This year & random seachange thoughts

Well I sort of left you with the bad impression of our new house, so I will talk about its better qualities. The middle jam melon came from there.

The parrots at the new house sit up the trees and you can hear them. They can be right above your head which is really nice, I love that.

There was another interesting story about going to the house before we actually bought it. When hubby first applied for a job here, we wanted to buy a house in the same town as the new house, I won't say which house, but very close by. We saw that house advertised in a newspaper that was common to a wide area including our hometown. The real estate agents didn't have websites then. As an example, when we bought our current house it was because of an ad on the Elders website which is Australia wide. The agent took us from the house advertised to his home, and went through in his mind all the houses he knew that would suit us. He chose one then rang the owner.

He didn't get the job at that time. I was pregnant with our last child, so it was probably good I got to have the baby in our hometown and had a year getting settled before moving. However, it was a challenge getting five kids out the door for school during that year. However, I felt really proud when turning up for appointments with the baby just after nine o'clock. I didn't do it straight after she was born, I gave myself a few weeks, by using Family Daycare to help out a little. It was the hellish kinder year with extra running around and also the lead up to Christmas when she was born, then the summer holidays then we were off on this routine. Afternoon shift at the factory for hubby finished at that time too, so it was good, he was on dayshift. We had a new neighbour from out of town I think over the road at the time. One day he saw me take the kids across the front verandah into the carport one morning and actually stood looking over the fence with his mouth open or staring, can't remember but he and is wife didn't stay there very long.

Anyway, I was walking in the laneway when we were looking at the house I mentioned before and some parrots came by, and to me that was very important. I remember wanting to buy a cheap house outside the town where my Nana and Grandpa lived once when our eldest daughter was little, and had the same experience with the parrots while doing the inspection. In our hometown I got frustrated with the parrots, especially in our last house, they just flew over and didn't stop. Though in the house before I had great joy seeing them eating crabapples outside the lounge window. You had to be quiet and still mostly. At Nana's you could view the parrots (Eastern Rosellas?) while doing the dishes, which was even closer. She had a cotoneaster tree outside the window. The new house has one outside a window as well. I have planted one here for the same reason and it is growing. I have found at the new house there are a lot of seedlings, so I won't have to buy one again.

Where we are now, if you are visiting the little room with the louvre windows you can hear a variety of bush birds. I heard one this morning that is very special to me. I don't know it's name, but it was a bird that I heard in my childhood at the farm, somewhere near the creek or river.

Our house that we lived in for a very long time after we were married had a vege garden as I mentioned. To be fair, it wasn't all the corporate world's fault that we stopped our homesteading activities. Our beloved dog whom we got from the pound, we think had a hard time with food when he was a puppy. We don't think he could eat until he was told to, and he also had a habit of digging up vegetables. I remember him eating our carrots. I think overall he will be worth it, and I will forget how we couldn't grow things. Interestingly this year he lost interest in getting tomatoes off the bush, as I said he has been very sweet lately. Not sure if he ate any peaches that fell off the tree this year, I don't think I saw him do that, maybe the girls did.

This house I was describing had a large bath. The house was a refuge for me and kept me going as we did have stress, I don't think we brought the stress on ourselves lol. It wasn't flash, but it was our home. People thought we bought the next house because it was bigger, but in the end we had to get rid of furniture including my Nana's sideboard. We kept my Grandpa's wardrobe in the hallway there, which is far from ideal. I said to my husband that if we move, and end up with a period weatherboard I would want my wardrobe, and that was exactly what happened, not that he minded keeping in in the hallway too much.

The house had high doorknobs and it made is easy to raise a large family. It was so much more work in the next houses we had, with my then 3 year old, and her sister that was 5 years younger. I did lots more supervision work. Yes, I was still listening, but they couldn't run out on the road etc. etc. Also I could sit out in the garden in some sort of privacy.

Living in the mountains now having a bath, is freezing and the bath is too small. I wonder if I would use one now, but anyway, our new house has a large brand new bath. It also has a new ceramic cooktop, now a new shower and basin and taps, and dishwasher. It has an oldfashioned clothes line. Our new bedroom is a few feet wider, the fences are lovely, the other bedroom is huge. It has a lovely outlook, and a gorgeous wooden linen press. The stove and bath were already there. I was doing the property developer thing and trying to save money. I was watching Property Developing shows on TV, then after Dad died in May I lost interest I think. Now I just watch Super Nanny and maybe Ready Steady Cook to pass time.

The real estate agent wanted us to put in a wardrobe in our new house, built in, and take out a wall to accomodate modern TV watching standards and open plan I expect, I still stuck to my space for the piano and drying clothes, though I may live to regret it.

For my new garden there this year I have bought some tubes. They are still growing well. In the last house in our hometown I had a buddliea collection. It wasn't my doing, but I loved it. Well I have a new one to try. Also I have my pink salvia back that was in that garden also.



I was also able to get period, but in gold colour, door handles for the new house. The other ones were fine but there wasn't paint right up to them, so the period handles tidied the doors up and matched with some other handles in the house. Lots of the water problems in the house were holes from nails that was easily fixed. Only about 3 too.

A lot of this year, hubby has had to defrost the freezer. He puts the food into the freezer cartons that came with Chrisco last year, they are styrofoam boxes that sit inside the cardboard outer box for delivery of frozen food. Our freezer we bought when we moved into our new hometown house in 2000. We had to take the freezer to our hometown to get serviced and there was a lot of ice left in the gutter as we drove away. It is a nice freezer, and we can manage to keep it at a low temperature with effort.

Our practise year also served to help us to memorise the road to our capital city. So if we have to go there, all 5 1/2 hours of it, we feel like we are at home all the way down. All the parts of it relate to different parts of our lives.

The children were not good car travellers in their previous non treechanged life. Only this year while driving to the new house was the back broken on it so to speak. Their last piece of whatever it was was broken down. Now they are like any good baby boomer and actually look out the window and notice things sometimes.

Yes, one of our guineapigs turned out to be a boy. One day in the middle of winter, we found in the cage some babies. So we built a new cage.

Another lovely thing that happened to our daughter was that she sewed on holidays with their Nana. Nana went to the effort of framing it for her, and she won a prize at the Show.

When you read all this you think we are blessed beyond measure. I think we are. I have had two comments about my family too. It really does help make you forget some things that have been annoying.

What brought this on, it is his story to tell, but I must add that our eldest is now in a job, still at uni, and out of university accommodation. It wasn't easy at first, but I really enjoy where he lives. We went to help shift and got to take our little girl to the real zoo at last!! Our son's girlfriend had been to the zoo before and it was a nice day, I just followed everyone around.

Every night when I had to get up in the night, I would wonder what I was doing here. It was just before we bought the other house that I was starting to accept it. I still don't know if I should "go home" but I knew we should be here this year, maybe next, not sure, so we will see what happens. Things are unfolding, without me having made a decision yet, like with the dog. I am not sure if we have kept up with things properly though I think we have. Our son has got a lot from helping his Dad with the house. We do need to help him with driving and must keep going with things like that.

Our daughter met a friend, I am sure this opportunity wouldn't have happened at home, and got to go on a holiday and experience real life in the Outback with her and her family. Maybe that is how she got used to driving, maybe it wasn't us at all lol.

During the year there was a horse flu. Because our state was free from this disease and we live near the border, we saw border patrols. Also a major event was cancelled, or downscaled. Speaking of border patrols, because I shop over the border, I have to consciously remember not to buy fruit when I buy my groceries. You can't bring fruit back into Victoria. I remember once being mortified that I had forgotten.