ITS OFFICIAL...............

I have the bestest wife in the world,

I mean who else but the bestest wife in the world would put up with her husband (who she hadnt seen for 2 weeks) coming home from Brisbane, spending the night with her then buggering off for 3 whole days sailing, drinking and generally having a good time with is mates and not with her ?

Yet that is precisely what happened last weekend.

Dancin to a bit of Jimmy Buffet

Yup there I was, celebrating Australia day, feeling a little 'tired and emotional' after the passage race from williamstown down to Royal Geelong yacht club. that race we came 20th out of 51 boats in our division, but all up there was a little over 400 boats there for the weekend.

SOME of the yachts

The race the following day was going well until we buggered up, leaving the shipping channel and winding up 'on the bricks' (read run aground), needing yours truely to do his best 3 toed sloth impersonation hanging from the underside of the boom while the rest of the crew pushed the boom (the horizontal sticky bit that hits you in the head) out over the water, thus tilting the boat and lifting the keel off the bottom. But despite this we wound up 15th out of 31 starters, so we would have been a shoe in for a top 10 place if we hadnt made our 'navigational error'.

The 'A' Team in action (Im in the blue hat)

The final day was light and we all wanted to get home early, but we started the race and again did really well until the wind died completely. When we worked out that there wuld be no way we could finishe the race in the alloted time we dropped the sails, fired up the engine and went home.

To add to my wifes already legendary status I came home to a lamb roast followed by a few drinks and an early night. Certainly not the meal of 'hot tongue and cold shoulder' you would think I would be in for after such a weekend.

But Tueday morning as I got ready to go catch my plane back to Brisbane my wife came up to me, put her arms around me, kissed me softly and said 'it was nice to see you for the few hours that you were actually here, maybe next time we can build it up a bit until eventually we might even spend a whole day together..........'

Message received and understood

Shes such a treasure

J

Andrea ... aka whinging cow

To my friends, family and cyber-friends ... I am SO sorry for having a huge blowout on here.

A. It's got nothing to do with the house
B. Makes me sound like a pathetic loser
C. People simply aren't interested in hearing about my troubles

So .. sorry folks. Happy face is on .... no more complaining unless it's the house I'm complaining about :-))

Birthday day got WAY better after a couple of drinks at lunch time with friends from work. Got a beautiful bunch of flowers delivered from hubby then friends came over for dinner ... where more wine was consumed.

I became the plant lady for my birthday .... receiving 4 lovely natives and 5 or 6 other plants (agave, cordylines, lilirope and aloe vera).

Unfortunately all of these plants will be for out the back yard so they'll have to live in pots for a while yet.

So .. once again ... sorry for the rant and rave. It was a minor meltdown but hopefully shouldn't happen again.

Love ya's all

A

Happy birthday to me

(to be sung to the tune of Happy Birthday)

Happy Birthday to me

Squashed bananas and wee

Don't waste it just taste it

Happy Birthday to me

Yay for me ... 37 today.

If you haven't picked up the sarcasm in that last line entry I'll just let you know that it is there!!!

Feeling even crappier today than I did last Wednesday (meltdown of the year day) .... everything really sucks at the moment.

Anyway .... no point whining about it all the time hey ..... nobody gives a crap and it just makes me feel even worse.

So ... happy face on ...... going out for lunch today with the guys from work and a couple of friends are coming over tonight for dinner (a 'la Bridge Jones birthday dinner ... minus the blue soup).

Hip hip .... hooray

Too much work & getting old

What a crappy week. Good thing it hasn't been that hot because otherwise the heat would have sent me over the edge!!

I worked until 3:00am on Monday morning to get a tender in on time (due Monday morning) and since then haven't really been able to catch up on sleep. I hit the wall yesterday and was a mess - wanted to cry everytime somebody spoke to me, everybody and everything was annoying me and all I wanted to do was shoot everybody fair and square in the head.

So a combination of my tiredness, missing hubby, and my 37th birthday fast approaching all culminated in a minor meltdown yesterday. To top it off I got home and for no particular reason (as nothing has changed in the last 6 months),I got really really sh*tty that the backyard still looked like something out of a Stargate episode when all life has been wiped from a planet for 30,000 years. Huge holes ... some pieces of wood sticking out of the ground and big ugly nasty weeds.

