May the 4th be with you!!

Over the past couple days many things have come up that I've thought would be a good addition to my latest post. Each time I consider the wording, the possible title I could use to relate to the particular story and imagine my newest post getting longer and longer. Today, I've come up blank. It isn't often that a fog goes over my brain when I set in to write, but today it certainly has! I think it'll take me a while to come up everything I want to say.

However, today is Dad's birthday. Many times we joke about the fact he was born on May the 4th, and wonder about the chance of his parents possibly having named him the same name as a future Star Wars character - Luke, perhaps. I don't think Darth Vadar could've ever been a possibility! I think his day is going well - he's hasn't had to work, which surely must be a bonus.
     We had our traditional pancake stack for brunch, layered with lemon juice and icing sugar. Everyone who tries it, loves it. However it can be a bit sickening if you have too much. It's funny, because nobody I know has ever done pancakes the way we do. Everyone always gets one pancake at a time, and smothers it with yoghurt, cream, fruit and typical toppings like jam, marmite and nutella. Of course there has been another extreme, where at the Girls Rally I used to attend, pancakes were coated in chocolate of all kinds. M'n'M's melted from the heat and turned into a big, colourful, sloppy mess. Yes, lemon juice and icing sugar it'll always be!
     We all gave him cards, as per normal they were filled with smart comments. My brother played his usual trick and forgot to grab the envelope when his bought his card. This time around though, the only funny thing was that he bought the same card as he did a few years back - we all recognised it. At least he didn't top it off by accidentally writing "happy father's day" inside. Yes - it has been done before. You can trust my brother for the works when it comes to birthdays and Christmas.  Price tags being left on is the most common offense! :D
     Dad got a nice big snuggly dressing gown from me, I'm sure he'll use it as we come into winter. The second hobbit movie from my brother and a couple of nice beekeeping books from Mum. Yes - he's dangerously allergic to bees, having landed himself in hospital once before, and he wants to take up beekeeping. As if he isn't already busy enough, and he seemingly likes to live life on the edge...

I am shocked to say that I haven't gotten an ounce of school done these holidays as was intended. I did start my stats report early this week. But this time, instead of fully using Excel, my teacher wants me to use iNZight - a programe designed for data analysis. It's really easy to use, but there is no work involved at all. Just copy the data in, and use a snipping tool to copy specific graphs and figures into the report. I find it hard to read the data and understand it because I'm not actually "working" with it. Yes, it makes some good graphs, done in the flick of a mouse click, but it's the cheats way of doing it and I much prefer using Excel - even if it takes forever. At least that way I can fully understand what I'm reading. Unfortunately I'll have to get used to it for future reports, but right now I'm going to use a mixture of them both to get it all slowly done.
     My excuse for no school is that the whole first week was an utter shambles of work work work. Week two I spent a few hours in town. The actual "city" town an hours drive north - not town five minutes down the road. Mum and I spent the day there on Monday while her car had its annual service and warrant. It was torture walking around for hours on end, when we both hate shopping. It didn't help that we'd spent the weekend fencing with Dad, and one of my legs was killing me. Seriously - it was wrapped around my neck, absolutely choking me and....well you get the idea!
     Wednesday my brother and I were back there, as he had a doctors appointment. So we used our time wisely to buy Dad his birthday present and hunt around for something for Mothers Day. Success all around.
     I had been invited to a get together on Thursday at the local lake by a friend from down the road. He said to be there any time after ten, so I got there at eleven to find nobody was there. A couple thoughts flashed through my head:  has he cancelled and just hasn't bothered to tell me? Or even worse, was this some joke invitation to see if I'd fall for it? I squashed the latter, as that is a typical school girl thing to do and just plain cruel and instead turned around and drove home. Later on I went and helped Dad with some more fencing instead. As it turns out, the get together thing still happened, except that people turned up later for some reason. I think he was probably a bit annoyed at me for not coming, when I said I'd definitely be there. But it must've just been a bit of a miscommunication or something. He was apologetic when I told him I'd arrived to find no-one.
     Friday and Saturday were taken up by two milkings each day. So in between work I dug my nose into my book and finished Marley & Me in four days. It took me a while to get into it, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. Yes I had a bit of a cry at the end. Now I want to see the movie again.

I had to think though, while reading the book, how cool it would be to write a column in a newspaper and be so well known like the author John Grogan was. I know I would never get a job with my sad attempts in English writing essays and having done no form of media study whatsoever. But hey, I've always got little sparks of ideas in the back of my mind for "just in cases". There is also the thought of how great it'd be to spite my English teachers marks on my attempted writing from the last few years, prove to them that yes, I am a very capable writer. But perhaps I should stick to one thing at a time!

We got quite a shock on Thursday when we heard that a baby we knew was in Starship - on life support. She was the daughter of one of my sisters friends, from a fellow homeschooling family we've known for years. She passed away on Friday after her life support was turned off. She was just over a year old. Mum and I were horrified. We only met her for the first time over Easter, when my sister was here and her friend dropped in to visit. The baby came with her and she was so full of life, very happy, very active. Pretty darn cute too I might add. So it was sad to hear about the news. The death of a baby certainly isn't anything you want to happen. We see it on the news all the time, of a baby being injured and dying as a result. I'd never considered what it'd be like if we personally knew the family...

On a brighter note though, we've got a full day of fencing tomorrow. Mum and I are helping the guys out to try and get it finished, it's a big job that is taking forever because of the many hold ups. Fingers crossed we'll get it all done. After that I'm fully back into school, youth starts up on Wednesday (yay, so looking forward to seeing everyone again) and then my Nana is coming up for Mothers Day weekend. I'm super excited to see her!!