Saturday, July 12, 2008

Connor walking video

Here's the first video hot off the camera, enjoy. More video (of equally poor quality) to follow.

Connor is walking

and now won't stop. Video to follow

Saturday, July 05, 2008

Well, Connor still has chicken pox, a few spots are now starting to show up on places other than his legs and bum, he's now got one on his cheek. And at the same time it feels like he's cutting an eye tooth.

On the house front, no movement, for having three couples through in three days, none came back.   Oh well, another open home this weekend, and because of that, I've just painted the entrance way, and Steph and I weeded the vegebed lime.

Last weekend, I dug up the muddy area between the house and the washing line, and replaced it with lime, it looks quite good (photos to follow).

Anyway, Connor wants attention (as always!)

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Spotty Baby

Well, Connor has chicken pox...and it looks like he's cutting another tooth.. Restless nights all round!

Monday, June 30, 2008

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Connor first steps

well, yesterday we bought Connor his first pair of shoes, and when we got home, he took his first 3 or four steps (not wearing the shoes though). So walking might not be far off.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

Bit of a catch up

Well, it's been a while since I last blogged and since I have a spare hour or so on the train this evening, it seemed like a good idea.

Firstly the house, we've confirmed all the conditions we stated on the contract, and all the checks came back fine, there is a bit of work needing doing, but nothing major, so now the only condition we have to fullfill is the sale of the house. On that front, we had a lady through for the second time last weekend, and she wanted to come through for a third look (promising), but she fell off her horse, and is unable to come again for a while, also he partner thinks it might be a bit too far out. Hopefully she'll be able to convince him otherwise, and be up and about soon! As a backup plan, we've got a couple of open homes, 1 this weekend and another the weekend after, and a fair bit of advertising to coincide with the open homes too. Fingers crossed.

On the farm front, it's not all good news, we unfortunatly lost a goat a few weeks ago. Klaus (the Christmas day goat), we healthy and happy one day, and the next morning was scouring (poopy), and then by 5pm he was dead! From the speed of it, we think it was barber pole worm, a particularly nasty worm that feeds off the blood of the host and kills them! We've drenched the rest, and, touch wood, no one else is showing signs.
On the happy side of the farm, Steph and I have been progressing in our NZQA General Farm Skills course, we've now completed the chainsaw, ATV, 2 wheel farm bike, and tractor driving segments. I passed the tractor driving one before I even got the tractor out of the shed...Just by observing me getting her out (the ground was slipping and traction wasn't great), and parking her up I covered everything he wanted to see!
The 2 wheel bike course was fun, and I think that if we get the other farm, I will have to get a bike to supplement the quad as it will be able to go alot of places the quad can't, but as with all these ideas, we have to sell the house first!

On the Connor front, yeah, the bit you've all be waiting for..He's fine......


Nah, I'm sure I can write a bit more, he's good, sleeping through the night. We don't think he is particulary close to walking, he can get around quite fast on all fours at the moment! One neat thing we did observe on Sunday was when Steph and I were reading to him (a pretty boring book with objects and animals of different colors etc), every time the image was a horse he made the horse sign, same for light, gloves, fish, dog,bird and cat. We think he might have attempted sheep/goat too, but might have got confused with horse (at the moment if an animal isn't a fish/dog/cat/bird, it must be a horse!) It's a neat party trick for a 1 year old! Just shows how much faster their brains develop in relation to their verbal skills!
One thing he has taken to is beating himself up, when he gets frustrated he tends to hit himself on the head, we're slowly dealing to it.
He's still going swimming once a week, and is still finding it great fun, if he had his way, it would just be submersions, but he's only allowed 6/day.

Well, it's been a while since I last blogged and since I have a spare hour or so on the train this evening, it seemed like a good idea.

Firstly the house, we've confirmed all the conditions we stated on the contract, and all the checks came back fine, there is a bit of work needing doing, but nothing major, so now the only condition we have to fullfill is the sale of the house. On that front, we had a lady through for the second time last weekend, and she wanted to come through for a third look (promising), but she fell off her horse, and is unable to come again for a while, also he partner thinks it might be a bit too far out. Hopefully she'll be able to convince him otherwise, and be up and about soon! As a backup plan, we've got a couple of open homes, 1 this weekend and another the weekend after, and a fair bit of advertising to coincide with the open homes too. Fingers crossed.

On the farm front, it's not all good news, we unfortunatly lost a goat a few weeks ago. Klaus (the Christmas day goat), we healthy and happy one day, and the next morning was scouring (poopy), and then by 5pm he was dead! From the speed of it, we think it was barber pole worm, a particularly nasty worm that feeds off the blood of the host and kills them! We've drenched the rest, and, touch wood, no one else is showing signs.
On the happy side of the farm, Steph and I have been progressing in our NZQA General Farm Skills course, we've now completed the chainsaw, ATV, 2 wheel farm bike, and tractor driving segments. I passed the tractor driving one before I even got the tractor out of the shed...Just by observing me getting her out (the ground was slipping and traction wasn't great), and parking her up I covered everything he wanted to see!
The 2 wheel bike course was fun, and I think that if we get the other farm, I will have to get a bike to supplement the quad as it will be able to go alot of places the quad can't, but as with all these ideas, we have to sell the house first!

