You're going to feel this

Hi everyone, 

And many apologies for the almost 3 month gap between entries, time has flown by, and pretty much like winter snow, it's come & gone before anyone really realized it.

We did get some snow, but nothing like the amounts anticipated, the couple of flurries we got we sufficient for the kids to test out some toboggans and slide round & sometimes into, a fire hydrant.  It was very powdery so even digging out the cars wasn't too strenuous for this old fart!

Pictured is Hannah using up her energy at SkyZone a place populated with sufficient spots for even Hannah & Ryan to bounce out all energetic feelings for an hour.  We've bought a seasons pass for a year and it's pretty much paid off already, future visits will be free entertainment!  

Ryan is delighted to be able to claim 1 of the 100% slots for his class at Math on the Reflex computer program, he really put in the effort this year and zoomed up the charts, very well done and he's catching up Jessica's math skills fast! :)

We're back in Soccer season and Ryan has to tolerate his Father coaching once again, because nobody else will.... so that will be fun.  Possibly for me, possibly for him, probably not for both of us! He's still basking in the glory of the CHEATRIOTS winning the SuperSnoreBowl.  

Other news involves the departure of Bluey II.. possibly some kind of stomach disorder saw his demise despite some attempts to assist him through it.  Pretty sure most here wouldn't have noticed had I not informed them!  Right now the tank stands full of water, but no fish, unsure if we'll go & try once more, as it's generally only me who does the daily feed & maintenance.

The title? Oh, yes.... as some may be aware I have a dislike of dentists based solely on some unfortunate experiences when younger, now I'll say here my current dentist is great, and the crew there do tend to view me somewhat sympathetically as they know the history.  I tend to lay there like a dead bluey and just hope for the conclusion, but recently I had to have some reconstructive surgery which led to temporary crowns, the 1st was completed, but the 2nd needed further work, so they went to re-insert the temporary, pre-empting it with "Sorry my friend, you're going to feel this" which is perhaps the worst thing a dentist can say, especially to a nervous patient.  Well initially it was not too bad, and then OH MY F****** GOD! I actually shook and lost feeling in my legs... holy crap that was unpleasant.  I was too afraid to even ask what the hell they did, I presume something along the lines of touching the root canal nerve. 

That was followed 3 days later by the temporary which never felt right incidentally, falling out & being replaced again, only for me to get to within 24 hours of my appointment & thinking I'd enjoy a nice juicy burger.  1st bite, and crunch.... and that was end of the temporary, and my lunch :(  However like all good stories, this ended well as I got finally repaired and have been almost without pain for the 1st time in a month and the 1st bite of food was delicious :)

Jessica has had some fun & games at work, having said goodbye to some friends recently including Carey who managed to come & work for us, and be trained initially by ME!  Haha.  Time will tell if she's been a good student, I'll be watching her and keeping her in check for sure.

Cats are fine, Poofy is getting more like a grumpy old man day by day, and is still non-tolerant of feisty kitten activities, he's now decided the safest place is actually on the sofa with us at night so that shows how he's changed over the years, Oreo's still loves ice and other odd items as toys and spends the days continuing to stand her ground against Jake the thug, who of course absolutely obliterates her when he wants to.  Thug has begun balancing on the stair bannister, perhaps inspired by kitten walking up above the deck doors.  It would remiss not to mention we're rapidly upon the day of losing Nugget and 9 years later it's still a shame we lost him, though we are glad to have Jakey with us.

Ok, for now that's enough of a recap, we're rushing towards Taurus time which means birthdays aplenty!  

Till next time, 

J, J, R & H.

The Redcoats have come..... and gone!

Yes it's true, we had some overseas visitors for Christmas this year as a cunning plan came through and barring a couple of rainy days, even the weather behaved (just about!).

Plenty of wine, water, tea & shockingly coffee was consumed by all.  Trips to our favorite restaurants were almost all accomplished and most surprisingly of all I didn't screw up the Christmas dinner!  Hoorah!

Much to Jessica's (I thought they were coming tomorrow) and Ryan's surprise - he even let out a little "Yay!" when he saw them in the car when we collected him on his last day at school, a pleasant journey over was greeted by crappy rain and of course rush-hour traffic.  Hannah seemed nonplussed by the new arrivals, but swiftly warmed her vocal chords and realized here was more people to terrorize.

