New Years EVE

We had a really busy day today, just running around, trying to get things done before the year is over!

Grocery shopping so we could take some food and drinks to the NY EVE party, back to Bunnings, to a nursery (we needed 1 plant) and planted it and also trying to stay dry and out of the heavy showers. We also had to get some meat for the bbq, I bought Dominic a new little sleeping bag (to keep him in his cot!) and had a look in a pet store.

Then we went around to Ian and Sandie's place at Auchenflower with a bunch of other photographers (who Ben has breakfast with on Thursdays) - and their wives and children - everyone was really nice.

Poor Dominic was playing with a battery operated toy train and the wheels turn around - anyway he says to me "Help Mummy" and he's holding the train above his head. It wasn't until I looked closer to see that the train wheels had actually caught his hair and it was all twisted around the wheels. I was trying to stay calm. Ben wanted to cut his hair off but it was a huge chunk and it was actually pulling his scalp up so it would have hurt like hell but Dom was very brave!!! (Don't get me wrong, I would have cut it out if I had to, but I just slowly picked out the strands of his hair - trying to work out which way it has been caught - and eventually I got most of his hair out - poor kid!

See never a dull moment with our kids!!

We were the last to leave at about 8pm and we came home, McKenzie watched the 9pm fireworks and then she fell asleep (she wanted to stay up until Midnight like she has previous years) and Ben and I just sat up until midnight and then went to bed. A quiet night but a nice way to end the year and start another one!

Busy day around the house

Well Ben was in the "maintenance zone" today so he raced off to Bunnings to buy some things like:-

• door knobs for Dom's room - it hasn't had them for nearly 12 months since we had it built in!
• bits and pieces for the french door which needs to be repaired, the wind nearly snapped it off it hinges yesterday!
• light bulbs
  
• Bamboo fencing for our back fence - so we're not looking through a metal fence and it makes it feel more "tropical"
• Ben also bought a planter box for outside of the studio
• Bought some bamboo plants, some bromeliads and some black pebbles

He also had his gym mates come around to help him go and collect his Ganesh statue which must have weighed about 100kgs!

Ganesh means - Lord of success and destroyer of evils and obstacles. He is also worshipped as the god of education, knowledge, wisdom and wealth.

After all that, Ben had to fix up the french door, which became really bad timing because we were meant to go to the Breakfast Creek Hotel for Tracey's lunch catch up, but since we had the door off it meant we couldn't leave the house! The children were a tad bit feral too and Dom went to sleep at 1pm so we just couldn't make it.

We were also meant to go to the dog park with Craig & Denise and their kids and dogs, but it was crappy weather - windy and a little bit raining so we decided we'd do it another day!!

So then Ben decided to put the bamboo fencing up in the backyard - to give it a more of a tropical feel I guess. If we ever get our Balinese Hut it will look great out in front of the bamboo!

I put Dominic's cot, change table and pram on ebay too.

So all in all a very successful day.

WOW Big Cot!!!

Were Dominic's first words when he saw us pulling the bedhead out of the box - he's a funny kid.

The bedroom suite arrived about 8.30am so we spent the next 3 hours just putting the furniture together, packing the new drawers and cleaning up boxes and the styrofoam sheets (that managed to get broken and were all over the house).



We also managed to sell our old bedroom furniture on ebay - so we were very surprised (and pleased) that they will be gone on 2 January!!!

We've also decided that it's time to upgrade our tv cabinet and tv (as Ben wants a plasma unit and plasma tv for on the wall) so we all have them selling on ebay too..

We went for a drive to Samsara at Milton and Ben bought a Ganesh stone statue for his garden (which has to be picked up on Sunday when we have a few guys to move it as it weighs about 100kgs). We didn't find a tv cabinet there so we went to Bali at Home at Windsor and bought one from there. It was reduced by about $300 less than when we looked at it about 2 or 3 weeks ago!! It will be delivered later this week hopefully! (which means we really need to sell the cabinet quickly!!!!

