day FIFTY FIVE | Year EIGHT | 2017
This year Willow had the opportunity to volunteer in the Animal Nursery at the Royal Canberra Show… Willow? Animal nursery? Hells Yeah!
day FIFTY FOUR | Year EIGHT | 2017
… and here she is… up on the horse! She just loves this so much! <3
day FIFTY THREE | Year EIGHT | 2017
I’m trying to work… but ‘someone’ keeps distracting me!
day FIFTY | Year EIGHT | 2017
I was so busy catching up on my photo-a-day editing and uploading, that I actually forgot to take today’s photo… luckily Xan stepped up with this awesome selfie 😉
day FORTY NINE | Year EIGHT | 2017
This morning we took a trip out to Bingley Farms in Sutton to check out their honey extraction operation… I had no idea how it was done… it was really interesting… but I still don’t like honey – sorry guys 😛
day FORTY EIGHT | Year EIGHT | 2017
It was a bit of a rough deal for fourteen year old Willow – filling in for Xan’s U18 indoor hockey team… for a 10:10pm Friday night game… but she stepped up and did a great job – not sure she is feeling so awesome right now, though! lol
day FORTY SEVEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
My awesome birthday pressies… our first piece of real furniture bought for a specific place in our new house… not hand-me-down, not cheap second hand, not multi-purpose so we can use it in the next house… this was bought for THIS spot, in THIS house! … plus – as if that wasn’t enough – I was also given an awesome AMBIDEXTROUS wireless mouse! A high end mouse that I can actually use with my left hand! WooHoo!
day FORTY SIX | Year EIGHT | 2017
What more could a girl want on her birthday than a chocolate mud cake, surrounded by choc-mint tim tams and covered in Turkish delight Easter eggs and ferrero rochers!
day FORTY FOUR | Year EIGHT | 2017
When Darci asks Willow to make piklets for dinner… Willow makes piklets for dinner!
day FORTY TWO | Year EIGHT | 2017
Photographing lightning with Xanthia… we are pretty happy with these results, shooting out the back door!
day FORTY | Year EIGHT | 2017
I think, one of the cruelest indictments of getting older is that the first thing you forget is that You. Are. Getting. Older! … and because of that, you start making crazy assumptions like, for example, playing two games of netball in a row, in a tin shed, in 35º heat, won’t render you useless for next three days… but don’t worry – I remember now! 
#feelingeveroneofmyfortyfouryearselevenmonthsandthreeweeks
day THIRTY FIVE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Today, my amazing man ticked over 30 years of Military service… to stay in any job for thirty years is an achievement, but to make the personal sacrifices needed to serve your country for three decades is something to be particularly proud of… and I am SO very proud of him 
day THIRTY FOUR | Year EIGHT | 2017
If there is one place this girl loves to go – it’s Pegasus, Riding for the Disabled. After two and a half years of biding her time in the horse-handling class, a place finally opened up in the RIDING class for Jaimi… now she gets to go to twice a week!
day THIRTY ONE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Month ONE of year EIGHT – DONE!… finishing off with a selfie, coz I just can’t be bothered wrangling any ‘models’ tonight 
day THIRTY | Year EIGHT | 2017
Zoe and her Alex … he arrived from Melbourne of Friday for her birthday this week… long distance relationships are hard, but these two are making it work… nearly two years and counting.
day TWENTY NINE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Darci and her Freddie … he heads off to ADFA tomorrow and will be incommunicado for the next six weeks… tough times ahead.
day TWENTY EIGHT | Year EIGHT | 2017
After saying goodbye to my beautiful puppy this morning, I decided I needed some fun times with the other two, so off to the lake and the doggie park we went… one year old Marty, was too quick to capture, but 5 year old Emmett, was happy to hang back with us… he says running is for losers, and I couldn’t agree more
day TWENTY SEVEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
We knew this day would come, but it was still a kick in the guts when the vet told us last week, that it was time. At almost sixteen years old, my Zeusy-boy is just worn out.
