Where Has Summer Gone?

The weather really has been crazy this Summer! I'm still waiting for the hot weather to arrive!! We normally have a lot of days over 40 degrees, but this Summer I don't think we've had any!

It's absolutely pelting with rain today and the pool is just about to overflow!! I was planning a trip to town for supplies but have wisely decided against that! Rain is forecast for the rest of the week too!

PS: All up we had 225mm of rain over 5 days! That's 9 inches in the old scale!! Our average annual rainfall is 22 inches, and we've had almost half that in one week!! Unbelievable!!!!!!!!

I ♥ Rollerskating

Like a lot of teenagers in the 80's I was madly in love with rollerskating. Every Saturday night my friends and I headed to the local rink for the evening disco! The best part was when it was the "speed skate" and everyone would step onto the rink and proceed to hoon around it to "Wipe-Out" blaring over the sound system! Oh, the memories!!

My friend Andrea had the most beautiful white leather (or maybe they were just vinyl?!) skates with red wheels. Oh how I envied her! My skates were red, blue and yellow! How retro - probably a collectors item now!

Anyway, I always have the Ellen show on at lunchtime for a bit of light entertainment, and yesterday she had an absolutely amazing husband and wife team of roller skaters on. Check out their You Tube clip below - OMG, it's superb! Now why didn't I ever look like that?!

Emma's 15 Minutes of Fame!!

If you look really hard you'll see Emma's face on today's edition of The Border Mail newspaper - see in the top right hand corner!!

Yesterday I drove her to Albury to audition for X-Factor. I only saw the ad on tv at the weekend which said that auditions were in Albury which is only 1 1/2 hours from home. I suggested she try out just for the experience and also for feedback from the judges on what they thought of Emma's voice.

Although Emma did a fantastic job at her audition, she wasn't picked to go onto the next round. The judge was very impressed with her voice saying that he was surprised that she had such a strong voice, but at 15 years old she just needs some more performance experience and to definitely try again next year. He just told her to go out and do as much performing as she could.

Emma was really happy with her audition and even happier with the judges comments. She was just glad that he didn't tell her she was a "crap singer", to use Emma's exact words! So she's very excited about the year ahead and what it could hold for her!
Check out http://www.bordermail.com.au/news/local/news/general/wouldbe-stars-face-auditions/2464954.aspx to read the whole article and watch a quick video of Emma practising before her audition.

Always Busy

Every second day Ryan has been inspecting the grain bags of wheat filled at harvest to make sure that they are in good condition. Birds, foxes, kangaroos and emus will put holes in them which need to be patched up with silo tape.


Some of the bags have a lot of tape on them and resemble a patchwork quilt!

Look at what I had to contend with this morning!!! We have not owned sheep for about 5 years now - Farmer Phil hates sheep and does not tolerate them on his cropping paddocks at all! We have a mob of sheep being agisted on one of the paddocks that we do not grow crop on as it's too steep and full of rocks and trees. I received a mercy call this morning from Farmer Phil - the sheep had escaped their paddock and were happily tramping all over Farmer Phil's good cropping paddock.

I grabbed Lucy the retired sheep dog and rounded the rogues up and got them back in their correct paddock. I haven't worked sheep in quite a few years but was happy that they all behaved themselves and marched straight back into their paddock.

Lucy was happy to stay on the back of the ute and bark instead of rounding the sheep up. Actually, I didn't want to let her off in case she ran around in front of them by mistake as she hasn't seen a sheep in a long time and maybe wouldn't remember what to do! Jack kept her company and let out a few helpful barks along the way too!

Farmer Phil has been busy doing more spraying after we received rain again on Friday. It's mainly just self sown wheat from harvest time which has sprouted. Easy to get rid of with Roundup.

We've had a water ski tournament on every weekend for the last month with one more next weekend before we get two weekends in a row at home - yeah! Ryan is jumping 6m more than last season so he's happy with that! He will be skiing at the Australian Nationals at Easter, so we'll be skiing for another few months yet!

Emma is back at school as a Senior in Year 11. She is a dormitory prefect for the Year 7's and 8's. During week one she had to soothe each girl in her dorm who were all feeling homesick! She said they've all now settled into life at boarding school with no more crying episodes! She dressed as a fairy complete with tutu, wings and tiara for the annual swimming carnival and went in every race except butterfly to get points for her house. It must have worked because Mighty Mutch House won the carnival yet again!