Usually at Easter time I don’t go away with the masses for the four days. Last weekend we went to some friends holiday home for the Sunday night. We stayed about one day overall and it was lovely just to do that one day.

Their house is near Lake Albert at Meningie. Lake Albert’s water used to go all the way to the reeds you can see in the photo below. Now, due to the drought the water levels have gone right down.

We took our chairs and a couple of drinks to the shore level and sat down in readiness for the sunset.

The boys went for a swim in the water.

I noticed this rusted out 44 gallon drum and couldn’t resist taking a photo of it as the setting sun shone. This drum had rusted out because it used to be submerged in water. We also found a couple of empty beer bottles.

Who can resist having a mud fight?

The result of the mud fight.

And when some has a new camera (ie me) sometimes people can’t resist having a go with it so I end up in a shot. I’m  the one standing up at the back.

And I love this photo of JJ and his mate. JJ’s on the left.

I managed to get the sun just as it disappeared. Ever notice how quickly this actually happens? If you look away for a moment, it’s snuck down behind the horizon all ready to greet our northern hemisphere friends for their morning.

On this day five years ago I wrote my first blog post and Semantically driven was born. Normally I don’t celebrate my blogiversary but this year I’m going to and you’re invited.

My idea is that I’d like to find out how your blogging quest has gone for you. You write about it, add a link back to here so I know you’ve done it and then I compile a list of them all so there’s a central repository. I reckon there’s some interesting stories out there.

I’m even offering prizes to kickstart it all off. Please visit the my Blogging quest page to read all about it. I’d love it if you participate and Tweet about it, Stumble it etc - to spread the word.

I’ve no idea if it will work but there’s only one way to find out. Come on, help make my blog’s fifth birthday special.

My linky love posts are too few and far between because I have no easy way of compiling them, or they just slip my mind to actually do them.

A couple of bloggers I read are really good at them. Stand up Shai and Kikolani. So below are a few things I’ve come across this week.

Toni from The Happy Housewife has just had her seventh child - somewhat early - and she still remains happy and she still manages to update her blog just about every day. Luckily baby Cora is now home and being adored by all her siblings no doubt.

Jayne from Our Great Southern Land has a blog full of interesting back-in-time facts. I now know that in 1985 Australia was the first country to test blood donations for HIV.

And I’ve come across a couple of stories about breastfeeding your doll not being allowed at kindergarten, and a teacher telling one of her pupils she was pathetic. I think both these situations could have been handled a lot better and it’s these situations we don’t really want to deal with as parents but make us stronger.

I’m still reading the daily tasks for Probloggers 31 days to build a better blog but until now I’ve lapsed in actually doing anything.

Participating in the challenge has enabled me to find some new bloggers that I probably would never have otherwise come across. Below are a couple of them. For some reason I can’t actually get into the forum as it just keeps on asking for my username and password, grrrrr.

One blog I found was MyMarketer - Understanding Internet Marketing. The author of this is also participating in the challenge and he extended the list challenge to create a list of all the lists created as part of Problogger’s task in Day 2. There’s 603 lists there all in various categories. Imagine how much time you could spend just browsing them and then think how much time it must have taken to collate this list. Apparently he’s a new dad and is having sleepless nights. How I wish my sleepless nights as a new mum could have been spent in front of the computer, but they were spent pushing a pram back and forth.

Michelle from Retarded in Love - although she’s shortly getting married so she can’t be too retarded in love but like most of us has been in the past.

Stay tuned for my fifth blogiversary special tomorrow.

Thanks to one of my gorgeous readers - Jeanie - I found out that my blog had all but disappeared. Any page I tried to view gave me a 404 page error. Everything else was there, just no content.  She emailed me first thing this morning and I didn’t read it until I got back from my mini Easter break this afternoon.

I immediately panicked and wondered when the last time I did a backup was - too long ago I’m sure. Once my little panic was over I thought I’d better fix it.

Knowing that Wordpress runs from databases I logged into my blog’s Cpanel and went to view the post database to see what was there. A message informed me that I had a “WordPress MySQL database error: Table is marked as crashed and should be repaired.”

After doing a quick search I came across this very helpful post, and within a minute had repaired my database and was back in business. So if this ever happens to you, it’s probably a database error. I’m thankful that it wasn’t someone hacking in which has happened to me before too.

