CITY!!!...

The Mancester City fan in our house is a bit tired today but very happy.

The Sky Blues won the FA cup, beating Stoke City 1-0.

We don't mention the 'other' Manchester team from the Premier league in this household, the one that most people know of...you know the 'United' team. According to the Mitchells, Man U is not the team, they are not a real Manchester team.

Manchester City fans have waited 35 years for this trophy, they have been relegated down 2 divisions and fought their way back and blah blah blah. I'm just glad they won so I don't have to listen anymore.

A centenary...

Erin & I braved the cold weather, rugged up in coats, scarves and hats, to watch a parade last night.

Our branch of the CFA celebrated their 100 years of operation by having a torch light parade. Thirty local brigades from Ararat to Yarambat paraded from Maddingly Park and down the Main Street with Bacchus Marsh leading the show. They marched in uniform accompanied by pipe marching bands. Fire trucks from all eras were also part of the procession. It was quite the spectacle. I thought the torches would be the battery operated kind but they were small kerosene lamps that the marchers held away from their bodies on a long stick.

this 50 seconds of video is from a torchlight parade in Mildura earlier this year but shows exactly what it is like

There were lots of local people cheering them on and I was very proud and glad we had gone down to watch.

Bacchus Marsh is a funny town in that you have to be third generation born, died, worked  & volunteered here to be able to call yourself a 'local'. I don't agree. I feel like a local. I live, work, raise my family and participate in all things local I know lots of the history of the town and have local pride so I classify myself as a Bacchus Marshian.

Cookies...

I had a little nervy turn just now. I was unable to open my blog. I tried restarting the computer and I tried  the laptop. Still nada. Only a code instead of the blog.

With a little panic in my voice I asked my computer tech hubbie to HELP!

He had to clear my cookies.

And now it is working (obviously as I am back to posting)

Not sure if this has anything to do with my Masterchef or banana references yesterday but I always thought cookies were good things but like in life, too much of a good thing, or in this case too many cookies in your cache, is not a good thing.

Ironically if it's not just me you won't know either that it's the cookies fault, unless you have a resident tech.

Good luck with that!

Not Masterchef...

Some recent ups and downs in the kitchen have proven that my knockbacks from Masterchef were prudent.

I whipped up a beef and choy sum stir fry tonight, perfect if you need a quick tasty dinner. It is an all round family pleaser but I also made a chicken & sweet potato cous cous dish. The morocan seasoning on the roasted vegetables and chicken was really nice but the cous cous was a disaster.

Oh well, I'll keep trying.

It has been absolutely freezing here and wet. We've had to get out our scarves and coats already. It has put a dampner on my running too. Erin was very pleased though that the school cross country event was cancelled this afternoon. In this non tropical weather I had a hankering for a ...banana. So I splurged and bought 3 which cost $7.50, very extravagant. I really missed them since the cyclone devastated the crops in Qld and decided to treat myself.

Bananas and snow...seems fitting today.

Post Mother's Day...

I have a huge basket of ironing to do

I am thinking of doing another run

Erin is growing up to be a beautiful young woman

My mother's day...

Happy Mother's Day to all the mothers out there.

I have had a very good Mother's Day!

It started out very early, no sleep in or breakfast in bed for me. Hayley and I were off early on the 7:02 train into the city to join 1000's of others in the Mother's Day Classic.

The forecast was for a cool, showery day. Thankfully the rain held off til the afternoon.

I was all smiles before the race

 and very red in the face by the end. I didn't run all the way, but my catch a breath walking was still pretty quick. There were all sorts in the race... small children, older than me people, much fitter and quicker than me people, toddlers in jogging strollers and mercifully for my ego some who who older and slower than me.

 I was pretty happy to be at the end but was thinking how will I ever find Hayley amongst the throng at the finish line. She had been waiting to take these pictures and then raced up to me and caught my attention by yelling out 'Mum'.

She said to me with a tear in her eye that she was really proud of me, and I was really appreciative of her company and support. I was pretty proud of me too.

We collected my showbag, had a coffee and caught the train home to have a hot shower.

This afternoon I thought I would check the results page and I was surprised to see they had been very efficient in putting it up already

I came 3959th out of 5347!

It gets better...I came 2858 for gender and 675th in my age division (you have to have some credit for aging) with a PB of 29:56:2 minutes. I was pretty happy with that number and maybe could improve on it without having to dodge and weave around the course. Some finished in 11-15 minutes and perhaps I could go a bit quicker without hills and obstacles. We'll see next time (if there is a next time)

Later, after lunch, Callum came in on his motorbike and pulled out of his bag this bunch of flowers, they had survived both remarkably well, Thanks Cal

It has been a great day and I will be scrapping a layout to remember it all by soon.

Today...

I took my dear friend to her radiotherapy appointment. She is finding working and driving the 110 km round trip is becoming exhausting & she has only just done the second of six weeks of daily treatments.

We were able to have some yummy lunch and a poke around the shops in Ballarat beforehand. It was a good chance for a catch up. Overall she is doing really well.

(Question for you Louise - what is the 'other' kind of RT she has after the first few weeks?)

I also went down to the Performing Arts Headquarters annual Teacher's Spectacular tonight. The Drama, Singing, Dance and various Music teachers got to perform and show off their talents. It was a very good night, the highlight for me was a rendition of the old classic 'Stairway to heaven' performed with 3 violins and a bass guitar.

Therefore, no housework done today, no laundry and a thrown together chilli for dinner.

Getting close now...

just 2 more days now until my first fun run

I received my race kit in the post

I'm all set now, I have the timing tag, race number and my special socks. All I need now is a fine morning, not too cold and no rain.

And not to come last.

Crafty...

in a good way.

I mentioned to my clever husband that I wanted to find a rack/thingy to hang up my necklaces.

I had turned this little rack from a mini quilt hanger into an earring holder.

and I showed Chris the kind of thing I wanted.

He got a little glint in his eye, asked me if we had any wire hangers then disappeared out to his shed. A short time later he presented me with this

I can now hang up the necklaces that previously had been coiled up in little compartments of a tackle type box. The rubbery ones weren't doing very well coiled up like that and are much better hanging. I can see them easily and wear them often.

Thanks hun for whipping that up for me.

April...

Looking back at April I see it has been filled with cooking, running, holidays and weddings.

Erin had a hair make over...

Before

 During

 And after

 My hairdresser couldn't get over Erin's thick luxurious hair and kept running her fingers through it and exclaiming 'where did she get such lovely hair? not from you'. Thanks Amber for the boost to my morale!

 Autumn has become apparent in my garden, the leaves are changing and falling.

 I've also been scrapping the recent picnic

We've used up all our available downloads for the month so the internet is sooooo slooooow, it has taken more than an hour to load and post this April update. I can't stand it anymore I'm going to bed.