First weekend after getting home with the Tab and we took it away! YAY!! We stayed at a van park in Townsville. Saturday we took the kids swimming at the rock pools and had fun at the waterpark on the Strand. Sunday we went to the markets and then to Riverside/Riverway?? - more swimming anyway which is the thing to do in this stinking hot weather. Speaking of which we almost died of heat exhustion on Friday night, I got absolutely no sleep and had a ripping headache from rolling around in my own sweat all night (and some of Anakins too), We had to go and buy a fan for inside the van and one for the annex too so Saturday night was heaps better. I suppose you can't really classify it as camping when there's a Pizza Hut, Sizzler, Noodle Box, Macca's and Hungry Jacks within a 200 metre radius, but I did cook Jaffles, which got all stuck to the jaffle iron, burnt around the edges and totally sucked, but anyway... We caught up with some much missed friends and visited with Anakin's cousin Toby, it was fun. We packed a machete so on the way home we could stop on the road and cut ourselves a Christmas tree. We were walking along looking for the best one and signing for the truckies to honk their horns as they drove passed. HONK!! HONK!! Hilarious. Just as we got safely home a huge thunder and lightening storm began. The cracks of thunder were deafening and we lost all power except for some power points in our bedroom. So Izzy put his mattress down on the floor, we plugged one of our new fans in and away we went! (To sleep.)
Monday morning I got a ride to Cairns with Nick and Chris to pick up my car (which has been there ever since Greg flew down to Brisbane to meet me). The kids and I stayed up there for the night and Nick looked after them for me for a few hours while I did some damage to the bank account shopping for Christmas. Visited my girlfriend who got me into wedding planning mode googling wedding dresses. Have to post a few of my favs so far.
Got home yesterday and have been hooking in to the house work trying to spruce the place up. The inlaws are coming tomorrow!!! So I've been cleaning under beds, washing all the cushion covers and throws, scrubbing out the laundry, making trips to the salvo' bin ... I've still got SO much to do. I need HELP!! Or just one more day!! Two would be better. I can't wait to have it all done so I can indulge in something a bit more fun - like some sewing, or some Christmas cooking. The yard needs serious attention too but we've been getting rain every arve so there's nothing we can do about it at the moment. We are heading to Kurrimine Beach this weekend so if we can't get it done beforehand we're going to need a bloody slasher by the time we get back!
Anakin has been reciting "Hey Diddle Diddle, the cat and the fiddle, the cow jumped over the moon.." his favourite nursery rhyme to us all tonight. He sounds so incredibly cute. He thinks it's a really funny poem. I bought him a beautifully illustrated book of nursery rhymes (from Nana and Grandad) for Christmas so his repertoire will be a lot larger come the New Year I'm sure.
I bought Izzy a box of decaffinated cappacino sachets to satisfy his current obsession with drinking coffee. He's been drinking them like there's no tomorrow. Except there is, and tomorrow I'm going to be setting a limit of ONE!
I feel a bit ripped off that Christmas is coming up so fast and I don't feel like I've had time to be Christmassy enough yet! We only got around to putting up the tree last night!! Today we set up some colouring fairy lights in Izzy window. Yesterday I bought myself a little Christmas frock from the op-shop and dug out my jingly christmas braclets. Actually we stopped at a servo in Gin Gin in the middle of the night on the way home from Gympie where I bought three CD's of Chrismas Carols. They even have renditions from Lou Reed and The Darkness! I flogged them in the car all the way home don't worry.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
Thursday, December 11, 2008
End of an era
Today spells the last day of primary school for Izzy and I'm already organising his school gear for next year. There's a bit of guess work involved though because there's no booklist in highschool, I'm just trying to think, practical, organised, easy... What do they use colouring-in pencils at high school?? My entire bookshelves are filled with state of the art folders and binders and document wallets, so I'll be dusting a few of those off and trying to get away with buying as little as possible this time.
I feel like I need to go through this whole house with a fine tooth comb as if we were moving out. The place is a bit of a shambles and it gets on my nerves. I need some serious organisation going on in here.
