Women and their tools...

Well, by request I thought I would look up some images of women and their tools. Ya'll don't wanna know what it was I found, I am guessing tools can be interpreted all different ways, MEH!!! So there is the first one, Like the t-shirt or not? Me, I like it:)

In contrast I found this one above. The top one being girlie and pink and nice, then this one being, oh-so-macho-chick-kinda-pic....she has certainly got the look dont you think? "Don't mess with me"attitude, sweet or not?

Don't leave home without it...the ever essential pink tools and case to go with it. Take it anywhere, you could take it in your car, on your bike, in your picnic basket or as an accessory for that all important girlie meeting. Wait, but that's not all, you could take it nightclubbing too!!!

Nah, gimme a wood lathe anytime, and I will turn you a nice bit of Tasmanian redgum into a mansion!!!

What are your favourite tools?

Cool calm and collected.....

Here's my other half and a big tool...hey, you people, I mean the drill in the hand.... Sheesh, settle okay!!! The hole in the wall is for the Air-conditioner to be installed, hopefully before next Summer, but wait, Summer's last day is tomorrow for us here in Australia.
Tomorrow being the 28th Feb and the next day being the 1st March can be a sad event. I know this because I had a teacher in High School who missed her birthday every other year that was not a leap year. Yes, a leap year baby would be sad, 29th Feb. A Clayton's birthday is what she termed it, "A birthday when you aren't really having a birthday".

A picture of little miss Mia, all sweet, butter don't melt in her mouth now does it? I have forewarned the teachers at school about Mia for next year. They were telling me how lucky I am to have Tom, Nick and Sarah who are kids with such pleasant personalities, always jovial. Then...then, comes Mia, cute as she looks she is a girl on a mission I tell ya. They have been briefed as of now :)

Reading with the little preppies at school was a delight today, they were so excited to be reading alongside me, and I was with them. I look forward to every Tuesday morning this year. Sarah was proud of me too, it made me feel good :)

Tako- tsubo...

Every day we learn new things, I know this is especially my case, working as a registered nurse. When I am done at work, I always have a list of things to look up, new medical terminologies and so forth. This weekend's newest addition to my learnings is about a condition called Takotsubo. The basics, it occurs in post menopausal women and it is a condition that makes you feel like you are having a major heart attack. Tako-tsubo is a Japanese term for "Octopus Trap". This is the shape that the left ventricle of the heart takes on after prolonged stress. Please have a quick look at the link there, it is very interesting. Stress reduction is the required treatment for this condition, only after ruling out any other etiologies.

Speaking of stress reduction, the move to our new house is now complete, yeah!!! It is nice to be here. The Sun is shining beautifully through the branches of the trees in the yard.

Today I am going to workout to my Bob Harper DVD and get in a warm up session on my exercise bike. Mia is a little under the weather so she will have a midday nap. Sarah's first full day at school begins today after previously finishing at 2pm. I begin assisting with the reading in her class tomorrow morning.

Hope your weekend has been a relaxing one, what did you do? What is something new that you have learnt? Share it here!!!

Feral and Funny Friday....

I went to a seafood disco last week...and pulled a mussel (boom boom)

Two antennas met on a roof, fell in love and got married. The ceremony wasn't much, but the reception was excellent!!!

Two Eskimos sitting in a kayak were chilly, so they lit a fire in the . Unsurprisingly it sank, proving once again that you can't have your kayak and heat it too. (Ok, this is bad.)

An invisible man marries an invisible woman. The kids were nothing to look at either.

Two cannibals are eating a clown. One says to the other: "Does this taste funny to you?"

Mahatma Gandhi, as you know, walked barefoot most of the time, which produced an impressive set of calluses on his feet. He also ate very little, which made him rather frail and with his odd diet, he suffered from bad breath. This made him. (Oh, man, this is so bad, it's good)....A super-calloused fragile mystic hexed by halitosis.

Deja Moo: The feeling that you've heard this bull before!!!!

I can be an artist if I wanna be....

This is a clock I made in woodwork class in year 11 at High School. The hands are missing..MIA..where are they??? LOL

Well, this is our bar, we arew slowly adding to it each week. Come by for some poison, if you dare??
This is some art I created when I was doing my HSC, for those of you abroad, HSC is Higher School Certificate, or final year at Secondary School.
This is my favourite piece yet. It adorns the most viewed wall of the house wherever we have lived. It is oil on canvas. I made the wooden frame, stretched and prepared the canvas, and did my thing with oil paints.

