The Wine Tally

How much longer are we in Mudgee for? 6.5 weeks.

How many bottles of wine do we have? 13.

2 whites, 11 reds.

We have somehow, mysteriously, gotten from needing to drink 3 bottles a week down to needing to drink 2 per week.

Wow.  Time flies when you're having fun.

Kangaroos are Truly Stupid Animals

Months ago we almost hit a kangaroo on our way to Melbourne. On the return trip from the trip 2 or 3 of the ridiculous things ran circles in front of our car.

 I have tried explaining to North Americans just what a danger and a menace these things are.

Last night we were driving home from a BBQ at a friend's place and Dave suddenly jammed on the brakes. This wasn't even dawn or dusk, it was after 9pm! This fun furry friend was hopping along in front of the car.

I quickly grabbed my phone to snap a shot of him as Brigitte was really annoyed last time that I hadn't managed to capture a good shot.

 I got more than a photo.  I was able to grab a video of the complete lack of sense that this creature has.

Sometimes you do really stupid things even though you know they are a terrible idea...

...and this time will be no exception!  I did a double Spartan trifecta this year.  I ran some road races. I am signed up for one more race on Halloween night (zombies, had to do it).  That was meant to be it. My plan for the last couple of months was to sit on my tail and drink the rest of the wine. 

Not anymore.  Not once I received this message:  I Googled it.  A minimum of 10km of running and at least 50 obstacles.  Any sane person would say "no, we have an international flight that evening.  I can't possibly do that." But hey, this is the year of "yes", right???

 

 And that clinched it.

 It looks like soooo much fun too!!!!

 I will need/want to find a place to shower before boarding the flight, but I have HOURS to sort that out.

 So no more laziness plan for this girl.

 I will need to be up for the challenge.  Here we gooooooo

Happy Grandparent's Day!

Happy grandparent's day to those of you blessed to be grandparents.

Monkey has been very sad for the last couple of weeks as he doesn't have any of his 4 grandparents here in Mudgee. 

Today he settled on having a picture of my parents and a note from them on his desk.  There were only 3 grandparents plus me in his class of 24 students, so as sad as he was, he was not alone.

 BigC was pleased as punch to have me there as his "special peraon".  We sat together and he wrote out some special memories of times he and I have spent together.

 Grandparents got scones with cream and jam.  You snooze you lose Canadian folks!  Those babies were split between the boys and I in your honour.

 Monkey sang a song in the senior choir.

 It was the same song they did for Mother's day.  Pretty sure that one is on the blog as well.

Spoiler, we've apparently caught up to our wine consumption and have exceeded it....new goals to be announced shortly.

Dog Sitting Continued

Monkey was at a scouts sleep away camp all weekend.  Hendrix was absolutely thrilled to see him when he arrived back! 

 There was much scheming between the boys the get the tire away from Hendrix.  

 I'm not sure that he's ever had quite so much attention placed on his tire fixation.

 I can assure you that the large German Shepherd was the ultimate winner in the "I want the tire" competition.  That said, the boys slept very soundly!

Dog Sitting

Friends of ours were off for a weekend of half Ironman silliness and put us in charge of their hairy kids.  There are two hairy kids.  This is Hendrix. Hendrix is 5 going on 2 and always wants to play with this tire.  All day.  BigC is very happy to play with the tire.  In fact, he devises all sorts of ways to distract Hendrix so that he can get the tire.  This can go on for hours. I'm not sure which of them enjoys it more.

Neither Hendrix or Mya are short or small.  Both are starved of both love and food, at least to hear them tell it.  Here Hendrix is offering to help BigC with his dinner...just in case help should be required.

Mya was more than happy to sleep on the floor of BigC's room.

 He said the nights we slept over there were the nights when he slept the best and wasn't ever afraid of anything. Apparently having a German Shepherd nearby made him feel pretty safe.

To be honest, I could see his point!

Blood Donation

It is blood donor time again!

 Dave claims that his blood pressure and heart rate were "yeah, around the same". He can't prove it though...so I am not sure we can give that one to him. These are mine.

Dave conceded that his hemoglobin was 149.  This is likely the first time I have ever won this one. 

At your second Australian blood donation you get a key chain with your blood type on it.  It's pretty nice. Dave and I are both very pleased with them! Never mind that we've both given far more times back home-there's swag here!

 I wasn't cold...I just had not thought it through when I wore a skirt to the blood donor clinic.  Then they sat me so that my feet faced the door that everyone walks in through.  I requested a blanket so that my stuff was not the new Red Cross welcoming committee.

Snakes and Gardening

When we got back from Darwin the summer had hit Mudgee and the snakes had come out.  They were pleased to wake up and discover that there were no pesky humans in our yard.  Once we returned they were very comfortably sunning themselves right up close to the house. Did I already mention that in these pages?

Anyhow.  I have been terrified of the yard for the last 9 months.  I've ventured out a couple of times, but it's not common to see me further out than the clothes line.

The wife of our exchange family is an incredible organic gardener.  We have heard of fruit and veggies.  Really Heather, you should live here.  You'd. Love. It.

Liz came over for dinner last night and offered to take Monkey out to harvest some fruit.  Hey each out on boots and then one grabbed a mop and one grabbed a broom and they went from ping out through our garden.  What a sight!!!

Fruit harvesting is serious business around here!!!  She explained that as the evening cones,  the heat fades and the snakes are less active.  

They picked oranges and tangellos and found a plum tree out back as well.

