I was feeling unwell last night, but having taken 4 green tea tablet, a very hot bath to take away the chill and 10 hours of sleep, I feel quite OK this morning,

When I told Sara last night that I was sick, she was running around looking for a themometre. She believes the taking of the temperature itself is a cure! She makes me laugh, my funny little girl.



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This is the last day of winter and to make up for the spring like weather we had recently, it was very cold this morning.
Richard is back at work and I took Sara to Steiner playgroup in the morning, drove to Katoomba to return the dvd, a little shopping at Coles, came home to receive Lisette and the girls for a cup of tea.

I restrung my guitar for the first time in years on the weekend. I have lost all my calluses on my finger tips, so it will take a long time to get used to playing all the chords, but it feels like I got a piece of myself back now.

I'm not feeling well tonight. I have a sore throat. I'm hoping to shake it off with a big dose of green tea tablets.

Sara has just landed on my lap as I sat down to begin this blog.

Richard made a second table for the styrofoam boxes to grow vegetables in yesterday. The vegie patch are looks nice and neat thanks to my husband of five years. I have been instructed to report this achievement. Today is the last day off for Richard's week long holiday. Tomorrow morning, he will be up at 4.30am to begin his work week. At least he caught up with some sleep and did some work around the house.

It's our 5th wedding anniversary. Richard ended up taking today off as well, but not to celebrate our anniversary. I spent all day making an opera cake.
It was hard work and didn't really turn out like the one from David Jones, but it was better than not having an opear cake at all on our anniversary.

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Sara is holding a piece of blue tuck in this photo. It is her latest favourite thing.
Every morning, she begs to be given some blue tuck to play with and to hold all day.

Yesterday Richard and I went to look at some bikes as a potential birthday present for Sara.
Ever since she went to a bike park with her cousin in Sydney, she has been asking for a bike and a scooter. There isn't much suitable places for kids to ride their bike around in our neighbourhood. I am not convinced that she will be that into it. What to do....
May be a little scooter which is easier for mum to fit in the car.....

We have a new rule for Sara. No TV in the morning.
This morning, Richard and Sara got up before me and when I got up, Sara was watching TV and she knew that I disapproved of this. The guilty expression on her face was unmistakable.
She also knows that her mum and dad have different set of values and rules. Mum is more lenient on the mess, but strict on food and TV. Dad buys her whatever she wants including toys and lollies, lets her watch what and when she wants, but very strict on tidying up.
On the issue of the TV viewing, Richard and I will have to present a united front.
When I switched the TV off this morning, she went to her Daddy to see if he could intervene, but she accepted that from now on no more TV or DVDs in the morning.

Wish us luck.

Sara had a full day yesterday. In the morning, she went to the playground at Wentworth Falls Lake. There she bumped into Mia and they played together for a while. She came home and went next door and played there all afternoon with Tyller. Then Tyller and his parents came over to dinner at our place in the evening, got very excited and stayed up till late.
You'd think that she would at least sleep in this morning, but no, she was up at 6.30am. I've been getting up early to have a little "quiet time" by myself recently, but I only got 15 minutes of peace this morning.

Richard is on leave till Thursday.

When I'm out in the garden pruning and weeding, Sara tries to stop me by saying "Stop cutting my gardening!"
Then when she sees all the leaves and branches later, she says "Don't do it again mummy."

She makes me laugh.

Richard doesn't like me pruning either.
I'm trying to bring some sort of order into the garden as everything is overgrown and over congested, but he gets nervous whenever I'm out there as he thinks I'm going to go over the top and pull out and chop down too many things.

Yesterday, I took Sara to the Steiner school to attend an interview for the 'pre-kindy' for next year. They asked interesting questions like how my pregnancy and birth were like for Sara's birth. They evidently think that how she was brought into the world is an important thing to be aware of. The interview went for an hour. Francine got Sara to do a crayon drawing on a piece of paper and she kept that drawing to go into the file for Sara. She drew a series of boxes which she called "mummy's kitchen".

They really don't approve of television, dvds, and computer games. Although they know that it is impossible to totally ban TV viewing and dvds, they definitely don't want the kids to play computer games. Consequently, for two days in a row, we've made an effort to really cull Sara
's TV and dvd viewing. It's a challenge.

