Today...

Today is just another ordinary day.

Or is it?

Today...Falcon is 3 years 9 months and 0 days.

Today...Pepper is 4 years 4 months and 25 days.

Today...Jasmine is 0 years 1 month and 25 days.

Today...Gus is 40 years 0 months and 11 days.

And today...I am 37 years 0 months and 0 days.

Happy Birthday to me. Yay!

Yes, this was my (or "our" as it was a cake for Gus' birthday too) birthday cake that
my family generously supplied on Saturday. And boy was it delicious!! :D

*hugs*

Introducing . . .

If you've been wondering if my conspicuous absence from this blog means that I've gone and had the baby, then wonder no more (and yes, I do realise some of you have been stalking this blog awaiting the news!!!)! Let me introduce you to...

Little Miss Jasmine!

Over a week and a half ago, on Tuesday 5 July, little Jasmine entered the world at 1.36am after mum laboured for about 10 hours (completely natural birth, no interventions although copious amounts of both nitrous gas and much appreciated encouragement from hubby was required at times).

Weighing in at 3.9kg (8.6lbs) and 51cm in length, she wasn't a small baby! Upon taking her first breath of fresh air, she immediately let us all know that her lungs were in perfect working order and that being naked and cold and out in the big wide world was most uncomfortable.

Dad was immediately smitten by this new little being. Mum was a bit too exhausted at the time to really take it all in and just wanted to close her eyes and sleep!

Once she had been weighed and measured and cleaned up a little, she was returned to the care of mum and dad. All three were then lead out of the Birthing Suite to one of the suites in the Maternity ward for some much needed rest.

Three days later, it didn't look as if we were going to be able to leave the hospital just yet. Jasmine developed jaundice from not getting enough fluids (mum's milk was slow in coming and in short supply). This is where things started getting distressing, moreso for mum and dad than baby herself. Due to the high levels of bilirubin (toxin associated with jaundice) in her body, there was no choice but to undergo Phototherapy (UV light) treatment. However, the weather last week was very cold, and severe wind storms had even taken out the power to the hospital on two nights (airconditioning cannot be run on generator power, so for those two nights, we almost froze!). Hence the midwives weren't taking any chances and Jasmine was put into a Humidicrib (incubator) just so that she didn't freeze to death as she had to lie under the lights completely free of clothing, even her nappy. Watching her sleep in a big, noisy machine under blue lights was not pleasant at all. (Several other events lead to even more distress and anxiety, but I'll spare you all the details - thankfully nothing was really that serious.)

Thankfully God had His firm hand on the whole ordeal, and a little short of 24 hours later, the bilirubin levels had dropped to a manageable level and the Phototherapy was no longer needed. We had to stay in hospital one more night for monitoring and to make sure that the bilirubin levels stayed down, but at least we were over the major hurdle.

Finally on the morning of Sunday, 10 July, Jasmine was given the all clear and we were able to take her home. We still have the breastfeeding hurdle to overcome, but hopefully that will sort itself out over time.

In the meantime, we have the fun job of trying to work out some sort of routine, getting rest where we can (although I'm finding this is an almost impossible task!), but best of all, enjoying our new little bundle of joy. (psst - she already has daddy firmly wrapped around BOTH her little fingers. LOL)

I'll leave you with a few last photos and hope that this whole post has made sense. Very little sleep is completely addling my brain and ability to string meaningful sentences together! :D

Hopefully normal programming will return to this blog, although don't hold me to that! LOL


*hugs*

Weekend Wrap-up

I don't normally do a Weekend Wrap-up but this weekend was particularly pleasant.

I didn't want a Baby Shower - too much fuss - but a few friends of mine from work decided to have a "Baby-Shower-in-the-guise-of-a-get-together" anyway. :D We went to Lillianfels on Saturday for High Tea. You might remember we did this last October for our wedding anniversary so I'll spare you the photos of the delicious food. ;)

Instead, here's a photo of my friends' gorgeous little baby, snuggled up against Clancy (or was his name Claude? I can't remember now! Sadly, he had lost his name tag. :( ).

My delightful friends brought me lots of presents, of which I don't really want to show you as they are mostly practical items such as breast pads and disposable change mats and other such necessities for when baby finally arrives! What I can show you though is the lovely cake that was made for me:

I was very touched as I wasn't expecting this either - it's such a lovely cake!! I must explain however that since I wouldn't tell my friend the proposed name of my baby, she had to resort to "Baby Hua" instead. LOL

It was lovely to catch up with them, even though I've only been off work for two weeks. :D I'm also touched that they did travel all the way up here to the Mountains to spend the time with little ol' me! Thanks guys - mmwah!!

Unfortunately, I don't have any photos of the rest of the weekend - just good memories:

• Saturday night dinner at Monte Bello in Katoomba where they have a most delicious duck risotto.
• After dinner coffee at The Carrington historic hotel, whilst sitting in front of a huge {fake gas} fire and enjoying the Yulefest (Christmas in July) decorations.
• Sunday breakfast at The Conservation Hut in Wentworth Falls overlooking a gorgeous fog filled Valley of the Waters.
• Taking the dogs out for a good run at a nearby park.
• Spending the rest of Sunday afternoon chilling out.

I hope you all had a good weekend too!