Biggest shock was the fact that the friendliest cat was Poof!  Usually he'd stay away for virtually the whole trip but he was swiftly on the scene and the sofa demanding belly rubs.  Highlight of the cats entertainment was our nutter kitten who's developed a fascination with Ice Cubes... fishing them out of the sink and now fully associating the sound of the freezer sliding open, she bounds up to the door in expectation of...... a treat....? Not sure quite how she sees it, maybe it's a play toy, but she's happy until it inevitably melts or vanishes under a cabinet.

Entertainment was in sparing supply,  Jessica had a Christmas gathering at the weekend so people could enjoy Australian English accents on a multitude of angles, fortunately with no confusion though I'm not sure some things weren't lost in translation on both sides.  The visitors did manage to watch about 1/2 of It's A Wonderful Life, and endured A Christmas Story too.  However later that day we upped the ante with the ultimate Christmas film, Die Hard! Yippee Ki-Ay Melon Farmer as one of our younger guests was pleased to inform us at the gathering.

We also played Uno and as witnessed by the photo above there was some ganging up on certain people, that's the thanks I get for the copious food & drink I prepared.  You can take your Plus 4 and definitely not triple down on it.  And you cheat too.  Bastards.  Cheating Bastards.  Especially the little boy!

In other news, Jessica decided to take us all to the mall, we left her with Hannah to have a "little trim, tidy up" and came back to an almost scalped girl.... if I'd have pulled that stunt with Ryan I'd have not been around to type this!  Double standards ahoy!  To be fair it's now a nice bob and was only about 6-8 inches lopped off, maybe I'm just clueless due to the lack of hair I possess, but it did seem a lot!

Onto Christmas, and Ryan did brilliantly, seemingly impressed by how Santa knew to get him everything he wanted, which included a Switch which he's sort of played sporadically..... time will tell if the pull of the Legos is too much. He did say he wanted a Bugatti Chiron, but even in Lego form it's a little too much for his wallet! His other popular toy was a "Really Rad Robot" (I think) which sent Hannah into hysterics when it proclaimed "YOU"RE A DIRTY MYRUS"  obviously we think it's VIRUS, but Ryan & Hannah are adamant.

Meanwhile Hannah, fresh from quoting Anglo-Saxon terms of endearment (times like this I play the Aussie Card, to little or no avail, sadly) was very pleased with her Elsa doll, she also inflicted Frozen, The Incredibles 2 and Big Hero 6 on our guests. She loves her light up Paw Patrol bedtime toy and enjoyed rummaging in her stockings while bossing everyone about, she did very well for clothes and other things too.

Jessica's gift was to set up a photo shoot for kids & grandparents and she doubled down on that by insisting the kids develop pneumonia - December, early afternoon, windy.... chilly. Kids, to quote Phil Collins - No Jacket Required.  Poor call Mom!

Right we're into 2019, no resolutions because you know you'll be let down.

Enjoy 2019!
J, J R& H.

Galloping towards the end of the year!

How is it December already? We've shot through September, October & November and stomped over the 1st week in December too.  Before you know it, we'll be celebrating Hannah's birthday for real - right now everyday is her birthday and she's most irate if anyone dares to deny the Princess her wishes.

So last time out we'd just introduced Oreo and now we can officially confirm that she's feisty, regular battles with Jakey to see who owns the highest thug status but she's also recognized her place in regards to Poofy.  Glad to say after a 3 week hiatus he ventured upstairs, rumors that this coincided with the return of Paul aren't wide of the mark and you're welcome to venture gases guesses as to the cause.

Anyway Poofy has taken back ownership of wherever he goes, and has often stood and stared down Oreo, she's always the one who cedes and walks away, even with a hiss it's clear she's given ground. I think he isn't being mean, just not willing to take any of this "youngsters crap".  Even at food times there's a definite pecking order and we've had to split up the servings as he moves pretty rapidly for a fat old cat.

Ryan's soccer was hard work, we ended up not having a regular turnout so inexperienced players had to play all games, but the boys tried hard and even without it being obvious if you simply judge by results, I think they all ended better players than before, we'll see what Spring brings in terms of team and who Ryan slots in with.

