see how we go.

As I am typing this, smelling the pumpkin soup preparing itself on the stove for dinner, I realise I have put 2 whole onions in it and I now will need to make something extra for Master 5's dinner, bugger.
So, if you have any 'reflux friendly' recipes, I would appreciate them, and any other advice anyone can give me to help our Little Boy would be appreciated.

Our Chooks are not Chicken!

Whenever we go out and come back in the afternoon, our chickens are sitting on and under our front steps. The other day, once the chooks had moved, I saw Rusty sitting in there with them, I am pretty sure the chooks were resting on top of him and he was sleeping cause we did not initially see him!
This afternoon, I feed the dogs (of whom our puppy is now as big as our big dog) with Little Miss 3 helping. Upon placing the dog bowls on the ground and walking away, the chooks approached the dogs peering into the dog bowls and pecking at the ground around them. Boy these chickens are game, and our dogs are awesome (except for when the puppy pulls washing off the line and eats our thongs)!

Trying this out!

My new phone I got at the beginning of December is a 'smart' phone, so I am trying to do my blog from here. Excuse the typos and such as I am still getting used to the technology as I have only had posession of my phone for half the time it has been mine, but I wont bore you with my disgruntled telco customet rant!
We survived the first term of school! I am anxious to see how these holidays  play out. We have so much planned, but everything is pending certain other things take place first and it is a whole waiting game at the moment. We have started the first day of holidays on a rather boring note, not doing much, as is the plan until monday when people get back to work and phone calls etc can be continued.
I have finally re-enrolled to complete my diploma, it has taken me this long to settle into our new life up here, Master 5 starting school and entertaining Miss 3, sorting out chickens, dogs, and the odd other animal influence around us!
 In the time I had been offline from my studies, the course I am srudingg has become paper based, rather than the online course I was enjoying. So I am a little disappointed at having to adjust to this new method of course delivery, but I am determined to finish it this year, so I will be knuckling down!
Miss 3 joined a Music Makers class last week and has been having a blast singing songs and dancing around to any snippett of music she hears! It is very cute, she is enjoying it to the extent that I am  no longer allowed to help her! I will get used to having the extra time to myself eventually, just was not prepared for it so soon!
Well, I feel I have rambled enough, and am sick of typing on this thing, let me know how I went on my new toy!

Why did I do that?

Just came off a 2 day detox and felt great. I usually do the 48Hr Rapid Detox you can buy in the supermarket, just to give the system a chance to process everything else we tend to consume but never burn off!
I tell you it was hard though. 2 little kids and a husband still had to be catered for. Needless to say, sunday pancakes did not happen this weekend past! And the cheese cake I made the other day was finished by others (my hips thank them). I tell you I was not the perfect detox-er, I did lick the peanut butter off the knife after making Miss 3's lunch, and later stole a cracker off her plate. I made a nice chicken dinner last night and it was really hard not to eat any!
After all that hard work, today started with a coffee which I did not drink all of, and a nice egg white omlet with parmesan cheese. I reminded myself everytime I got hungry just a glass of water was fine until the next meal, and it worked for the morning. Lunch was a slice of bread with turkey meat, tomato and (too much) cheese, which was good but again too much cheese. The dinnertime routine was a fail for me, I forgot about the P&C meeting on this arvo straight after school and had no excuse to get out of it. So, we did not get home until 430 which is usually when we are getting ready to eat dinner. Dinner ended up being leftover chicken for Master 5 (and we wont go into the tantrum which ensued when he realised it was not the chicken meal he though he was getting), chipolatas for Miss 3 and I have just finished off the last 2 chipolatas and a chocolate drumstick. What a way to finish off the first post detox day! I had all these plans of easing myself back into food and having salads today, good luck to that for next time.
Playgroup tomorrow, and I would like to go, but a plate of food is requested for attendees. I have no problem with that but the plates usually derive of crackers and cheese, or cakes of some description. Am thinking I might just go for a cracker and dip with smoked sausage but really limit what I consume. Damn you self control!
Think I might have to go make myself feel better now and have a cup of green tea!