That was pretty much our day gone - we just had dinner and Craig and Denise (friends from the next street over with 2 spoodles) popped in for a quick hello and we put the kids to bed early as they didn't have a sleep during the day.

Had a great night's sleep on our new bed - ahhhh. zzzz zzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzz

More Shopping

After we said good-bye to Aunty Tracey (but hopefully only for a couple of days), we decided that we needed to buy Dominic a bed, considering he is 2 years old and still in his cot!!

We walked into the first shop, saw a brilliant bedroom suite for Ben and Myself and said "Yep that's the one we want", we ordered the Hudson Suite, which was a queen bed, 2 bedside tables and a tallboy. We also bought a new mattress since ours was 10 years old and actually bought a decent one, which we desperately needed. And the best thing is that they said they can deliver it tomorrow! I've also ordered a King size quilt but that will take about 2-3 weeks to arrive.

We had a look at a some more bedding shops but couldn't find any kids beds that we liked. We think we'll buy McKenzie a white bed, since most of her furniture is white, and we'll give Dominic her bed since he has wood in his room.

We then went to Freedom at Windsor and found a lovely white bed (like a metal or wrought iron) and it has a love heart on it, so we bought that for Kenz. It will take about a week for it to be delivered.

We came home, had some lunch and then Kenz and I raced out to Pillow Talk where I bought 3 new mattress protectors, and a quilt and sheets for Dom.

Then we had the wonderful job of pulling out bed apart, moving it downstairs, taking the bedside tables downstairs and taking everything out of the daggy chest of drawers that we have.

There wasn't anything on tv so we put our old bedroom furniture on ebay - so hopefully they will sell pretty quickly...

We slept on the mattress on the floor.

Christmas Sales

This morning McKenzie Dominic and I met up with Aunty Tracey at Toombul (we thought it would be a bit quieter than Chermside - which is was) and we had a lovely morning tea and lunch there and did a little bit of shopping.

Aunty Tracey bought McKenzie some lovely lady beetle stud earrings - so once McKenzie can change her earrings (in about 6 weeks) we'll take a photo of her with her new earrings.

Aunty Tracey also bought Dominic a Pirate t-shirt and didn't he turn into a scallywag!!

She also spoilt them with some really funky Christmas decorations for the tree.

I bought some cute Santas for the tv cabinet...


After the shopping (about 4 hours - I never thought I could stay that long at Toombul) we came home and Aunty Tracey came to stay the night - so the kids had a wonderful time with her. We got yummy Thai for dinner. Ben and Tracey watched a DVD downstairs while I sorted out some stuff around the house (eg putting away Christmas pressies etc).

Boxing Day

Well another busy day for us today - we're off to visit my family down the Gold Coast. We arrived at Nanna and Pa's place at 9am and Rebecca and Zac were there, and then Rochelle and Andy arrived. We had a lovely morning tea and opened more Christmas presents...talk about spoilt!!

After that we went around to Mum and Dad's place and my Uncle Jeff was up from Tasmania, so it was wonderful to see him for a couple of hours. Mum and Dad also had a lounge room floor full of presents too - so extra spoilt! We had a wonderful lunch and we managed to stay dry with the downpour that arrived at lunch time too!! We also spent the day with Rochelle and Andy and Nanna and Pa and then we headed home for a much needed rest!!


Did you know?

What is Boxing Day?

Boxing Day is a day the higher classes gave gifts to the lower classes. Before or on December 25th people of similar class would exchange gifts to celebrate the Christmas season. Gifts were not exchanged with the lower class until the next day called Boxing Day.

The holiday is named Boxing Day because the tradition of giving gifts of cash, food, clothing and other goods to the less fortunate were placed into boxes for easier transportation. The goods were distributed based on the family needs and their services to the giver.

Santa has arrived

Well our morning started before 6am with the kids very excited about Santa....they got so many presents but they didn't have too long to play as we were heading up to Minden to spend the day with Ben's family - and what a great day everyone had!! Mary had a great idea to make Pina Colada's - so we were drinking them at 11am - what a brilliant start to the day!!!



