Welcome back to our blog, been a few years since i've added anything - as you know life takes over leaving us one step behind everything we intended to do....

so what have we been doing, HOLIDAYS!!!!

Also outings...  below is from the Gorge Wildlife Park in South Australia, if you've never been there check it out its well worth the visit. Here is Schnelle and the kids in front of a Camel. 

Erin and Caitlin are both going to school now, well Erin goes to School and Caitlin goes to kindy, where on her first day she introduced herself as "Kitty Cat Caitlin" which is my nick name for her. They are both awesome of course and great learners.

As for me? Well this is an old pic, but a fun one, we're at a theatre waiting to watch the wiggles..... yes..... the wiggles..... of and I play with dolls now too [what a father will do for his kids ay?]

Enjoy and see you in another year - or 4

Hi all,

Talk about lazy....this is my first Blog for 2012!!!

What a great time it's been also:

We have Caitlin Jory who arrived not long ago thanks to Schnelle giving birth to her (I wont post her birth date as we are getting too many identity hackers these days...)

Caitlin is awesome, is always ready for a smile or play, and she's only  coming up to 5mths old!

Caitlin (and yes this blog will be mostly about her and not guitars...) is a mighty power house, the core body strength this baby has is amazing, her grip is vice like and if she grabs you hair!!! (watch out). Schnelle feeds her the most and by bottle, due to a high-arch-palette, meaning she is alsop quite large comparatively due to being on formula. Other babies the same age are half the size...

I am going to add pictures of her here, just need to get home, get some time and add them.

Now I have 3 girls at home, and am feeling like the house is turning into a Barbie play center...anyway....

Erin is going to turn 4 soon, yes, 4....and it seems like I only just posted her 3rd B-day in this blog, and now she's turning 4. Erin loves to play hide'n seek, she loves her "Wot Wotz" and to mess around with her Dad (me).

The standard when I get home at night is to be greated by Erin, who is at the door waiting for me and always has some great "news of the day" to tell me, how she shared a lolly or was given a new jumper....[each day is a different thing].

Schnelle is getting over colds it seems contunuously, poor love, it seems as soon as she's over one another captures her. Must be hard being continuously sick all the time. But she is a trooper and you wouldn't know she was ill if her little body didn't crash every 6 hrs...

On the horison?

We are going on Holiday soon, more on that another day, will post lovely picks on where we go/stay.

Stay free.



 (oh yeah, if anyone ever wants to buy me a guitar, just make it a 1954 Gibson Les Paul Goldtop like this one...)

Erin turns 3!!!

Hi all,

My how time has flown....

Erin turned 3 last month and what a great birthday it was, Schnelle booked a kindy near our house to hold her party, the venue could hold 30 people and at least that many kids showed up!!

Schnelle was amazing and catered the whole shabang, here is a list of tucker:

Savoury:

1) Home made cheese and ham tarts (keish?) ( a giant plate full)
2) party pies and pasties (a few plates full)
3) party pizza (3)
4) a cheesy pastry from malta (I cannot what they are called)
5) sandwiches (cheese and ham + chicken and salad)
6) chips and biscuits
(I am sure there was more, but as you know - I am a sweets kind a guy)

Sweets:

The Birthday cake was first off the rank, and that was an amazing feat of cake engineering by Schnelle, it started off with a base made from a heavy style of cake = toped with pink icing and decorated with hard coulorful candy and licourish. Not to mention it was a 2 part cake made to look like a candy shop (pics to come hopefully)

2) "Frog in a pond" (a choc frog sitting in a clear cup of green Jelly)
3) Schnelles home made famous Toblerone Cheese cake (...mmmmm cheesy)
4) lollies (assorted)

All the above came in abundance (we still have frozen b-day cake in the fridge + only god knows when we will eat it all:)

Erin had a great time mingling with her cousins Shayla, Isiaih, Serena and Matthew (my brothers kids) and Tyler, Finn and baby Jade (Schnelles brothers kids), not to mention all our friends kids. When not eating the kids were playing with the Kindigartens selection of toys which were all over the place... at one point Erin coaxed me inot the kiddy cubby house for a cup of imaginary tea (it was a bit squeezy when the other kids wanted to come in too)

At the end of the day all had fun, stacks of photo's were taken (some to be posted here), tummys were full of food and fizzy pop. Everyone went home with a littel gift bag that Schnelle made containing a ballon, stickers, lollies, a toy and crayons.

