Saturday, July 10, 2010

Introducing Ashleigh & Matt


I have an older daughter Ashleigh. Always the quiet one but very much a favorite with her siblings and her parents of course!! A visit to Ashleigh & Matt's house is equal to a trip to the Australian Zoo!

Let me introduce their little family:



2 dogs Missy & Vader. This is Missy, a stray that they took in after searching and advertised far and wide for her parents, but to no avail, so Missy is now Missy Woods-Thompson.
Vader is a hard shot but Missy keeps him well under control. They both sleep on the bed with Ashleigh, and Matt has to fit in where he can.


Next we have 2 Shingleback Lizards

I know what you are thinking. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I can tell you the kids love them!! Me, I admire them from the other side of the glass enclosure.





Then there is the Rats. No photo required . No offense honey, I know you love them but....

Last but not least is the I think 7 snakes. All kinds and sizes. Matt makes the most beautiful enclosures for them and there is a couple in every room.


When they are not playing Zoo life at home they're on VW runs with the car club. This is Matt's handy work, but we won't bring up the 'small' scratch on the roof that happened while Ash was driving. He restored this himself. He is so clever & yes he does have the longer hair out of the two of them.


They live on 10 acres and have kangaroo's down the back paddock. So Matt loads the kids up & off they go Kangaroo spotting. You can see why they love a visit to Ashleigh's & Matt's

They're off to Europe in about 2 months for a holiday with friends and are so looking forward to it. Matt's mum will be on duty to run the zoo while they're gone as I have a zoo of my own over here. I could never do it. Feeding snakes is so not my thing.

Well this is everyone now. You have meet all the kids one by one on the blog. I'm just madly in love with them all. But when you live away from home like Ash does, you can get a little over looked but never forgotten and always missed.
It's tax time so she'll be around for dinner really soon. I'm the family tax agent.
When Ash & Matt come to dinner it's equal to the arrival of the Royal Family. The house is cleaned to the "are we getting visitors Mum?" standard and I always cook a feast for a king. I love to feed them all up and send them home with a ton of left overs. Dan likes it when they come because I never feed Ashleigh lentils, only meat!

You raise them to be independent and prepared for the adult world but you never stop wanting them to just curl up on your lap and scratch their backs or brush their hair. She had her wisdom teeth out recently and I got to play mummy for a night again. I MISS MY ASHLEIGH.

6 comments:

Roger said...

Did you not notice that things were busy around your house today?!!
Nice photos and story about Ash and Matt though.

Donna said...

This was written earlier in the week. I told her that would do one on her and she said "about time". She is the overlooked child sometimes.

Roger said...

Fair enough - you forgot to mention that they will happily drive for hours so the girls can use the snakes etc as pets at pet parade - which is extraordinarily kind.

Donna said...

And they took the day off work to do it as well.

Denise said...

Wow~ I am so jealous!! Well, maybe not about the reptiles....
Some day could you put more pictures up of their land~ maybe the kangaroos?

Anon said...

I loved this post, it was sweet and touching. I especially loved the bit about no matter how old they are you wish they could curl up on your lap and let you scratch their back or brush their hair.

My girls are still young enough to fit on my lap lol but already the two eldest will only sit and cuddle when THEY want and on THEIR terms. ~sigh~ They grow up to fast.