I can't recall the last time we were all together for Christmas and it's been four years since all of the kids have caught up - so we had to take some photos as it may be another 4 years before we catch up again.

(Tracey is taking this photo below - so that's why she's not in this photo unfortunately).

So we have Dom, Ben, Kenz, myself, Matt & Levi, Ross, Bronny, Gabriele, Mary, Rod and Michelle.




Mary had another great idea to do a slip n slide for the kids (as the temp at Minden at Christmas is usually very hot) - so McKenzie and Levi had a great time. Dominic wasn't too keen on it.


So a very busy day and we got home about 8pm and we all crashed early!!!

I can't believe it is Christmas Eve!!

There's more, much more, to Christmas

Than candlelight and cheer;
It's the spirit of sweet friendship
That brightens all the year.
It's thoughtfulness and kindness,
It's hope reborn again,
For peace, for understanding,
And for goodwill to men!

I'm just about to take McKenzie to get her ears pierced - but I haven't told her yet!! Will let you know how it goes!

Kenz had no problems getting her ears pierced - here's a little photo...



and before the kids went to bed, we read The Night Before Christmas..

The Eagle has Landed

Aunty Tracey (Ben's sister) arrived this morning from Melbourne and we were SO happy to see her (especially since her plane was at least 45 minutes late) and we haven't seen her for nearly a year.

We then raced off to DFO and had a little look around and Trace had her usual fruit juice drink with Kenz.


We came home, had some lunch and then we all decided to have a nanna nap as Trace didn't get much sleep last night.

Then about 45 minutes later, Matt (Ben's brother) Michelle, Levi and Sean were knocking on our door as they were coming for a quick visit so we could catch up with Sean for Christmas. So it was nice to have 4 of the cousins together - all we needed was little Gabriele - and she arrived about half an hour after Matt & Michelle left.

Mary (Ben's mum) arrived at 3pm and then Bronny and Gabriele arrived, so it was nice to catch up with them before Christmas and it was the first time that Tracey had met Gabriele!! After everyone left, we went to the kennels to pick up Oscar - and I think he was pretty happy to see us!!!!

Now all I need to do tonight is wrap up Christmas presents and do some ironing - a fun night ahead for me! :o)

Rainbow Beach

Well we have just arrived home from a lovely and relaxing weeks' stay at Rainbow Beach (Qld) from the 15th - 22nd December 2007.

We stayed in a little cosy 3 bedroom beach house at Rainbow Shores and Mike, Kate, Jessica and Abbey (and Mike's parents - Tony & Brenda) were staying in another house in the same street.

Last Sunday night, Ian, Sandra and their 2 children Joshua and Ashleigh came and stayed with us for 3 nights and it was nice to catch up with them and the kids all got along so well. Ian is also a photographer and took heaps of photos - so hopefully I can add some of them to this blog.

We did some four wheel driving but unfortunately didn't make it to Fraser Island due to the tides being wrong for us to drive on the beach and it was a pretty miserable day on Tuesday.

But other than that little disappointment, we still went driving through Freshwater Track on the beach where the Cherry Venture used to stand..... (On July 6th, 1973, the Cherry Venture was driven aground in a wild storm at Double Island Point on Noosa's North Shore). She was demolished only recently (Nov 2006) as it was just rust and extremely dangerous.

Ben, McKenzie, Dominic and I went up to Tin Can Bay with Ian, Sandy and the kids to do the Dolphin Feeding. McKenzie was lucky enough to feed one of the dolphins but Dominic wasn't overly interested in the dolphins, he was happy to chase the massive Pelicans!!!!

We were up there at 7am and the dolphin feed was at 8am and then we went to a little park for the kids to run around and we had an nice breakfast / morning tea.

We had some fantastic catch ups at Mike and Kate's place where the kids had a wonderful time swimming every day and also visiting the beach most days. Dinner was always a huge affair over there too - one night having 10 adults and 6 children!! We also went to the Workers Club twice for dinner and Tony made a brilliant Chilli Crab meal with the 16 mud crabs that Ben, Mike and Tony caught. It was to die for!!

