January

Well it's hard to believe that January is almost over, and it's almost time to go back to work. We have had such a wonderful Christmas with family, followed by our little adventure to Hawaii - for our third visit to these beautiful islands.

This time we saw the Big Island of Hawaii for a week and then flew back to O'ahu for 2 weeks - where we met up with our partners in crime - Les and Julie. Now we have seen each of the islands twice, and the island of O'ahu three times. We probably won't go back specifically for a holiday here again (as there are just too many places in the world to still see!), but we will definitely stop here on our way back from the U.S.A. when we go next.

We had a fantastic time, and its always great to have quality time with the girls. These are some of my favourite bits:

1. Sight-seeing: seeing some very beautiful coast lines, bays and reefs, waterfalls, lava tubes and rainforests. Also seeing the barraness (it that a word?) of the Kileau Caldrea and surrounding areas. We also did the drive down to the end of the road in Hawaii to see the actual lava flows, but were a little disappointed as the lava was still a fair way away that night and it was hard to get a good look and photo.





2. Spending time at the beach with Leslie and Julie as they are both water babies. Les and Julie bought a Hawaiian Long Board, and both Julie and Dave took surfing lessons and could stand up and balance on the board and get some small waves by the end of the trip. Jas especially loved having a go on the board. We spent quite a few days at Waikiki, and I really loved being there til the end of the day to see the sunsets.






3. The girls loved going to the pool (even though the water was so much cooler than the sea water! Our favourite pool was one of the pool at the Hilton on the big Island, which included several spas, a waterfall, and a big water slide. I especially loved getting cocktails by the pool. Amazingly cocktails in Hawaii are cheaper than buying a glass of wine. However wine in bottles was very nicely priced - starting at $5.99 a bottle for Moscato, and not more than about $12.99 for a NZ Sauv Blanc in you bought the wine from the ABC shop! We even had Les (who has not had a drink in a few years), drinking a few Lava Flows.





4. Driving around O'ahu in a Mustang Convertible (which felt like driving a tank!). The girls thought it was just fantastic - with their hair blowing all over the place, we are definitely taking hair ties next time.


5. The food. My favourite restaurant is definitely Roy's. New vogue fusion cusine. Very nicely presented meals at a reasonable price. You could still wear casual clothes (including thongs aka flip flops). It was also the only place you could fit in an entree, main and dessert!

Other haunts included the Cheesecake Factory (great for the variety and price of meals, the size of the meals and also the cheesecakes); the Yard House (which had the best steaks in Waikiki, and over 150 beers and ciders - you have to try the pear cider if you go here); Jimmy Buffett's (best pasta as voted by Eliza, second best steaks); Dukes (great atmosphere and view as well as great steaks), they also had a barefoot bar/cafe where you could come from the beach without shoes and eat; Hard Rock Cafe (great display of guitars on the roof!); and last but not least the Calfornian Pizza Kitchen - fantastic pizzas, pastas, very good prices, and the place where we got take-out to eat in the room when we weren't super hungry).


6. Also of note, were:

The shopping. Prices were great (especially since the dollar was almost 1 for 1!) Clothes were a lot cheaper here, and all the food was reasonably priced as well (especially considering you could normally order an entree and be full at the end). Dave enjoyed the Ala Moana Center in Honolulu, and I enjoyed the open air shopping centers including the Queens and Kings marketplaces on the Big Island.


Seeing the Arizona Memorial again, but seeing the USS Missouri for the first time.



Snorkeling with the girls at Hanauma Bay and also out at Waikiki.

Whale watching on the big island (but also seeing whales up close on the snorkeling tour at Waikiki).


Eliza - finally treading water and dog paddling on the last day without her floatie vest on!

Ahh, we have such great memories.... now to make the photo book and to plan our next holiday! I always think we are so lucky to get the opportunity to travel, and our girls travel well. So many more places in the world I want to go - I especially want to see Italy and Greece, would love to go to Tahiti and Samoa, and also travel around New Zealand. Looking forward to the girls being old enough to go back to the USA, and do some more touring here (and of course take them to Disney Land).

Now changing the topic all together - I'm not one to make new years resolutions, but last year I read 47 books. This year I'm aiming to read 52 books (that's one a week on average). I am pleased to report that I am on target already and managed to read four books whilst in Hawaii:

1. Fallen - Lauren Kate
2. Torment - Book2 Fallen - Lauren Kate
3. A Caress of Twilight - Merry Gentry Book2 - Laurell K Hamilton
4. Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater.

Looking forward to reading a heap of books this year.

Well, must close off for the night. Off to Sydney tomorrow to visit our friends and also to take Jasmin to her Specialist followup appointment. Looking forward to sharing a few bottles of wine with Shell and generally catching up.

Everyday Life

It's been wonderfully ordinary the last couple of weeks. No trip away last weekend, so we managed to get our groccery shopping done! This week I started some Christmas shopping (all online of course - what a wonderful God-send this internet stuff is sometimes, when you just don't have the time to go out!) We are planning however, a trip to the Canberra Centre on Saturday to do some "real" shopping as well.

Jas had a play date at a friends yesterday afternoon, they played in a pool, and she even got dinner! She had a great time, meantime back at the house I had to be Eliza's playmate. She has such a great imagination. After a bit of imaginery play, I found the Wonder Woman outfit someone had bought her for her birthday, and couldn't resist snapping these pics. She even has the Wonder Woman spin down-pat, and Dave is going to hunt up a couple of old episodes for her to watch. I suspect they will be a bit dated!







