We had a fantastic time in Fiji with the girls and my sis-in-law Julie and bro-in-law Les.
We stayed at the Sheraton Resort on Denerau Island - which was basically a resort island 20 minutes from Nadi airport. The resort itself was one of the best resorts on the island - and only 20 minutes walk to the Port which had a marina from which all the boat tours left from. The rooms were lovely - and the bathrooms had double shower heads and double vanities. The resort itself also had the best pools on the island - with a bar along side, and tables you could sit at in the pool and drink your drinks on.
We had the Civic Video conference for the first 4 days and then after that it was basically nine days of relaxing. I looked after the girls while Dave, Les and Julie attended the conference, even Jazz went to one day of the conference and brainstormed marketing ideas with the group and got to hear Steve Bradbury talk (ie. Winter Olympics Speed Skater - you know the one that won after they all fell over in front of him). What's not really well known is that he broke his neck six months before the Olympics, and that most skaters were wearing skates designed by him at that Olympics.
We had a couple of fun nights with the Civic crowd including cocktails at the golf course, a Bollywood themed night, as well as a beach BBQ which includes the Fijiian Kid's Choir and some fire dancing performances. The only thing that put a downer on things was the fact that we lost a franchise owner whilst there. He went snorkelling one day, and had a heart attack. It was a bit of a shock to us - he was in his late 50's and fairly fit, and we had visited him at his Wagga shop when we first bought his, and we had only been talking to him the night before and he was OK. His name was also David Turner, and I really feel for his son and wife who were not at the conference this year.
While the guys were at the conference the girls and I hung out at the pool, the girls got their hair braided, their face painted, we did some watermelon bashing, and ate ice-creams. We managed to fill in our time no problems at all.
We sampled most of the restaurants at Port Denerau, and we made a point of walking to and from the Port for daily exercise, which was required in order to work off the food we had eaten. The girls would complain and ask why we couldn't catch the bus! We also had a couple of meals at the Feast restaurant at the Resort which put on a very good buffet - Jazz was impressed as they had sushi on the buffet for dinner and for breakfasts. They also had the best dessert bar - the girls would go back 4 times for dessert! Normally at lunch we would have some chips and/or fish by the pool if we were at the pool/beach and not off on one of our day trips. We found the Golf and Racquet club across the road also had a bistro which served excellent pizza and cheap drinks ($4 FJD beers = $2.10 AUD):
As you can imagine a lot of cocktails and mocktails and glasses of wine were consumed over the course of the two weeks. It was actually cheaper to drink cocktails than wine - Julie and I bought some bottles of wine at the duty free when we came in, and the boys bought us a couple of bottles on one of their walks down to the Port - that way it was only $10-$20 AUD for a bottle as opposed to $45+ per bottle. I wish they had the selection of cocktails and mocktails on restaurant menus in Australia (or perhaps it's a good thing they don't!):
The girls had a fantastic time hanging out in the pool - which was only about 10 metres from the beach, where we could also use paddle boats, and feed the fish in the mornings. We had a beach and ocean view from our room which was stunning. Dave and Jazz even went to the Aqua Aerobics classes in the pool every morning - which operated on Fijiian time, that means the class was meant to start at 10:30, but often didn't start until 11am:
We also enjoyed three separate day trips to different islands off the coast of Denerau. We went to South Seas Island, Tivua and Plantation Island. You could walk around the first two islands in about 5-10 minutes. They were all great little islands. Eliza loved South Sea Island - as it had a swimming pool; my favourite was Tivua where I got a lovely massage and walked around the entire island in about 10 minutes; Dave enjoyed Tivua as well as he had a scuba lesson and the snorkelling guide was great; Les, Julie and Dave both loved the coral reef off the last island - Plantation Island.
So when we weren't going on day trips the other activities we enjoyed included mini golf, bungy trampolining, tennis (later in the day of course), walks to the Port with a little bit of shopping (they didn't have many shops on the island), and I have to say Dave enjoying falling asleep everywhere he went!
So - all in all, another great holiday. Now to plan for our next holiday - to New Zealand in the summer holidays.
