A Blog About a Bloke-Living with WHS

Another amazing family that I have come to know over the years are the Austin family. Right now they are going through an incredibly tough time and need your prayers. You can read about their incredible transplant journey here:  I'm thinking of starting a blog Murray is very ill at the moment. I know how powerful prayer and healing thoughts can be. This family need all they can get right now.

Source: facebook.com via Cheryl on Pinterest This afternoon one of my neighbours said one of the nicest things to me. She told me that she thought David and I were two of the best people she had ever met. I swear I nearly cried. She said that she tells people about us all the time and that we are amazing and that she loves listening to us and the kids over the fence. I can't tell you how lovely it was to hear such kind words, especially when the last two weeks have just been pretty draining. I love my neighbours. We are truly so lucky to have people that just know when to give us a little boost when we need it the most. Whether it is with kind words, or sharing something they have cooked, or even sharing furniture with us for the Farm. We can always count on them when we need it the most. I hope they know how much it means to us. I hope they know we are always here for them too. Sometimes all it takes is someone to say that you are doing ok, to remind you a...

I wish Ryley could talk. I wish Ryley could use an AAC device to tell me what is wrong, or what he wants, or just to tell me about his day. I wish Ryley wouldn't look at me with his sad eyes as he tries to communicate where it hurts. I wish I was better at interpreting his body language. I wish, I wish, I wish. Nothing is harder as a parent than watching your child in pain. Nothing is harder as a parent than not being able to take that pain away. No matter how in tune with Ryley I am, I sometimes just simply can't figure out where it hurts. All I know is, that somewhere his body is causing him enough discomfort to not want to walk. If he is still having trouble tomorrow we will have to take him to the hospital and order I dunno, a full body x-ray or something. The problem is that I have no idea what has happened. I can only assume he has lost his balance (he loses his balance constantly now) and has fallen onto something, or twisted a muscle or...??? As much as I...

Hello. Remember me? I used to blog a bit here on this blog... I have been a bit busy lately so haven't had much time for the blog. I am joining up with  Fat Mum Slim's April Photo a Day  for April, so that starts next weekend. Which means, ohmygoodness , I will have to post everyday! Let's see how I go with that hey?? Meanwhile, here are some pictures from Rybrae Farm. We spent our first weekend out there this weekend. What an adventure!! For updates you can 'like' our FB page:  Rybrae Farm  I will post regular updates there, along with pictures. Join in the conversation as we start to realise how hard a dream is to achieve sometimes!!! I can say that self-sufficiency is interesting and we have A LOT to learn. The solar power is fairly outdated given that it is 25 years old. The wind power hasn't been working for 3 years and the wind turbine has fallen over. So we need to fix that. We are yet to get the hot water system going. BUT. We did get t...

Finally we can introduce 'Rybrae Farm' to our blog followers! (Can you figure out how we came up with the name??). Rybrae Farm is situated in a town called Amphitheatre, which is about 70 km from Ballarat. It is the town that David grew up in and the town where my parents bought a holiday house some 20 years ago. It is the town David and I met as kids and then fell in love some years later. It is where our hearts are. The farm features a 5 bedroom home that is run by solar and wind power and we also have some appliances that use gas (and some lights!). We have approximately 135 acres with 6 dams. There is a lot of bush areas, with some cleared areas too. Braeden exploring the front garden We have so much work to do!  But can't wait to get stuck in. For those who are wondering, we won't be living out there. We will be staying in town. It doesn't make sense for us to move given that we both work in town, Ryley is at school and Braede...

This time next week we officially takeover as owners of what we have been calling 'The Dream'. If you have read my previous posts about what we are planning to do, you will know that this is an extremely exciting and daunting time for us. We are taking a huge risk and it is going to mean a lot of hard work and lots of sacrifices. Somedays I pinch myself and can't believe it is all truly happening. But then I realise that we have worked so hard to get to this point. During the week, I will sneak in a few updates here and there. We have named the property already and this will be the name we will run the business under hopefully. That tiny picture you can see was taken on the property. Not by us, it is a real estate one. Can't wait to get out there and start work on it!!

How many 4 year old's do you know who have been trained to administer Midazolam? Not many I am tipping. But the reality is that we all had to have training on Monday down at the RCH so that we can give Ryley this drug to stop a seizure (which included Braeden-he wanted to learn actually so the epilepsy nurse taught him, simple as that). I need to have some additional CPR training as well. David is ok as he has a current First Aid Certificate. Ryley has a new Epilepsy Plan and anyone who is caring for him must be trained properly to administer Midaz and he has to take it with him everywhere. The chances are high he will have another weird seizure or prolonged seizure of some description. It is just a new reality for us. Well more like a new reality that is really an old one. There are a few other concerning things too which means it looks like our days on the Ketogenic Diet are definitely numbered. Our alternatives? Not much. Braeden also had a reaction to his 4 year o...