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!

Getting ready for 2011

We're heading off for the standard Lame Games with the Lane's this evening, sans the pidgeon pair who have managed to wrangle a sleepover with their second family down the road. Shall be a lovely evening, probably home before midnight if past experience counts for anything.

I've not made a New Year's resolution for about three years - that one was to only buy Fairtrade or recycled clothing. I've stuck quite firmly to that - although I've also started imposing the same standard on loving family members who would like to buy me clothes for Christmas/birthday/out of pity. It was rather interesting explaining to my 80 year-old Grandma that this situation arises from an ethical standard, rather than from being frugal. She got it in the end, she's taking me to a couple of the recycled clothing boutiques up her neck of the woods for a "new frock"! Mind you, she'll probably wind up spending about as much on a second-hand dress from the shops up her way as we would from a chain store, but the quality will be much better. A little bit of luxury, I'm really looking forward to it.

Following on from that, I have a few things that I really need to focus on this year. So, I'm making some resolutions! My fitness has dropped markedly over the past twelve months to the point where I'm not doing anything. I've used my SLE as a crutch to allow this to happen, and have developed a real block to any sort of exercise. Not good for my health, and a poor example for the kiddies. So, back to basics with my fitness. The recommendations from the Arthritis Organistion is flexibility every day, weight-bearing every second day and cardio 3-4 days/week. For flexibility I'm going to alternate a short session one day with a longer session the next. The short session will be 4 cycles of Greetings to Khatu, and the longer session will be an hour working through the stages of the YIDL program. One the days where I do a short yoga session I'll then do some weight bearing exercises, so my muscles are stronger, hence there will be less stress on my joints. And three nights a week I'll go on the treadmill. I'll start with five minutes (I'm REALLY unfit) but aim to work up to 30 minutes at a moderate heartrate. I'd also like to get into the pool at least twice a week. I went for a swim on Boxing Day, and the relief on my joints was indescribable, well worth the cost of pool entry! So on days when I make it to the pool I won't walk - have to make sure I don't over do things. Fine, fine line, it can be really difficult to tell whether a flare is because I've been overdoing it physically or whether it's simply a part of a natural cycle. I'm guessing a regular blog will help me identify patterns with my flares.

I'm also aiming to go with a Project 365 type theme. I've just started collating past years' photos and realised just how few we have from the past twelve months. I splurged and bought myself a funky, tiny little camera yesterday, with the idea that it'll be easy to take with me. I'll aim to take photos every day, and post a couple of times a week.

So, the resolutions are
1) follow the exercise regime, and if I fall off the wagon simply get back on; and
2) take daily photos of family and a life, and regularly update the blog with them.

Seems achievable.

On the farm, we've got a new aquaponics system that is going great guns, so 25 Barramundi in the old sysytem and 40 Silverperch (30 fingerlings and 10 up to and including 35cm!) in the new one. Five HL browns and a silky bantam (Georgie has gone to the Jingle Bells Farm down south, lucky duck!). Three wick'd beds and two round AP beds that need a fair bit of work. My first REAL herb garden, too sweet. Two miniature nectarines (one is in it's fourth year and has provided us with 40+ lovely little fruit), a dwarf cherry, six pears, a mandarin, a lemon, an apricot, a midjin berry, two figs, a nectarine, four grape vines, three passionfruit and a gooseberry bush. Not bad for 440 square metres! (The house is included in that 440m2, we have a tiny block!)The native garden is filling out, and the grand total of what needs to be done in the yard is the two final tiered garden beds down the side of the driveway and the paving on the opposite side of the driveway. Then just some sort of system for keeping things tidy!

I love my life.