The completely insane part of me then starts questioning all of the decisions we have made and the major one was should we have spent so much money on our honeymoon when we could have had all of the landscaping done with that money???

Well I answered my own question by looking at the pictures of the honeymoon .... even while the weeds grow at an alarming rate and the dogs are in fear of their lives due to the large craters they may fall into ..... if I had my time over again .. I wouldn't change a thing.

So today .. I'm much happier ... I've had a lot of sleep ... and some additional good news is that my man will be home at the end of February.

Life is good.

The sun

Man it's hot

Be careful what you wish for

Welcome to 2008!!!

I've finally got a chance to sit down ... take a deep breath ... and reflect on what seems like a whilrwind few weeks.

The silly season has come and gone as quickly as it took to spend my whole month's salary!! Fortunately having a hubby that gets paid weekly helps the situation however on the weekend he misplaced his eftpos card therefore the promised trip to the movies with the children was put on hold as we had no way of getting any money out of the ATM and since my money tree hasn't arrived from the Garden shop yet ... well .... you can just imagine the result.

Good thing I had some beans in the cupboard to eat :-))

Anyway ... that was a minor hiccup in what was a fantastic few weeks with the family.

Tim & Chris (John's terrors .. I mean ... lovely little boys) headed back home on Sunday morning after spending a week at our place. They seemed to enjoy their room that we had made in our house just for them and there didn't seem to be any arguments about who had the top bunk. I think the week gave Sarah a taste of what it would be like to have brothers and sisters ... at times I think she would love some siblings but at other times I think she was pretty glad she is an only child!!!

but in general all 3 kids got along great. Sarah is the bossy one and took on the role of 'mothering' the boys when John and I weren't saying anything. Tim is a typical video game nut and as long as the X-Box was playing Need for Speed, he seemed to be in his element. Chris is far more imaginative but can't sit still for more than 3 minutes (has the attention span of a house brick) so entertaining him was a little bit more difficult but fortunately there weren't too many times we were just sitting around doing nothing.

The Gumbuyah Park toboggan got a great workout from myself and John .. unfortunately the 2 boys were too young to go on it ... so we had their turns for them!!! what a cool ride that is. And for those that haven't been .. you don't even have to walk back up the hill ... a neat pulley system brings you back up to the top!!! Some lazy ass man invented that I reckon :-))

As for the house ... well it seemed to endure the myriad of guests we had over the 2 weeks however at times was a bit squishy. Christmas lunch we had 13 people .... we have a 6 seater table ... you do the maths.

So it was a good lesson to us that the patio area really does need to be finished by Christmas 2008!!

We picked up a lovely outdoor table (8 seater) in the post christmas sales ( half of it paid for dad as a wedding present) so now we just have to hurry up and get this jolly paving done.

As for the heat ... well I think I lost 5kgs in sweat alone and on Saturday I had had just about enough so we signed up for Evap Cooling. Installation is 3-4 weeks away however knowing Melbourne in February, it will get used quite a lot before the weather starts to cool down. And I guess we would have to put it in next year anyway so may as well do it before another price increase (that's my story and I'm sticking to it).

The down side is that by being lovely and cool, I don't get a motorbike at the moment but I'm willing to sacrifice being cool on a bike to being cool in the house.

The front garden has been left to fend for itself and unfortunately I paid the price yesterday by having to dig up a billion weeds. I'll stick to what I was doing previously I think ... a little bit of gardening every second or third day is a hell of a lot easier than a whole day in the garden every few weeks!!!!

Anyway .... lots and lots happened that was pretty fun and exciting but I can't bore you all with the nitty gritty's of it all. Needless to say, we had a fantastic christmas and new year.

We are looking forward to the year ahead. My new job is going great and I'm busier now than ever. John also seems to be enjoying his job in Brisvegas (although he's not enjoying the weather ... who ever said Qld has the best weather should be shot). Fingers crossed he heads back to Melbourne at the end of March as his contract states. Wouldn't put money on it mind you but here's hoping!!!

I'm looking forward to updating you with lovely patio pics and a finished front yard soon.