Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams

Am I the only strange person who watches a movie on TV when I have the DVD?

I’m watching Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets tonight on Channel 9, even though I’ve got the DVD here. I could watch it without ads, but then I’d be the freak who watches something on DVD the same time it’s on TV.

So am I the only person who does things like this?

For those of you with school age children, this is the time of year with ceremony after awards night after farewell dinner after morning tea after Christmas pageant after Christmas carols after bla bla bla.

In all the rush it’s sometimes easy to overlook the achievements of the young people in our community. Through my involvement in the Lions Youth of the Year as a judge, I am priveledged to meet many young people who restore my faith in the next generation. With the constant media reports of “teens behaving badly” it’s sometimes difficult to remember these really are a minority, and many young people handle themselves with dignity and apply themselves with distinction in whatever activity they choose.

This year judging Youth of the Year I met young people who had represented the state in sports from dressage to rugby league and everything in between. Musical scholars. Straight A students. A young lady who had completed the Kokoda Track with her family. School Captains. Church leaders. Quiet achievers. Community workers. Aspiring politicians.

Last night I was lucky enough to attend the local state high school’s awards night, where I was treated to more extraordinary students displaying artwork, musical performances, public speakers who do a better job than I do and academic achievements that inspire just the tiniest spark of jealousy.

Nights like this really do restore your faith in the next generation. I look forward to tracking the future careers of these young people as they continue to work towards fulfilling their dreams. Their passion and drive is something to behold and just a little inspiring. If you get the opportunity I strongly recommend going along and marvelling at these young people, and what they’ve achieved this year.

Have you gone to an awards night lately? What are your experiences?

Image Courtesy of FreeFoto.com

Y’all know I live in the country right? Where every second car is a 4WD and they actually see a dirt road on a daily basis. We don’t have a 4WD, but hubby has a ute for work. A Landcruiser ute. He’s constantly on and off construction sites and carting around all sorts of stuff.

On the weekend we took the ute up to our nearest northern city, about 4 hours drive away.

I am used to being in a vehicle towering over smaller cars when I drive. Even around here. But in the city there are so many small cars, we really felt out of place in our lumbering lump of steel.

In fact, when we finally made it to the shopping centre (thank goodness for mobile phone technology I say) we were hard pressed to get our lumbering steel ute in a carpark at all. We eventually parked 1,000 kilometers away from anywhere, and left half the car hanging out over the rear of the park, partially blocking the throughfare. But what are you supposed to do? I get that in a city small cars are practical, economical and necessary, but when you’re from the country, you need more steel to protect you from suicidal Kangaroo’s.

And here I was wanting to move to the Big Smoke?? What was I thinking? Where would we park the ute then?

We have been away for the weekend, but we picked up a pile of fruit and vegetables at the markets on the way home, and the meat is still stocked in the freezer, so there’s no shopping required this week beyond the usual milk and bread.

Monday - Meat Pie, mash & veg
Tuesday - Meatballs, pasta & sauce
Wednesday - Curry and rice (curry is already in the freezer)
Thursday - Herb Chicken Drumsticks, mash & veg
Friday - Chicken nuggets, chips and salad
Saturday - BBQ - Sausages & Chicken kebabs and salad
Sunday - Friends for dinner

What’s on your menu plan this week? Do you have a menu plan? If not, check out my How to Menu Plan post and then head over to Orgnaizing Junkie and post your menu and see what everyone else is eating this week.

I would say silence, but the dryer is working hard, and Hubby has the TV on. Also the tap tap tap on the keyboard can hardly be described as silence.

Still, it’s quiet.

For some reason quieter than a normal Friday night.

It may have something to do with the fact all three children are elsewhere.

As in, not in my house.

So the toilet light is off. There’s no chatter, sleeptalking or snoring coming from any of the bedrooms. No one will sneak out in 10 minutes asking for a drink of water. Even the dog is having a sleep over at Grandma’s (have I mentioned lately how much I love my in-laws? No? Well I do. A lot). So there’ll be no little bodies in bed tonight. No wet noses trying to get under the blankets. No midnight “Mummy I wet the bed” wake up calls.

What’s a girl to do?

Oh right, the usual. Stay up late and play on the computer.

But it’s quiet.

Shhh! Don’t spoil it.

Oh damn, I should have thought of a different title, now I’ve got a Wiggles song stuck in my head.

But it’s getting to the silly season, so named I’m sure because it induces such panicy feelings that the only way to get through it is to indulge in a glass of sherry or brandy before 10am in the morning, making Mum’s all over the world silly before lunch time. I swear that’s the only way I’m going to get through this year.

As it approaches the magic two month mark til Christmas, I think about all I have to do and feel like running away with Bettina until everything blows over.

I know I have too much on my plate, compounded by the fact I have 34 days until I leave, rather than the 63 days until Christmas.

At least I don’t have 500 Christmas parties to go to.

Please? Anyone know where I can get one?

I’ve been flat out the last few, well, months. But in particular the last few weeks. Between M&M’s birthday, assignments, cleaning out the garage and trying to fit some swimming and other exercise in, I’ve barely had 2 seconds of peace.

Needless to say I was really looking forward to today. I was going to skip swimming (shhh!), sleep in and potter round the house catching up on housework and washing (as an aside, how sick does it make me that a “quiet day at home” involves cleaning and washing???).