And then today we had to pack up and come back home, just as we were all starting to relax. Maybe next year we'll go for 2 weeks so we can relax for a little bit longer!!

Read book Cow

One of Dominic's funny comments is the following"

Read Book Cow

He got a lovely pop up farm book for his birthday which we must read to him every night before he goes to bed. It's just so funny hearing a two year old say Read book cow (but at least we know he wants us to read the farm book about cows)!

I guess you have to be there to see the funny side of it.

The Mindenites.....

This morning we went to Minden to catch up with Rod & Mary (Ben's parents), Bronny & Gabriele and Ben's Uncle Wally and Aunty Col.

It was so nice to catch up with everyone and spend some lovely quality time with Bronny and Gabriele.

And a big thank you to Col and Wally for the lovely Xmas presents for the kids and also to Rod adn Mary for the great Melbourne Hats for the kids too!!!

Wishing you a joyous Christmas and a Holiday Season filled with peace, love & laughter

The magic of Christmas never ends and its greatest of gifts are family and friends

I finished work today - until 2 January - so I'm starting to get into the holiday mode.

Ben calls me "holiday Lisa" as he thinks my nature totally changes and relaxes when holidays are just around the corner!

McKenzie the Little Worker

Well McKenzie (and I) both survived the full day at work. Everyone was great at work asking how she was enjoying her day, giving her little jobs to do (like putting labels on envelopes, emptying the recycled paper boxes into bins and even shopping for Christmas decorations!).

We went to Queens Arcade for lunch and McKenzie just scoffed down her ham and cheese crepe and I think she was pretty tired by the time we got home!

Kenzie wants to know when she can come back to work again........

After dinner we went to Calypso Court at Eatons Hill - they usually win the 4KQ Best Neighborhood award!! And it's pretty impressive! Dominic and McKenzie just loved walked around the cul de sac. It's so nice to see a street get into the Christmas spirit. I think we're the only house in our street that his Christmas lights and I'm hoping to buy more when the sales are on, so we can have many more lights next year!!!

Nothing too exciting today

I just dropped Dominic off at child care and then went to work.

Ben looked after McKenzie today - she went to the gym with him, sat in the VIP room and sat on a massage chair for about 10 minutes. She then went with Ben to a portrait sitting and she did great in entertaining their 4 month old baby - she just smiled at McKenzie all of the time.

Tomorrow she is coming into work with me - so that will be interesting!!! Can't wait to tell you about that!

Aunty Bronny + Family Christmas Get Together at Greenmount, QLD

First thing this morning we had a lovely surprise visit from Aunty Bronny, Ross, Gabriele, Aaron and Jacob! It was so nice to see them (as they now live in Townsville and we haven't seen them since July) but unfortunately they could only have a quick visit as we had to leave for Greenmount.

Mum's side of the family try to have a yearly get together at Christmas time, so we all met up at the park at Greenmount. There were so many of us (probably about 50), which was great - even some cousins, 2nd cousins etc that I haven't seen in years!!!

It was also Uncle Ted's 70th birthday, so I think he was pretty chuffed about all of us being there.

McKenzie had a great time swimming with Lexie, Dallas, Kiahnee and Coral - I think she went for a swim about 3 or 4 times.

Dominic wasn't too keen on the surf and he was happy to sit on Ben's shoulders in the shallows.

We got home about 4pm and the kids had a sleep and we put out all of our junk for the curbside clean up. 2 seconds after we had put things out, people were pulling up with utes and trailers collecting our stuff - amazing!!!!

Santa, Gymnastics, Bali and Sleep!

Saturday morning - I met Steph, Tres and Lyn at Toowong Village for our annual Christmas Photo with Santa. Not a bad photo and a nice tradition to have since we started doing it in 1998.
We had brunch there (I wouldn't say it was service with a smile), but the food was ok and the company was great.

I got home and Ben had taken McKenzie and Dominic to gymnastics and they had just walked in to the door too.

We then raced out to the Bali at Home store at Windsor as we're looking for a low line plasma tv cabinet and found a really nice one there as well as a great dining table, since ours was 2nd hand and is now falling apart!