Sara has added a new phrase to her vocabulary.

"I never get to"

I never get to eat icecream.

I never get to play with Mia.

I never get a new pair of shoes.

I never get to go to preschool.

I never get to see Daddy.

She evidently does not understand the meaning of NEVER, but she makes me smile every time she says it.

When I opened the car door this morning to take Sara to preschool, there was a HUGE brown hairy spider on the door hinges. I screamed. Naturally.
I picked up a stick on the side of the road to flick it off. The Huntsman decided to jump inside the car. With the same useless stick, I tried to get the beast out of the car. It decided to go up near the break pedal and crawl under the carpet. I poked at the surrounding areas with a stick, but the spider wouldn't come out. We were running late for preschool, so I got in the car and drove all the time expecting to see the creature crawling up my leg. I dropped Sara off and came home without any further sitings. I called Richard who told me to get back to the car and deal with the beast as soon as possible. I went back to the car armed with a hand held brush.
Being an old car, I discovered that the carpet is loose and there are numerous airpockets. I pressed down all over with the brush, my foot and the stick. I then went to get the vacuum cleaner, moved the car inside the gate and cleaned it thoroughly. I did several more minutes of poking, stepping, brushing, and pressing on the carpet. No spider.
I'll have to drive Sara to ballet this afternoon. I'll wear my wellington (long boots made of thick rubber) and will just have to do it. Wish me luck.

It was our third visit to the Steiner playgroup yesterday.
On our second visit last week, Sara missed out on a nice pink cusion when the children sat down for the story time. Sara was very quick this time. As soon as she realised the story time was going to start, she went straight to the pink cusion, sat on it and declared to me "Mum I got the pink cusion!!" She also missed out on the pink apron for kneading bread last week. Not this time. As soon as Amy had a bucket of soapy water ready for the kids to wash their hands in, Sara went and got a pink apron before the other kids had the chance to even think about aprons.
She may not be the most articulate of her age group, but she certainly is street smart.

We went to the monthly markets yesterday where Sara kept her little finger wrapped around Richard the whole time getting her Daddy to buy whatever she wished.
She got this pink unicorn (the the horn broke off in a couple of hours), a dvd and even a soft serve from Mr Whippy. It took me months to train her not to ask for icecream from one of those vans and he managed to undo all my hard work.....

Sara has activities Monday to Thursday, but Friday is her day to stay at home with mum.
She never used to complain about it before, but she was demanding to be taken to either preschool or to her daycare yesterday. She finds being at home with mum the most boring thing imaginable. To appease her, I took her shopping with a promise of a new pair of shoes.
Sara LOVES shoes. She didn't get that from me.
I have no interest in shoes whatsoever. I just want to be able to walk in them comfortably.

Anyway, she chose a pair with a picture of Disney princesses. Oh dear.....
She adores her new shoes and wanted to wear them to bed last night. Richard took them off her after she fell asleep. She put them on the first thing this morning.

I've been waiting for them all winter. They only appear in the green grocer in Katoomba in late winter. The perfect oranges to make our favourite marmalade with.
I had a feeling they were there waiting for me yesterday and there they were, Seville oranges!

I bought three kilos, 17 oranges and spent the afternoon chopping them up and boiling them in tow of my biggest pots. They now need to rest for 24 hours before I add sugar and cook them till they reach the setting point. I'll boil all my glass jars and will be filling them tonight.
I hope they will be as beautiful as my first batch from last winter.

Today, my best friend Kate came to visit me. We went for a bush walk to Dante's Glen. A beautiful forest walk down to a little mossy creek in the valley with a couple of waterfalls.
Kate brought me a packet of vacuum packed clams and beautiful pasta. So, we had linguini vongoli for lunch and it was soooooooooooo delicious. A good walk, a good lunch and a great conversation with an old friend. It doesn't get much better than that.

Sara appears to be going through a particularly energetic stage at the moment. She just has abundance of energy and can not sit still for a single moment.
I picked Sara and Mia up from preschool this afternoon and the girls had a little play at home.
Mia is just three months older than Sara, but will be starting kindergarten next year as I think the cut off point for kids turning 5 is June for the next year intake. Even if she was able, Sara definitely won't be ready for Kindy next year anyway. She does not suffer from early developer syndrome my little Sara.