On return to Australia we stayed in Sydney with our friends Michelle and Mark. It was Liam's 12th birthday. Michelle organised a Nerf party for him - which was lots of fun, and the girls joined in. I particularly like the photo of the girls posing "Charlie's Angel's" style with Josh's girlfriend Jess.
On the way back from Sydney we left the girls in Goulburn for the first week of the school holidays. They had a fun time sleeping at different places for the entire week, and playing with their cousins and second cousins. Aunty Julie also took them to the movies to see Hotel Transylvania. The last week of the school holidays was spent at a Drama workshop which they really enjoyed, and then we went down the coast with our friend Mel and her daughter Kate, for the weekend. It was lovely and relaxing - we spent some quality time walking along the beach and climbing on rocks. I have a huge bruise on my butt to show for my efforts, as I slipped down the stairs which go down the cliff to the beach!
Last but not least - Jazz had a 10th birthday slumber party on Friday night. She had 7 other girls from school over for the night. Started with so birthday nibblies on the birthday table, and then we just did girlie things - played pass the parcel and each girl got a little notebook as well as a girly thing eg. nail polish, lip gloss, body butter and so on. We played spin the nail polish - where you line up all your nail polishes, and then the birthday girl spins the first bottle - whoever the lid points to they have to paint one nail that colour - then they spin the bottle, and it goes on until you have all your nails painter. We then had some pizza and had another game - blind-folded make-overs. It was pretty funny. You get them to draw a number out of a hat and then that determines the order for the make-overs. Number 1 gets blind-folded and attempts to do the make-up of Number 2, and then Number 2 does 3 and on it goes. A couple of them were quite good and actually felt the face and ended up with the make-up pretty much in the right spot - they really struggled with the lipstock though. After that it was time to set up some mattresses in the cinema room, and then watched a movie. I would like to say they then went to sleep - but some of them didn't (at all)!
The next morning I packed them off with a Smiggle tin with some Smiggles goodies inside. I have included some more photographs of the party table later on under the photography section.
Reading
I have now read 84 books this year - managed to read a couple in Fiji. My picks for the month are:
14 by Peter Clines - The blurb sounded interesting - basically a story about a guy that moves into an apartment block where the rent is really cheap, it's in LA near Hollywood so it seems almost too good to be true. Turns out the apartment block is strange and strange things have happened there. It starts as a mystery and turns into a Science Fiction thriller. Since I didn't know what to expect, I really enjoyed reading the book.
Killing Floor - this is the first Jack Reacher novel. I wanted to read one before the Jack Reacher movie comes out. It's not based on this book from what I can tell, but Tom Cruise has bought the rights and has cast himself as Jack Reacher (pretty funny since Jack is built like a tank and is very tall). So it will be interesting to see what the movie is like. I did enjoy the book, has plenty of action and plot in it.
Glass Houses - the first book in the Morganville Vampires series which has about 12 books in it. It's a nice quick read with some interesting characters and an interesting house in it. Nice fodder for reading in-between other more weighty books.
and finally -
No One Would Listen. This book is non-fiction and is the story of Harry Markopolos and some other people who discovered the biggest Ponzi Scheme in the U.S. being run by Bernie Madoff, a trusted member of the american financial community. They tried to get the government and industry to see what he was doing - but no-one would listen. Very interesting read.
Scrapbooking and Photography
Not a lot of scrapbooking for the last six weeks as you can imagine - no time really between birthday parties and trips to Fiji!
This one is a simple double page 8.5x11" layout of Jazz's first school camp. Did this for Bootcamp @
Big Picture Classes for Cathy Zielkze's second boot camp exercise on using a single font on a page. I chose Century Gothic - it's my favourite font. The text is all in one size, and the heading is about 62 point with one word in pink and italised. Love this combo of pink and green.
This one is also from Bootcamp and was an exercise in using common margins - Pictures are of Eliza and her birthday cake from this years birthday:
I did this collage of photographs of Jazz's birthday party table - for her 10th birthday. I always forget to take time out to take pictures of the setting, which I often regret later on. I had about 10 minutes to spare before the party started and snapped a few photographs.
Well that's it for now. Off to bed now to get some much needed sleep.
