The end of 2009

It coincides with the fact my broadband speed has run back to dialup, so this post will be short and sweet.

Have fun tonight everyone, maybe take some time to reflect on all the joys 2009 has brought us. Don't focus on the crap parts, leave it behind you where it belongs.

Bring on 2010!

Lot's and lots of love to you all xoxoxo

See you next year.

Rockin out to Rammstein

So Teen Queen scurried off the the Boxing Day sales and scored her own copy of Guitar Hero - clearly with mummys blessing.

Oh such good clean fun! This pic shows all 3 of my darlings rocking out. I wish I had taken video footage instead because the little ones were bouncing along perfectly in time on their new hopper balls whilst Teen Queen ripped it up.

The penny finally dropped about my dorky neighbour blasting random songs very late on Xmas Eve......clearly the Fat Man brought him Band Hero and he couldn't wait until morning to play with it.

I'm getting quite good now. Apparently I'm ready to move up in skill level from Easy to Medium. Of course due to the fact all the kids cleared off the next day so I had lots of time to improve my skills.

And did I - I spent about 3 hours in one afternoon being a rock star, thanking the screaming crowd for coming, and high fiving myself.

Then stopped and realised - I am no rock star, I am a suburban mother of three with piles of washing to fold.

Who's the dork now????

The Great Unwrapping

Yay for Hungry Hungry Hippos!
Yay for pool ponies and Star Wars figurines!

Worshipping the false idol - yay!

Off to mums for dinner on Xmas Eve. Awesomeness. A table decorated with magic, delicious food (3 helpings for Miss Unperfect) – lots of laughter during the great gift unwrapping and screams of delight when one of the neighbours took it upon himself to dress as Santa and visit every house in the street.


Home in the pouring rain and bellies full – little tackers off to sleep – presents already wrapped for a change so relaxing in front of those cheesy ass carols on telly until I could stand it no more.
It was weird this year. Teen Queen flew the coop a few months ago (just not enough angst in this house apparently) but of course returned for Xmas eve. Like any decent parent I immediately turned her room into storage space about 15 minutes after she left (bwahahahaha!), so she had to sleep on the couch (in front of the telly so bliss for her).
When it was time to do Santa she was awake. It was HORRIBLE. The spell was totally broken. I don’t care that she is 17. She doesn’t care. She knows mummy is Santa but seeing the complete BORINGNESS of mummy arranging the actual presents in front of the tree instead of whimsical thoughts of reindeer and sleigh bells (in Australia hahahahaha) were popped. Badly.
In the words of Teen Queen – “it’s ok mum, it’s a Rite of Passage”. Nooooooo! I never busted my parents putting the presents out and still haven’t at the age of 30 +.
Ah well.
So I went to bed earlyish but found I couldn’t sleep. One of the usually quiet neigbours decided he would stay up late blasting his stereo REALLY REALLY LOUD. Who does that Xmas eve? I was also puzzled at the choice of tunes. Weird – one minute blues (so that’s ok) next minute Top 40, then some heavy metal (rock on)…WTF? Then I could hear him singing KARIOKE? Even more wtf. GO to BED DORK.

Xmas shenanigans

Of course I had to go through the yearly shitfight with the outlaws about going to their house for Xmas lunch.
What gets me about this – each and every year the mother in law (MIL), who is not EVEN my MIL in reality has to make some sort of fuss. Apparently I suck because I don’t want to drive for 2 hours on Xmas day to listen to her family moan and bitch endlessly about everything in the universe, then eat her (truly awesome) Xmas dinner and drive 2 hours back home again. The food is lovely but surely not worth the 4 hours in the car? Xmas day is lovely for getting together with family…but surely not when you have to jam a smile on your face while you listen to the carping and moaning of the ‘adults’ over the table? Especially when you cannot get plastered in order to dull the pain or even stick a lampshade on your head to distract from the whining???

NOOOOO

So Lulu called it a day and said NO MORE! Shitfight ensued but it was over quickly and I got to spend the day at home…..aalllll day with MY family. Who insist on laughing and having fun at every given opportunity. So THERE.

OMG Guitar Hero

This is only the funnest ever game in the universe. FUNNEST. EVER.