I took Sara to Steiner Playgroup this morning. 
I found that the kids were quite unsettled today compared to last week.
I wonder if the moon is in the bad angle to mars or something...?

We went over to Lisette and I had a cup of tea, Sara and Mia played for an hour.
In the afternoon, we went to Katoomba for grocery shopping.
Sara likes to either get a ride on the side of the trolley or to push it herself and basically get in the way. She is lovely, but really really hard work, my daughter.

We went out to lunch at Darleys today.
Darleys is the most expensive restaurant in an exclusive boutique hotel in Katoomba near Three Sisters.

Since we have my birthday as well as our wedding anniversary in August, we decided to celebrate in style.

I dropped Sara off at Lisette's house in the morning, so Sara too had a good day playing with Mia all day.

The food was lovely, but expensive and I felt quite ill from over eating and drinking wine during the day.

We probably won't be doing this kind of thing too many times in the future.

We got a parking fine as we were leaving the restaurant.
Parking fine in the Blue Mountains? Unbelievable.
But of course, we were awfully close to Three Sisters.

Sara was bursting with energy and noise all day yesterday.
How fortunate I am to have such a lively little girl ; )

We waited till Richard got home to cut my birthday cake last night.
Yes I baked it.



Yes it is Sara who is blowing out the candle.

Why is Sara covered in white stuff?
Because Richard bought an alcohol heater which came wrapped in a crumbly styrofoam.

The heater is to be situated in the guest room so that our guests need not freeze when they stay here.
Given that it arrived on my birthday and Richard hadn't told me he bought such a thing, I will assume that it is a gift for me.

It's my birthday today.
As it was Sara's day at home with mum, we spent the entire day at home with each other.

This mum is worn out.
She is FULL ON.

There was a shift in weather late in the afternoon and it got very windy.

I had a sleepless night. I blame the cup of tea I had yesterday morning. It was the "katekin" tea my dad brought for us last month. It was produced for its health benefit only and not for the taste. It's very very bitter, but supposed to be extremely good for you. Unfortunately, it also happens to be full of caffein (I think) as I can not think of another reason why I couldn't sleep all night even after taking melatonin. Also, as you know, my beloved family members are not at all helpful in this department of allowing me to sleep. Sara crept up to the big bed around midnight and spent the rest of the night putting half her considerable weight on me at the same time pushing and kicking me. The sound effect of the jack hammering coming from the other end of the bed did not help either.

The weather continues to be sunny and clear. It really does feel like spring with flowers blossoming everyhwere. When we moved here two years ago on 17th August to be exact, it was terribly cold and dark for weeks.

Sara is at Family daycare today. I am going to do some housework and gardening.

I took Sara to her first Steiner Play Group yesterday. We have been on a waiting list for a year and finally got in. It was a lovely experience and a good introduction into the Steiner education. We are now committed to attend every week for this term. They have a song for everything. For packing up, washing hand, passing the dough (of the bread the they bake together) etc. There were more boys than girls in the group which surprised me since I know that they have a shortage of boys at the school.
After the playgroup, we went to visit Lisette and the girls for lunch and a little play. Lisette was baking bread as well.
I am proud to say that I have influenced at least three women in the mountains to bake their own bread this year.

Today was an interesting day.
Did I tell you about the green house Richard bought on the net?
Anyway, he decided to build it today.
The instruction said that it would take approximately 5 and a half hours.
He began this morning, say 9am and abandoned the project at 4.30pm.
Much emotions and words not fit to be uttered near children were expressed during the process. Since it was something I tried my best to dissuade Richard of, I didn't want to be involved, but I got involved as a support staff and the receiver of the emotion.

The project is currently lying on our driveway.

You know the screw cap of wine bottles?
It has little notches where they were attached to the bottom half.
When detached, they form scratchy pointy bits.

With this weapon, Sara decided to have some fun scratching Richard's beautiful new red leather reclining chair.

She got into a BIG BIG trouble.



Note the ballerina's green fingers.