Friday and Saturday

I didn't post last night as we went for dinner at the Ramble and by the time I got home, put the kids to bed and did my flexibility stretches it was time for bed.

I'm looking into local geocaches with www.geocaching.com. There's one down at our local park and many within 5km of our house, which is very exciting. We'll give it a go with the iPhone app, which costs $12.99, and if we enjoy it to the point where we may like to start creating our own geocaches we'll sign up with the website for $30/year. I'm really excited about it, it is such a fun idea.

Alice had her allergy testing yesterday, she's not allergic to anything, yay! She does, however, have very large tonsils which may need to be removed if they cause any issues with colds and so on. According to the allergenist the large tonsils and adenoids are the reason for the pale skin and dark eyes - they stop the blood from draining from the head. So now I'm wondering if the food intolerances cause the tonsils to swell - we'd given her a big banana for morning tea, and they both had a finger bun from Baker's Delight (it had no sprinkles and I thought it wasn't glazed, but it was...). Her behaviour is not bad this morning, but she's incredibly sensitive and crying at the drop of a hat about the littlest things.

Yesterday marked the end of the first week of 2011. I did my yoga/flexibility EVERY DAY! It amazes me how much a change in attitude influences the success of a venture. Rather than seeing the exercise as a chore or a punishment I've deemed it important for my health, and a way to look after myself. In the words of FlyLady, I am blessing myself when I exercise. I purposely chose exercises that will help me manage my lupus better, and I gave myself a reasonable time frame to build up to where I needed to be. So, it took me six days to get up to 15 minutes of flexibility a day. And today I added in my first batch of strength training - one circuit of the NEWO system. That's 15 push ups (on my knees, and I did them all!), 15 crunches, 15 parachute stretches and 15 momentum lunges. So I walked up and down the street for five minutes to warm up, did my NEWO for six minutes and cooled down with 15 minutes of Greetings to Khatu and my Curves stretches. 26 minutes of exercise and I have worked and stretched all the major muscles. Yay me!

I've also made my bed every day this week! And kept the en suite clean. Hoping to gradually add in more areas of the house as I get little things under control.

We're off to the Ramble again this evening for Kit's farewell dinner. I have to go down the shops to get drumsticks and chips for the kids. The adults are having take-away. I'm going to try and fill up on carrot soup and brown rice during the day as well as drinking water. Hopefully I'll be able to keep a lid on how much rubbish I eat at dinner.

This is Benjy. Mike got a few childhood boxes from his mum and dad last night, Benjy was the big treasure.

And RL Stine was writing back in our day!

A Day of Rest

I'm glad I identified yesterday that today and possibly tomorrow needed to be quiet. I did my yoga and stretches this morning - 15 minutes! I've reached my week one target with a day to spare. Aside from that I had a healthy breakfast, managed without much difficulty to eat healthily and track my food. And I rested. Lots of rest. I actually had a planned nap this afternoon. I'm still tired but an early night and as quiet a day possible tomorrow will go a long way to rectifying the fatigue.

The lupus means I need to be extra aware of being too busy, pushing myself too hard or not eating/sleeping properly. It's a learning curve that I'm sure I'll be on for a long time. I'm getting better at being still and not feeling lazy on the days when the fatigue is particularly bad. I have a bigger difficulty with remembering to rest early and often on the days when I feel okay. It's those days when I tend to push myself that I set up a flare.

Mike and I took the kids for a walk/ride around the park after they had dinner. Alice is so confident on her bike although she does need to work on braking. Josh is proud of himself as he speeds around on his Chuggington bike - he's stubborn on the hills, refusing any help. We've started a system of restricting TV that requires the kids to "buy" half an hour of TV with an hour of physical or mental activity. So half an hour of piano practise and half an hour of bike riding would together purchase half an hour of TV time. The kids aren't allowed to sit in front of the telly for more than half an hour (we'll allow a movie on the weekend or special occasion). The kids are playing together better and don't seem to miss the TV at all, although Mike and I do a bit. We had some awesome dressing up this morning.

I'll be doing the registration for home-schooling in the next week. I'm also going to start on my programming - we've got some interesting ideas for project work. Alice made a slot-together mouse today, which means she'll be able to make animals for our cardboard farm that I was planning for the foci of our first unit of work.

Tired but happy.

Wowie

Today has been another very busy day. I'm going to have to make sure I have the rest of the week with as little scheduled as possible. I'm really feeling the effects of several busy days, not to mention the fact that I took too much sun today (which is to say, I was in the sun today).

This morning Alice and Josh put on a bike riding show so I could see firsthand how clever they are both getting with their bike riding. Alice last night learned how to start off on her own and also how to steer. Given that I learned how to ride a bike aged eight, I am very proud of how well she has picked up these new skills. I'm also quite awed at what a great job Mike did teaching her. He's the one that's given her all the lessons.

