Just buzzed through November, gosh the year is speeding by. I'm not sure where the time has gone!
At our last mini school which was 2 weeks ago, we had the amazing colour run as a school fundraiser which was pretty awesome! These images were captured by the lovely Tania Raine.
Little ratbag thought she was so funny!
On the Friday of mini school week, I had the honour of photographing Katie's formal. She was the most beautiful model to work with. And that dress was simply gorgeous! Was a very fun afternoon of taking photos!
And that's been in from the past month of my photography, except for a family shoot that I did two days ago that I completely ruined, so we are doing it again. I don't know why I did it, but from some reason I was feeling a bit nervous so I switched my camera into an auto setting and usually I can hear if my shutter is too slow, but I must have been talking too much which made a lot of my images not perfectly clear. While some of the images turned out nice, I wasn't 100% happy with them, so luckily they have agreed to let me do it all again! So this time I will just know to trust myself more and hopefully I will be able to share some of those. I hope the light plays for us this time, as it was perfect the other day, so I will be a bit salty if it's less than ideal!
From my phone:
Chronologically again which is nice! My little ninjas!
I'm not how long it will last that they want to dress the same, but we will just roll with it.
There's been an awful lot of cloud watching this past month.
And we've been taking what we could get, even if it was only a few isolated showers of 10mm over the two weeks. But it was enough to make the country try to respond and you can see bits of green around.
Our very last pony club of the year was at Springsure. It was an afternoon affair which meant that for once, we had time to wash and groom our horses, rather than just loading them on a truck in the dark and leaving. So they were very pretty in their new rugs which they won at Blackwater.
I had to have a bit of a chuckle, Kaka got a trophy and came running out to me saying that she had won, and I explained gently that she had come third overall. This was the photo taken just after the realisation that her brother had won his age group and she had gotten third in hers..... oh dear!
I bought this plant the other day without looking at the price tag.... OMG!!!! I will never not check the price tag again and let me just say that if everyone gets finger limes for xmas, they will know why and they will be grateful!!
What a show this girl is putting on! I love this tree she is so beautiful.
Just some rainbows from yet another storm that went AROUND us!
With all the storms floating around I think it was only a matter of time before this happened. A lightning strike in the neighbours paddock. Was actually a lovely thing to be apart of for the most part because; firstly, we managed to get the fire under control before the day was through, but also because it was such a wonderful community spirit. Everyone was there as soon as they could, we had 3 graders and at least 4 firefighting units and it seemed like people everywhere. The people who lived there weren't even home and by the time they returned, we all but had it surrounded.
Fire was never really that much of an issue where I grew up, it either run into the creek or the army, neither of which mattered. On the odd occasion it went into the neighbours, they were often not concerned. Only once did it cause us any grief and that was mostly because the dozer blew a hose and so the fire burnt down a set of our yards.
Back burning. As you can see there was plenty of fuel. They had this paddocked locked up all year and it was pretty full of grass! I'm hoping now they've had a storm on it!
Our counsellor Rob on the grader!
I'm not certain of the details, but I'm pretty sure that Lachy was flying over and saw the fire, so he landed and grabbed their fire fighter unit to go and start putting it out, now that's efficient!
We managed to get it all out before it hit the mountains which was fortunate, cause once it's up there, you just let it go until it come back down.
Post fire beers. I was not aware of the esky requirement. Some of these guys have obviously done this before.
Thank goodness for Julie arriving with a box full of sandwhiches, as I had not eaten since smoko and the two beers were making me want to have a lie down lol.
Few yarns were spun!
While I did not grab an esky, nor did I grab my camera and I was kicking myself!
My little pickaninnies at the end of the day after they had been playing in the aftermath.
Back home and this is one of the realities that we face sometimes. This girl was bogged and sadly had to be put down after she couldn't get up. It's a bit hard not to be bitter, but when we had cattle on agistment, the gates were left down and the neighbouring bulls got in with our heifers. This meant that they started calving very early in the season and with no rain and growing calves, they got down in condition. We should have started feeding them earlier, but the promised rain kept getting later and later. Now they are on cottonseed, but sadly it was a bit late for this girl. The dam has now been fenced off and by this time next year, we should have all our pipeline in, so that cattle no longer need to use the dams, they will all have access to clean water from a trough.
Our apple tree has some apples. Hard to explain what this means; when we were looking, for years, to find our new home, Garrett kept drawing pictures of a house with an apple tree beside it. So as soon as we moved here I began our orchid, and now having apples growing... I dunno, it's just cool!
We went to visit Julie's mule next door! OMG look at the size of this thing! It's only 5 weeks old in this photo! Out of a Mammoth Jack and a massive big warm blood mare! Such a little/ big dude!
I keep taking photos thinking that next time I see it, it will have more water in it.... I'm still waiting. I took these before we left for mini school and it's drier now.
Last mini school for the year.
They had a race day dress up and all the girls looked very beautiful!
Then they had crazy hair and crazy sock day!
Justin sent me this picture from home after we had 10mm and I feel exactly what this frog was thinking, "Where's the rest of it?"
Look at these trees and their colours! So beautiful and such a palette! I wish I had my good camera as my phone doesn't do their vividness justice.
As sick as this guy is, look at all the flower buds coming.
Lara gifted the kids some lego when I did the photos for her daughter.
I was only home for a couple of days before I headed off again to go to Toowoomba with mum and my two cousins and aunty. Was the best weekend! We arrived about 30 seconds after Jess and Sam pulled in the gate which was pretty funny, we were racing on our app! We went to see the bush markets which were alright, but not as big as I had expected.
On our first night out we went to the rather extravagant Gips restaurant. Food was lovely and we had so many big belly laughs.
Sam trying out some new headwear.
We have so much history in this little group and it's so nice to be able to spend some quality time together. Mum and aunty Wendy are heading off next year to Western Australia to the Kimberleys and I am so happy and proud of them, I can't wait to hear all about it.
Mum and I left Toowoomba on Sunday morning and I left her in Rocky and continued home, which was about 11hrs of driving.
The next morning Justin and I went back to Emerald for a cattle nutrition workshop! It was so awesome and I was frustrated that I was so tired. I was taking lots of red bull so that I could pay attention to what was being said. Our educator was Desiree Jackson and she was so knowledgeable. I wish I could just follow her around and absorb everything she knows. We stayed overnight in Emerald for the 1.5day course and princess thought she was cool taking up the WHOLE bed.
Which brings us to the end of my blog. I'm pleased to report that we've just over an inch of rain. So that coupled with three lots of 10mm that we had a couple of weeks ago and the country should respond. To be honest, a little bit more rain would be nice, but I'm not knocking what we had. I think it will help to get us back on track. We're having a steady start to our Sunday but we will be off to put out some more cottonseed to help keep the cattle going until the grass catches up.
Signing off With Love x