Naturally I’ve now done a backup. I was imagining having to manually redo my last few week’s worth of posts since my last backup but it’s all sorted.

photo credit: Sakurako Kitsa

Easter bunny came last night and he left easter eggs in a plastic container because we’ve had a marauding chocolate loving cockroach in this house and I’m too scared to leave any food out just in case. Now I have to go and do Easter bunny’s job for him so JJ can still have the thrill of the easter egg hunt.

Yesterday was a lovely afternoon. A friend I haven’t seen for 18 years (I can’t believe it was that long), and her husband came around for lunch. They live in Sydney and are here visiting family and friends. I took some photos but because this is a quick post I’ll write more about that later.

Today we’re off to visit a friend for her birthday and we’re staying the night so I’d better go and get organised for that.

Hope you all enjoy Easter and the long weekend. It’s beautiful autumn weather here - just gorgeous.

I love my bedroom. It’s my haven from a busy day, a stressful day, a good day, any day, and when I hop into bed I look forward to my usually peaceful sleep. Some nights are restless but that’s either because I’m sick or just thinking too much about something.

About a week ago I woke up to an unusual noise in my room. I couldn’t figure it out. I turned on my light, had a look around but could see nothing. The noise continued on and off throughout the night but I kind of slept anyway.

A couple of nights later I heard it again and it sounded like it was coming from my wardrobe nearby. I opened the door and had a bit of a look around and again could see nothing. After work that day I pulled out some of the stuff that was sitting at the bottom of my wardrobe - it’s a place where I keep presents that I buy people including an Easter egg stash.

I picked up the chocolate Bilby that mum had bought JJ for Easter and had a closer look at it. It had a small hole in the bottom where the foil wrapper had obviously been eaten, and some chocolate was eaten as well. As I’ve had recent encounters with mice at a holiday shack I was pretty certain it wasn’t them but my other thought was cockroaches. I do see the odd cockroach inside and outside my house and they’re generally not a problem.

I put all the easter eggs, including the eaten one in a plastic bag, tied a knot in it and placed it on top of my little stepladder in my room - a place that JJ would never look. That was the end of it, or so I thought.

A few nights later I heard a rustling noise again. A pattern started where I’d turn on my light, sit up and try to figure out where it was coming from. I eventually got up, got the fly spray, gave the room a bit of a spray and went back to bed. The rustling continued. About the fourth time I turned on the light I realised the noise was coming from the plastic bag with the easter egg stash. I got up, shook the top of the bag a bit and a huge cockroach jumped out the bag and dashed to the wardrobe. As he did this, I screamed and jumped out the room - my heart pumping.

I got the bag and took it to the kitchen. The cockroach had obviously eaten a hole through the plastic bag and eaten more of the Easter Bilby so I threw it straight in the bin. The others were unscathed. I made sure there were none of cockroaches friends in the bag and put it into the fridge and went back to bed. By this time I’d been awake for nearly two hours.

The cockroach was obviously hungry, however, as he kept scouting my room for food. I have wooden floors in my bedroom so there’s no carpet to mask the sound and they’re quite loud - especially this big one. The next time I turned on the light I saw him jump out the rubbish bin. I tried to go to sleep yet again but this time he thought he’d have a party under my bed.

That’s it I thought - I need my sleep. I got up, got some blankets and went out to the lounge and bedded down for the two hours that were left of the night. This was yesterday morning.

Yesterday after work I bought some cockroach bait and put it in my bedroom and in the kitchen. When he started making some noise last night I didn’t even hang around to see if it really was him. Hopefully he’d eaten his bait and was in his death throes. I went out to the lounge, set up the lounge cushions on the floor and had a kind of okay sleep.

Today I will give my room a good clean and hopefully I find him flat on his back with his legs up in the air - DEAD.

• Today’s (although the posts are out in my evening time so should it be tomorrows?) challenge for Problogger’s 31 days to a better blog is to write a list post.
• I’m going to take the list challenge literally because I’m in that sort of mood tonight.
• Lists allow writing to be readable and flow, but it means being succinct.
• And succinct suits me.
• Lists help me through the day, whether they’re mental or written down lists.
• But the list doesn’t allow for children.
• My child tonight was particularly painful to be around.
• I think tonight I was probably particularly painful to be around too.
• Tonight we’ve both cried and we probably both regret some things we’ve said to each other.
• Tonight we’ve been the best of mates reading Snugglepot and Cuddlepie together. They’re great stories and I’ve made him promise to read him more.
• Tonight we’ve hated each other’s guts but deep down we both really love each other.
• Tonight as I kissed him goodnight and chatted about tomorrow, I left him laughing.
• That laughter made me smile.
• Thank God.

I don’t think I could have done this post in any other way than a list.