The theme began with my preparing a collage of different pictures of sailing boats. Then I sketched them out in grey lead. Then I colored a piece with some of my finest Derwent Watercolors. Finally, I created this oil on canvas.

When I was at University, I submitted this piece in an exhibition. There was a competition whereby the most voted piece went on front of the following year's University Diary. I did not win. I love it anyhow :)

If you want to see some real art though, go visit this blog, Jim Thalassoudis has some truly inspiring works. I will have to go visit the Charles Nodrum Gallery to see it in the flesh :)

Donut and the King....

Today I took Mia to the shops for a short time to buy some bathers for Sarah that were on special. As their school goes swimming mid year which is our Winter time here and at that time there are no bathers to be seen anywhere in shops. Mia asks for Donut King. She got a dirty big T-Rex Dinosaur Donut from there and she ate the lot!!! I just don't buy my kids much junk food so that was a treat for her. As she was eating it she asked the usual death and dying questions...

"Muuum, why did Crikey die?"..."He was swimming above a sting ray and he got it's stinger called a barb into his heart"..."Yeah, duh, I know mum...but why did he die?"..."Because his heart stopped pumping"..."Well, is he in your hostable (hospital) ?".."No, he is in the ground"..."Oh, I wanted to save him for Bindi..I like Bindi...maybe we can get her a new Steve Irwin for a dad".

Next stop was the toilet, whilst I was changing her into her new rainbow colored dress we just brought her, she asks, "Why did Elvis die mummy?"..."Because he took drugs Mia"..."Well, he should have taken one drug not five then"...."No Mia, one drug can kill you..drugs kill you"...."Oh, well he was silly mum".

By the by, my other half answered the door tonight and paid $10 for me to go to the local gymnasium for a whole month's trial. That along with my 30 minute workouts every other day should do the trick. Ain't love grand??

Sorry..gotta go...

Well, we all know that when you are about to sit down and have a meal or begin to take a bath or begin to do anything relaxing the phone always rings!!! Right?

For some funny ideas on what to do or say, go visit Sorry Gotta Go. Com, it is a laugh. My dad used to answer the phone when I was a kid and say, "City morgue, spare parts"....or my brother and I would start with the tune, "Hey, how ya doin' sorry ya can't get through, why dontcha leave your name and your number and well get back to you..( check it out)". Yep, regular funnies at the funny farm...oh yeah...that was another one, "Hello, you've reached the funny farm.."LOL.

My mum, when we were in high school in the 80's, went back to work to help the house out as there were hard times money wise back then with interest rates sky high and wages not matching up..hang on, that could be said of now..anyhow....she tried, for 2 days, to be a telephone operator for Telecom...ahh, old Telecom, now chopped up and sold into little bits. She didn't last past the 2nd day because of the abuse she got from the other end of the line. She wasn't calling people to sell them anything, she was surveying what the customer thought of their service..that was it.

The times it makes me mad is when the person at the other end of the line doesn't take no not interested as an answer. I am nice to them and they obviously need to make a sale. I used to find it hard to say no to a call, but now , I have things to do you know...got 4 kids to deal with here people!!!

So, what kind of things have you ever said when you answer the phone and it is someone you didn't want to, or didn't have the time to speak with?

Monday Monday...

Now I have your attention with the remarkable site above, LOL, I can alert you to a site I found at random that has a 10second medical test for you to complete, it is fun and worth a visit, so go check it HERE. It made me laugh!!!
Yes, MANIC MONDAY it is today. After two days of 38degree celcius heat and no air conditioner installed as yet, it is a nice coolish kinda morning here. We had some rain, but not quite enough, so it is also humid now, but that's ok.
Sarah got to school today and ran straight into class, as usual, but I made a mistake. Because I could not see her go into class, she was too fast for me, I went into the hall to see she got to her locker ok, and she ran to me and didn't want to stay at school, not sure why, it just happened. Mia offered to go to school for the day for Sarah, how cute, they want to kill each other at home but when we are out, they protect each other.
I remember one day last year, the girls were playing at a park and a boy started to pick on Sarah. Mia went up to the kid and started to have a go at him, "Don't you pick on my sister Sarah..get lost!"The dad came over and started to go crook at her for saying that, I just said, "Hey, it is a cruel World out here mate, and if ya got kids ya need to lgihten up, this is their way of finding their place in the food chain..let them sort it out." It is so true you know.
Nick is being the mum for the next few weeks, so he informs me. He is going to load and unload the dishwasher and put out the cereal of a morning, what a sweetie he is. Tom spent the weekend with some Tongan friends of ours, they have offered to take him with them to Tonga this year, along with their two little kids. We shall see what prevails. Not sure I want my 10year old going along to Tonga without one of us there.
Gotta go run some errands now, have a great day, hope your weekend was great, and that today is not a Manic Monday for yáll.