I’m not a fan of most games Wii, PS3 or Atari….I just don’t have the attention span. I love the shooting at the screen games, but the ones where you have to go through 80000000000 scenes and pick up a magic flute, jump and and down 15 times on the spot whilst pressing A + B and Z in a certain order bores me to tears. I must admit I think I got Guitar Hero mixed up with Air Guitar silliness. I thought you just jumped around in front of the screen like a spaz and got points for wearing spandex. How wrong I was.

At the celebration evening of the birthday of my dear friend The Force there were cocktails and 4 axe (tee hee) guitar hero games.

Here is the Girl Band FAIL. The Girl Band are the dark ones, the FAIL part is the blonde tressed ladies who in NO time had the crowd booing us off the stage through sheer un co-ordination and lack of skill.

We laughed, we cried…..and everyone was kind enough to let me have a turn with my guitar set to MONG after some intense coaching by one of the Masters. My sides and my arms were still hurting the next day. Good times, awesome PATIENT friends.

Other terrible things my children have done to me...

A classic from the Teen Queen files.

Teen Queen was always independent from the word go. She also seemed to feel no fear, especially at the shops. She would talk to anyone and often wandered off with other families at the supermarket.

Once I watched her walk away from me at a large shopping centre, pushing her doll in the pram. I stood there wondering how far she would get before she remembered I wasn't there.
I watched, and followed and watched and followed....she didn't look back once. From one end of the centre to the other, not a care in the world.
If I had been distracted and not seen her walk off, she might well have gone outside and caught a bus to Timbucktoo before I noticed.
She would have been 2.5 years old.

I knew I had to do something about 'stranger danger' but didn't want to scare the pants off her with "Bad Man will take you away" stories. I ended up warning her that maybe some person she didn't know might want to take her without asking mummy and that was very bad. If that every happened she was to yell loudly "you are not my mummy - or daddy".

So six months later (you know what's going to happen don't you?), we were out somewhere and it was time to go home. She didn't want to go, so after 2 failed negotiations I took her by the hand firmly to pull her towards the door.

Those cornflower blue eyes went a shade darker and like a trooper she stood her ground and screamed YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER, YOU ARE NOT MY MOTHER! At the very top of her lungs.

Embarrassed much? I can't quite remember how I got out of there intact because everyone within a 500m radius stopped dead to look. It might have been because we look so alike....maybe. I blocked it out....

000 - a family tradition?

I was chatting to an old friend later on the evening of the Cyclone 000 incident and she reminded me that Teen Queen did that to me at the same age.

Slightly different story though, remember this was the days of Home Alone being the biggest movie of all time.

So Teen Queen (back then she was Awesome Child) was dragging her feet getting ready for school. I had a big day at work and wanted an early start, but she refused to leave the house.
I did what all horrible parents do and walked out the front saying "well I'm off then - bye!". Awesome Child responds with "I'll call the Police and tell them you left me home alone."
Me says - "well you will also have to explain to them that you wouldn't get in the car to go to school" and headed out to the driveway.

Loudly slammed the car door. Nothing
Started the car. Nothing - now come on, this one ALWAYS works
Beeped the horn Nothing
Reversed out the driveway, slowly NOTHING!

I gave up in disgust at knowing she had me over a barrel now, I should not have made a threat I couldn't carry out.

I strode back in the house - just in time to see AC quickly hanging up the phone, looking very guilty indeed.

YES she did call 000 and she was even speaking to the operator when I interrupted. EEKS!

Cyclone and the Very Nice Policeman

So when your child gets to be a certain age you teach them how to call 000 in an emergency. Please, please take extra pains to explain what an emergency is won't you?


Because Cyclone just called 000 because he wasn't happy about being sent to bed with no story.


I did notice the cordless phone lying on the bench beeping away and when I hung it up noticed it had been off the hook for over 2 mins, which puzzled me because usually it does a really LOUD off the hook noise to alert you to it.


Then I saw it had 'ringer off' all over the screen and I spent a good 15 minutes swearing because I can't work out how to get the ringer back ON.


