Update Update....

I know I'm still slack. Its just been so busy around here.

School Update: Its going well. We are still part of this social programme group. The kids part is great but the parents part is not. I spoke up last week about how I don't think it really applies to us and she agreed but as the hour went on one of the mums admitted she has no control over her kids and she just gives in to keep the peace so maybe the programme will help her. One of the other mums decided to remove her child. Her child was included cause she was initially very withdrawn and quiet but her parents are going thru some major issues with the courts involved, and strict visiting schedule/DOCS etc so I think she was just more scared than anything else. Her mum is finding the parenting programme offensive so...

Anyway other than that school is great. I've put my name down to be a regular reading helper and I'm also in the canteen every few weeks. I'm loving my time in the classroom, its great to see DD interact with her class mates and also to get to know them myself.

No shampoo: So tomorrow it will be 8 wks and frankly I'm disappointed. My hair does not feel any nicer than normally. The yukky oily stage is gone but my hair still feels rather dry but now its also super curly and I mean super curly. My future SIL is a hair dresser and she said obviously this is my natural hair - and I don't like it. I'm not sure where to go from here. Maybe I should try the bicarb wash and apple cider rinse. I'm truly tempted to go back to the chemical filled products I was using before. I miss my No Frizz Serum. If anyone has any ideas..

House Update: Wooden floor was laid this week. The laundry was installed (which will be the temporary kitchen while we building the rest of the house). The plasterboard is just waiting for the final sand down. The tiler just laid the flooring in the bathroom and will be back next week to do the walls. Only thing that can slow us down is our painter lives in a area that is currently cut off due to flood and he has a few jobs to do before ours so we are left waiting on mother nature. ((On a side note, how bizarre with a huge part of VIC burning and only a few hours away parts of NSW flooding and then again more flooding in QLD, Australia is a very weather diverse place at times)). Anyway we are on track for a late March move in.

Financial stuff: Is going terrible. I'm even more behind. I have bills overdue to be paid, money spread over various bank accounts at both banks. I need to find time to sit down and transfer money, close the accounts from the old bank and pay bills. Then once again get stuck into MYOB so I can finish our budget.

Coming Week: Once again a busy school week, Monday is my only free day. Tues is the social programme at the school, Wed DD#2 has her sports class, Thurs is reading in the class and canteen, Friday is DD#2 swimming and speech therapy. Saturday I'm meeting some old school friends for lunch, I haven't seen them for ages. And finally on Sunday we head off for a 4 day break, my parents bought a package for us at a lovely resort, so as long as the weather is nice we are going to swim and dolphin watch and generally relax. The accommodation we booked has a full kitchen so we can keep the cost down by taking our own food. We think we will have breakfast and dinner at the accommodation and eat out for lunch while doing our sight seeing etc.

Family: We are all a bit sick. Just coughs, sore throats, runny noses etc. So hubby is pottering around at the house today doing little things which won't tire him out too much and the girls and I will sloth on the lounge I think. I'm re-reading the Twilight series again (for the third time) I'm about a quarter of the way thru book 3 so that's my plan for the day.

As for my weight loss/get healthy plan well.... nothing. I've really fallen off the wagon with a lot of things... eating healthy... exercising... meal planning... saving money... living simply...

Week in Review 12/1 - 18/1

I am always amazed at how different my girls are when it comes to waking up. My youngest is smiling before she even opens her eyes, she wakes up instantly and is chirpy, asking 'mum lets get up, can I have milo and milk, what are we doing today', she skips to the lounge room with her curls bouncing. My eldest however wakes slowly, with groans and grunts, her long thick hair so matted around her face you can't see her eyes. Even when awake she likes to lay there for a while, preferring to be cuddled awake by me. She then prefers to be not spoken to for 1/2hr - and don't ask her if she wants breakfast too early or woe be to you.

I understand my eldest, that is the way I greeted each day for a good 25 yrs of my life, until I had babies. I do wish however I could wake like my youngest. Today I am half way in between, I hate waking and wish I could stay in bed and some days I curse #2 chirpy voice and smiling face. But I wake quickly from necessity.

This week: I really wanted to get the bookwork close to completed, but that didn't happen. Basically I was planning on 4-5hrs on Wednesday when MIL had the girls, well MIL ended up picking them up a good 1.5hrs after I thought she would, then wanted me to go and get them a bit earlier than I thought, so after doing a quick tidy, hanging a few loads of washing on the line and cleaning out the guinea pigs I only had 2 hrs to work. Oh well, I did get a lot done in that 2 hrs so I'll just keep going. I got a letter this week from ATO asking why I haven't done the Jul-Sept BAS yet... uh oh.

