Was such a beautiful morning this morning, so I quickly grabbed my camera and headed out.
You can see in the above photo, a very small amount of fog laying low in the valley, but by the time the sun rose, as you will see, it came in so thick!
We had a few days of miserable weather last month, which was just what the doctor ordered, for us to defrag a little bit. These pair of wombats, played like this for ages. Of course by the time I finally decided to run and grab my camera, they quickly stopped.
I love this one!
So much personality in these shots.
I had also been busting to do this particular star trail shot... I don't like to miss out on sleep however, so I had been putting it off. But the weather was finally clear enough and I had a morning where I didn't need to jump straight out of bed, so here it is.
And when I went to collect my camera, I thought I would go and get this moonrise shot, but I didn't really like it as much.
This was one afternoon that I was going to set up for the star trails, but it came in too cloudy, so I packed up and tried again.
This year I joined the Queensland Camera Group, as well as my local photography club, as they offer a lot more of their stuff online via zoom. One of the competition categories was photo montage, so I had a bit of a play around and this is what I came up with. I quite like it, I'm considering getting it printed. It's a bit 'out there' but I like it, especially the blaze on Bobby's face.
From my phone:
And just to mix it up once again, these ARE actually in chronological order. I have no idea why it does this. Above, miss wanted a photo with me, I actually hated it, but I would never refuse her such a request, there might come a day when she doesn't want a selfie with me!
This big pain in the arse, has been EXTREMELY slow with his progress! I spent 5 weeks of working on him, just for him to let me touch his neck! I lost patience with him this week and ran him up the race to get a halter on, so now, he will juuuuust let me touch him on the nose! Gosh I hope that when he finally trusts me enough to touch him all over that we can progress a bit quicker.
Missy wanted to do face masks with me! 20 mins is a long time for one little girl to lie still apparently! She did very well though.
My handsome husband.
The kids commandeered my boot box as their own.
I've been thinking for some time, about what to do with our remaining 2 embryos that are currently in storage. It's hard to explain, but I feel like they are still my babies. So I thought I might have their ashes put into this ring. I couldn't really bare the thought of someone else using them, or donating them to science and our family is definitely complete.
I made myself a new box.
Afternoon rides with my girl.
In the 4th week of working with him, I decided that roping him might help me to get a bit closer, but it didn't seem to make any difference.
From princess to grandma in the same day and one costume change.
Long-eared guinea pig doing some school.
Oh darling cow Pirate gave us a bit of a scare a few weeks back. She went down in the yards and couldn't get herself back up. She had lost a lot of condition from having her weaner on too long and the paddock she was in, wasn't the greatest.
Anyhow, I'm very pleased to report that after a week and a half of having to stand her up twice a day and giving her a few vitamins, she is now trying to knock me over for her feed bucket. I'm so grateful that she's recovering. We had been having an ongoing list of things that hadn't been going our way and losing her would have been devastating. Just the straw to break the camels back, so to say. I was very grateful also, when I put a call out on facebook for something to just go right for us for a bit, the outpouring of people who sent their kind words and thoughts and who generally just checked in to see if I was ok. I really meant a lot and it was from all different people, even some who I'd not spoken to in a very long time.
Initially we couldn't get to stand up at all, but we gave her some anti inflammatory and after giving it a couple of hours to work, she managed to be able to hold her self up.
That afternoon, after we finally get Pirate to stand back up by herself, Garrett was learning to put the little 100XR bike into neutral and it fell down with him. I believe that it was the kickstand that went in underneath his shoe and cut his foot.
So at 5pm, we all showered and headed to the ED. Got there at 7pm. Seen by the Dr at 12am. Discharged at 2am and home at 4am. The kids obviously fell asleep. This is missy in the resus bed. Was so good to be in an environment where I knew some the nurses. In hindsight, I should have wrapped it, gave him some drugs (which I did anyhow) and we all should have had a good night sleep and dealt with it in the morning.
10 sutures later
So the ongoing list of things that weren't going our way continued. That morning after spending the night in hospital, Justin had to truck some cattle, so running on very little sleep we walked into the yards to find that this cow had fallen into the hay trough and obviously couldn't get out.
Me and girl.
Missy got ANOTHER teddy bear from Grandpa George, that obviously had to go everywhere with her.
Ooooh yeh, and then it got infected... so back to town we go to get some antibiotics.
Jason Large had his 50th and Ange has asked mum and I to do the cake. Mum did all the cake baking and I came to town on the Saturday morning to help with the icing and decorating. I don't know that we would get a job as cake decorators but I think they liked it.
Very carefully transporting the cake.
Me and my babies.
Ange, Mum and I
I have absolutely no idea what this face is..... at best, maybe it was "fuck, I hope I don't drop it, don't drop it, don't drop it"
Last week was mini school! Honestly it's the best part of the whole term. I think next mini school I need to schedule a day off... just a day where I do nothing at all, because despite the fact that we do go and drink coffee together and catch up with the other mums, it's still not very restful.
Western Wednesday where they have a balloon lady.
They did dress up on Friday! Poor G man, it's a bit hard to get something in his size!
Kaka made the cutest little wonder woman, despite all the tears in the morning to get her to actually wear it.
And that's a wrap! I'm off to Moura this weekend to the Country Coal Festival. So that will be fun. I'm their photographer and I can't wait to wear my new shirts for the first time. I will post a handful of the images next month, but I daresay as usual I will have thousands!
I am currently reading a book called "The Blue Tattoo". It's interesting, even though it's a bit slow, although I've not been driving much on my own to listen to all of it.
Apart from that our deadline is fast approaching and looming over our heads that we still haven't found our new home yet. We have another month to go before we have to start selling all our cattle. It's a bit sad, but there's nothing for it. I'm trying not to get too caught up in it. As upsetting as it will be to lose so many of our beautiful cattle that has taken years of breeding to achieve, it's just another chapter in our lives. We are all currently healthy (G man's foot is healing). We still have other options available even if they aren't the ones we would have originally chosen and maybe it will open up another door for us that we hadn't previously considered.
Hope you are all thriving.
With Love