So I'm putting Betty Boo to bed, hear a loud knocking - the dogs go wild, and there are two rather tall police-type men at the door. I assume they are here because of the graffitti that appeared overnight on all fences but mine (gotta love those mutts for something). Looking back I wonder how that thought crossed my mind "Graffiti - let's get to the bottom of that Danno".


Fluffy mutt is trying to break though the security door and Disco dog is trying to jump through the window and I manage to squeeze my way out without letting them through so I can talk to the police in peace only to find out there is a report of a 000 call with no response. BRILLIANT.


I sheepishly explain Cyclones past threats to call the police when he has been in trouble and luckily they think its funny and agree to wait whilst I round up the offender for a good talking to.


Fluffy mutt escapes mid stern talk (which wasn't stern at all because they both were trying their hardest not to laugh) and kind police-type man chases her up the driveway as she goes to attack some mild mannered maltese X being walked by her elderly owner.



Talk over with and finished with "looks like you have your hands full". MUCH? I realised there I was standing in my skanky pink moccasins, Wot Wot headband on (DON'T ASK) with a very embarrassed Cyclone on one side of me and Betty Boo on the other side charming the pants off everyone with 3 different texta colours drawn all over her face and body.


They couldn't get out of here fast enough....laughing all the way.

And where pray tell did it come from?

Priceline, Priceline, you pay less at PRICELINE.

And you can have your own sachet of Placenta & Henna for only $3.95 - woooooooo!

Don't start on my tightassnes with Xmas presents - 3 teenage boys = various shaving creams, soaps and hair products all wrapped up in a noice package.

You KNOW you can't have too much soap when there are boys in da house.

HA HA HA HA hee hee hee - STOP it!

Oh this takes the CAKE. Whilst breaking the Xmas present land speed record (6 presents, 30 minutes) I came across this.



Ohh yeah!

Although I did take home my babies placentas in ice cream containers and lovingly planted them in the garden...this is getting silly!

For best results use with other fine Hask Placenta Products.

You mean there is more? Placenta Shampoo....hairspray? Great way to scare off a hot date when he runs his fingers through your hair - "it's the Placenta that keeps it so shiny darling".

Blueergh! No I'm not opening it, I don't want to know what it smells like even if it is perfumed up, I will KNOW there is placenta in it.

*Placenta extract is derived from animal placenta

Oh...well that's OK then.

Four Tawny Frogmouths sitting in a tree

Here is the little family. The babies are nearly all growed up now.

I thought I'd missed them and they had all flown the coop. There was no poo all over the footpath, the nest was gone and I felt a bit sad that I didn't get more shots.
But there they were again, all in a row.


Pity I couldn't move that branch. Looks the little one is giving me a death stare again.


OMG, Dad is too. Yep looking right at me and not moving.

Actually no, looking right through me and not moving. It started to get creepy.

I thought I'd better take a few more shots and then this -




They opened their eyes - like REALLY OPENED THEIR EYES........shhhiiiiiiiiiit!

Look at their faces in the earlier pics. Their entire faces are practically closed. Until something draws their attention obviously.

This pic didn't do the colour justice - they were GLOWING red.

I put the camera down and walked very very quickly back home.

Looks like Scorpio is doing the Kinder drop offs until it's safe again.

Awwwww Owly things

One of the great things about living in this Old House is the proximity to the local kinder. It's across the road and four houses up.

The other good thing is this....erm these -


That's Tawny Frogmouth Daddy

and this is Tawny Frogmouth Mummy. The shadow behind her is one of two babies. Fluffy, fluffy babies.

They aren't very easy to see and I'm not sure we would have even noticed they were there if it wasn't for the huge puddles of poo all over the ground at the Kinder gate.

So no, they are not actually owls - there are a few differences and they are apparently closer related to Nightjars - whatever the hell that is.
The parents kick the babies out of the nest so I wanted to make sure I got some pics before that happened. I missed a few more shots when my camera was being held hostage (hahahaha) but I did manage to get right underneath mumma to get this one.


Can you see that fluffy ball in the fork of the branches? See that black stripe? That's it's liddle eyes. It was giving me the evil eye I think.....but aawwwwwww.

So cute