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!!!