Erin got some lovely presents too, of which she is very grateful and appcreciative of.

Thanks to all who came and enjoyed the day.

Backyard Blitz

In early 2010, Schnelle and I decided we'd had enough of the 30foot Gum Tree sitting at the fence line of our back yard। The tree was actually on our neighbors property and it lives right up against the fence (middle).

This type of Gum Tree which is only native to New South Wales, looks a bit like a Lemon Scented Gum, and is actually a member of that family. In November every year like clock work the tree would decide it is the perfect time to dispense all of its bark and gum nuts (small nuts the size of peas).

co-incidentally November is the same time of year it is really heating up and is perfect swimming pool weather, so you can imagine what it's like....our swimming pool is directly under the Gum Tree so it happens, and funnily enough the pool was there first according to the oldest neighbor the street has seen.

TIME TO FIX UP THE BACKYARD - ENTER = BACKYARD BLITZ TEAM


This brings me to an amazing group of church mates, under the leadership of Ben, one of the Church Deacons, a group of lads came together to help renovate the backyard pool area, which was always in a mis-match of ideas and looked rather ordinary.

The first thing we did was draw up a plan of action, whilst Schnelle and I decided on a nominal amount of money to spend (which was all we had). It turned out we had only $2000 to spend, which if using contractors would only pay wages, we had 8 guys, some of which were landscapers - called "Mates at Work" - the landscaper decided we would tear up all the sandstone squares around the pool and re-use them by relaying half back where we took them from and the other half to be used in a patch of paving red bricks in which we would cut a large diamond.

Also the fence next to the pool was looking dilapidated, and funnily enough that was all I originally was going to fix, until Ben commented that we could really renovate the whole area. Next after fixing those things we would plant shrubs, grevilias, grasses, a lemon tree and some rosemary around the pool area, with lovely new soil and mulch to keep the weeds at bay.

Before all this work would start Schnelle and I decided to get into the back yard and paint the fence on the opposite side of the pool area. We painted it a nice brown color in time for the lads to start on the pool area.

THE FIRST WEEKEND

This consisted of everyone meeting out the back of my place to 2 chocka bags full of Egg McMuffins (not bad either - even Patches got into em) all up there was 8 of us (sorry if I don't remember all your names):

Ben W,

Lawson

Deacon

Chris

Pete (my neighbor)

David

Matt

and of course Myself

Apologies to those who I haven't mentioned here


Schnelle provided the food, which was awesome - spring rolls, mini pies and sausage rolls, a massive pot of pea and ham soup (which burnt my mouth), cake, cheese cake, fruit platter and of course several bottles of water, orange juice, Coke and berry mineral water (mmmmm berry goodness)

WORK DONE

We started on removing the sandstone slabs around our pool area, as we were going to blast them clean before relaying them. We had decided on a 2 fold plan:

FENCING:

1) we would need to repair the fence on the right hand side as it was leaning over sue to rotting wood, and the fence on the left hand side Schnelle and I would paint at a later stage (see pictures above for Schnelle painting the fence)

2) Lawson (from Mates at Work) came up with a great idea to use some sandstone pavers from around the pool to create a diamond shape to break up the bricked are to the let of the pool.

With the main idea decided and the pavers pulled up Lawson and Deacon went off to scout materials whilst we started on removing about 2 metric tons of rubble from around the pool in order to replace it with good soil for the plants we were going to introduce to the right hand side of pool and rear fence by pool.

We started also transporting a ton of bricks to the front yard whilst we waited for a couple of skips to take our rubble (which did not arrive until midday) - which was exhausting for all of us as we were using a chain line of guys passing the bricks into our wheel barrow whilst a nice chap out the front helped unload them into a neat pile on my front lawn. It seemed to take for ever and we couldn't believe just how many bricks there were for such a small diamond that Lawson cut into the bricked pavement.

MOVING THE FENCE:

With plenty of hardware arrived courtesy of Deacon taking off in the Ute to pick up some massive Redwood beams to line the panted areas around the pool and to make a neat little BBO alcove (pictures below).
I originally decided to number all the fence sheets and thought we should remove them one by one as I was expecting there t be no retaining wall on the right side of the pool patio, but there was. Which made life so much easier - so we decided to take a chance and pull up the fence in 2 pieces - by cutting it away from its original supports (what was left of them. With that done we could easily sink a couple of really deep holes to put our massive beams in. Ben decided on treated pine, approximately 2 meters long by half a foot square, these poles were thick and heavy - just what we needed.