This afternoon after I picked Jas up from school we made cupcakes. Both girls got Master Chef cupcake sets for their birthdays from different friends. Jasmin made the Orange Cupcakes, and Eliza made the Fairy cupcakes. Jasmin read and followed the instructions all by herself, and only asked for help as she needed it. Eliza did really well as well, cracked the eggs in the bowl, did her own sifting and stirring. Her favourite bit is licking the bowl out of course:




Doing a colour course with Nic Howard on Big Picture Classes at the moment - here are a couple of more layouts from that class:

Green Week


Orange Week


Yellow Week


Now for a list of things that have made me smile over the last couple of weeks:

1. Eliza got her pre-school photographs back - in her words "These are all fantastic Mum!"
2. We had a visit from a school friend last week who came to stay the night - thanks Shane! It's always great to catch-up. (PS. hope you find your glasses)
3. Jasmin played all the way through a Wii game (Scooby DOo) with a bit of my help. We had a great time (first time I've ever finished a game!)
4. I've decided that Jasmin and Eliza's nick names can be "Giggles" and "Chuckles" respectively - they so suit their nick-names!
5. On getting Jasmin's school spelling list this week, I had a bit of a chuckle, I'm not sure Dave would get them all right!
6. Making cupcakes with the girls. Jasmin making them just wearing her undies and singlet and an apron (she didn't want to get her clothes dirty)
7. Taking pictures of Eliza while she pretended to be Wonder Woman - she was just soooo cute! Cutest little Wonder Woman I've ever seen.
8. I am almost finished Jodi Piccoult's "Nineteen Minutes", it's a huge book, and has taken me a couple of weeks.

Okay - off to ice cup cakes and watch the girls bounce on the trampoline.

It seems like forever

Warning - Large Blog Post!!!

It seems like forever since I blogged.... it's probably only been a month, but I have been so busy since we got back from Singapore.

Dave and I had a great time - although we did miss the girls. We rang ever couple of days from Singapore. The first time we spoke to Eliza, she asked if we could come home now please? We said that we were there for a couple of weeks so we couldn't come home straight away, and after that she refused to speak to us on the phone!

We loved our trip away - two weeks is almost too much time for Singapore, we saw most of the sights, with the exception of the Zoo, which we felt would have been more fun if we went with the girls. We saw the Changi Museum and Chapel, bicycled around Pulau Ubin after catching a bum boat to the island, shopped on Orchard Road, Little India and Chinatown, rode on the Singapore Flyer (which is apparently bigger than the London Eye), cruised down the Sinagpore river, observed Singapore from the Observation Deck of the Marina Bay Sands (a marvelous piece of architecture I must say), stayed on Sentosa Island and had fun at Unverisal Studios... and much more. The second week was spent mainly at the Civic Video Conference, where we had our brush with fame - with inspirational talks by Li Chunxin of Mao's Last Dancer, and Mark Bouris of Wizard Home Loan fame. We had excellent dinners at the Marina Bay Sands, Night Safari, with all the drink we could drink (pretty good considering the alcohol was expensive at restaurants), and we also got to see all the movie trailers up until about May-June next year (one of my favourite bits!)

Here is a small selection of photos:
















I had a couple of tears on the second weekend, when my girls left me this message on facebook:



On a positive note - they had a great weekend with all their cousins!

Since our return we have been continually on the go. First up, was Jasmin's eighth birthday, a Pizza and movie night with all her class friends (and her cousins of course!). It was such an easy party to do - $80 for 12 pizza's from Dominios (pick up before 5:30pm), lots of lollies, chippies, soft-drink whilst they played pool, and ate pizza. Then a movie in the cinema room (yes we managed to squish about 20 kids in there), and then we did birthday cake (decorated like a pizza), ice-creams, and sent them all home with the parents, with lolly bags in hand (chuckle!)



We did a trip back to Goulburn to meet our newest nephew (and cousin) Oscar -



And then Halloween of course. It was fantastic, such a lot of fun. Everyone go into the groove and dressed up, it was such a great night.








I started a colour course on Big Picture Classes with Nic Howard - Preclass work was a set of tags (which I turned into cards instead), and then the first weeks assignments were based on the colour red (my favourite):




I have also managed to read a few books in the last month, so to add to my list are:

41 - 42 Wicked Lovely Books 1 & 2 (Melissa Marr)
43. The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets Nest (Steig Larrson)
44. A Kiss of Shadows - Laurell k. Hamilton - Book 1 Merry Gentry novel.

At the moment I am reading a Jodi Piccoult book called 19 minutes and the last of the Wicked Lovely Books. Thinking I might read something a bit heavier soon, although these pulpy books are easy to read, which is sometimes what I need when I am so busy - I don't have to think too much!

Off to bed early tonight - yes, 10:30pm is an early night, after staying up until 1pm watching movies every night this week. We've had to preview a heap of movies as this weekend we have to order for both December and January. The girls have been great, and have previewed about 6 kids movies for us as well. Jas is pretty lenient scoring 4's and 5's out of 5 for the movies, Eliza is more conservative and harder to please, scoring mainly 3's out of 5's.