New year.

Bizarrely it is now 2018.

I still have three kids

My eldest is 19 - he is an apprentice diesel mechanic with a bus company.  He is going well, I'm very impressed with his worth ethic.  His niceness at home leaves a little to be desired - however he doesn't do drugs, doesn't go missing, doesn't have lots of random sex at home.

Middle kid is 8 - about to go into grade 3.  Loves his sport and anything to do with a screen. Occasionally he likes to read.  Doing well at Taekwondo, football and swimming.  He is a sweetheart, but also a warrior.  He might be a challenge.

Youngest is 6 - Almost in grade 2.  He is my split personalility child, a monster at home and delightful at school (I guess that is ok).  He is going great in Taekwondo, improving in swimming.  He is enjoying being young, cries a bit to get attention.  He knows all of my buttons as well.

Jamie works a lot in his business.

I work 5 short (6 hours per day) days per week, and it frustrates me as well.

I'm exhausted with trying to keep everything together, keeping everything up in the air.

Hopefully I will manage better this year.

Almost done

And now its almost completed.

Concreting done.
Shed is up.
New facia board (still need guttering)



On the still to do list:
Electricity and lights
Pergola/verandah/roof for the "just outside our backdoor" bit
Gate
Leveling of the back yard and grass planted.
New tap or maybe a sink in the bathroom.
LANDSCAPING.

I'm reasonably happy, heaps of errors with the garage, things we will see forever, but everyone else just says "wow, that's that you call a shed"
All men have envy and most women are surprised I let it happen.

This garage is HUGE, its beyond huge.

Concreting day.  Quite exciting

Finished shed

Laying out the verandah bit

putting up the mammoth wall.  You can see here the size of the freaking thing.  Its massive.

A bit of a time line.

My  mother thinks it would be a good idea to put up a year in review.  My facebook year in review looks beautiful - all sunshine and light.  Happy outings.  What it doesn't show is the myriad of phone calls, sleepless nights, stress, STRESS and (well I'm not going up a font size) stress.

Having a part of your property burn is challenging.
No one was hurt, this is fantastic.  But losing ones possessions is hard.  Losing photos and some books that I won't replace is hard.  Jamie losing most of his stuff... hard.

Saturday April 2nd - night of the fire, this was documented below.

Sunday April 3rd - Ben's fifth birthday, we had a party at a park planned.  This went ahead.  Two of his school friends, and family.  Jamie's parents came down from the country, but my parents had started their long holiday.  This was a welcome spot of happiness.  We were able to digest what had happened the night before.  Then most came back to our house and we surveyed the MESS.  At this stage everything stank.  He stench was horrendous.

Monday April 4th - I took the day off to consult with the insurance and the saga of the insurance commenced.  In all we had three claims.  The motorbike (which was unceremoniously dragged down our driveway and hoisted onto a towtruck)    I got a phone call from the vehicle insurance surveyor to ask what was the licence plate of the motorbike, as the one he was looking at was burned and you couldn't read it... well then knowing the licence plate isn't going to help you buddy.... it was char cooked.  I think out of everything Jamie was the saddest about his bike.  It was still quite new and still in perfect condition.
That day I got some stabilising supports for the doorway of the garage and a temporary fence put in by two building companies - to this day I have no idea who the fence came from.

The building assessor came that week.  She was young, disinterested and well not very helpful.  She barely answered my calls - and I didn't make many.

Our claims assessor was South African - and in South Africa.  This was the most tedious part.  We took about two weeks to formulate our list of what was in the garage and the approximate purchase price of it.
Our home has very little in the way of storage, so almost everything was in the garage.  Photo albums - 10 scrapbooked albums of Mark's childhood.  Irreplaceable. Computers, camping gear and tools - Jamie is pretty much a tool hoarder.  All his aircraft tools, gardening, renovation, car maintenance tools.  Then there was the Commodore, and the full extra body kit for it and full second interior for it and some extra stuff as well.  None of that was covered by insurance as we didn't have the car insured as it wasn't drive-able.  Mark and Jamie were starting to do it up for Mark to have for his 18th birthday :(

Time for an update!

Not much has happened since the fire.

Life kind of stalled.

Hopefully will have a super update soon.

Garage fire 2nd April 2016

I'll start with the photos of during.  I felt very wrong taking pictures so I didn't, other than these three.  Fire started about 6.30pm Saturday night.  Mark and Jamie tried to put it out, but it was too intense. I called the fire brigade (as did many others I would imagine) in total there were 5 appliances and 2 ambulances - they checked Jamie and Mark out for signs of smoke inhalation - both of their faces were black.... neither allowed a photo.

About 45 mins after the fire started.  Still a lot of smoke.

Fire truck arriving

Fire truck

This is where it touched the house itself.  Eaves gone and red bricks are now black

Aluminium melts at 660 degrees Celsius.  WTF!!!  Aluminium window frames and bowed tiles

Another shot of the melted verandah roof

Our old VN Commodore.  We were giving it to Mark for his 18th

.

Ryan's bike and melted verandah roof.

Motorbike being towed away :( 

Kiddy Hawk Challenge 6th March 2016

Before the race.  Nice clean boys.

Commando crawling under barbed wire - yes real barbed wire.

End of the race, are you really that muddy?

Ben going through the first of the muddy trenches.

Ryan... do I really want to go in there?

Head to toe - mud

Even worse!

Dubbo to Moree

Tents all packed up and off we headed, this was a shorter 4 hour drive to the central NSW town of Moree.

Bringing the city luxuries to camping.  We had a coffee machine.

Something funny is going on with these two.

My gorgeous Mark

Ben and Zahli with lollypops.  They both got bitten by wasps at this caravan park.

Moree is famous for its thermal pools.  This one was at the caravan park and VERY popular with the grey nomads

Four different pools of varying temperatures

Gwydir Caravan Park  (how do you pronounce that?)