YouTube is totes Cray Cray

We don't spend a huge amount of time watching TV at my house.  We don't have Sky or anything so the limited channels means there's lots of crap on, which makes it easier for me to just turn it off.
We do however spend a lot of time on gadgets or devices.  So laptops are always open, the ipad or our iPhones are usually in someones hands.
We do have Apple TV, which is a little black box that plugs into your TV, its a way of accessing the Internet using your TV as the main screen, you can order movies online, look at your photos or videos, music channels and I often find the kids watching YouTube on there.  Lets just begin by saying YouTube is totes cray cray.  You can start off watching someone like 'Ellen' on there and 3 hours later you are learning how to build your kid a bunk shaped like a giraffe???
I thought I would give you a couple of things I have found which make me laugh out loud and another couple which I found inspiring and moving.  To show you there's still good people out in the world.
They first 3 are a little strange.  Not in a bad way.  Just a little bit WT? like maybe someone needs to remove the magic mushys from their gardens.  My kids think they are hilarious.  That's all the warning your going to get about those.
But the last 2 are amazing!

My Girls

So I haven't really blogged since May and I was thinking about all the things that have happened since then.  Dam my future Altziemers (?) I can't think back that far.  But I do remember we got new Kune Kune Piglets in June.  This was after a long grieving period for our last wee ginger piglet, Ruby, who we lost at 4 months to a pretty shit house bacteria which gave her blood poisoning and died quite suddenly on our doorstep.
I was really missing the grunts and squeals of my little shadow and my Staffy was missing her mate too.  So I started trawling through Trade me to find our newest additions.  I decided to get 2 sisters this time so they would have company to cuddle up to in the cold winter nights.
These girls came from the West coast and were quite different straight away.  They lived inside for the first 2 months as the winter weather was pretty crap and it was a good excuse to have 2 very cute wee piglets sleeping inside in front of the fire, stealing the dogs beds.  I think my Staffy was a bit put out because they definitely stuck together and evicted her from any cosy spot she got to first.  These girls we have named 'Daisy Boo' (the black and white one) and 'Polly Wog' (the ginger one) but during the first few weeks I had moments of wanting to change their names to 'Kim' and 'Khloe' due to their very demanding and high maintenance behaviour.  It was like having puppies again.  I was up twice in the night letting them out to toilet train them, they would get into everything and were very loud when hungry or just wanted attention.  You would find me every morning round 5:30am in my dressing gown and gumboots with 2 tantruming, squealing piglets following me down to the back of the property to feed them their breakfast.  Then an hour later they would be back banging on the door and straight back asleep in front of the fire.  It was intense but very cool.
In the last couple of weeks the husband has made a fenced in area with an awesome cosy, straw bale castle inside their pig house, in which they now sleep every night.  Complete with single mattress.  They are able to wander and graze around our acre at their leisure and are still welcome inside during the day but at dinner time their gate is shut until its time for breakfast.  The husband has had to fence off his vege garden to keep them out and we are in the process of teaching them not to root up the soft ground.
They are growing really quickly, in two months they have easily doubled in size,  and always come running when they see us.  They can sit for treats and a scratch behind their ears makes them flop to the ground for a belly rub.  They are really good little lawn mowers and eat all our household scrapes and weeds.
I love seeing them asleep in the sunshine on my doorstep or in amongst the garden.
Kune Kunes are such characters, they have awesome personalities, soo smart and social but feisty and stubborn too. 
If your thinking about adding a piglet..or two...I say "Do it!"

Stuff you just need

I moved out of home when I was 18. Straight from 7th form in Paraparaumu to do the student thing in Christchurch. When you first leave home, your olds get you lots of stuff to start you out. A new duvet and Cover. Sheets. Toaster. Cutlery set. Towels. Grocery vouchers. A Cook book.  Common Sense.  Morals.  Birth Control.  Pretty much as many necessity items you can fit in a suitcase.  But there are 2 things that my mother has continued to buy for me 20 yrs later. These 2 things I have never had to go out and buy for myself EVER. The first thing is an Iron. She bought it and I never use it. It always ends up put away in a box, inside another box at the back of a cupboard in the laundry behind torches, plastic bags and a weird electric duster. If when she comes to visit she can find it, it gets used.  By her.  Otherwise it just stays in the back of the cupboard. Sitting patiently waiting for Lyn to come back. I figure at least it will be in mint condition when Te Papa call wanting to add it to their olden days collection.