Halloween was as usual a success, ranging from Princess Elsa (oh my God Frozen non-stop on the DVD...zzzz) and a Ninja, to Jessica and co working wonders at Bingo for the benefit of the PTO and punting the pumpkins off our deck for the squirrels below :)

School is an interesting one for Ryan, at times some of the results/feedback are disappointing, but when we actually look at the results he's right on the edge of where he should be,  there's a swelling school of thought that some of his issues may not be as simple as ADHD and that could be fun to chase down in a new Insurance Deductible period.

Hannah is getting occasionally disobedient "I don't want to", a real threenado if you will, though not as bad as some kids we've encountered.  I guess at times you have to see others in action to appreciate what you actually have, rather than assuming because they're not 100% good ALL of the time they're actually devious little turds.  However, if a certain young man continues to BS about his homework and reading tallies, Santa might have to return some of his gifts for credit!

Work continues to be interesting for us both, I'll be interested to see how things are handled because there's little doubt a lot of people have justifiable concerns and moral is inevitably beginning to get pounded.  In the meantime, we turn up, do our work and do our best to decompress whilst dealing with WubbaStrops and BooTantrums.. The thing about Ryan is when he's in the middle of one of those moments, laughing at him actually stops the sulk and he laughs too... which tells you 95% of it is totally unnecessary anyway.

The escape room crew ventured off to watch "Love Actually" and returned with props, not sure if they were donated or simply lifted, all that means is the men will get time for another night out, the last one lasted 5 hours much to the chagrin of the wife who whined "what can you have talked about for 5 hours?"  However, some of our crew need to plan a better drinking structure lest they fall into an Uber and not recall any of the evening - no names, you know who you are!

That's all for now, another update before Christmas, hopefully a positive one from Santa :)

Thanks
J, J, R &H

Life got busy - Part 2

Hi everyone, as the title says - Part 2... so go back and read part 1 if you've come here first.

The above picture accurately represents the pace of life right now so lets get back to the updates, kids are back at school - that's right, Ryan is a 3rd grader and Hannah is 2 years away from K.  Time flies when you're mentally busy!

Before I get onto work situations, let's first announce that we're back up to 3 cats once again!  If you haven't seen/heard we once again found a black cat.  In short, we'd agreed that we'd not get one before vacation - hardly fair - and would best be suited to waiting for a "clear the shelters" event. Well, I found out there was a nationwide one the day after vacation, so we went to Leesburg and found a lot of cats available for show & share effectively.  Ryan of course, being so close to Jet, found a 1 year old black female, and consequently got upset when we suggested we think about it.  So we checked and it was still unclaimed, and if we were open to a visit that day we'd be able to have her.  

Once that had all been sorted, we were advised to keep kitten away from the other 2 and introduce them all gently.  So Ryan asked for kitten to be in his room, no big deal, litter box, food, water, play up there and keep her company.  And it worked great for 24 hours... and then Ryan decided he didn't want his door shut.  Out came kitten, debatably named Oreo, which narrowly beat off Jet 2 (this is not another bloody fish scenario! - Bluey 2 is fine by the way!) and swiftly explored under the bed, running into a surprised Poof Cat who momentarily thought Jet had been resurrected.  

The net result of this, once Oreo decided she liked running up and downstairs - she's a kitten, who wouldn't? Is that Jakey found himself in danger of not being the biggest thug in the house, he's fighting back quite hard, but it's fair to say she's feisty.  And poor old Poof has quarantined himself downstairs, he actually clearly couldn't give a crap about the kitten, but he did manage to initially embargo himself in our room, but that came to an end in a never-ending sea of vomit on our bed, carefully synchronized in time with me washing the sheets in between the chuffing.  What a git!  Things are settling down after a month and I think in time all will be fine, or at least tolerable :)

Work, both Jessica & I are working very hard, we're entering into our major month and I've just picked up a new role, it's testing me quite a bit, because there's a lot of new protocols & procedures to learn.  With 4 staff moving on inside a month at my level it's become very much all hands to the pumps and personally I'm just hoping that come October any mistakes aren't too costly.  I can tell tensions are running high because some people are acting/doing things that you wouldn't usually expect and their conduct towards others is sometimes falling off the cliff.  No big deal, I've faced worse things in my life, and this is definitely a means to an end, hopefully it will get better faster and become a lot less of an issue.

