Our wonderful home for the next month

I know I keep saying it.. But things really do happen for a reason. Though Gympie was not on our list of areas we wanted to check out on our search for somewhere to settle when we got back to Australia after our travels.... this house sitting job came up and it was hard to say no to the cutest cat around...


Mr Darcy is a ragdoll cat - who is obviously adored by his owner - and just as loved immediately by Morgan and Lilly.

The house sits on 20 acres of land - overlooking a creek and fields of pasture all round. ( they have cows and horses in there usually - but they are in different paddocks at the moment)

Its peaceful and very quiet - normally anyway. Though on the road to Tin Can Bay - there are only a few timber trucks which go through during the day and not much other traffic otherwise.

With a gorgeous wide verandah overlooking the gardens and lawns, we are looking forward to lazing our winter days away and soaking up the sun as it peeps out.

We do have our work cut out for us, with Mr Darcy, the cat to look after, a very energetic 10 month old puppy, Murphy - who is enjoying eating all the shoes and the couch out on the verandah, thee pens of chooks, a peahen, two peacocks and two parrots.... phew!! but its going to be great for the kids -who have emphatically said they want lots of pets... well... here goes - all at once.

Morgan has bonded immedialty with Murphy and is busy teaching him to fetch, sit and lay down.  Lilly just wants to spend all her time with the cat....oh no.. the chooks... no.. the parrots... darn it - everything!!

I love the enthusiasm they both have with the chooks and collecting eggs.  We had better start eating a bunch of them everyday is all I think!

Below is a picture of Peter, one of the owners before they left - showing the kids how to get the eggs and change the litter tray etc from the bantums chook tractor.

The kids have a bedroom each - such a luxury!! and I have a huge bed... all to myself.. not so great on long nights.

We will be homeschooling while we are here - and see how we go with the rest of travels around.

I've done up a schedule of things the kids need to do every day (5 days a week) and its up to them to ensure its done before 4 pm every day.  I have covered the main things - handwriting, English (stuff on grammar, word building, sentence structure etc) Science, Maths and reading. They have to reseach on the internet and blog about what they have learnt in many of the subjects and the science program I have even has little tests to complete..  I've looked into some web based maths and english stuff too.

On top of this - they have 30 mins of wii fit to do every day - and as much wii games as they want to afterwards... whats not to love about homeshooling?  They get to munch away on nuts and dried fruit as they go, stop for a wii game, pat the dog or brush the cat whenever they want.

I'm pretty confident that they won't be missing much from 'school'..

anyways - keep an eye out on their blogs... 

As for me... I'm just going to hang ten. breathe and get up every day. I don't think I have much else I can handle at the moment.