The other domestic item which my Mum buys every time she comes to Christchurch to visit us is Pegs. I always need them but never actually go out and buy them. There's nothing more frustrating than not having enough bloody pegs to hang out the millions of socks and undies my family seem to wear every day.  This last visit my Mum and Dad made down to look after my little farm for a week, while I was drinking booze and sunning myself in Raro, was a chance to outdo herself.  Not only do I now have a new collection of coloured plastic pegs ready with strength and determination to combat the wind and stop my bloomers from flying into the neighbours yard, but I also now have 3 extra 'Glad containers' full of yellow polyethelene goodness as back up for when the environment inevitably starts swallowing and destroying the current active members. Those containers make me smile everyday.

I love you Mum. Thanks for still looking after me.

Breakfast Spreadsheets

Is there anything more fun than being taken out for breakfast at a nice coffee shop, ordering a warm cheese scone, hot chocolate, a glass of freshly squeezed orange juice, free wifi and no children, to then have a laptop opened in front of you displaying a spreadsheet made by the husband outlaying in bold your last 6 weeks of daily spending. Fuck.

He started the conversation by saying "WE need to look at our spending" by 'We' he obviously meant 'Me' but was trying to begin this horrific discussion on a good note. Not wanting to lay the blame directly on me straight away probably for fear of getting my butter knife jammed in his eye. It was at about this point I started trying to work out which injury I could fake so I could commando roll out of there. He was good. He already had all exits blocked. 

I frantically racked my brain, whilst keeping a relaxed not concerned in the slightest expression on my face, all while mentally scrolling through all my clothing, shoes, books and Mcdonalds purchases in the last 6 weeks. Fuck. Where's a bloody 6.9 earthquake when you need one. 

Luckily on closer inspection of his fancy spreadsheet there were a lot of large gardening and home maintenance tool purchases on there which made my impulse shopping look not so bad. Phew.

Apparently he tells me this is going to be regular occurrence. I think he needs to be encouraged to spend more time with his fancy new tools and less time with his laptop which i have a premonition is unfortunately going to go missing.

Happy Fathers Day to all the Bogans out there

What an absolute cracker of a Sunday for Fathers Day today.  It was a treat for us cause we don't usually have the husband home for this celebration, he is usually away working keeping us in the lifestyle we are accustomed.  Someone has too.  So we started the day with homemade cards in bed, which the kids worked all last night on.  There was a lot of cutting out of magazines, colouring and sticking. Our kitchen table looked like a primary school art class had thrown up on it.  One card included a rap by the 8 yr old and the middle child seems to think her Dad looks like someone from a bad 70's disco movie. 




















He also got some new Kiwi Sounds to beef up our collection and a book about straw bale houses.  After the mandatory fry up for Brekky,  I packed the car and loaded everyone into it for a trip to the Oxford Speedway for a Charity Family Day out raising money for Prostate Cancer.  We met up with one of my besties and her wee family, which consists of a husband and two 2 yr old twin girls for a picnic in the sun.
I forgot that Speedway usually has a compulsory uniform of Black Jeans, Black T-shirt, Mullet and can of Bourbon in hand.  This family day was no exception.  I learnt a lot about parenting and how it seems to be very effective to just pretend like no one else is around and scream at your children about "how they better not f#@%*en show you up today!!"  A family just beside us decided to have a coke and paint fight with the 'loser' ending up looking like something from a scary version of Brave hart.  That was about the time we decided to move our blanket a bit further away.
I kept having to check where my son was in case a bogan decided to recruit him or steal him as bait for a bogan kid fight.
Then just as the sun was going down and the speedway was closing, we got distracted and let our guard down, which gave one of the twins just enough time to pick up and almost eat a piece of discarded bogan bread off the ground.  Sweet Jesus her mother had lightning reflexes.  She swooped into survival mode and dived across the picnic blanket flicking that bread out like a ninja.  Before she could be infected with bogan-niss.  We won't really know just how much she was contaminated until later I'd imagine, but if she starts demanding Metallica and coke in the next few days, we will at least be able to pin point exactly whats to blame.  Her parents have been given strict instructions to put her on a complete diet of hummus and Bob Marley to counteract the symptoms.  We live in hope.