Alice pushing off all by herself

Truth be told, Alice is already more confident on her bike than I ever was. She spent a fair amount of time today zipping around all the furniture and assorted in the back yard.

We headed up to GG's place around morning tea time. Grandma decided to buy me a new frock for my birthday and Christmas gift this year. While Mike was doing some odd jobs around the unit Grandma and I walked up the main road to Bubble and Squeak. I found a skirt that I am just in love with, Gypsy and it would appear to be hand made. I also got a blue dress that will come in handy over summer if I have reason to get tizzied.

This afternoon the family ventured to Bunnings. This outing was much more successful than yesterday's travels. I spent both gift vouchers in one fell swoop. The Bunnings at Success had a great range of Digger's and heirloom seedlings. We got three or four more eggplants, two punnets of heirloom tomatoes, organic parsley (I always kill parsley but hope springs eternal), a mixed punnet of beetroot and I cannot remember what else. Huge amounts of fun.

I took this photo out the front of Bunnings. I felt the barrels almost gave the impression of two kids in Italy. This is my favourite photo of the year thus far.

We ran into the Spud Shed for the week's F&V. I've already snacked on apricots, cherries, strawberries and a plum. Looking forward to fruit salad and yoghurt after dinner. I weighed heavy at WW last night (I put on 1.5kg over Christmas and New Year). I'd made the decision that I wasn't going to track or try over Christmas, and the gain is reasonable. However, I do need to get back on track as of right now so that the damage doesn't increase. Yesterday I ate 85 PPV - that's three days worth of food. HOWEVER! I am doing my yoga every day, will start walking on the treadmill in a day or two and have tracked properly yesterday and today. I will eat sensibly, and if I have another gain next week (which may happen - gains and losses can take a week to hit the scale and I was shocking with what I ate both New Years' Day and yesterday) I'll take it on the chin and just keep on trucking. One of the girls I weighed yesterday very sensibly noted that Christmas comes but once a year.

My yoga and flexibility is up to 14.5 minutes as of today. Three cycles of Greetings plus my Curves stretches. Two days left before I add in my strength and cardio! Getting excited.



What a day

Today we had Burple booked in for her service. We left the house at 8.30, and spent several hours spending money and time at Garden City before picking up the old girl and heading up the hills to pick up GranNan's car. She's asked us to keep an eye on her garden while she's away for a few weeks, and is lending us her car and fuel card to make it financially possible. Takes a big bite out of the fuel tank to power up Canning Mills Road!

Work at WW tonight. The new program is now being advertised and we had 13 new members. Busy, busy night, but everyone was so lovely and patient, and the stock and money balanced at the end of the night, hurrah!

While we were out and about this afternoon we stopped in at Bunnings in an attempt to spend some of my birthday money. Sadly, the new seedlings hadn't been delivered yet, so may try again tomorrow.

Today marked day five of the New Year. I'm still very much enjoying my camera, and have taken photos every day. I'll add several days' worth at the end of my post. I've nearly got my flexibility stretches up the 15 minutes (13.5 minutes today) and am right on track for starting with strength and cardio on the eighth. I'm really feeling our day in the pool yesterday - my arms are very tender, possibly from the constant pulling of Alice out of the water. Mike tells me she had a great bike lesson this evening after I left for work. He is currently teaching her how to steer and also how to start herself off from stationary.

My birthday family pic

A female zucchini flower

Tigerella, yummy

Last night's story

Alice leaving a note for Uncle Kit

Watching lollies get made



A Day in the Life

Today has been another enjoyable one. Mike and I achieved a great deal of boring but necessary house-hold chores, like dishes and vacuuming. Things are looking much better although the house probably needs another full week of mornings like ours today.

Our old neighbours have been having some issues with malware on their PC. Mike organised to go over this afternoon and finish his IT efforts, which combined very well with a swim in Deb and Eric's pool. Their new place could feature in a home lifestyle magazine, it's airy and light. We spent hours in the pool - very thankful for my new rashie and the umbrella that was over the shallow end of the pool. Alice was swimming by the end of the day, underwater but able to grab onto me and get her head out of the water. She's very confident which is both good and scary.

Scary also is the fact that she decided to decorate the space under her bed this morning. She started this by wedging a metal necklace under a plug in the socket. Apparently it went FLASH, and there was a massive scorch mark when we went in to see what she was so upset about.

I've taken a few photos around the farm this evening, mostly in an attempt to illustrate our new understanding of how vining fruits go about producing. Mike did some research and discovered that

a) male flowers start appearing first and have thin stems
b) female flowers have a mini little fruit below the flower, which becomes viable if pollenated.