But when I went to pick the kids up from daycare yesterday, I was reminded that today was photo day. Bugger. Now not only do I lose my sleep in, but the kids have to be presentable and at daycare by, wait for it, 7:30am. Ha! Stuff that for a joke. The sign said 7:30 - 8am for individual photos, so I figured we’d get there at 8am. But of course it’s never that easy with 3 kids, so after waking two of them up, we made it there just on 8:15am. Then we had to wait around until 10am for them to do the group photos. It was alright for the kids, they had people to play with.

Then I had to bribe them to come home, so via Red Rooster for an early lunch, and now I’m exhausted again. I’m thinking a couple of hours rest should be enough and then I can start my “quiet at home” day again. And I just remembered we have to go out tonight. Arrgh.

Can I go to sleep now?

Yup, that’s me.

Seriously sick of the state of the garage, a looming assignment due today, and a Tupperware party all propelled me into the garage on Saturday morning. First I pulled out all my Tupperware and made a nice long list. I have the most rediculous amount of Tupperware EVER. Seriously. I’m in the process now of putting it all into a document so I can at least see at a glance what I have when people are looking for something. I even packed it away by type and packed up a kit bag in the event this party eventuates. I know. I know I said I wouldn’t do anymore, but this is for a friend. And to be honest, the money would come in handy. I’ve set very strict conditions on when I can do it. The fact it is nearly the mad exam time on top of the mad planning time to go away doesn’t seem to bother me. Especially now I’m ready for it. It would take half an hour preparation time from here and I would be ready to go. Plus I have a better chance of selling off some of what I have here before Christmas. In fact since I did that I’ve sold over $100 worth - all of which I have in the garage, so that’s $100 straight in the kitty.

Anyway, that took up the bulk of the morning. The rest of the morning we sorted through the 8 remaining boxes of books we had left over from our last move (we got rid of 8 boxes then too, and have since taken a box to the book exchange for the unremarkable sum of $26.50). We managed to keep 4 boxes and get rid of4 boxe. Not a bad efford I don’t think. My criteria was if it doesn’t fit on the bookshelves we already have, it goes. Poor Hubby had to be vicious with his beloved books, as I was with mine. There are a few sentimental favourites, and some harder to find books we kept, but if it was likely to be in a library, we got rid of it. I figure if we ever want to read it again it will be there, and I can save room on my bookshelves and have less to move.

By this stage we’d pulled apart half the garage, so we started in one corner tidying a few things up. Hubby put together some aluminium shelves I’d bought, and we stacked our camping gear on those. We set up a “Tupperware desk” which is a fancy way of saying the old desk we were going to get rid of is now holding my Tupperware off the floor - with a filing draw and storage for all the bits and pieces.Then we worked our way through finding a ute load of stuff to go to the tip, moved the remaining boxes (10 storage boxes, mostly containing photos that I want to go through) and generally tidied everything up. I condensed our Christmas stuff from 5 half boxes into one large and one small box (in addition to our 3 trees - happy Kelly?). I then hid it away because I’m not getting any of it out this year since we’ll be away and Hubby, he of the “Bah Humbug” parade, isn’t likely to put it up himself. This left me with 5 boxes that haven’t been touched. I chose the two most likely and found my special presents from Tupperware last year. I also found my missing towels (I knew I was missing some) and spare sheets for the girls beds. I feel all flush with linen.

By now it was getting late, around 5pm, so we started putting everything away, leaving 3 boxes unattended to. I opened one and it looked like Hubby’s toys tools and stuff, so I’ll leave those three for him to go through I think.

I tried to get rid of some more furniture, my mother-in-law is chasing our old tv unit - we just need to figure out how to get it up her stairs. And Hubby is attached to a couple of chairs and stools. Then all the gardening stuff (lawnmower, wheelbarrow) etc etc etc. It’s  still about 1/3 full, but much better than it was. And I have a better idea of where everything is in the event I need it. Also found the present box which should cover me for Christmas this year.

Of course at the end of the day I hadn’t done ANY work on my assignment, and this is another with a rediculously low word count, thus a fair bit of work required to get as much relevant information into the low word count. My first draft on Sunday was a little over 1400 words. As I write this (procrastinating on Monday morning) I’m about half an hours solid work from finishing, with about 100 or so words to lose. I’ve given myself too much time, and now I’m procrastinating again.

But at least my garage looks nice.

It’s a fairly quiet week here at Kin’s Home. Between a couple of Lions functions and a sneaky night away with Hubby, I’m only cooking 4 nights this week. Handy too with the assignment I have due tomorrow, among other insanities happening this week.

Monday - Meatballs, pasta & sauce
Tuesday - Chicken drumsticks, mash & veg
Thursday - Fish & chips
Friday - Corned Beef, cauli, mash & beans

What’s on your menu plan this week? Do you have a menu plan? If not, check out my How to Menu Plan post and then head over to Orgnaizing Junkie and post your menu and see what everyone else is eating this week.

Dads4kids.org.au is an initiative of the Fatherhood Foundation which aims to build an online community of father’s in Australia.

You may have seen the ads with Matthew Hayden about a competition to identify and solve the greatest problem facing kids today.

Father’s play such an important role in our kids (and our) lives, I think it’s great that father’s out there are trying to do something about the problems facing their kids. So often mother’s take on so much responsibility for our kids that we can unintentionally leave father’s out of the equation, parenting is a partnership!

Encouraging father’s to be more involved and pro-active in raising our kids can only be of benefit.