Category Archives: Kids Play

Grateful for The Mobile

Once a fortnight I pack 3 of the 4 Muddy kids in the car and we head off to the local session of the Mobile. This is a service partially government funded that takes playgroup out to rural communities. They have 2 staff members that load up the Landcruiser with toys, tables and chairs, craft, books, music, whatever exciting game they’ve decided to throw in the truck. They drive up to 2 hours, set up and run a session in a community and then pack it all up again at the end and head back to the office to do it all over again the next day for a different community, sometimes even 2 sessions in a day if they’re not travelling too far. They are taking early childhood services out to kids on stations and in small towns that have no other early childhood services
I am so grateful for a service that can entertain my 3 kids very happily for a couple of hours, giving me a chance to have a cuppa and a chat with other mums in the same situation as I am. A chance to just sit back while the kids have an absolute ball playing with other kids and exciting and different toys. We all come home exhausted and some weeks I’m even lucky enough for all 3 of the Muddy Kids to have an afternoon camp while I catch up on house jobs.
Yesterday I was feeling sick of my house and starting to feel very snappy with my kids so I was very excited to go to the Mobile and let the kids run off some energy while I recharged with a cuppa and a chat.

Linking up for the first time with *Maxabella Loves… for 52 Weeks of Grateful

Working with Hay

We’ve almost finished the hay work for now, getting ready to focus on sowing if it decides to rain (not looking great at the moment). The bales get loaded on the truck up the paddock and either carted into the hay stack and unloaded in lovely rows or they get carted to the hay shed and stacked in there, but it doesn’t hold very many big round bales.



All loaded up from the paddock, waiting to be unloaded

 

Unloading in the hay stack (The Muddy Pixie has her own little spot in the tractor today, the Puzzler gets the afternoon shift)
All lined up in lovely rows (got to love order)

Before the bales could be stacked in the hay shed the hay shed had to be cleaned out, so we got a load of lovely mulch and a huge load of hay for my garden. Sunday we all worked together to spread it over the veggie patches and around the orchard. Somehow I think Muddy Hubby got the easy job!

The Muddy Puzzler loading up her cart
The Muddy Pixie with a full little wheelbarrow





All lined up ready for a load (damn you blogger for making it so hard to arrange my pictures how I want them!)

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Muddy Bubby oversaw it all from his pram or the sandpit.

One of the things….

One of the things I am not loving about living where we live at the moment is my Internet access. We’re on satellite Internet, which means we have a big dish on the roof. This also means that it’s nowhere near as fast as some other Internet options. It also means that when it’s overcast the service sucks, when it’s windy there’s often no service, and sometimes for no good reason the dish on our roof stops talking to the satellite in the sky and we get absolute zilch, zippo, nothing. Now the Internet service provider flatly denies any of this, says weather and wind do not affect the service. I disagree.

But rant now over, for all the little things that drive me batty living out here or give me cause for utter frustration, there are so very many more good things. My good thing for this week has been the complete turnaround from sunset to sunrise.

This was the sunset on Monday night, breathtakingly beautiful. The Muddy Kids and I went outside to feed the dogs, pigs and chooks and dawdled for ages just watching the beautiful sunset and chasing the animals.

The next morning we woke up to this awesome Fog. The first fog for the year for us, not a pea soup fog like I can remember growing up in Sydney, but a hazy, ethereal fog. It didn’t last long, by the time I’d dropped the Muddy Organiser at the bus stop it was almost gone, chased away by the sun.

It’s these little things that remind me how I love living where we live, and help stop me yelling at the Internet service provider in frustration. Just don’t ask me how long it took to actually upload these photos!

What are some of the little things that you love about living where you live?

Tearing my hair out!

This week has been a long one. Or at least it’s felt that way. I’m not sure whether it’s school holidays and work on the house that have all combined to turn my delightful Muddy Puzzler into a Muddy Wrecking Ball. Maybe it’s that she’s now competing for attention with the Organiser and the Pixie who are home from School and Preschool. Maybe it’s that she knows she’s only got a few months left of the terrible two’s and she’s going to make the most of it. Maybe it’s the work I’ve been doing on the house that I’ve been neglecting her and she’s a bit bored. Maybe she’s tired of the games we’re playing and we need to mix it up a bit. Whatever it is, it has me tearing my hair out, quite literally, as I pull paint out of it that’s been splashed in it by my Muddy Puzzler.

