Last day of work

It's Friday, which means today is my final day of being gainfully employed by Good Dog Design. Thankfully after a week off I'll move over to being gainfully contracted to Good Dog Design, but it wont be quite the same.

I haven't been thinking too much about it, because we've been knee-deep in moving preparations. Who'd have thought 8 years and 2 kids would bring with it so much stuff to be packed up? ;) This weekend is our final chance to finish up with all the packing, and Monday the truck will come and take all our worldly possessions away. Except a couple of air beds, sheets and pillows and the like which we'll use for the next few days.

We'll then spend whatever is left of Monday, plus Tuesday and possibly Wednesday if necessary cleaning, patching cracks, painting and doing whatever else the house needs to get it ready for rental (not that we have people ready to rent it, but that's okay). No fridge, microwave or anything that wont fit in the car means we might be eating out a fair bit. It should be fun.. suburban camping ;)

Meanwhile our stuff will arrive in Bendigo probably Tuesday, and Cheryl's family will direct it into rooms for us.

We'll spend a couple of days driving over, so we should be in Bendigo Thursday or Friday. That gives us another weekend to unpack the necessities before I'm back online and working on Monday.

It'll be a busy week at the end of what has been a very busy few months. Hopefully then things can settle down though, we can unpack gradually, spend some time playing with the kids and hanging out with family and generally try to wind down a bit. I'd certainly enjoy getting more than a few hours sleep a night, and getting rid of that 5-6am wake up should contribute a fair bit to that. I'm pretty sure Cheryl will appreciate some quiet time as well.

So I guess those of you in Bendigo - we'll see you in about a week. Those of you elsewhere - we'll see you next time you're in Bendigo :) Bye bye Adelaide.

Happy birthday to Oscar

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Oscar
Happy birthday to you.

Love and hugs from Nanny and Nana.
I'm going to Ballarat today then on to Kyneton tonight so I won't be home to ring you for your birthday. I'll ring on Wednesday and you can tell me about what a great birthday day you have had.

14 Day Kickstart COMPLETE

Well I have successfully finished my 14 day Kickstart, and the results are in!
..
....
......
- 6.5kg! New weight 113.5kg

I'm thrilled I was gunning for 7 but meh I'll take 6.5. My goal is now to reach 110 in 2 weeks.
I'm on my own now, but I have also purchased he's cookbook that has a sample 14 day eating plan... The fundamentals are pretty basic so it is now going to be about exploring to create a whole new variety of meals etc... Exploring and trying new things.

Watch this space! :)

New Me

Well everyone would have seen at Christmas just how much weight I have packed on!  20kg's in fact!  I am now a whopping 120kg, the heaviest I have ever been and I am very uncomfortable and unhappy about it.
I need to change and to do that I have had to review a few things, you could say a perfect storm has gathered...

1)  I can shift my weight sticking to weightwatchers but I need to stick to the plan religiously or the weight comes back with a vengeance, I was 100kg in July!  This was something Damien discussed in a post a while back, a persons ability to keep weight off and how many fail I never saw myself like that but as I was packing clothes from my closet today I see sizes range from 14 ( I was never a ballerina!) to 20, my weight has been a lifelong battle that I am now losing and I am so very tired of it!
2)  WeightWatchers have really let me down, in their ability to keep up with technology and their complete lack of customer service, in the end I was only paying $30 a month to use a points calculator.

Thankfully a couple of really great tools have presented themselves which I am hoping will guide me into a happier and lighter me!

1)  The fitbit!  This is a great little tool you clip to your belt, it is a pedometer but it also measures how many flights of steps you take, your calories burnt, well it does a few things which you can read all about, but what I like is it sync's to an application, which captures all this data along with what you eat, how much you weigh (again this figure is sync'd from the Fitbit scales we have)  how many calories you have left to consume etc, what I really like is that Glenn and I are friends on this app so we are constantly competing against each other for steps and weight loss.

2)  James Duigan's Lean and Clean Diet, now this guy flogs clean eating, and Damien this address the permanent weight loss, the idea in a nut shell is that we store a bunch of toxins in our fat that are obtained from fake processed foods, sugar etc... James asserts that when we loose weight those toxins are released into our body, the body hates this as it now has to deal with them, we get tired, grouchy etc, so when we do slip up on our diet the body uses the fats and sugars to clean up and store these toxins again as body fat.

I start James's 14 day kickstart diet plan today, after the 14 days you are urged to eat mostly organic if you can with reductions in CRAP Caffeine, Refined Sugar, *Alcohol and Processed Foods, this is an education not a diet, you also have a simple 8 minute work out to do, which I will complete along with my steps (which i may struggle with this week due to the extreme heat!)