Our house, the solar hot water system was mostly installed yesterday and its being finished off today, hubby is also cleaning the whole place out in preparation for plasterboard which will start this week, we will probably go over this afternoon and help clean after the plumber leaves.

Yesterday I did something I somewhat regret now. I suggested to the girls we make a paper mache pig. Of course I suggested this before reading the instructions, only to find out you need to do 4 layers, with it drying in between, then leaving it over night before painting. The paste is annoying to make and you need to make it each time you put a layer on. This was a bad idea with a 4 and 5 yrs old, on a rainy coldish day, so it ended up being an inside project. I now have paste all over my floor. The girls soaked their paper and balloon in paste which did not dry even though we went to mums for lunch and stayed there for 3 hrs... the second layer went on and even though its now been left for 16 or so hrs its still not dry. Both girls continually coated their arms in paste cause it felt nice. And I still have 3 pigs needing another 2 layers plus paint. Argh..

Coming week: We have speech therapy for #2, therapy for #1 on Monday, a little playdate on Tuesday followed by swimming lessons for #1. Yay Wednesday is completely empty so far and I'm hoping to keep it that way. Thursday is a full day with just #1 and I while #2 is at preschool, I think we will head into the shop to buy food for Friday night and claim a few medicare and NIB bills. On Friday after #2's swimming the girls are going to MIL's again. When she brings them home she is going to stay for dinner. MIL and I don't click much, we are very different, so aren't overly close, we really don't see her much, though the last few school holidays she has taken the kids for a few hrs each week. (I think she figures that most of #1 therapy stops during school holidays so they will have more time and she can then take them to her house and see them away from hubby and I).

Meter Reading:
I made a huge mistake last week with my water meter reading, I was out by 1000, no wonder it was so high...
Meter 1 - 28857 (usage of 133)
Meter 2 - 31831 (usage of 58)

Total usage of 191 over 7 days. Or 27 per day. Still not sure what the average is or what I should be aiming for. This week hasn't been so bad though, I've hardly used the a/c.

Water was 53049. Which makes the usage 125 per day per person. More than last week but still well under our allowed usage per councils restrictions.

Week in Review 29/12 - 4/1

This week was the week I started my blog, I feel really positive and happy about it, I'd like to be able to read back on this blog in a year or two and see how far I've come, about the positive changes I've made for myself and family, and for the environment.

This was also the week I received my much waited for book 'The Complete Tightwad Gazette', so far I'm only up to page 133 of 927 so I still have a long way to go. Being Australian a lot of points have little to no meaning to me - like the bit about the mail service and also coupons. We don't seem to have the same systems for coupons, sure they are around like two for one deals on the back of Woolworths receipts but not really on the scale of other countries I don't think, which is why I purchased this year Entertainment Book.

The last two days have been messed up and mangled from my original plans of several hours of bookwork - yesterday hubby decided we need to make the decision on bathroom tiles NOW, something to do with thickness for door frames or something, so off we went tile shopping, which was very successful. We also managed to pick up external lights for a fraction of the cost that we saw elsewhere, we bought the expensive eco globes which we will get several years of use out the them. I'm really happy with the way the house is going, my priority was to create a comfortable home that wouldn't have huge running cost and luckily so far hubby has come along for the ride. With lourved windows for cross flow ventilation, extra insulation etc it shouldn't cost much to heat and cool the house. Also hubby has been using the last year or two to collect material off building sites and from demolition jobs. It means a bit more work for him cause the timber might need de-nailing or cutting down but its meant huge savings and also huge chunks of our house are in the old hard wood timber not the new lightweight treated pine. I'm very lucky to have a man who is willing to work all day and then stay back and collect left over bricks etc. (most building sites, will allow you to collect bricks from a completed house if you do the labour yourself, brick layers scatter bricks all over a building site, so usually a builder will have to pay someone to walk around picking them all up, so if they don't need them they are happy to get rid of them, we've so far collected atleast $1,000-$2,000 worth of bricks).

I'm going to start recording my electrity and water meters on Sunday afternoons. Here is my first reading

Elect #1 - 28595
Elect #2 - 31723
Water - 0004683.9

Next Week Goals: I'd like to think I can get all the receipts entered onto MYOB this week and to start reconciling bank accounts (I'm six months behind on this). Though I only have one 3hr period kid free the whole week so it might be a bit big of a task for this week, I can only try.