Well I finished my teaching contract. I'll miss a lot of the kids but I tell ya, a couple of them were SO out of control yesterday. Maybe because it is the last week with lots of fun activities going on and the relaxing of the usual routines. But holy shit, I came so close to dropping this big brute of a child flat on his arse, the vision of it was flashing in front of my eyes just before I dragged him off to the office instead and saved my career. And another misfit of a kid was picking up chairs and throwing them around. The other kids are just use to it and get about their activities sensibly while all this complete bedlam is going on around them, it's quite amazing. It was a shithouse note to finish off on and I tell you if I see either of them in the street in future and they wanna be my best friend I'm just going to have to say "don't ever approach me again, just turn around and walk the other." So harsh hey and I probably wouldn't even. But if you had to deal with these confrontational little shits you'd feel the same I swear.
Anyway my new contract has been approved for next year and my name is even alongside Mum's on the top of the class list. I've taught these kids before, they're mellow as. Anakin's daycare is all organised too and he starts one day a week in early January. We went for a visit on Tuesday and all the little kids were really interested in the both of us and the group leader was a beautiful girl. It's going to turn out real good.
Anyway Iz is hounding me for the computer and Anakin is trying to wipe mayonnaise all over me (his favourite snack??) so off I go for now..
I feel like I need to go through this whole house with a fine tooth comb as if we were moving out. The place is a bit of a shambles and it gets on my nerves. I need some serious organisation going on in here.
Well I finished my teaching contract. I'll miss a lot of the kids but I tell ya, a couple of them were SO out of control yesterday. Maybe because it is the last week with lots of fun activities going on and the relaxing of the usual routines. But holy shit, I came so close to dropping this big brute of a child flat on his arse, the vision of it was flashing in front of my eyes just before I dragged him off to the office instead and saved my career. And another misfit of a kid was picking up chairs and throwing them around. The other kids are just use to it and get about their activities sensibly while all this complete bedlam is going on around them, it's quite amazing. It was a shithouse note to finish off on and I tell you if I see either of them in the street in future and they wanna be my best friend I'm just going to have to say "don't ever approach me again, just turn around and walk the other." So harsh hey and I probably wouldn't even. But if you had to deal with these confrontational little shits you'd feel the same I swear.
Anyway my new contract has been approved for next year and my name is even alongside Mum's on the top of the class list. I've taught these kids before, they're mellow as. Anakin's daycare is all organised too and he starts one day a week in early January. We went for a visit on Tuesday and all the little kids were really interested in the both of us and the group leader was a beautiful girl. It's going to turn out real good.
Anyway Iz is hounding me for the computer and Anakin is trying to wipe mayonnaise all over me (his favourite snack??) so off I go for now..
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
As I was saying..
I was a bit fried after that huge drive and complained to Mum (after she made me drive her around town looking for a gift for Mumps) "are you all going to have to actually witness my physical and mental breakdown before one of you takes Anakin and lets me have a bloody sleep??!!" Well they took him for about 20 minutes while I tried to reorder the neurons! Fark! And I didn't take it too well when my Auntie gatecrashed into my motel room and set up a DVD player for all the older kids to watch zombie movies. I was like "fine I'll just grab all my stuff and move into your room shall I? Fancy sharing it with a 2 year old and a strung out crazy-woman? (I'm sure about as much as I wanted to share mine with a bunch of morose pre-teens) Shove over! He we come!!"
Anyway it was all fun and games, a whirlwind of BBQ's, morning teas, pool parties, tennis, dining out..
Then come Monday afternoon I packed up the kids and headed on down to Gympie, which once upon a time had a reputation as "Hell Town", a name which I refuse to let die, I'm actually single handedly responsible for perpetuating the myth. All the way me and the kids were singing the ACDC song "I'm on the (sing it with me) High Way to Hell!! .....town". Actually it's a really beautiful place where I got to hang out with my old uni mate Jenny and meet her girlfriend (as opposed to boyfriend in this context), who was a real honey too. We all have two boys each! So it was a barrel of fun.
Thursday the T @B got delivered by my best buddy Bill!
And get this bit, it freaked me right out... after all the papers where signed and the transactions complete and Bill went on his (not so) merry way (I would cry too selling such a cool van), this huge thunder and lightening storm rolled in and everyone was talking hail (oh.my.God.) The roller doors to Jenny's shed were too small to be able to get the van under cover and I just stood at the kitchen window with this totally grim look on my face for about an hour (I should have got a photo of it), while the lightening and wind and rain and occasional "tink" "tink" of hail beat down and whipped around my lonely little van, sitting in an increasingly large puddle... oh God... Thankfully it rolled away just as fast and my little Tabernacle was left undamaged... geez, what a freakout..