I wish I knew more of what to do out there and could do more of it from within the confines of the house.  I know that the poor orchard is mostly just growing bird food this year!

Some of the citrus fruit is right up against the house in a mowed area.  We have been harvesting those bits.  I know that there is a cherry tree out there somewhere, we just need to find it and mow a path to it so that bigc can sit under it for the month of November and do nothing but eat cherries!  For now we need to find it so we can throw a bug/bird net over it to protect it.

Spartan Double Trifecta-Done and Dusted!

Anna and I took about an hour to recover from doing the Spartan Super before suiting up in dry clothes and heading off for our Sprint. I had fully understood that the sprint would be around 6km.  You know that he Sprint course is some portion of the Super course. I just had not paid attention to which parts when I was doing the Super.  The answer is that it was most of the hard bits and a whole lot of the running bits!  My Garmin lost satellite reception a couple of times but still managed to teack over 7k of total distance!

 The pace and elevation stats make me laugh!  You run, stop for an obstacle,  run, stop, burpees. All par for the Spartan course!

 Yesterday's post discusses the Spartan 300 and that was featured at the end of the Sprint too.  Oh. My. Goodness. Was I ever tired coming in to it this time. The only part that was different was that the dumpsters that they were using for the ice baths had thawed and drained, so we didn't have that to cool us down this time through. 

In the end, done and dusted. Second trifecta earned (yes, there is a special medal just for that). Likely the first Canadian to earn two in Australia  (I have not yet confirmed that).  They even gave us a snazzy patch for having been stupid crazy enough to do two races in one day. 

Here is all of the race bling for my 2015 Australian Spartans.

 I'm pleased, but exhausted.

ANZ Stadium Spartan Super

This past weekend was the final two races of the second Spartan Trifecta that I have been working towards.  The races were in Sydney and Anna and I drove down the day before to help out and volunteer with setting up the course.

Anna hates selfies...hi Anna :)  We fueled up on pho the night before.

I ran both races with my phone in bag check turned off.  I did not take photos on course.  That said, here are a couple of photos and videos of other people to give you a good idea of what I got up to.  I'll take a look once the official photos are posted and see if I can do a follow up post with some shots of me in all of my sweaty glory mess.

The first race of the day was the Super distance.  This is a 12km race with plenty of obstacles.  As we were in the ANZ Olympic stadium, as opposed to an outdoor course, they didn't have any mud or barbed wires.  Instead, we ran all through the stadium including lots of time in the bleachers.  We ran through the VIP boxes, the private staff only areas, the changerooms and even out on to the field and grass.  We ran up and down the ramps and through the parking garage-usually with slam balls or sandbags on board.  

The the climbing happened.  Oh the climbing.  They started with a ski erg machine.  I had to go 200m in 60 seconds.  I smashed it, but my shoulders were tired and my hands were sweaty.  Of course, this was the very next obstacle!  Ugh.

I got most of the way up and then suddenly, I was falling.  Arrggg!  I fell about 3 meters down on to thin mats landing on my back and head.  I got up pretty quickly and kept moving (I would later realize I damaged my head and tailbone, but not for a few hours yet!)  

The next section of the race is right before the finish line.  It is called the Spartan 300 and it is intense!  Here is an aerial shot.  In here there is a whole mash up of things like a log jump, a Hercules hoist, cargo nets galore, wall ball, a crazy hard travers rope with a climb in the middle (oh my shoulders!!) and more...so much more. 

 Here is a lego video version of it in case you are interested:

This is the single most hateful rope traverse I have ever done.  I completed it though. Once you put that much work in to something there is no way that you are willing to fail it and do burpees!

This is the Cliffhanger. It looks really horrifying, but is actually not as bad as it looks.  I nailed it both times. I finished in just over 2 hours and I was pretty battered.

Here are the 5 race medals and 5 pie pieces earned up to this point.  

So, So, SOOOOO very close to having that 6th and final pie piece!!!.

Boys weekend - last one for 2015

With SJ out of town, we took the opportunity to do 'boy activities' to liven things up.

Some friends invited us out to their parents alpaca farm. Here is BigC trying to get one to kiss his hands.

We followed up on Sunday by checking out 'Scupltures in the Garden' at one of my favourite wineries - Rosby wineries. They run a huge fundraiser for the Guide Dogs and show off / sell hundreds of sculptures. The boys and I wandered around for an hour and a half checking out which ones were our favourites, as well as using the guidebook to guess at how much each one as being sold at. They ranged from $100 to more than $18 000!
Here is one of my favourites:

Monkey tried to narrow his down to a top 3.
Here is a limestone sculpture he thought was very cool (at more than $10k we left this one behind)

This one made heaps of people chuckle (at $11k it also stayed here)

BigC thought that the wax rowboat and red boots was really cute

While Monkey checked out the lions made from bent railway spikes (Ok, this one was $10k, remind me to NEVER allow Monkey to go to an art show with my credit card)...

Before we left we just had to get a photo with their combined favourite - the roos! (unfortunately all of them were already sold, however I know that they wouldn't fit into our luggage).

After this we headed to a different winery to check another item off our to-do list. The Stein Vintage motorcycle museum.

Both boys thought that this was so very cool. Most of the motorcycles were from the 1950's and featured descriptions and photos of the winery owner racing them on local tracks in his hay day. 

We finished the weekend off with a solid dinner of steak and bacon pizza.
It was a wonderful 'boys weekend' and I look forward to having many more once we return to Canada.