This week alone she has wreaked havoc in my household and shredded my patience with the following activities:

  • Tipping over a 10L tin of paint that Muddy Hubby had failed to seal fully, resulting in a big pile of paint to clean up and get splashed around (hence the paint in the hair)
  • Emptying Muddy Hubby’s aftershave all over herself so she still smells like Chanel Allure for Men 3 days later
  • Painting toothpaste all over the new bathroom walls and door, I’m told she was trying to polish it
  • Painting toothpaste all over the bedroom carpet (not sure how she got hold of the toothpaste)
  • Losing the key to the local tip, so we can’t take the rubbish and recycling to the tip until we find it
  • Running the water tap in the bedroom for a good while while I fed Muddy Bubby, depleting our rain water tanks which are getting a bit low
  • Climbing the painting ladder and falling off the top (I only turned around for a second!)
  • Sneaking the sticker book into the car and decorating the interior with stickers
  • Spraying Muddy Hubby’s deodorant all over our bedroom, including the photo frames
  • Spreading the Muddy Organiser’s Lip Smacker all over her face (resulting in tears for the Muddy Organiser)
  • Pulling all the photo frames down in her bedroom and pulling out all the photos
  • Stamping the office ‘Paid’ stamp all over herself and the office (not sure how she got it down from the top shelf)

Today topped it all off for me, she decided that her Baby Brother needed a little bit of attention, after she had finished colouring in her toenails in blue texta and decorating her lips with red texta she decided to draw on Muddy Bubby with blue texta. I don’t think he minded, but it probably isn’t the best of looks when we go out for a play date tomorrow.


Proud to show off his decorated face to Muddy Hubby when we ducked up the paddock

We have headed outside whenever we can to let the Muddy Kids run off some energy and have some fun in the sun. My plan at the moment is to keep her within a couple of metres and eyesight at all times (not really sustainable though) and to spend the remaining few days of holidays outside, where there is only a minimal amount of mischief that she can get into, surely?!?!?

Come on, please tell me she’s not the only one getting into mischief?
Do you have any tricks for keeping kids busy and out of mischief, please share if you do!

Painting, Sanding, Painting and More Painting

Now I do love my old little farmhouse, but before you get all ‘aww a nice old farmhouse’ it’s not like one of those at all. It’s not one of those lovely big sprawling farmhouses, nor is it an old sandstone one. It’s a little weatherboard that has been added on and added on, with verandahs closed in and a toilet put inside. We have gradually over the last 7 years done little jobs to help make it a bit more homely and comfy for us and the four Muddy Kids. The biggest of these jobs has been closing in the bathroom, by taking out the window from when it used to be the outside of the house. The verandah is now my office and the kids rooms are off the office. Really it’s a bit of a rabbit warren. But a rabbit warren I do love. EXCEPT for the weatherboards.

While the louvres used to be the bane of my existence and I hated cleaning them and all the dust they’d let in, we have replaced them with proper windows, much to my delight. It is now the weatherboards that are the bane of my existence. With 3 verandahs being closed in to now be part of the house I have LOTS of weatherboards to paint. One verandah I was lucky to get out of painting while I was pregnant with Muddy Organiser. The other two I have not been so lucky. At the moment I am covered in paint splatter, I have paint in my hair and over my work clothes. For you cannot roller weatherboards, they have to be painted by hand. This means a lot of time, to make sure you’ve covered every part of the weatherboard. They are loooooong walls and my poor Muddy Kids have been a little neglected as I plow through the painting in an effort to get it done before the new carpet goes down.

Muddy Hubby has been able to step in for short periods of time to take some of the kids out and about on the farm while I paint, but for the remainder they have been TV kids, and are getting used to me saying ‘Just let me finish this section’ before we can eat or get games down. Again, like the bathroom I know it will be worth it, it’s been good to keep my arms going while bootcamp is on holidays too!

I do wonder though, who invented weatherboards and why? They gather dust and dirt easily, they are a pain to paint and if they’re on the outside of the house require even more painting than my inside ones do. Was it just for looks, did they think ‘that’s a nice look, we’re not going to have to worry about the upkeep’ or do they actually serve a purpose?

Where our bathroom window used to be



Where new meets old, looks like the house used to be painted blue



Popping in to see how long til we can have morning tea!

