In the news

There's Andrew, in the paper. He's playing keyboard, trumpet and saxophone in the local production of The Boy From Oz. It's very exciting and we can't wait to finally see the show. Opening night is the 13th of November and we (Jossie, Toby and I) are going on the 20th.

Bethany was in the paper yesterday in a regular spot where they ask a particular question to primary school children. What has been the best part of Bethany' first year at school? Going to the computer room because she likes typing things like sentences. I love it!

I think the photo of Bethany is great. I also think Hamish's photo is funny - he is very smug about being good at maths.

We have a new dog again after an episode at the groomer. Poor poodles and other 'oodles' need to be sedated to have the wool plucked from their ears.

My day off yesterday was spent turning the six kilos of drunken fruit into many kilos of wedding and Christmas cake. Four tins lined with three layers of paper and one enormous bowl of mixture, made twice. The three tins below were photographed while the biggest one was in the oven.

This is a lot of mixture to lick from the bowl. Two such bowls equaled lunch :)

Now, Jossie and Toby are at Kids' Club, Bethany is out with her friend Hannah and I am packing for my weekend away! My reunion is tomorrow...... I think we should go to high tea beforehand to build up our strength. I'll pop on to NQN and research high tea possibilities.

Melbourne Cup Day Fun

Unlike my brother and sister-in-law who had the foresight to move to Melbourne, we had to go to work on Melbourne Cup Day. As usual, Kristy inspired us to get frocked up and have a little fun with it.

I wanted to get people to pose a little better but they were watching the actual race which is a bit boring of them really.

Like most workplaces in Australia we had sweeps running. Most of us had a fistful of horse names like Kelly. I had one for each member of the family plus two more and none were winners :( Andrew's horse obligingly came last, earning two dollars. I ought to have brought that home and given it to Andrew but I confess that it went into my coffee money box.

All that fuss for a horse race!

Today I stayed home with Tobes as he needed to go to the doctor to see about his cough. Hayfever is so bad at the moment that we were worried he might get asthma. Thankfully he just has a sinus infection and greatly appreciated a day off as he wasn't actually feeling unwell. Here he is enjoying a milkshake while we waited for his prescription to be filled. The book didn't fit into my handbag and was necessary for the doctor's surgery in case of a long wait. I didn't read it while we drank our coffee and milkshake, we talked. Toby told me that he and Callum both want to be policemen when they grow up. Toby is also considering astronomy, archeology and bakery....... time will tell.

Tomorrow I am going to attempt wedding and Christmas cake cooking. I have four tins to line, which will probably take all day (not a gross exaggeration), and the biggest of the cakes takes over 4 hours to cook! Can I do more than one at a time? Should I attempt to mix all the ingredients in one go? Mistakes would be demoralising, not to mention very expensive.
Only a few days to go until my 20 year school reunion. I am certainly looking forward to a day away in Sydney. I wonder if we could squeeze in high tea before the reunion? I will have to ask Andrew to record Spooks for me. Last Saturday's episode was very exciting. Do you think Malcolm has really left? I love the fact that Spooks is gritty and real, for all that it is fiction. When you watch Star Trek and a character you have never seen before is invited on an away mission you know straight away that he or she is going to die. With Spooks I am constantly surprised by the characters and they do away with them when least expected. I do hope the reunion is worth missing Spooks for........

Spring Vegetable

Bethany has been talking about the Spring Vegetable  for a while now. It turns out that she means Spring Festival which is a new celebration at school. On Friday afternoon from 1 til 5, the school held a festival for the students, parents and anyone else who wanted to come. There was lots of food, animals, music, plants and stuff (Jossie's favourite expression).

The kids took money to buy themselves some lunch and anything else that took their fancy. Toby and Bethany spent all their money on food but Joss invested in these glasses.

We did think about buying a brother for Milo. He's a baby toy poodle and he is very, very sweet. I'm sure Milo would love a brother but I'm not sure we would love another puppy. They are hard work! He also cost $600....

Bethany asked if we could have a lamb. That was an easier decision.

We waited half an hour for Bethany to get her face painted. She wanted to look like a Chinese person. Nice cleavage shot.

On Thursday night I went to my friend Liz' house for a Stampin Up workshop. I made this card! As a non-crafty person, I was pretty impressed with my efforts and I really enjoyed it. Check out Liz' blog to see the other card I made.

It is raining again today and I am so pleased. It has meant some double handling of my washing but it has finally reduced the pollen in the air so the hayfever is manageable. It also makes for lovely cooking, reading and television watching. By the end of today I will have made bolognese, minted lamb patties, lemon crisps, chocolate pavlova and proper custard (what else would I do with my leftover egg yolks?). I will have almost finished Little Dorrit (SO GOOD) and will watch the first episode of the eighth series of Spooks. I have watched all the other series on DVD so am sure it will be awful having to wait a whole week to see the next one. What will happen to Harry? Ruth is coming back! I'm so easily pleased, aren't I?

Spring in Wagga

There are lots of lovely aspects to spring in Wagga. I love bringing flowers into the house from my own garden.

The jasmine smells divine.

Colour really brings life to the non-gardeners' garden.

The weather is much warmer for Milo to frolic in.

