This one has been doing the rounds of inboxes but I couldn’t resist putting it here as a Smiley Saturday post. 
He finally did it:
Hopefully as you read this, I’m finding somewhere cool in Adelaide where we can escape the heat.
Happy Smiley Saturday everyone! I hope you have plenty to smile about this week.
Cos maybe that’s a little too bad! 
Cos it’s hot!!!!
SMOKIN’ HOT!!!
Like 48C Hot!!!! For Days!!!!
We’ve been driving into town to pick the kids up from school because there isn’t any air-conditioning on their bus and they all struggle with getting sick from the heat (like blood noses, headaches and so on).
To top it all off, we’re heading off to the Big Smoke! The worst place to be during a heat wave. Particularly now that all the buildings have heated up beyond belief. Yet still we go because we have medical appointments that really shouldn’t be put off any longer.
Here’s hoping we survive!!! I don’t hold out much hope for my poor garden surviving our absence though. *sigh*
Yes, it is summer and yes, we do live in a hot part of the country. But this is extreme, even for us.
Dear Mr Contact,
Yes, I know that “Contact” is actually a brand and that I should in fact be referring this memo to all “adhesive book covering” companies. But the truth is, we all call is “contact”, no matter who made it. And “adhesive book covering” is quite a mouthful compared to “contact”.
I would be pleased if you could consider the following points when next testing the quality control of your product:
Kind Regards,
A Frustrated Parent
Today is my first day of long service leave. I’m celebrating by cleaning the house!
My youngest started full-time school today.
All 3 of my children have worked hard to make the transition as painless as possible by being absolutely feral for the past week. Plenty of bickering and whining and stirring going on. Enough to make me kind of relieved that school went back today.
How kind and thoughtful of them to do that for me. 
I did spend an hour in Trailer Boys classroom this morning. While he was rather excited, he did get a little overwhelmed at first when we got to school. But he settled in after a while as I expected he would.
So, now I’m home. Alone. Attempting to clean away some of the feral-ness the school holidays has left upon my home. And breaking out in a sweat in these 40+ degree temperatures.
The long-service leave?
Well, I’ve spent the past 11 years at home with kids under 5. And people start asking you what you’re going to do when your youngest starts school. So, I tell them I’m taking long-service leave. I’ve worked full-time in this job for more than 10 years so I figure I deserve it. Even if it’s only 8-4. I’ll even get paid just as much as I did as a full-time mum!
My actual plans this term are to go through the entire house and declutter as much as I can. After several years of keeping up with the basics as best we could, it is in desperate need of a decent declutter, sort out and deep clean. When that’s done, I may even get some painting done.
How does that sound for an exciting way to spend my long service leave? 
You’ll have noticed that from time to time I’ve been writing product reviews on this blog. I enjoy trying new products and letting you know what I think of them. So when I was approached about trying this new Pomegranate Juice, I was intrigued. I’ve never heard of it before. Here are my thoughts:
I have to say that before the juice has even hit my tastebuds, I’m impressed. How cute is this bottle? And the logo with the love heart? I’m in love already!!! 
I took some with me to swimming lessons during the holidays and the bottle alone sparked quite a bit of interest and intrigue from other mum’s around me.
Attached to the bottle is a cute little label which details the following in terms of the antioxidant power of pomegranate juice when compared to other juices:
POM Wonderful 96%
Red Wine 68%
Concord Grape Juice 62%
Blueberry Juice 51%
Black Cherry Juice 47%
Acai Juice 46%
Given I’ve always thought of Red Wine as being high in antioxidants, I was quite impressed with these figures.
It’s taste reminded me of grape juice and blackcurrant juice which isn’t surprising given it’s a similar colour juice to those. It is quite strong and I prefer it watered down with either water, lemonade or soda water. In fact, I think it would make quite a nice base for mixing together with any number of other drinks. Naturally, the health benefits would also be “watered down” in this case. However, I’m not sure I liked the taste enough to continue to drink it at full strength.
My children are always the biggest critics when it comes to something new so I thought it would give the juice quite the test if I gave it to them. They’re used to having dark juice diluted with water so I gave this to them the same way. Here are there reactions.
Lleyton (almost 11) - wasn’t keen. Took 1 sip and that was enough for him.
Singstar Princess (8) - wasn’t sure. Drank about half of the first cup and said she didn’t like it but came back the next day and wanted to try it again.
Trailer Boy (5) - LOVED it! Can’t seem to get enough and is always asking for more.
So there you go, quite mixed reactions there!
It’s apparently available via Woolworths and Safeway stores. Has anyone seen it in the stores and anyone else tried it? I’d love to hear what you thought of it if you have.
If you’d like to know more about it, you might enjoy having a browse of the POM Wonderful website. I noticed there are some other flavours mentioned there. It would be interesting to try some of those. I particularly like the look of the Pomegranate and Blueberry juice.