* Addition at 8:41pm... I have been working out 30 mins a day and I feel really good now. I am not going to weight myself, just guage my progress by how my clothes fit me and how great I feel. I know 30min cardio daily will do the trick too :)

Well, I did it...

Yup I did it, blogger kept hounding me to change over so now..here we are, The New Blogger..hmmm, doesn't feel much different..I guess I will survive (winks).

Today has been too hot, too hot for the kids, too hot for me, I am over it!!! In contrast, some of my friends abroad are snowed in...isn't the internet amazing? We can be talkin'and whingin' about it being too hot and other people are whingin'about it bein' too cold...why can't we just have 25 degrees celcius every day? That'd be awesome!!!

I was googling pics of Ipod covers, just for the sake of it ya hear, and I decided that if I ever got myself an Ipod I'd want a chewbacca style one, funky hey? You could picture it...walking along, listening to the Ipod and here comes a big dog and rips the Ipod cover off of you and runs off!!! Easy bait I say. Course, that'd never happen with one of these "Bling, Bling"covers here, how funky is that??

Looky here...

We just bought this lovely hall stand off of ebay for a wonderful $100.00. It suits our house so well and is worth so much more in the shops than what we paid for it. What a steal. Just needs some nice Straw hats to hang off of it and it will be perfect.
Been a very busy week and with the weather heating up again the kids and I are tired and jumpy too. Sarah is going very well at school, the boys are marvellous at their reading and little Mia keeps on practising to write her name because she thinks she will go to school next week...not next year LOL. I keep telling her not to rush it, but, ya know, they know everything at 4 years of age. Well, almost 4, her birthday is in March.
Looks like my other half will be working at the Avalon Air Show in March, we have gone as a family, all be it a growing one in consecutive Air Show Years, since it has begun. Totally love aircraft, I always have, I even wanted to marry an F-16 Tomcat when I was an Air Cadet..well, ya know, someone married a Dolphin somewhere in the World, so why not an aircraft? LOL
Will be sure to blog pics of the Airshow and the cute Airmen and Airwomen (for you bloggarific guys out there of course), when we attend the show.
Have great and safe weekend people :)

Fun Exercise....

I know, I know people, rule of thumb is to never put fun and exewrcise in the one sentence...but looky, looky here....a dance craze machine....I want one NOW!!!
Thing is, I think that they would be worth a fortune and so I would probably have to settle for one of these.... But, I am still not sure where to buy one of these, or the cost of such a thing. All my ebay search returned were used ones, that have no guarantee of even working properly, or, they were attatched to a PS2 which we do not have.

Oh well, have to stick to riding the treddly peddly and walking me thinks. Actually, today I did over half an hour of sweeping after a storm hit us here this afternoon, so I class that as a cardio workout :)

Anyone know where to buy one of these dance mats here in Australia? Thanks for the help in advance, Cheers Cazzie :)

Here I am..helloooo :)

Here I am, that is me.. Cazzie. Lovely adorable little old me !!! Obviously that was on our trip to Sydney. There, I weighed approx 92kg's. It was the most I have ever weighed. After having the kids, having been sick, then just not finding the time to do worthwhile exercise that actually puts my heartrate up, ya know, the cardiovascular workout stuff, the weight just stayed put. Make no excuses about it, now I'm makin' the time!!!
Since we moved to this new house, I have been walking and riding the bike everyday. I am actively riding the bike for a 30minute timeslot. The kids came with me tonight, yesterday I rode the bike "by my own self" (as Mia would say). I also walked to kinder and wheeled Mia's bike there for her to ride back home.
Each day, unless I am unwell, I am going to make sure I walk or ride the bike for 30minutes minimum. The kids love going to the four parks we have situated near us too so we went there tonight. An awesome Flying Fox Ride is at one of them.
I was going to write a diary but I thought I would use my blog to add in my daily activity I have done on my journey to a fitter me. I will just use a small paragraph each day and that is it. Then, I will post a pic of me in a months time, make it 8th March hey? Good, I am commited now.
I will keep on reading up on the Go For Your Life site for tips if I need them for motivation. I am always active, cannot help but be active with four sproutlings to run about after, but the 30 min a day is intentional exercise.
Keep ya posted anyhow people.