We drove down the street and went past Karuna Hospice and they had Christmas decoration sale on (we didn't end up buying anything) but we sat in their lovely grounds and had Devonshire Tea.

A bit about Karuna Hospice:-

Karuna Hospice Service views itself as existing within a comprehensive and integrated health network, and acting as a model for community based hospice services both within Australia and overseas.

As a Buddhist based organization the Karuna Hospice Service also acts as a compassionate service model to the dying for the world Buddhist community.

How is Karuna Funded?

Karuna receives some Government funding for people who are public patients of the health services system. The remainder of our services are funded by donations from the community.

Your financial support is always valued and is vital to the continuation of care for those with terminal illnesses.

Karuna is a non-profit registered Public Benevolent Institution and is also a registered charity in Queensland. All donations are tax deductible.

Then we all came home and slept for 2-3 hours!!! Got to love air conditioning.......

And because the kids had had such a big sleep, they were still awake at 9.45pm!!! Dominic decided that he wanted to sleep in McKenzie's bed, so I think it's about time we buy his own bed!!

More Christmas Lights

We went to Mark and Sharon's place tonight (Albany Creek) and checked out their fantastic lights - I must get some photos and post them on here. Dominic was fascinated with all of the lights and the nearly life size Santa Claus at the front door - he just didn't know where to look!

Anyway we had a great dinner (thai) and catch up - it's always great fun seeing them.

Congratulations to Rachael and Jeff

for having their twin boys last Thursday - 29th November (this was their first chance to let me know today) - Welcome to the World little Harrison and Jack!!!

Last day of school (grade 1)

Well it's hard to believe, but McKenzie has finished her first year of school, finishing grade 1 today!

We walked McKenzie to school, and then raced off to Dominic's child care Christmas Party.
There were a lot of children, and Santa arrived and handed out their Christmas presents (a little book). They also got a cup full of lollies and some candy canes. There was also a lovely morning tea - but boy it was hot!! The kids were singing Jingle Bells outside in the sun (at 10.30am) and it must have been at least 30 degrees - if not hotter! I think this is the hottest day we had in a while.

Then Dominic and I raced off to Toyworld and I bought Dominic's Christmas present, but I'm still stuck in what to get McKenzie.

Then at midday we raced back to school to collect McKenzie after her assembly - where they sang "Forever Young" for the grade 7's who were finishing.

Came home, had some lunch, sat in the air con, the kids watched a bit of tv and soon we have to take Dominic out for his swimming lesson. McKenzie was meant to go to gymnastics this afternoon for a make up lesson, but she doesn't want to go - so I'm fine with that!!!

Christmas Lights

Ben had a wedding appointment, so I decided to take the kids (and the dog) for a quick drive to Dorrington Drive, Ashgrove to look at their Christmas lights - they were fantastic!! No wonder they are finalists in the 4KQ Christmas lights competition. Got home about 8pm where a certain little miss decided that she didn't want to go to sleep - gggrrrrr. Oh and Oscar threw up in the back of the 4x4 - guess he's never been in the car at night time and after a big dinner - and probably won't get to do that again.

Welcome to our Blog

Well I thought I'd try give this blogging a go.

Everyone always mentions how busy and hectic our life is for the four of us, and I think I've just decided to make it even busier with doing this blog!!!

Anyway, we'll see how it goes and hopefully you won't get too bored with our antics. Personally, I don't think there is ever really a dull moment in our house, there is always something happening, or some drama and especially after just having both of the kids' birthdays in the last 3 weeks, and now it's only 2 and a half weeks until Christmas - it will be pretty full on!

Like just now, I'm trying to give Dominic a biscuit for afternoon tea, and Oscar (our nearly 2 year old spoodle) has just snatched it out of his hands and Dom is not impressed!!!

Then 2 minutes later I walk outside to see Ben standing on a dodgey white chair on the front steps, trying to hang up little Christmas lights - oh it's an accident waiting to happen!!!

Ok the bewitching hour starts about now - 5pm - better go....