Do you have weatherboards to paint too?
Have you got a rabbit warren of a house or is yours more streamlined?

A Good Old Fashioned Party

Yesterday saw myself and the Muddy Kids attend a lovely 4th Birthday Party morning tea for one of Muddy Pixie’s little friends. It was low key with only close friends invited (mind you we all have between 2-4 kids so there were quite a few kids running around). There was no big theme, there were a few balloons, the usual backyard toys (plus chooks and a puppy), pass-the-parcel, musical statues and an ice cream cake. Simple, enjoyable party goodness.

The kids used their imaginations and created their own games, they ganged up girls vs boys to take over the tent filled with balloons, the girls held strong for a while until the boys launched a strong campaign and the balloons were no more. The boys played policeman, and hunters, while the girls played princesses and fairies. They all busted some moves under the clothesline to the music, some moves which left us all wondering ‘where did they learn how to do that?’.

It reminded me so much of when I was a kid and went to parties. My kids had a ball, Muddy Bubby included, they collected a small lolly bag at the end and came home exhausted, having run around and enjoyed just being kids. Sometimes when life is rushing by so fast and everything is pushing kids to grow up quicker than we are ready for it’s nice to be reminded of simple old fashioned fun and to sit and relish in the kids enjoyment.

Do your kids get to go to parties like we did when we were kids?
Or is it all about the ‘theme’ nowadays?

Wordless Wednesday – Let’s Go Fly a Kite

From one of my all time favourite movies as a kid – Mary Poppins
‘Let’s go fly a kite
Up to the highest height
Let’s go fly a kite
And send it soaring
Up through the atmosphere
Up where the air is clear
Oh, let’s go fly a kite!’
– Robert Sherman

It’s all good until it gets stuck up a powerpole!
Maybe we should have listened to Muddy Hubby and taken them all the way out into the paddock!

Linking up for Wordless Wednesday with Trish at My Little Drummer Boys

Some Lunch and Weighing Lambs for a Wonderful Weekend

I’d rather ignore Saturday with 6 loads of washing and a broken lawn mower but Sunday made for a Wonderful Weekend. Muddy Hubby fixed the mower for me, so I could finish mowing the orchard, keeping the mozzies down and giving me a clear view of the snakes coming. Then the Muddy Family headed to the local pub for lunch. We set up camp on the back lawn of the pub, the kids settled down on the rug for some colouring-in and lunch, while the adults settled in for a good catch up and tasty feed.
Our local pub has been gradually restored and renovated over the last few years. It’s now a meeting place for friends and family, a place to relax, unwind and have a good time. During the year they host functions, and have family BBQ’s, Sunday was one of those days.
After lunch the kids had fun watching the train go by, playing make believe as trains, planes and horses, while Muddy Hubby and I played with Muddy Bubby and chatted the afternoon away.
We went straight back to work in the late afternoon, weighing lambs for today’s sheep sale. Making sure we had the heaviest to send to market. The girls are getting good at learning how to shift the sheep, keep them moving into the scales and drafting them off into the heavy and light pens. My favourite bit is them getting to spend time with Muddy Hubby and learn all the workings of the farm. I also love to see a bit of fashion in the sheep yards, Muddy Organiser with her silver shoes and pretty dress and Muddy Puzzler with her bright red dress, always a way to brighten up the dusty yards.

How did you spend your weekend? Do you have a local pub that’s good for families like ours is?
Linking up with the Amazing Sonia at Life, Love and Hiccups for Wonderful Weekends

Back Online and On The Move

Hooray, I have a computer back! Not only that but I have my camera back. Now all that’s left is house repairs and I’ll feel like I’m back in business.

I figured what better way to celebrate being back on line than with some pics of Muddy Bubby on the move. All my other Muddy Kids didn’t crawl til about 9 months and they were conventional hands and knee crawlers. Muddy Bubby, so desperate not to miss out on any of the action, has begun commando crawling, and over the last month has mastered the art, he can get into anything and everything and he couldn’t be happier! He spies something he wants and gets a look of determination and off he goes.

I’m hoping he gets the art of conventional crawling soon, because he’s showing me just how dirty my floors are as he drags himself around!

Were your babies conventional crawlers or commando crawlers?
How old were they when they got on the move?