My hope here is that I do change my habits and I'm not permanently on a diet, either way I urge you to create an account on Fitbit and ask to be my friend, that way you can see my progress and encourage me, its also a really great source of accountability for me, make sure I'm keeping my Clean and Lean on!   You can see more about it here...

http://www.fitbit.com
http://store.bodyism.com/product/13/Clean+and+Lean+Diet

My motivation's are:

1)  Another baby
2)  More active, there are so many outdoor activities I'd love to do which I dont!
3)  I wanna look hot!
4)  Health

Wish me luck everyone!   You are all my support and motivation!

*  Yes I have even given the demon drink up for the time being!  Its been a week now, I decided I had better start that early as it took special reserves of will power! :)

On our way..

Hi everyone,

It's been a while since I've posted any updates.. I've had fabulous intentions but never actually followed it up. :-\ oops! O well, we'll see you all soon so we can fill you in in person. :-)

We're at the Travelodge in Feltham, enjoying a quiet drink while we wait for check-in time - it would have cost £10 to check in early, so we spent the money on drinks instead. :-D

Tomorrow morning we catch a bus to the airport and hope that our luggage is under the weight limit.. It's going to be close. :-)

I'm happy to have some holidays - I've had a very busy couple of months with lots of driving, lots of meetings and lots of Christmas celebrations! I'm bringing our Wii exercise DVD to work off all the extra after the "break". :-) 

I'm really looking forward to seeing everyone! It's only just sunk in that we'll all be in Bendigo in a couple of days. So excited! Yay!! We'll see you all very very soon! !
*hugz*

Birthday wishes for Lisa

Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Lisa
Happy birthday to you

Love from Mum XXX

Happy birthday Carolynn

Happy birthday Carolynn,

Have a wonderful day.

Love and hugs from Nanny. See you tomorrow for tea.

Face painting in Eaglehawk this morning. I saw a couple of adults and loved the result so I had my face painted. I told her I was going to a dance tonight and I think she got a bit carried away. be interesting to see the reaction at Spring Gully.

It's getting scary..

Another quick update from us.

We met with a property agent from Elders. Their percentage was slightly higher (and by slightly I mean a difference of $4 a month) but they have -no fees- apart from that. So we're going with them. They're keen to get the house on the market ASAP, so on Tuesday they'll be dropping around to take photos. Lots of cleaning up and hiding to do before then.. especially the yard. Our hope is to get $320 per week, which would give us around the $285 a week (minus maintenance). $310 would give us $275 so still okay.

Shaun has awesomely agreed to rent us his place for $280 instead of $300, so that works well.

We've also locked in our moving date - the removalist is arriving on Monday 4th Feb. We'll load them up, and probably stay another day at home to clean up and everything before heading to Bendigo.  We'll organise family to meet the truck in Bendigo for us. Yay for family :)

My goal is to have the maintenance-y type things sorted by the end of November, which lets us focus on packing and cleaning. Some of that is stuff I can do (painting, mowing) and others we'll need to get someone in for (the dishwasher, power box, shutters). I'm not sure we'll get there, but it's the goal.

So that's 13 weeks left. Minus the week we take off over Christmas.

Yeah. Getting scary.

More housey stuff

Cheryl and I met with a property agent this week. It was really good.. she gave us an estimate of what rent we could ask for, and then a break-down of all the various fees as well. It was better news than I was expecting to be honest. The ongoing costs aren't too bad, although every new tenant will bring with it about $1000 in fees, which kind of sucks. Hopefully we can get a nice family in who are happy to stay for a few years :)

We've still got a lot of work to do around the house.. more cracks to fix (in Ossie's room), painting, and the expensive stuff like updating the electrical box and fixing another broken roller shutter. If I could work out how to open up the metal container on the roller shutter I'd have a shot at fixing it myself to be honest. Oh and we'll replace the front door too - I've got a friend who's a carpenter who has offered to help us out with that.

We did a big clean-up in preparation for the agent's visit, although no doubt we'll have to do another before we leave. We've done a bit of packing here and there as well. Cheryl's family might be visiting after Christmas to help out around the house - I suspect by then we'll be in full panic mode and very thankful for the assistance.

Oh, and when Oscar found out we were selling stuff on eBay he picked a few of his (broken) toys to sell as well! What a team-player :) I think we'll chuck them in the bin and then say we sold them and give him some money. He can use it to buy more Lego :)

Happy Birthday Glenn!

Like the title says ;)

Happy Birthday, Damien!

Happy Birthday, Damien! Hope you enjoy your long weekend! (plenty of time to put together the Lego! :)

Lots of love from Os, Lil & me 

Home maintenance

Decided to use the Family Bandwagon to fill everyone in on some house maintenance plans. I hadn't checked it for ages. Thank you for the birthday wishes Dayna and Bruce.