Ryan is back playing soccer, and his Dad is "assistant coach" which I've stepped into as a favor to Roberto who's Head Coach and had no-one to help.  Not going to lie, it's nice to be back involved, but this will be a one & done I think, I'm more inclined to help only Ryan and can't commit to the 3 times a week all the season.

Next up is Halloween and I'm assuming that means Jessica will be off whipping her subordinates into shape to provide the best possible Bingo night, once that's gone, we'll begin thinking about Christmas.

I'll get more updates before then!  Honest.

Have fun,

J, J, R & H

Life got busy - Part 1

Hello again everyone, did you miss us?

I was thinking I needed to get onto updating here and then worked out it's been 12 weeks ooops..  So the lets try to split up the summer with 2 updates in quick succession.

Part 1 shall follow on from last time, where we'd said goodbye to Jet, it was of course just about end of school year and both Ryan & Hannah had an excellent summer.  Ryan was back at summer school for 3 weeks and did well, he also took some extra STEM training for 3 evenings at the local library run by a Grade 2 teacher from Lowes Island.  What was good about it was he worked with some of his friends creating bridges and towers etc out of food stuffs, he showed some good construction skills, perhaps Minecraft does serve some positive purpose after all!

Hannah turned 3 of course, and had an exceptional party at Clemyjontri, for a lot of parents it was either the first time ever or the reason to return after a while away and again the weather behaved and we all had fun.  Hannah did freak out people though early on, as I was unloading the car I got a call... "Hi, is this Hannah's Dad?".. "Yes!" "oh great, I have Hannah, she's lost!"  cue me looking round from the back of the car to see David's mom holding an upset Hannah's hand.  I quickly got to them and it turned out Hannah had lost sight of Mom and her friends so had returned to the last place she saw them, the toilets.  But of course they weren't there.  At that moment I saw one of the Moms run into the toilets and call for Hannah, followed by a fairly frantic Jessica coming down the path.  Relax lady, I've got this covered ;-)  Hannah was fine by this point so everyone got on with the fun.

We made our pilgrimage down to Myrtle Beach and got lucky as expected poor weather turned out to be pretty reasonable actually, we even met up with Maggie on the beach one morning.  We played Crazy Golf - well Ryan cheated a bit and Hannah simply put the ball down next to the hole and whacked it in.  Stupidly we did this on the hottest day at the height of the afternoon... and all showed wear & tear after it.  The oven in the room was pretty crap, kept setting off the smoke detector and didn't heat properly, but we made the best of it, and of course managed to go through a full aquarium of seafood.  We even found a very good, cheap burger place and found both kids could pick something off the menu.  Best news of all is Paul didn't spend any time needing to discuss actions with any cops this time!  Progress.

Cats coped in our absence, we had a deal set up where twice a day someone came in, fed, watered and cleaned up..... and after a little reticence - Poofy does not forgive easily! and some insistence on sleeping with us on our bed, they were both back in good form.

Jessica continued her escape room endeavors, from the whispers I've heard, they seem to be failing more than they succeed, but somehow they still manage to consume alcohol. There's been some bad behavior from the group - you know who you are! - and Jessica is equally culpable for encouraging it!

Ok, part 2 will follow shortly - honest.

Jet flames out :(

Unfortunately we have to devote this blog to the sad loss of our soppy cat, Jet.  Jet had been in declining health for some time and regular readers may recall we sort of talked ourselves off the edge last year, sadly things didn't improve for her or us and it became clear that the quality of life just wasn't there anymore.  In order to reduce risk of "Jet bombs" or other events, we'd ended up keeping all the cats downstairs for a couple of months, this had led to some unhappiness and it was clear we were making the other 2 unhappy with that arrangement.

Things came to a head on Tuesday and it was a run down to the vets, due to the timing, I ended up making a trek to get Hannah, who after it had all occurred was most upset to be leaving Jet at the Dr's "I don't want to leave her at the Dr's!" but it was harder for Ryan who of course had no idea and had to have the news broken to him later that evening.  We did have the fortune of having incredibly caring and supportive vets, and they worked with us to make it as pleasant as such an unpleasant occasion can be.