THE SLABS:

The slabs we managed to lay just the diamond on the first weekend - and we still hadn't put any of the slabs back around the pool area - or any of the new plants to go around it. The diamond however was looking magnificent and Deacon had cut some red wood gum sleepers to make his BBQ entertained area. Between Laswons awesome paver laying abilities and Deacons eye for a straight cut the nasty looking old red bricked eye sore was now looking like a professionally landscaped entertainment area (which it was/is).

THE SECOND WEEKEND

The main player (Mates at Work) arrived to ensure we knew what to do - unfortunately they had not planned on being called away - and were offering their services free of charge any way - and to be honest they had done what they came to do - all that was left was for us to repave the area around the right and rear of the pool. For this we had the awesome abilities of Bin, Bin was really a plasterer (more on this later)and his colleague was doing the interior of our ceiling and a bad wall (again more on that later) but Bin put his hand up to do the laying of pavers this time.

We did the right side of the pool after some deliberation as we wanted to try to keep the pavers as snug against the pool lip as we could - as the last owners left about a 20 cm gap and filled it with black pebbles (of which we now have 2 garbage bins full of)

Christmas at Pops House

Hello all,

This blog is a bit belated, its now 5 months since Christmas came and went - but - better late than never. I had 2 weeks off work and since we rotate around family extensions ie: My mums side, Schnelles dads place (Pt Lincoln) or Schnelles mums place.

So as you can see it takes 2 years to get back to one side of the family, which means we all miss out for that time. As Erin is coming up to 2 years old in September we are rotating back around as this coming Christmas will be her 3rd, keeping in mind she was only 4 months old for her first Christmas.

Above is a video of me enjoying my new guitar bought using the kindly distributed $1000 that everyone got from the government. Erin as you can see is doing her rendition of a sea shanty jive.

Erin Jory at 16 months old - Jan - Feb 2010





Hi all, welcome to our latest blog, you will see in the video I have posted here that Erin is now starting to stand up and try to walk (aided by chairs and sofas etc)



I have also included some pics of Erin doing her best to get around in our house.

Erin Jory - 1st Birthday

Erin Jory Birthday and her first Birthday

Enjoy Erins first birthday pictures, although Erin did not sleep well the night before due to a slight cold, teething (possibly molar) and fatigue from waking up every hour she displayed a calm demeanor throughout the whole day.

Erin did not take a nap during the time her friends and family were present and did not cry once, despite the house being quite loud due to the amount of people in the space available.

We would like to thank Erin's Uncle Jamie, Aunty Bek, Cousin Tyler (3.5yrs) and Finn (18mths)for driving from Pt Lincoln to Adelaide, what an awesome effort - Jaime flew back to Pt Lincoln the next day due to work whilst Beck and the boys have stayed on for 2 weeks.

Also it was fantastic to see our 2 - 9yr old cousins Angela and Sarah Rullo who came down from Berri, South Australia and had a great time playing games and blowing liquid bubbles in the back yard for young Tyler to pop.

My Brother Mark Jory, his wife Bronwyn and children = Shayla, Isaiah, Serena and baby Matthew came over too from down the road which was awesome, always great to have plenty of family and friends at a party.

My Mum (Lynda) and Brian (my stepfather) drove down from Salisbury Heights with our cousins Sarah and Angela which was a massive drive for them, next year they need to make sure they drive around the city to get here though as apparently the Adelaide Royal Show was in full swing and trying to drive through that chaos would have been tiring.

स्च्नेल्लेs Father Peter had come down from Pt Lincoln the week earlier and he had a good time playing with Erin and seeing all his kids and Grand kids enjoying their food and games.

Schnelles mum Valerie and her husband Frank came down from Seaford and brought all kinds of platters, cookers and chairs for guests to have food brought, prepared and seats for (well sitting..), they also gave us lots of help preparing the "pastitzies" = what I hear (and taste) is a great Maltese pastry and cheese treat. Which of course went down well and were all gobbled up.


Lastly, to all our friends who made it from all sides of the City, without friends a party is a family gathering, so thank you all for coming and bring your great stories and brilliant presents for young Erin, although she sat on Franks lap for half the day during the "pass the parcel" and gift unwrapping ceremonies Erin enjoyed all of you so much, and we have the video to prove it.

Cheers to everyone for making it a great day.