Our Happy Little Vegemites

With our ridiculous record heat over here at the moment (it's sat right around the 40 degree or 102F for 5 days or so), I decided that I just couldn't put off giving Rex a haircut any longer! His black fur just attracts the heat, and even with having them inside for a few days while the fence was being fixed he was still so hot! He was not happy with the idea of getting a haircut though, and because of his resistance and my back just about breaking from 2+ hours of hunching over him cutting and shaving hair, his fur is still nowhere near as short as it should be! But it's better than nothing and I'm sure he feels better now. He was not a happy camper when I made him lay down and began to cut away the matted clumps on his back legs!  Most of the time I needed to have my leg across his head like this to keep him still.....he looks oh so impressed right??!  After a couple of hours, this is what my kitchen floor looked like.... And Rex ...

As per usual it's been a weird and wonderful week over here in LaLa the Land of Insanity! The younger two children have had school swimming for the last two weeks. So every day during that two weeks they go off to school in their swimming gear, and come home in the school clothes. They have to take a towel and their change of clothes, and while it sounds great....it's kind of like homework for little kids. In that it's really more of a pain for the parents than anything. Although I guess it's a necessary evil, over here at least. We live so close to the ocean and every second person has a pool in their backyard, so it's so very very important that they at least know how to swim. In our case the last two weeks have gone something like this: Miss Emily - "I forgot to put sunscreen on, I got sunburnt, but I got moved up to level 6!" She can swim really well, I think from memory level 6 means they can swim freestyle a minimum of 50 meters. Which is grea...

Late Sunday night, while everyone in the house was sleeping we had a visitor arrive! He didn't disturb anyone and was actually quiet as a mouse (but he isn't a mouse!). It was Bernard, our friendly little Elf on the Shelf, arriving to watch over the children for the few weeks before Christmas so he can report back to Santa on their naughtiness (or lack thereof). On Monday morning as they got up for school, The Boy came into the kitchen as he usually does and exclaimed quite excitedly when he saw Bernard sitting in the paper sleigh he himself had made a few days earlier! Bernard had apparently accosted the sleigh, a cardboard reindeer that The Boy had made at the fete the day before, and the Santa salt and pepper shakers, and plonked himself into the drivers seat right in front of Frosty and The Gingerbread cookie jars!! Miss Emily and Little Dude were very happy to see him, and just could not wait to see where he would be found this morning. Needless to say, Bernard got...