So we remember her as always loving & demanding cuddles, and for some reason hating any cat other than Poofy.  She hissed & snarled when Nugget arrived and never really made Jake the Thug feel welcome either.  No idea why those two made her uncomfortable, but her love for Poofy was endless, he's already missing the Poof Wash and is going around the house looking for her, he even took a very brave few steps outside onto the deck which represents the 2nd time he's ever ventured out and the 1st time was more from terror!

Jet was great with Ryan, less so with Hannah - mostly down to age but probably more likely she recognized the danger lurking!  Ryan often wanted Jet to fall asleep on his bed and he even went through a month or 2 where he couldn't sleep unless she was there.   I've spoken before about her amazing lack of athletic ability and incredible propensity to consume food, in fact in times past you couldn't even think of touching any food without her barging in and trying to grab it.  As she aged, and her hearing failed and she got more distant, it became a rarity to see her nose on your plate, which probably told us a lot more than we wanted to accept.

I'm sure there's several Jet stories out there, the time she escaped at Herndon and went to the top floor (we were on the ground) and sat there for 4 hours until Jessica came home and found her is pretty typical of the dopey feline.  Jessica fell for her when she went looking for a kitten to adopt back in 2005, immediately loving those glowing eyes and completely black coat, little did she know Jet had already adopted this other cat, slightly younger but apparently part of the package.  Jet never stopped caring for her friend, she'd even offer to try his food - all of it! - prior to his consuming it, just to be safe.  That's dedication! 

Like all of us, Poofy is going to miss her, she was a special cat and her personality & presence is a hard one to lose.

Run fast, jump high Jet, snore all you want and hover round the kitchens.

Hugs always;

J,J, R&H and paws from Poofy & Thug.

Updates & Rebates

So you know those times when you think, "Yeah, I've got enough to write a blog update" but then somethings coming up and you think "I'll add that in" and so on.... that's where we're at so we're cutting it off here & now and this is the update you've all been waiting for!

Ok, so the diet ended March 1st - Jessica did not approve of the last blog calling it "too negative", others did approve calling it "a return to form".  To answer the critics dieting is supposed to be difficult, it will make you unhappy, because you're doing something you don't enjoy and not doing the stuff that you DO enjoy, therefore the tone was correct because it was crappy - especially in the first week.

Which is why Jessica wants us to do it all again...... and I've agreed because I'm utterly stupid wonderful!  The good news is we ended up a combined 27lbs down, and not much of it has gone back on in the meantime.  She did want to start immediately but I suggested she could do one with 3 birthdays coming up!

The first delay to that part of the follow up was created because GrandParents came visiting and after 10 days with Hannah they needed another break.... so they went home! The good news is the weather was ok, having snowed before they got here, it only rained a little bit and they dodged crap weather back home so all was good.  The usual DIY tasks were instigated by Jessica and a couple of local bottles of wine were sourced in return.  We didn't get to travel too much, but hopefully should they come back next year the kids (1 in particular) will have settled down and be fit to go visiting certain places.

Ryan is doing well at school, he just scored highly on the COGAT test (think I have that right) and the progress in his reading & comprehension is actually outstripping expected annual development rates so in other words, he's catching up and closing the gap which is great.  He's also begun his Spring Soccer schedule in very garish yellow boots.   Bonus of those is we'll never lose him on the pitch.

Hannah continues to be confident and cocky, the picture is one of her admiring the beauty of her fruit snacks.  She's looking forward to playing soccer too, I envision her in the midfield enforcer role making the other team punt it long for fear of getting into the same zip code as her zone of terror.

As for the rebate part, well as we've now been house owners a year we decided to celebrate by cracking open a purchase on a new HVAC system with water heater due to the AC deciding to munch on the compressor.  Granted given the age of the units (as old as the house) we were under no illusions that it wasn't going to be long before it took a hit, but it of course picked the one day when temps were in the 80's... consequently so was the house, and poor BlueyII only survived because someone (me) dumped enough ice to damage a ship into his tank to cool it back to a survivable temperature.  Fortunately the temps are back in the 60s and its quite comfortable right now for the next week until we get the new system installed.  We even managed to see the same salesman who sold the unit last year into the house we rented, that might have been played up a touch to get a little more trade in value :)

Ok, next time will probably be a round up of birthdays and fun events.

Have a good one!

J, J R & H!