Farmboy and I had the day to ourselves yesterday which was exactly what the doctor ordered. We had a couple of appointments to go to, so we left the kids for a day with his mother and headed off.
The first appointment was with the dentist - a strange topic for a Smiley Saturday post if ever there was one. I’m terribly dental phobic although our current dentist is wonderful and is really helping with that. I usually use a product with a relaxant and mild pain relief in it but they’d run out of the inhalers so I decided to “brave it”. I was really quite proud of myself for managing to get through the visit without it (shows I’m making good progress). I was also really pleased that the only filling I needed was one that had been identified a while back (so we knew I needed it done). No KNEW holes have appeared in the past couple of years - YAH!!!!
After Farmboy also had his dental visit, we headed off for an afternoon of shopping (a great reward for going to the dentist if you ask me!). We also took the opportunity to visit the local RAA (our automobile association) and grab some FREE maps for our “big trip”. They also gave me a brochure with all the tourist attraction tickets you can purchase through them before you go (for a discount). VERY exciting!!! 
We’ve already made yet another change to our planned route - who knows which way we’ll end up going by the time the trip gets here!
On the way home we stopped at a favourite spot of ours for a meal. Looking out over the azure blue waters, I was almost scratching my head about our penchant to visit Queensland when we have such beauty almost in our backyard!!!!
Of course, there IS more to our trip than simply the beautiful beaches in Queensland, but it’s also nice to appreciate what we do have not too far from where we live.
To top it all off, their special for the night was Rump Steak with a drink for $12.90!!! Including a full salad and vegie bar! I bet Queensland prices won’t be anything to close to that!
All in all, it was a lovely day, even if the main purpose for the trip was the dentist appointments. Farmboy and I really needed some one on one time together. These holidays have been rather full-on (albeit in a fun way!).
I hope you can all find something that makes you smile on this Smiley Saturday. If you’d like to join us, simply publish your own Smiley Saturday post with a link back here and then come and link to your post in the Mr Linky box below.
Happy Smiley Saturday everyone!
Many months ago we bought pavers to pave under the large carport we put up and make it into an outdoor entertaining area. They’ve been sitting on pallets, mocking Farmboy while he waited for the time to prepare the ground and lay them. Yes, like all good farmers, he prefers to do things himself rather than pay someone else to do it for him. Something I love about him because in the long run it does save us quite a bit of money.
He had begun work on preparing the area before harvest but some summer rains washed a heap of silt into the area.
Anyway, things are finally starting to take shape:
The plan is to enclose at least 2 sides of the “carport” to give more shelter from the wind and sun.
I love it when a project finally starts to come together. It’s amazing how you can feel like you’re not making much progress with “house projects” and then all of a sudden, a project comes together and you feel much better about things.
We still have a long way to go to get things how we want them outside (tennis wall, verandah and decking, games room, pool - maybe…..) but at least we’re starting to get there with a functional back yard. It’s quite a project when you’re starting from scratch.
There are 7 more sleeps until school goes back!
Yes, I’m counting.
Mostly because Trailer Boy keeps asking when will it be a school day. Because he can’t wait to start school.
But also because my children are kind of driving me crazy!!!
And I think we’re all ready for school to go back.
And it makes me sad to think that a part of me is longing to “get rid of” my children, even if it is only for a for hours a day (the day certainly goes quickly enough!).
I’m the kind of mum who cries when her kids leave the nest to go to school.
But I’m also aware that there is no way I could ever homeschool my children.
I take my hat off to anyone who can.
I’m just not one of those people.
I hope wanting my kids to go back to school doesn’t make me a bad mum.
Cos I don’t wanna be a bad mum. 
P.S. Yes, I counted right. School goes back on a Tuesday here. Someone seems to think we all need a day off to celebrate Australia’s “Australia-ness” or something like that (Monday is a public holiday for Australia Day).
My mind has been working overtime trying to come up with meal ideas we can have while we’re away. To keep costs down, we need to do the bulk of our cooking in the caravan (rather than resorting to take away) so I thought it would be helpful if I could come up with a list of meal ideas and prepare laminated cards which detail what I need for each meal. Hopefully this will make grocery shopping and food preparation that little bit easier.
I’m thinking I would like at least 10 lunch ideas (for variety) and 20 or so meal ideas for the evening meal.
To cook with I have a small microwave, grill and stove-top as well as the dreampot (which is basically similar to cooking on the stovetop only I can have it cooking while we’re on the move or away).
Here’s what I have so far:
* Those in italics have been added after this post was published.
Lunches:
Evening Meal:
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated. Quick and simple with few ingredients is ideal. I also need to work out some frugal snack ideas as I don’t have an oven for baking.
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