On the Connor front, yeah, the bit you've all be waiting for..He's fine......


Nah, I'm sure I can write a bit more, he's good, sleeping through the night. We don't think he is particulary close to walking, he can get around quite fast on all fours at the moment! One neat thing we did observe on Sunday was when Steph and I were reading to him (a pretty boring book with objects and animals of different colors etc), every time the image was a horse he made the horse sign, same for light, gloves, fish, dog,bird and cat. We think he might have attempted sheep/goat too, but might have got confused with horse (at the moment if an animal isn't a fish/dog/cat/bird, it must be a horse!) It's a neat party trick for a 1 year old! Just shows how much faster their brains develop in relation to their verbal skills!
One thing he has taken to is beating himself up, when he gets frustrated he tends to hit himself on the head, we're slowly dealing to it.
He's still going swimming once a week, and is still finding it great fun, if he had his way, it would just be submersions, but he's only allowed 6/day.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Property

Just a quicky to say that our offer has finally been accepted, so now we have to sell this place...fingers crossed.

Sunday, May 18, 2008

Connor's Birthday, finding a new "Littlebush"

Well, seems blogging is becoming more erratic, that is partly due to being very busy trying to find a new farmlett.. Hopefully the search is over, we went to look at a place on Thursday, and by Saturday we had an offer on it. The property is about 23 minutes north of Masterton, in the middle of a forest!  There is an 1900's house, various outbuildings, including a sleep-out. The house is a 4 bedroom two storey one.  On the land is a wool shed, 2 bay implement shed, cattle yards, 2 sets of sheep yards, a few dams, and there is 55 acres of land.  Huge is the best description when compared to Littlebush.  We looked around about 2/3rds of it as the last 1/3 was covered in native bush.  If you want to have a peek, it's here . If they accept our offer, we'll have to start making moves on getting this place sold, we've already got 1 offer, but it was shy by 5K.
On the other things front, Connor is now 1, his birthday was last Monday, we didn't do anything as we are going to celebrate it on Saturday 31st as Amy will be back from Japan, and celebrate we are..we're putting a hogget on a spit for the occasion, we figured with my family, Steph's family, friends, and antenatal people, there would be a few to feed, and the easiest way to feed the masses is a spit roast, we've already got the hogget lined up.
Oh, Connor's still not walking, and we're in no hurry for it either!

This week I had off due to being over stressed, so on Friday, I decided to go for a hunt down in the ranges, only a day hike, but I went 5.2kms up a stream bed, and when I finally sat down for lunch, I instantly saw a herd of goats!, I took a shot at the buck as he had good horns and a fantastic hide, missed, tried again, and again, at which point the rifle during the recoil hit my head with the scope..nice little cut above my eye. The forth shot was aimed at a young kid, and he promptly dropped as it went through liver, lungs and spine.  I did take another shot at the billy when he was 100m or so up a scree slope, hoping that if the shot connected, he would come tumbling down, he dropped, but didn't come down the slope. I tried getting up there, but it wasn't too safe so I chickened out.

Speaking of chicken, we've got chicken for tea. Now this is a rariety, we don't eat chicken because of the crap that is feed to chooks for the supermarket, but the hens we bought a few months ago, 3 of the 4 have turned into roosters, which means they turn into chicken roasts...and I culled one this afternoon, so we've got him for tea.

Anyway, thats enough for now..

I'll update this as soon as I know more about the other place.

Friday, May 02, 2008

Sutff

Well, yesterday we got rid of the two pigs, they had become escape artists, jumping gates, lifting gates off hinges, barging through backs of sheds etc....and they were rooting up the lawn. Not a good look when trying to sell the house.
The house is now on the net ready for selling .

We've gone and seen a builder company regarding building a house, and hopefully next Friday we get our first ballpark figure before we start getting down to the nitty gritty design. It's quite exciting, but still, this place needs to sell, and there are many other things to consider.

Sunday, April 27, 2008

Owl

A bit of research on the net shows it to be the "Little brown owl", we'll still mention it to DOC tomorrow, very cool..
Oh on the farm front, the Pahiatua place few through as we walked away after they would meet us with the offer, so we're now considering other options...

Owls in the garden

I know I haven't blogged for a while, but this couldn't be not blogged. This owl has been in our garden now 2 days in a row, we think it might be a morepork, but the call is wrong, so I'll talk to DOC tomorrow about it.

This photo was taken about 3m from the house, and the owl was about another 5m away.

Tuesday, April 22, 2008

The "Farm" is up for sale

Well, Steph and I have decided it's time for a change, the first of which is the farm, it's going on the market probably at the end of the week once we've done some tidying etc. There are other changes in the pipeline, but they might take several months to come to fruition (and no, we're not trying for another baby!).

It will be a shame to say "bye" to Littlebush, but we've outgrown it and are wanting a new challenge.

Watch this space.

Monday, April 14, 2008

Connor Roaring

It is a common way to entice male deer at this time of the year to "roar" them in, here is a short vid of me practicing, and then Connor joining in. The will be more news and photos soon.