So after a week of coming to terms with it all, tomorrow morning we will say goodbye to our beautiful boy
Zeus | 15 years 9 months
day TWENTY FIVE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Drivers of Australia… be afraid. Be very afraid.
day TWENTY THREE | Year EIGHT | 2017
One more week and my baby will be in Yr 9… I forget how grown up she is – until she looks at me like this… then suddenly I can see the dead-set teenager standing before me… I’m not sure I like it 
day TWENTY TWO | Year EIGHT | 2017
I could hear the giggles coming from Darci’s room and found them like this… they were checking out years and year worth of my photo-a-days… and being very judgey about my early photo skills, I might add
day TWENTY ONE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Little Miss Isabella (Ella) has been a long time coming… her mum has been talking and dreaming about her for as long as I have known her – way back, 20 years ago, when she used to look after Darci & Xanthia at the long-gone child care centre… and now, here she is… so precious and so, so loved
day TWENTY | Year EIGHT | 2017
You just know it’s going to be a good get together, when the host brings out the chicken for a photo op 
day NINETEEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
Maintaining long-distance relationships can be hard, but Skype helps… although, that doesn’t mean you get any more privacy from the little sisters than you would if he lived in the same state
day EIGHTEEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
This photo pretty much sums up Willow… no pants, with her animals
side note: how amazing is the cat enclosure Russ is building down the side of our house!… the end you can see is almost finished, and the one behind me is done… soon our cats will be set free outside!
day FIFTEEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
Communicating with this 16 year old is often via txt or FB message… the joys of parenting a teen in the nought-ies
day FOURTEEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
This is what 21 looks like… in my day it looked like married, four years in the Army, one bubba girl and another on the way… now it’s watching tv in your decked out room with your kitten on your lap… I feel like Darci is doing 21 way better than me!
day THIRTEEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
This is Jaimi. She is 24.
She is in her happy place – alone in her room (which, for the mother of someone with ASD is frustratingly messy! She totally missed the memo about obsessive cleanliness ) … she is surrounded by her favourite things, always – her laptop (she is currently looking at “images of suns” – it’s really best not to ask why 😉 ); the Phantom comics she swaps with Pa are spread over her bed; two boxes of books at her feet; her gameboy; a book about the Sydney Swans (sitting on her Sydney Swans doona cover); wearing her ‘Buddy Franklin’ tshirt that Santa bought her; her X-Wing Lego model; a picture of ‘The Phantom’ without his mask on, that Pa found on Ebay, which induced big, flappy excitement; her horse figurines; and her ever present (but you can’t see him because he is on her lap) ‘Swannie’ – the build-a-bear dinosaur her sisters made her for her 20th birthday… there is nowhere she would rather be, right now.
day TWELVE | Year EIGHT | 2017
We are finally making progress in the last room to be sorted since we moved into our house back in August… Willow is sitting at the light-table my late Cartographer grandfather built for his business back in the 80’s… along side the beautiful wooden map drawers that were recently passed onto me by my mother, also a Cartographer (my dad too, for interest sake)… while the pull of sparkly and new can be strong – nothing replaces the joy of the history of these old pieces
day NINE | Year EIGHT | 2017
Dexter doesn’t just look weird… he’s a bit touched upstairs too ) He like to sleep in his pram (yes, you heard me – his PRAM), but was fizz-gigging around too much and knocked it over… that didn’t stop him trying to back himself back into it anyway!
day EIGHT | Year EIGHT | 2017
Willow… just quietly working away in the kitchen… preparing fruit for her breakfast tomorrow
day SEVEN | Year EIGHT | 2017
For all the pitfalls and deficits of social media… this is where it shines!
Maintaining friendship as a Defence kid in my day was nigh on impossible (after attending eight different schools and making many, many ‘best’ friends over those years – I have only re-connected with three girls from all my school years)… but now – these guy can not see each other face to face for a year or two (or more) and still pick up exactly were they left off, thanks to their constant connection on social media.
Willow and Kasey (on the blowup bed in the middle) were both born in Darwin just a couple of months apart… but their friendship didn’t start until they attended childcare together as three and four year olds in Puckapunyal… then they met back up in primary school in Brisbane… and now, we are in Canberra, they are back in Brisbane and these two high school girls were up well past midnight giggling away
day SIX | Year EIGHT | 2017
For the record – I am a dog person NOT a cat person… but this new little addition to our family sure is testing my resolve