We've found several cucumbers that are growing well, so we'll be harvesting for tomato and cucumber salads before much longer!

Happy Birthday to Me!

I've had a lovely day. We headed up the hill to visit with Mum and Dad last night - delightful hour in the pool followed by a BBQ dinner, boardgames, dessert and much, much drinking. We played Blokus, cool game! Alice took ages to settle to sleep as we hadn't planned on staying over and hadn't packed Mickey or Minnie. Surprisingly Josh settled without One Snuggly, Two Snuggly, Smootch and Baby Fox. We gave him three cars, he lay down and was asleep within minutes.

Alice sang me happy birthday this morning and in all honesty didn't realise that she sang "happy birthday to Alice". It was wonderful. I got breakfast one in bed - fruit porridge with all-spice which was delicious. About an hour later Mum made a full cooked breakfast served with hazelnut coffee. It was just like a cafe breakfast!

After a slow morning we headed home. Mike made a seafood pasta for lunch. He's also finished putting all the wires from behind the tv and sound system through the wall and up into the roof space so we don't have wires going along the floor any more.  It looks great!

I harvested tomatoes this morning from AP system 1. Three yellow cherry tomatoes and two red grape. The nectarines are going so well, Mike and I have had at least one each every day for over a week. And Jarrad and Deb gave me some Bunnings vouchers for my birthday, so I'm going to get seedlings tomorrow for one of the beds on AP1. You can't replace both beds on a system at once as it can throw out the bacteria balances and put too much stress on the fish (I think that's the gist of it) so I'll do one bed this week and another the week after.

We went to Taurus Hawkers for dinner. It was wonderful as always. Jarrad and Deb, Mum, Dad, Grandma, Aunty Wendy, Sarah and Family Ng joined us. Aunty Wendy and Sarah gave me a lovely bottle of organic, preservative free wine they found at Dan Murphy's. Mike and I have had no luck finding wine that is both organic AND preservative free so it's a great find for us.

Elina and Jeffery ordered some awesome Malaysian desserts that were absolutely amazing. I'll certainly be ordering those again on special occasions. Dad ordered entrees for the entire group, not realising how big the meals were going to be. Once we finished dinner we went to the Asian Grocery for our regular order of mystery ice-creams. I got little dumpling ice-creams. Mum and Joanna got watermelon flavoured icy-poles that were in the shape of watermelon!

Mum, Dad, Grandma, Jarrad and Deb came back home for coffee after. They left about an hour ago and now we're chilling in front of BBT and Bones. A charming evening which followed a day of peace and joy. I even got in my 10 minutes of yoga and flexibility stretches, go me!

Happy 2011!

In true "parent of a young child" form, even though the kids are (hopefully) fast asleep two doors down, I woke with the sunlight, and couldn't get back to sleep. So rather than lie in bed grumpy, or waking up Mike, I thought I'd get up, get going and have a nap later on in the day.

I re-read the recommendations on the Arthritis Org website, and before I add in cardio or strength training I need to work my daily flexibility workout up to 15 minutes/day. I'm glad I cottoned on to that fact before I started trying to do it all from day one! I managed two cycles of Greetings to Khatu, which is a great way to start the day, working every set of muscles. I personally need to be very centred to be able to balance many of the poses, so it's not an activity I can do while I'm fretting about anything. Two cycles took me five minutes (glad I set a stopwatch, felt like at least 15 minutes right there). Then my cool-down stretches took another five minutes. So, ten minutes today, and when I work up to the four cycles of Greetings I'll be right at 15 minutes, and ready for adding in alternating the strength training and cardio. I'm aiming for a week to get my flexibility up to 15 minutes, then a week with strength and cardio before I switch up to adding in longer yoga workouts.

New Years' Eve was great, Em and Selb made delicious pizzas in the new pizza oven, and their company combined with Giselle and James was easy-going and fun. The kids did really well from my point of view - it seems that it's easier to enjoy other people's kids in a social setting. I got to watch quite possibly the funniest puppet show ever, courtesy of Ethan, Milla and Owen. However I made the mistake of laughing, so it quickly degenerated into pretty extreme silliness.

First photo of 2011 (thanks Emma) at 12.07am

I've taken a couple of photos already today. I was up so bright and early I couldn't resist getting some shots of first light on the Vale.

The light hitting our flowering gum. 

First light behind Xanthorrhoea

 First light (or maybe second) on the Geraldton stock sunflowers in AP system 1.

Happy I've started off on the right foot with the exercise - I know how important fitness is for managing my lupus. And loving the new camera. Hopeful that now I've expended some energy I may be able to get back to sleep!

My birthday tomorrow! Breakfast in bed, slow day at home and Taurus Hawkers for dinner with the extended family, and the genuine hope that Deb enjoys the food and it doesn't make her sick!