I've booked to get my roof cleaned and the tiles rebedded and pointed. Also decided to get new guttering. Probably not much dearer than getting someone to paint the old one  and that had some suspicious bumps (maybe rust). I will need to paint the fascia boards after the old guttering is removed and before the new lot is fitted. Working bee, you boys are lucky you are both so far away. That will be a benefit my way when Damien, Cheryl, Oscar and Lily move back. Extra help for my projects. I'm looking forward to having you closer. Trip to Canberra instead of Adelaide. That is going to depend on the roof man but if he is finished, I'm thinking the week after Glenn's birthday and maybe flying at least one way.

Next project was to replace the patio blinds which have disintegrated with time and weather. One option was to go back to Kmart for three new ones. I just got a quote from Hi Light blinds for them to do the job. They would need to put in a post since they will only span 4.2m. These blinds would be much stronger and fitted so they didn't flap around. However the quote is $3700 against about $250 for the KMart version on sale. Even at $500 and paying Pete to fit them, I don't think I can justify the extra. The KMart ones lasted about five years.I'd been prepared for a couple of thousand dollars. Next time I head to Kangaroo Flat I'll price them and maybe the Spotlight version too.

Looking forward to a post from Glenn and Dee on how they have settled. Damien, have you asked what it cost Glenn and Dee to move their treasures to Canberra. Maybe the very expensive won't seem so bad. Not sure that saving a few boxes worth of stuff will bring the price down much.

Love to all
Mum

Moving Plans

So by now you've all heard that Cheryl and I are moving back to Bendigo. Our reasons for this are pretty simple - here in Adelaide we have each other for support, and while we're both awesome people and very helpful, it would be nice to have family around when we need them. Also as the kids get older we'd like them to have their cousins, aunts, uncles and grandparents nearby.  The possibility of babysitting certainly doesn't make the idea any less appealing too ;)

As such, there are some pretty major changes to be made, and I thought I'd update you all on where we were at with them.

For my work, I'll be moving over to contract at GDD, which means I need to get an ABN, set up a home office and start learning words like BAS and GST (okay, they're both acronyms, but you get the idea). I've bought a MacBook Pro which is now my main computer for work, so when we do move I'll be well and truly adjusted to using it. I'm also planning on getting a widescreen monitor, an external hard drive to store work on, and a printer. I think that'll do me. I do like the idea that the "office" is pretty portable - if I want to I could always go outside or to a park for a few hours to work. We met with an accountant last night, and he'll be helping me out and handling the tax side of things for me.

Cheryl is going to quit her job, and see what pans out in Bendigo. Right now what with the cost of parking, petrol, child care and the like we're actually losing money with Cheryl back at work.. Originally the plan was once Lily stopped breastfeeding Chez could get more hours, but now she thinks she'll just finish up around November and be done with it.

Oscar and Lily don't work, so it'll be an easy adjustment for them ;) We are planning the move to give Os time to start Kindy, hence end of Jan/early Feb as a moving date. Lisa has given us some great links to look into on that front.

We've decided to keep our house here in Adelaide and rent it out, and then rent a place in Bendigo. Realistically if we can get as much in rent from here as we're paying in Bendigo we'll be in the same situation.. although we will have to account for agent fees and the like as well. In a lightning strike of extreme luck a friend of ours has just bought a house as an investment property. He's in the process of doing it up a bit with help from Cheryl's siblings, and he's happy for us to move in there. It's about 30 seconds walk from Edith and Landon's place.

Cheryl's been contacting a few removalists to get quotes (it's EXPENSIVE) so hopefully we can just pick a date and move all our stuff, and Cheryl's fam can meet the truck at the other end for us.

That leaves us with a fair bit of work to do in the next few months - apart from packing/selling everything we own (the selling is an attempt to bring down that moving cost, which as I said is EXPENSIVE) we've also got a lot of work to do to the house to get it tenant-ready - fix the door, patch up cracks, repaint, replace the dishwasher.. and fork out the $1,800 to fix the electrical box as well. We can't claim those as deductions, apparently, but we can use them to bring down the capital gains tax when we do decide to sell.

I've also got to register for an ABN, get a licence for my swords, and probably a few other bookworky things I've forgotten. Still, The Move continues it's inevitable rumbling approach like the cleaner from the Labyrinth, and each weekend brings it a little closer.  At least we look to have locked down the two biggest worries (my work and the house) so that's good.

But yeah, looking at the help provided us by Lisa, Rach, Daz, Edith, Landon, Mum.. I think that pretty much explains why we're making the move. We really appreciate having people we can rely on who can help us out with this big life change.

And the babysitting will be nice too ;)

Happy birthday Cheryl

Dear Cheryl,


The lucky third-in-a-row birthday. 


Hope you've had a wonderful day and your family spoiled you rotten.


Have a wonderful year,


*hugz*
-d&b-