This is the new abode...

Here is young Mia on the mail box, dressed in her Hi5 PJ's.... Yes, we are in a drought, the people that lived here before hadn't watered the lawn so it is all dirt at the moment. We will be transplanting our Cooch Grass here from the other place and water it with my washing water again. It grows fabulously fast and is a hardy kind of grass so it will look awesome.

View of the place from the front drive way through to the back yard. The bobcat was here last night moving some of the rockery in the garden so we can bring "We Vamoose"on over. Her batteries are being charged as I type this post.

Great timing to have moved house....

We moved outta the other place a few weeks ago...and might I add, just in time to miss these suckers from swarming outta the skirting boards in one of the children's rooms. I kid you not!!! Since we moved to that house 2.5 years ago it had been nothing but troublesome. Thung is, it is a friend's place, and they moved to another country so we moved in when they left.
When you visit friends you don't look at their place and see that it is dirty...do you? Well, I never noticed it, until the day they said it was READY to move into. Not counting the garbage bag surprise they left in the centre of the floating floorboard dining area....that when I picked it up it oozed out watermelon juice and a thousand and a trillion brown flesh biting ants!!! The walls were filthy, so we painted it. The second bathroom had paint peeling offthe roof...correction, HAS it peeling off the roof. The tiles about to fall off in the shower..cockroaches in the garden, ants in every room, cats peeing and pooing outside every window of the house...on and on I could go. Thing is, the owner knew about it all along, everything, escepting the new invasion of termites. He never told us about the other stuff, but you know he knew about it all when you looked up on the laundry shelf and see ant rid, mice killer, rat killer and so on. Oh yeah, I forgot about the mice eating through the plaster in our main bedroom cupboard!!!
Then, I always seemed to get sick in that place, even though we cleaned it, got a bug guy out, painted the walls and tried to make it a HOME. Hell, I almost died when we lived there!!!
This place here makes me feel at home. It is clean and tidy and the street is lovely and quiet too. Things are looking up. I feel healthier and fitter and we are riding our treddy peddly's about the place.
Cannot wait to get the bus here. Photos will of course ensue :)

There are Toys, and there are Toys..

I dunno about you but after reading about this yesterday it made me cringe...what are people thinking to go buy their kid one of these things? I would much rather they make creations such as the one below that my Nicholas craftily put together. He even displayed it on his Bionicle Website aswell. Way to go Nicholas :)

Then again, when I was a kid, my Grandparents used to smoke. I used to get their empty packets, put a small hole in the top of the lid. Draw some pictures on small bits of card, put them in the empty cigarette packet. Then, I would use that as my camera, pretend to take pictures of people and open the lid to take out their picture. Playing with the cigarette packets never made me want to smoke, and I don't smoke, so I guess, what I am saying, is that the poker machine may not have an affect on kids having it as a toy...or would it? What do you think? I am still not going to buy my kids one anyway.

Sarah's First Day of School...

Here is Sarah at her classroom door. She had to wait until 12:30pm to begin a 2 hour introduction at School. It was hell for us both because her brothers began School at the normal time of 8:45 am and she wanted to aswell. Then, we took Mia to Kindergarten, and Mia kept on stating she did NOT want to go to Kinder as she was a big girl like Sarah and she wanted to get a School dress and go to School too. This is the climbing frame that we call the "Spiderman Dome". It was put there at the School when I was in Grade 6. Sarah is happily climbing all over it here just prior to her 12:30pm start time. When I came to collect her at the end of her day, she was in tears. They had gone out to play for a short time and she fell and landed on her right arm. Yes, it is sprained :( She is also right handed.
Other than that, Sarah had a marvellous day. She ran straight into class and grabbed her name tag and didn't look back. Unlike some of the other kids who were crying, and their parents were crying too. Oh well, guess some people do that don't they? I haven't yet with the boys'having begun their Primary Schooling..we will see next year with Mia I guess.
Today the girls decided to dress up as Fairies/ Princesses. There's Sarah with her magic wand. Mia with her naked baby doll with black texta marks all over it. Perhaps she will be a tattoo artist one day. OMG, did I say that? LOL Mia saying ,"Cheese".
Sarah being a ballerina.

On the rock feature at the back of our new place.