Sausage: to be or not to be??!!

So, I was told I had to blog about this so here is my side of the story......

A couple of weeks ago my DH showed me a picture on his computer and said 'what do you think'? 'It' is only $100. I don't remember giving a response at the time. I was busy being Mum.

We found a dog cage online and decided to buy it for camping trips so we can bring our dogs safely. Little did I know, DH had an ulterior motive for this purchase.

I had an appointment booked in town (2hrs away), so it was a big day out. In planning the day, DH said great, we can pick up that thing at the same time. So, obviously he was going to get 'it', I explicitly said I was not dealing with 'it'. 4days before we go to pick 'it' up, DH disclocates his shoulder at football training. I should have taken it as a sign to say NO, but figured there was a lesson to be learnt for all of us so off we went to get 'it'.

'It', was a pig.

Destined only for one thing, we got it home. I asked how long we would keep it and DH said we will see. I had purchased a bag of food for the pig and named it Sausage (its final destination). DH mentioned at one stage when it was big enough we (he, not me), would do the deed and sort it out. Then he changed his mind and said once the bag of food was gone it would happen. Cool, I thought, so the pig got really well fed, all the table scraps (dogs even more jealous now!), brekky, lunch and dinner, and more inbetween just to shut it up!

After having Sausage in our yard (penned off) for 5days, we got a call saying we needed to get it out of town within 24 hours. Someone was not happy with us having the thing. It was friday and we had just driven an hour each way to go grocery shopping, making sure we were back to pick up Master 5 from school. Remember DH had a dislocated shoulder, all the driving responsibilities fell upon me. So, we get Master 5 from school, hop in the car and the only decision we could make was to take Sausage to the farm, 5hrs away. We left home at 330pm, but instead of making a weekend out of it, DH wanted to get back home straight away for football sign on. Priorities right! We could have put it in the freezer but DH was not in a position with his shoulder to perform the deed.

My wonderful Father and Mother in law met us on the highway so we cut an hour off our trip, they took the pig back to the farm and we began the return journey. Made it back by 2am. The kids were fantastic in the car, but I don't want to do a road trip like that again too soon!

In the 5 days we had Sausage, our kids became attached and don't want to 'kill' her. Sorry children, that is life.

Unfortunately I could not find my camera charger at this point in time so I did not get any pictures of the beast, probably for the best!

Chickens, a lovely beginning, a sad ending.

Here goes another lesson in life!

Our favourite pet of late is our chickens. So much that the dogs are jealous the chooks get all the attention now. Rusty is jealous of the chooks getting most of the food scraps, he has even been eating their feed (the dog droppings around the yard are now speckeldy!).
Our chickens are doing great, getting along with the dogs and having fun just roaming the yard. Master 5 has become our chook wrangler, and confidently catches one when he is home, to cuddle up to for an half hour or so!

This morning Miss 3 was in the chook pen patting her chicken (a sadly, skinny looking one, DH and I had decided wont live long), the only one she was ever able to catch by herself. I walked by and she asked me "is this one dead?"
Bugger, DH is on night shift so had not long gone to bed for the day, so clean up duties fell on me (how unusual). So, to get the 'unfit for here' chicken out of the pen, I first had to make sure the rascally dog did not discover it, nor catch me burying it. Half an hour later I had a hole deep enough I hope the dog does not sniff it out. Making sure both children knew what had happened, we discussed the chicken going to heaven, not a new concept for Master 5 but something unusual for Miss 3. She kept asking why god wanted our chicken, her favourite chicken.
To take their mind off the deceased chook, I offered up some craft for the morning. As they were doing their collages, Master 5 declared he was going to bury his masterpiece so the chook could have it in heaven, how thoughtful!
And then there were 5, lets hope they start laying us some eggs soon!