The Brine Family Blog: Progress At Last.

Friday 16th May 2008

Today is going to be an exciting day. Jamahl went up to the block to start the windmill feet and start standing it up finally and I had to stay home because little darling Kai came home last night with a 38 degree temp and could not breathe, which was quite scary. It turns out that he has a chest infection which now means that I will have to have a couple of days off work until he gets better because they will not take him like he is at childcare.

Monte came over to help Jamahl which was nice, The reason that I was not up at the block with him (apart from the Kai drama) was that Jamahl dislocated my shoulder a few weeks ago. Lovely... no heavy lifting for me for the next couple of months the doctor said. The kids and I went over to visit after I had picked Tao from school and watched the progress. It was looking quite good. I could not help myself while there though, I put some aluminium sulphate in the dam, to try and floculate it, it worked on the top dam and we are attempting to do the same with the big dam now that it is nearly full again. The aliminium Sulphate makes the clay particles in the water fall to the bottom of the dam and clears the water. Standing around doing nothing was not my style so that is about all I could do for now.

SATURDAY 17TH MAY 2008

While Jamahl went to the block again I was heavily involved in making dinner as everyone was coming over our place tonight. We decided that we would do an Asian theme so I was armed with a menu and off I went, trying to keep the kids in check at the same time which proved harder today for some reason.

While I was busy cleaning, cooking and washing and fending off kids, Jamahl was putting a few more finishing touches to the windmill leg stands. After a couple of hours of food preparation and many arguments intercepted, it was time for Jamahl to come home and help make a dish that he wanted to do for the night. Miranda and PJ, Christina and Craig, Rebecca and Monte and the kids were all coming so it was going to be a great night as per usual, we were pretty excited. We love these nights, they are so much fun and lots of different things get discussed, mainly on an environmental front.

At around 5.30pm, Miranda and PJ arrived armed with goodies for desert asian style including a good Japanese beer that was awesome. Rebecca and Monte and the kids were soon behind them armed with soy cakes and we all toasted to another good night to be had. We had the fire going outside and as soon as the kids were sorted with food we headed out and sat around having a chat. Christina and Craig turned up and we all decided that it was time to get into the food.

In true asian style I made cold rolls, vegetable tempura and wontons filled with Cabbage and mock meat. They were so good and went really quickly. I also made prawn crackers and for the vegos (us) popadums. YUMMMMY. Jamahl made a slightly curry dish with asian greens so we definitely had enough to eat. We went through it all that is for sure. After we thought we could not eat any more we had desert of fruit and fondue, chocolates, fortune cookies and soy cakes, you could not ask for a better way to end the food part of things.

It started getting late and our kids went to bed by themselves and crashed, it has been a big day. Georgia and Matty were watching the tv and were about to go home aswell. We bid everyone good night and soon crashed ourselves, ignoring the enourmous pile of washing up that was made. Never mind.......a job for tomorrow perhaps.

SUNDAY 18TH MAY 2008

Even though we had a pretty late night we still managed to get up at a reasonable hour this morning and the kids of course did not let us sleep in anyway.... little rascals. We got our stuff organised and I decided that I was not going to miss out on all the fun today. We packed the kids lunch and snacks and headed out for the morning. When we got to the block, we packed up the tools that we were using for the windmill site and headed up to the top of the block to start the piers for the 6x15 shed. We had the holes drilled on thursday morning and the council inspector came out on thurs afternoon to inspect the holes and they were fine and ready to be poured and filled with concrete.

The first thing that we had to do was make us some box sections so we made them out of scrap wood that we found out we can get heaps and heaps of at Mitre 10. We then placed these over the holes and then I went around and oiled them with vegetable oil so that the concrete would not stick to them when we took the wood off. I then got the dumpy level out and repositioned each box so that they were level and off we went concreting to our hearts content.

Meanwhile Rebecca came by and picked up the kids for us and took them back to her place so that they could stay out of the wind because it came in pretty icy.... I had four layers on and was still cold, so much so when I took Monte into town I got a hot cup of coffee to warm up. The start of winter I think. Monte was building another chook house for the new chooks when I arrived, he was doing a good job too.

Back to the concreting. This was a fun job, I love doing it. Jamahl mixed it and I levelled it off and made the edges. We unfortunately only got about 4 holes done before it was 5pm and had to go and pick the kids up before it got even darker and colder. What a day, we actually achieved heaps today, that felt good.....