*hugs*

Last Getaway??!?

Last weekend (I seem to have a habit of being one week behind in my sharing, don't I?!?!), Gus and I went away for a final getaway (or Babymoon as some like to call it) before the baby arrives.

Warning: Another photo heavy post. Click on the photos to enlarge as usual, but especially with the panoramas this time. ;)

We stayed here from Thursday to Sunday:

Peppers is a relatively top end luxury hotel/resort chain that we've stayed at previously and have loved each stay - this time was no different. Port Stephens is a lovely bay area about 2.5hrs out of Sydney, famous for lovely beaches, dolphins in the bay, and lovely seafood eateries.

This is a 360 degree panorama of the resort that my talent hubby took and stitched together:

There were three "houses" where the rooms were. We stayed in Dalton House. Ours is the second room from the left on the ground floor:

Inside the room. Nice huh?!?

Our first night and we were treated to an awesome rainbow right outside the window:

Practically every day (except the last one as it was pouring rain!), we were also treated to gorgeous sunsets:

The sunrises were awesome too, although we only managed to wake up and catch the tail end of them, and it was far too early in the morning to try and work a camera for a good photo. LOL

As I hinted on last week's Thankful Thursday, I was going to get pampered, and I did! I had booked in for a one hour massage on the Friday morning. Whilst it was a little strange having a massage half reclining and only restricted to my limbs and shoulders rather than a full body massage, I do have to admit that it was absolute bliss. I completely felt like jelly afterwards and very much refreshed. It was awesome!! LOL :D

Having thus been reduced to a mass of wobbly jelly, the rest of the activities that day - which included having lunch at Soldiers Point and then a brief walk at Tilligerry Nature Reserve - all passed in a bit of a blur. LOL

However, the next day, after refuelling with a lovely buffet breakfast, we went for a walk around Corlette Head, of which Peppers Anchorage is cosily nestled behind:

The clouds were doing lovely things:

We even managed to see some dolphins, although much to our disgust and frustration, they decided not to resurface again by the time we fumbled around and put on the telephoto lens to try and get a better photo. Typical wildlife!

Since the dolphins weren't playing nice, we headed off to Nelson Bay for lunch where the pelicans and seagulls were being a bit more cooperative:

The Nelson Head Lighthouse was our next stop. It was disappointing though as it was no longer a lighthouse, but had been converted into a Marine Rescue Headquarters:

We then headed to Gan Gan Lookout where Gus took another 360 degree panorama:

And I had to get this photo of him in the act of taking the panorama. LOL

Our final stop for the afternoon was Stockton Beach. You can drive on the beach and the sand dunes if you have a capable 4WD. What amused me greatly was seeing the camel rides! I was disappointed that I couldn't ride one - maybe AFTER bubby is born! LOL

We didn't spend much time at Stockton beach because it was very windy and cold, and besides, we had to get back to the hotel for High Tea:

Here I will admit that, being the gluttonous pigs foodies that we are, we finished EVERY CRUMB of that afternoon tea, AND managed to have dinner four hours later. Needless to say both of us had a very restless night. LOL

All in all, it was a very lovely and relaxing weekend (despite actually getting out and doing more sightseeing than resting in the resort!). I thoroughly enjoyed it and it certainly helped to ease some of the stress I've been feeling in the past month or so. I know it's only going to get worse from here on, but at least I have this lovely weekend to look back on.

Finally, I'll finish off with some obligatory food photos. We ate so much over the weekend and every meal except breakfast contained some kind of seafood. Living in the Mountains now, we don't get as much fresh seafood as we used to when we were living in Sydney, so this weekend we were definitely making the most of it! LOL (Unfortunately we only had these two presentable photos of all the food we ate. The other photos were taken with our mobiles and they turned out pretty shocking! Oh, and sorry if you don't like seafood, we love it!)

Thanks for persevering to the end of this post! Hope you found my trip interesting. :D

*hugs*

Ironfest! (Part 2)

Hello! I'm back again with more photos from the awesome Ironfest! Today I thought I'd show you all the fantastic costumes that both the participants and visitors to the festival were wearing. Last year we saw a few people dressed up in Medieval costume, but this year, as the theme was Steampunk, quite a few people turned up in Steampunk costume. I didn't realise how popular Steampunk is here in Australia!

Anyhoo, I hope you find these costumes as fascinating as I did! (Again this post is quite photo heavy. Click on the photos for a larger view.)

A Medieval warrior:

A Medieval woman on horseback. This lady was actually one of the jousting competitors!

A Knight, although if I remember correctly, this was a female! LOL

A "Steam Monk":

Various soldiers of the "English" and "Irish" "armies":

Note: The muskets carried by these soliders did actually work although they only fired blanks.

A German Soldier (there was a small World War II display):

I'm not sure who these two were meant to be, but they were rather interesting and I loved their "Cloud Suits"!

And now to some of the fantastic costumes worn by the general public:

Jack Sparrow even made an appearance - Steampunk style! LOL

And finally, this was my favourite costume of the day as it was so detailed and such a great example of Steampunk!

We had such fun at Ironfest and really can't wait until next year! Thanks for putting up with my excitement and "show-and-tell"! Now to figure out some way of getting all these photos onto layouts! :D

*hugs*