Might try to do these as monthly things rather than semi-random ones.

Firstly, we are chick central again.  About three clutches with 7-10 chicks in each one.  Chappie's family want some of the naked necks.  This was the first lot.  Idiot hen had gone next door to brood, kids heard the cheeping and went next door to investigate.  Neighbour was astonished as she hadn't even realised they were there behind the shed, and just as well they'd only hatched that morning as she'd been dogsitting and the dog had left earlier in the day.

The picture of them is as day olds, they're now a week or so and feathering up.

The City of Gosnells recently had its Homegrown Festival, but due to many clashes of things the only thing we ended up making was the Liddelow Homestead Open Day.  It has a really cool corridor.

There was also a stove which the kids didn't initially recognise as such, we spent a few minutes talking about what it might be before I told them what it was, and we then discussed how one might control the temperature of the stove when cooking.

Or rather hang around the periphery of and watch.

I saw this on the front page of deviantART (hey the front page is good for something after all ;) when I went to log in:

Lightning La Buff Bust by mattj324

In my usual fashion after dropping in to leave a boring "wow" type comment, I went through the rest of the person's gallery and then watched them.

Apparently there was a bit of a kerfuffle in the moderator department, which meant I completely forgot about the moderation until the new moderator rocked up on my door towards the end of my work period.  Oops.  Fortunately I work from home and can make up hours easy, and I hadn't gone out to pick up my shiny new computer yet, though I had gotten dressed to do so.  So all she saw was that my place is a mess, which is about normal and I don't clean up for anyone!

We chatted and she seems like a nice person.  I gave her enough information to write a happy report and get us approved for another year.  She also sent me the literacy outcomes to help with the learning program which I have only just worked out that I do actually have (I'm a bit slow, I seem to do a lot of things because they make sense or because I need to do them to do other things etc and never realise they are processes that have names or that I'm implementing a program).

So what's been happening around here, we've managed to cram a bit into the couple of weeks we've been back.

Ruan likes experimenting in all media.  Recently I let her have a go with Pixelmator and my Cintiq.  This is what she came up with.

Now I have to go to Carousel to get her more paints and a canbus.

Ru: Can we get more paints and a canbus?
Me: Canbus? Canvas?
Ru: the canbus is what I paint on, silly.

Rapture and armageddon and all that are upon us, and as per usual Josh has taken the kids to Tao's Auskick game and I stayed home, trained the dogs (could have gone for another 5mins on top of what I did do but I got defeated by the cold) and ripped through an Anki session with a Lojban gismu deck.  We know we're not going anywhere.

With the few precious moments of time alone, I then plugged into Lightwave for more practise on avatars before tackling AEfter Ragnarok characters.

I've been lusting after one of these since shortly after they first came out.  This year, I finally had to retire my beloved Intuos3, partly because it was getting laggy and jittery in its old age after much use (it was a wedding present, wedding was 6 years ago), and partly because my toddler walked off with the pen and I haven't seen it since.  Following was angst over whether I should take the cheap simple upgrade to the Intuos4 or splash out and be broke for a while getting a Cintiq.

Seeing as it was a "milestone" birthday (3 decades!), Josh, my parents and my sister pooled together and threw some money at me so I could acquisition the 12" Cintiq.

We hit up the Perth Zoo today, and I finally got around to getting the zoo membership passes.  So now we can visit regularly without it costing an arm and a leg! We inadvertantly stayed there the whole day too.  Maybe it was the cart.  I've been avoiding going on the "adult and kids' prices" days because it's always packed out, on the other days it's fine and we can always get a cart.  Then the kids can hitch rides whenever they're feeling a bit tired and we don't end up walking over half the zoo before they're complaining of being tired.

The zoo visit was a zoo visit, the kids loved every minute of it, and the mother in law and I were tired out pulling them around in a cart.  One of the highlights of the trip was seeing a mutant hibiscus (I have no idea what it actually was, that's what it looked like to me) and a numbat which apparently didn't come out much.  The numbat not only came out, it quite happily traipsed around the place completely not minding our presence.

I recently hit three decades.  I spent most of the actual day finishing up the coding for the site that's going on the kiosk Sprat and I are doing for the Christmas Island Tourism Association and cleaning for the party on the following day.

Ruan requested the whiteboard so I took it down for her, and little arty girl knocked herself out drawing on it.  Tao came in to me at one point asking how to write an F.  I explained it as like an E but without the bottom line (and previously I've described the E as a backward 3 as that's how he was writing it, just straighter).  Later he very excitedly came out and asked me to come look at something he'd done for me.

I obliged.

I didn't think it was too bad an effort for sounding out "happy birthday".  That squiggle on top of it is a heart drawn by Ruan, copied from the blue one above it that I drew at her request and she coloured in.

What's been happening at Wannabe Farmstead? Feels like a lot.  I was out with the dogs at the oval when it occurred to me:

• I can sort out and adjust training "schedules" in my head fast from observing the dogs while working with them
• I can work out learning styles and interests of the kids from observation and interaction and work out where to go and things to do that they might find interesting
• I can work around family stuff with minimal dramas
• I can do things for clients on time (provided they get me what I need when I say I need it by)
• I cannot organise my own way out of a paper bag

I should probably do something about that last point.