Friday was Mammoth!! I drove another 1 n a half hours further south and spent the day at the Australian Zoo with the kids visiting koalas and tortoises and wombats and camels and elephants and tigers and cheetahs and pigs and sheep and goats and komoda dragons and crocs and alligators and .. well we bloody saw everything that was there....
Greg had caught a plane to Gympie and a bus to Beerwah and met us out the front at closing time.
Then we took our time driving back to Gympie where we took our time hooking up the van and packing up the car and then we began our very looong journey home.
Greg musta missed me a lot while I was away - after the kids went to bed the first night we were on the road he told me he wanted to marry me! It was a really nice moment actually. We were looking at each other adoringly through the darkness and giving each other big cuddles coz it was just so nice to see each other after a week apart and I said "you CAN marry me." Thinking we were just talking sweetly .. and he's gone "Really! I want you to be my wife! I've got you a ring, it's right here!" I'm just like "are you for real!!!! Oh my God! I wanna see it!!! Where is it??!!" Probably be an eternity before we can actually afford a wedding, but never mind first things first - a rollicking big old engagement part, with lots of food and drink and a bonfire!! Woo-hoo!! You can all come too!!
(I'll come back later and add some pix, it's getting late and it's my last day of school tomorrow
Anyway it was all fun and games, a whirlwind of BBQ's, morning teas, pool parties, tennis, dining out..
Then come Monday afternoon I packed up the kids and headed on down to Gympie, which once upon a time had a reputation as "Hell Town", a name which I refuse to let die, I'm actually single handedly responsible for perpetuating the myth. All the way me and the kids were singing the ACDC song "I'm on the (sing it with me) High Way to Hell!! .....town". Actually it's a really beautiful place where I got to hang out with my old uni mate Jenny and meet her girlfriend (as opposed to boyfriend in this context), who was a real honey too. We all have two boys each! So it was a barrel of fun.
Thursday the T @B got delivered by my best buddy Bill!
And get this bit, it freaked me right out... after all the papers where signed and the transactions complete and Bill went on his (not so) merry way (I would cry too selling such a cool van), this huge thunder and lightening storm rolled in and everyone was talking hail (oh.my.God.) The roller doors to Jenny's shed were too small to be able to get the van under cover and I just stood at the kitchen window with this totally grim look on my face for about an hour (I should have got a photo of it), while the lightening and wind and rain and occasional "tink" "tink" of hail beat down and whipped around my lonely little van, sitting in an increasingly large puddle... oh God... Thankfully it rolled away just as fast and my little Tabernacle was left undamaged... geez, what a freakout..
Friday was Mammoth!! I drove another 1 n a half hours further south and spent the day at the Australian Zoo with the kids visiting koalas and tortoises and wombats and camels and elephants and tigers and cheetahs and pigs and sheep and goats and komoda dragons and crocs and alligators and .. well we bloody saw everything that was there....
Greg had caught a plane to Gympie and a bus to Beerwah and met us out the front at closing time.
Then we took our time driving back to Gympie where we took our time hooking up the van and packing up the car and then we began our very looong journey home.
Greg musta missed me a lot while I was away - after the kids went to bed the first night we were on the road he told me he wanted to marry me! It was a really nice moment actually. We were looking at each other adoringly through the darkness and giving each other big cuddles coz it was just so nice to see each other after a week apart and I said "you CAN marry me." Thinking we were just talking sweetly .. and he's gone "Really! I want you to be my wife! I've got you a ring, it's right here!" I'm just like "are you for real!!!! Oh my God! I wanna see it!!! Where is it??!!" Probably be an eternity before we can actually afford a wedding, but never mind first things first - a rollicking big old engagement part, with lots of food and drink and a bonfire!! Woo-hoo!! You can all come too!!
(I'll come back later and add some pix, it's getting late and it's my last day of school tomorrow
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Back with the T@Bernack - The first bit.
Wow, what a week and thankfully made it home, with everyone and everything still in one piece. No traffic fines, no bad misshaps, just all good stuff.
How adventurous am I? Friday I packed everything up, it was flogging down with rain so I had to park the rear end of the car into our jammed up carport along side of the house to get everything in the boot without getting saturated. Me and the kids ended up setting off for Gladstone at about 2.30pm. We didn't get too far before we had to stop for Anakin's potty time.
