Country Mail Box Photo Series - week two

Welcome to the second week of my Country Mail Box Series!

If you missed week one you can find it here: Country Mail Box Photo Series - week one. As I said last week, I have decided to start a weekly photo series of country mail boxes in my area - we have some really unusual ones around here! Here is this weeks photo:


As I mentioned yesterday, I am hosting tomorrows JPix Carnival. I spent quite a few hours last night putting it all together, so I hope you will check back tomorrow to have a look!

For now, I have a heap of work to do and kids to attend to, school holidays remember... they can't go outside today as we are in the middle of dealing with the annual 'burning off', so it is really smoky outside. One of the reasons we moved here was for the fresh air, but, the pollution here over the 3 months of winter when the national parks burn off would leave the pollution in Sydney for dead! And that is really saying something!

Anyway, thats it from me today!


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Carnivals Galore - I am exhausted already!

It is such a beautiful day today outside. The girls have been out playing in the cubby house - it is school holidays here at the moment, they started last week and the girls have been pretty well behaved so far! The photo above is of Ruby in the car on the way home from one of our shopping trips a couple of weeks ago.... speaking of photos....

I will be hosting the up coming JPix carnival on the 12th of April, so if you have any photos that you have taken and posted on your blog please submit them to JPix so I can include you in the next edition. If you would like to host an edition of JPix click here and fill out the short form.

I will also be hosting the next Kosher Cooking Carnival so please make sure you submit your kosher recipes to be included! And if you would like to host an edition of KCC click here and fill out the short form.

And don't forget to check back to have a look at these two carnivals I am hosting over the next couple of weeks... and spread the word!!

=D


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Country Mail Box Photo Series - week one

I have a lot of work to get done today, which is why I am sitting at the table quickly posting on my blog! I am really having trouble getting going this morning - too many late nights watching tv and just a little lack of enthusiasm for housework, I have a mountain of washing to fold and put away and also washing in the machine still waiting to be hung (washing machine constantly beeping at me to remind me...) - although considering how cold and overcast it is outside today, I don't know that it will dry real quick.

I have decided to start a country mail box photo series and post some photos of some of our local mail boxes. Once I started really taking notice of the mail boxes around here, I realised just how many cute country style mail boxes, quirky mail boxes and just plain ugly mail boxes there are around here.

So without further delay, here is my first photos of what will hopefully be a weekly series of country mail box photos, these two photos were take two weeks ago.

Now I am off to do some work!





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Australian Tsunami Update

Just an update on the tsunami warning today, I have heard Queensland has now been given the all clear. However lifeguards at Sydney's Bondi Beach have ordered people off the beach - not because of sharks!

Apparently all beaches in New South Wales and Queensland have been closed and the Manly ferry service in Sydney stopped because of the warning. At noon, the Bureau of Meteorology said the warning was still in place for NSW.

Fred Fakari, chairman of the Solomon Islands National Disaster Council, said the tsunami which followed the 8.1 magnitude earthquake had 'completely wiped out' some villages. There have been unconfirmed reports of two deaths.

The tsunami alert for NSW was issued at 10.29am saying waves may impact the Sydney region after 11.30am.



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Australia's Tsunami Warning, The Cubby & Pesach

Right now though, the whole east coast of Australia from Cooktown in QLD right down to Tasmania is on Tsunami alert following an earthquake off the Solomon Islands which apparently measured 8.1. Noone seems to know much about it at the moment, they think that it will fizzel out and waves will roll in at around 20cm.

Even with this prediction, people in Cooktown in Queensland are leaving any low lying areas and heading for safety on higher ground. The bureau says a tsunami could hit Cooktown from 9.31am, Cairns from 9.49am, Gladstone from 11.39am, Mackay from 11.44am.

From what I have seen on the news this morning, I don't think anything will happen but it is good to see there is an awareness considering the last Tsunami episode.

Anyway, on to our weekend here in the middle of nowhere - a few photos of the girls from the weekend playing in their cubby house. As many of you know, Aaron and I run a Web and Graphic Design business, well about 2 years ago we designed a website for a Sydney cubby house builder, we asked that in return he build for us, deliver and install (remember we live 5 hours from Sydney!) his biggest and best cubby he could make.

Well, this is it, as you can see it is huge and pretty fancy, he also included a beautiful pink fibreglass slide! The girls love to play in it and the weather on the weekend was just way to nice to spend the day inside.

Also, because I don't know when I will get a chance to post again - I still have a lot to prepare for Pesach, I would like to wish my Jewish readers a safe and peaceful Pesach.

Chag Sameach!



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Running The Gauntlet

Living remote is great for keeping the kids away from the enormous mountains of chocolate Easter eggs and Easter rabbits at our local supermarket. We shop once every two weeks due to the distance and that is usually when two of our girls are at school anyway. I went to the supermarket last Thursday and as soon as the two glass sliding doors opened, I ran the gauntlet of Easter with Ruby (3yrs) - every coloured Easter egg you could imagine in every shape and size possible, it is quite unbelievable - they have been selling Easter buns since mid January! Even though you have to go through Easter hell to get into the supermarket - there is no way to get in the store avoiding Easter eggs, we have the shops covered, they are not so hard to deal with. Jade and Amber are old enough to remember having Easter in previous years, but Ruby is too young to remember, so taking her shopping at this time of the year is not so bad, she is not as interested in all the colourful Easter chocolates as what the other two girls are.