If it wasn't for the hayfever, this might be my favourite season. Autumn doesn't make me sneeze endlessly or want to scratch my eyes out. Autumn also doesn't lead into summer but takes us out of it so I'll have to name autumn as my favourite season.

Dean Spanley

I have emerged from the thick fog of marking and am free again. My camera and my phone are being very unhelpful as neither has any new photos on it to share. I went to Sydney for work on Friday, made another batch of matcha and white chocolate friands yesterday to take to church and have been busy at work creating summer reading clubs for youth and adults. Looking for photos on istock is very amusing. I wanted a photo to put on the front of some bookmarks with suggestions of good reads in the fantasy genre. Typing fantasy into istock brings up a diverse range of photos ;) I did manage to find a great one for our youth summer reading club, the theme of which is zombies - Zombie Reading Club: Great Minds Taste Alike. The photo is on a drive at work but I'll share it with you later.
I marked the last assignment after bible study on Wednesday night leaving my day off free for relaxing! Actaually, I had to write a quick article for Public Library News and, as it was Margot's first day back at work after 5 weeks off, I thought I may as well go in to work and have coffee with her as well. I'm so pleased I did because it was great to see her back and also because a huge number of DVDs had come in including my own request, Dean Spanley.

Before a DVD can go on the shelves it needs to be catalogued, tagged and labelled but Lynn was so very sweet as to let me take it home first. So, while I had planned to read and make cake, I ended up watching a movie, and what a movie it was. I laughed, clapped with delight and sobbed my heart out. Laughter and tears do come easily to me and, seeing as I was on my own, I was able to respond fully, unrestrained by the presence of others (who can find my emotional outbursts embarrassing) but I think that this really is a moving film. It is quirky, a period piece and has Jeremy Northam in it so I was always going to love it. Mum recommended it to me and I'd love to know what anyone else thinks of it. You can borrrow it from Wagga City Library :) (as soon as I return it and it gets processed).
My pile of books to read has grown while I have been marking in every spare minute. I am part way through the JD Salinger biography and A Confederacy of Dunces (still) and Jeannie, my lovely new library friend and colleague, has lent me the second and third books in the Millennium series so I don't have to wait for library copies, as well as I Have a Bed Made of Buttermilk Pancakes by Jaclyn Moriarty but I have no room in my head for any book other than Little Dorrit. Like many classics it is long and dense, but unlike many, it is light, funny and so endearing. There are just under 800 pages of tiny print but I am absolutely loving it.
This week I'll have to come up with a theme and photo for the adult summer reading club. I don't much like the idea of picking a genre specific theme as that might put some readers off. I am thinking along the lines of relaxing reading....... any ideas?

The deluge

I am still marking but as the last ten assignments I am going to mark this year are late, I can watch Poirot tonight and post a few photos on my blog.

I have, as usual, been busy apart from the marking. I am making another wedding cake this year, so, along with my own Christmas cake, I have need of 4.6 kilos of dried fruit. It is all, now, getting thoroughly drunk on brandy and rum in enormous green jars.

Bethany went to the school disco.

She and Jossie chose new pyjamas - one of the two was more pleased than the other to be twins.

Of course, the big news around Wagga has been the flood. On Friday night, after dropping our younger children at the school disco, Narelle and I drove down to Wagga beach before dropping the elder kids at kids' club. The river covered all of the beach and we were most impressed. As it happens, that was nothing. The very next day the entire BBQ area and carpark were completely submerged. The beach is on the other side of those trees.

This is the caravan park. You can see a tiny cabin in the distance.

The majority of the cabins were towed up the hill.

You can see the playground in this one.

Now can we say the drought is over?

Reader of the week

As I have probably mentioned hundreds of times before, I put together a library page for the weekend edition of our local paper every fortnight. A regular section on that page is Reader of the Week. Silly name really seeing as the page only appears once every two weeks and I have to leave the section out entirely when I  forget to ask anyone can't find someone to fill in the form. I once had all three of my children as readers of the week at once but Jossie has been asking if she could do it by herself. I do try and make the reader of the week fit the article on the rest of the page so when it came time to promote our school holiday programme I finally gave Jossie the chance.

I promptly forgot all about it so we didn't even buy a copy of the paper. Luckily they have them at the library :)

Do email me if you would like to be in the Wagga newspaper. You don't have to be local. You just have to read. Once, when I was desperate, I rang someone in the council to ask if he would do it. He said that he hadn't read a book since school and asked if rugby league magazines count. Do they even have words in them?

I have just been to Sweden, finally reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I waited for a good while before putting my name on the reserves list. I think I went in as number 13. I do know how to put my name at the top but I don't rort the system ;) As I don't usually read crime I wasn't in a desperate hurry but I actually enjoyed it. I read for setting and found Sweden a fascinating place to go. I also read Dirt Music by Tim Winton for the first time (shame). I loved it, though I'm not as keen on books set in Australia. I also read for character and language and they are strengths of Mr Winton. Always one to have too many books on the go at once, I am reading A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole - one of the more controversial of our book club books. I have chuckled out loud several times but it isn't making me want to stay up all night. Little Dorrit, on the other hand, is delightful. If only I didn't have 38 more assignments to mark, washing to do, dog to walk, family to relate to....... I'd just read all day. Except for when I was watching DVDs. Have I banged on about Miranda yet? Such fun! I loved it.