Yep, great thinking packing that potty. And then a bit further up the road was an hour and a quarter delay where a semi and the Tilt Train had collided the previous day. Traffic was banked up majororly, every now and again we had to jump in the car and buckle up and drive another 200 meters, then stop, pile out onto the side of the road and chat with fellow motorists before doing that all again about 5 times before we actually reached the detour and could continue on. It was the longest trip just to reach Townsville on dark and I had an entire nights worth of driving ahead of me! At Townsville we raced into Woolies to get some supplies - munchies to supplement the big batch of energy slice I had made, batteries for the torch, sticky pads for Izzy's to draw flick cartoons, chocolate to keep me awake.. I let Izzy join me in a cappacino for the first time ever on the way out and now he thinks he's a conisseour, with preferences for mild roasted and orange mocha's.. We'd gone through the drive through at Macca's for those and get this - they made us wait in the carpark!! God we were so paranoid about hold-ups by then and that extra few minutes waiting nearly killed us! We were banging on the side of the car in desperation and annoyance! They weren't even worth it coz they gave us stupid Extra - some artificial alzaimers inducing sweetener crap instead of plain bloody sugar!!
But we snapped a whole tube full of glow sticks to make us feel better and it did. Watching Izzy trying to take a discreet pee on the side of the road with about 15 glow sticks hanging around his neck and wrists was pretty funny.
We got a little bit lost driving through Ayr and when we entered back onto the Bruce Highway we were driving right behind Mum!!! Her and Nick and the kids where driving together, heading to Gladstone for the family reunion too, but we all left home at completely different times! Wild. We drove the convoy onto Serena were they slept at a rest area till daylight and I just kept on driving.. The coffee and V drink didn't help so much as chewing off all my fingernails... I stopped a few times to feed Bubby back to sleep, but when I couldn't get to sleep in under 15 minutes I just pulled out and kept on keeping on... Had a big brekkie in Rockhampton and finally reached Gladdie at about 8.30am. Thank the Lord.
I didn't catch up on any sleep either as the next two days were spent celebrating Mump's 90th and catching up with all the relies from near and far and wide.
How adventurous am I? Friday I packed everything up, it was flogging down with rain so I had to park the rear end of the car into our jammed up carport along side of the house to get everything in the boot without getting saturated. Me and the kids ended up setting off for Gladstone at about 2.30pm. We didn't get too far before we had to stop for Anakin's potty time.
Yep, great thinking packing that potty. And then a bit further up the road was an hour and a quarter delay where a semi and the Tilt Train had collided the previous day. Traffic was banked up majororly, every now and again we had to jump in the car and buckle up and drive another 200 meters, then stop, pile out onto the side of the road and chat with fellow motorists before doing that all again about 5 times before we actually reached the detour and could continue on. It was the longest trip just to reach Townsville on dark and I had an entire nights worth of driving ahead of me! At Townsville we raced into Woolies to get some supplies - munchies to supplement the big batch of energy slice I had made, batteries for the torch, sticky pads for Izzy's to draw flick cartoons, chocolate to keep me awake.. I let Izzy join me in a cappacino for the first time ever on the way out and now he thinks he's a conisseour, with preferences for mild roasted and orange mocha's.. We'd gone through the drive through at Macca's for those and get this - they made us wait in the carpark!! God we were so paranoid about hold-ups by then and that extra few minutes waiting nearly killed us! We were banging on the side of the car in desperation and annoyance! They weren't even worth it coz they gave us stupid Extra - some artificial alzaimers inducing sweetener crap instead of plain bloody sugar!!But we snapped a whole tube full of glow sticks to make us feel better and it did. Watching Izzy trying to take a discreet pee on the side of the road with about 15 glow sticks hanging around his neck and wrists was pretty funny.
We got a little bit lost driving through Ayr and when we entered back onto the Bruce Highway we were driving right behind Mum!!! Her and Nick and the kids where driving together, heading to Gladstone for the family reunion too, but we all left home at completely different times! Wild. We drove the convoy onto Serena were they slept at a rest area till daylight and I just kept on driving.. The coffee and V drink didn't help so much as chewing off all my fingernails... I stopped a few times to feed Bubby back to sleep, but when I couldn't get to sleep in under 15 minutes I just pulled out and kept on keeping on... Had a big brekkie in Rockhampton and finally reached Gladdie at about 8.30am. Thank the Lord.
I didn't catch up on any sleep either as the next two days were spent celebrating Mump's 90th and catching up with all the relies from near and far and wide.
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