Now, it is just school Easter activities we have to try to avoid. Last Thursday, Jade came home with a note in her bag from one of the teachers at school asking for the children to bring in a toy rabbit if they own one. Apparently they were going to be measuring the rabbits as part of a special Easter maths activity. The girls didn't take rabbits, I wasn't really very happy about maths being turned into an Easter activity. Unfortunatly there is not much we can do about it without making the girls feel left out, out of the entire school of 200 children, there are 2 Jewish kids - every other child in the school would be celebrating Easter so it is hardly fair to expect them to not have Easter activities for the rest of the school because my girls celebrate Passover not Easter!

It turned out that it wasn't just maths that had been turned into an Easter activity, but the entire day! They had an Easter activity DAY! Yep, the entire day dedicated to easter bunnies, eggs and anything else I have been desperatly trying to avoid. I know the girls would have felt very left out if they had not participated in the activities, but the school is very well aware of our beliefs considering the trouble we had to go to to get the girls out of weekly Christian scripture classes. I don't expect special treatment, nor do I expect them to stop what they are doing because of us, but it would have been nice if they had of brought to our attention that they were planning on dedicating an entire day to Easter activities - I would have preferred the girls to stay home from school that day.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised. We live in a tiny town of 300 people, the town basically has no shops and consists of a peterol station, a pub, a post office... and 3 churches!!! 3 churches! What do we need 3 churches for in a town of 300 people? Below are some photos which I took last week of some of the friendly locals in the next town from ours....ah, yes, it is nice to fit in.




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Country Reflection

Things are kind of busy here at the moment. It is not just the preperation and cleaning for Pesach, I also need to get some work done so we can get our savings back up in preperation of moving back to Sydney and on top of those two things Amber has been unwell with croup again for the second time since she started school.

So, with all those things to keep me busy, I have decided to do just a short post today of some photos I took yesterday afternoon while I was out picking up Jade from the bus stop (Amber stayed home from school yesterday). Even though it was quite an overcast day, I though the dam looked quite pretty with the reflections of the trees on it and the grass is so lush and green at the moment, we have had quite a bit of rain over the past couple of weeks and I heard on the news that the area I live in is now out of drought.
The bottom photo is just of one of the many cattle crush's around here, it is actually just across the road from the dam above.

Well, it's back to cleaning for me!


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The Gardeners Have Arrived

Yesterday Rafi G posted a small paragraph in his post about a web site promoting cows to be bought as house pets instead of dogs. It made me laugh as when we first moved here to our country house which is surrounded by paddocks full of cows, fresh from the city, Aaron was sitting outside one night in the dark having a cigarette (he has since given up smoking) when he asked me to turn the outside light on - 'I think we have cows in our backyard' he whispered. 'Don't be so ridiculous' I scoffed. After his persistence I went inside and turned on the outside flood light. Yep, he was right we had cows in our yard... not 1 or 2 cows but about 12 huge black cows! The all just stood there and looked at us wondering what we were going to do, they were really on edge - ready to freak out at any second and start running around in a mad panic.

We quietly slipped back inside to phone the farmer to ask him to come and get his cows ( remember it was in the middle of the night) - they couldn't stay in our yard, they were really skittish and that side of the house is mainly large glass windows - I was having visions of them freaking out and running through our sun-room!

Anyway, the farmer came over, asked us how they got in our yard - like as if we knew!! He calmly herded them back to the paddock.

That was about 4 years ago, it really hasn't happened since.... until this morning. When I got up to get the girls ready for school, we had cows in our yard, which I thought was quite strange since I had just read Rafi's article yesterday and since we haven't had cows in our yard for 4 years. The difference between 4 years ago and now is that we look at it a little bit differently - before we would have wanted them out as soon as possible, now, let them stay - they are good lawn mowers!! I wouldn't want them here all the time though!

Above: Ruby watching the cows in our yard.

Above: The cows in our yard this morning were only babies - but big anyway!

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Mr Bagel Returns To Blogging!!

Over the past week I have received a number of emails from people hoping Aaron, aka Mr Bagel, would come back to blogging. Yesterday when I came back online, I had quite a few comments left to the same effect...
'Is he coming back?'..... 'How's the BagelBlogger doing? Any chance we'll see him back in the blogsphere soon?' ..... 'Tell your husband he should come back..' ..... 'I miss bagels :(' , and so on.

Well, Mr Bagel has had a very busy week rebuilding his blog from scratch! Trust me, I know, I spent many nights searching Google for old cached copies of his posts and re posting them on his new blog to help out. I managed to save about 130 of his 660 posts, so there are still alot of older ones missing, but still, he is back and blogging and that is a great thing.

As Aussie Dave said yesterday, Aaron's blog is not like the average pro-Israel blog, he has a very distinctive style, which I think can be effective.

Check out his newly rebuilt blog he has only just come back online today.



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Conspicuous Hiding

The girls have been playing hide and seek a lot recently - which we have encouraged as it is really good for Amber and Ruby with learning how to count. The house we live in is built on 3 levels, we have the large downstairs office/computer room where my husband and I work, the middle level is the kitchen, lounge, playroom and kids bedrooms and then there is upstairs which is our bedroom.

Basically, when the kids play hide and seek they can hide anywhere in the house - behind curtains, under beds behind couches, you get the drift.
The other day after school, the girls were playing. Ruby was counting, Jade and Amber were hiding. Jade decided to hide downstairs... below is a photo of her 'hiding' behind the curtain....

Would anyone like to guess how long it took Ruby to find her!?!




.... Just another day ....