Boys Gone Camping...

Jeff and Oli decided to go camping last night as Oli had mentioned last week that he'd never been with just Dad and, 'didn't most boys do that?'... They took off to a place near us which is National Park and the site has boatin', campin', fishin' (and spittin' by the sounds of things').  They promised to telephone when they arrived as they hadn't booked anything. I heard nothing. Then, I suddenly remembered that I hadn't topped up the credit on Oli's mobile. The area they've gone to had a storm warning last night. Nuff Said.  

Christmas 2012

We have just had, what was to us, the best Christmas I think we have ever had! A very different experience...
It all started on Christmas Eve, with Oli and I watching an exhibition tennis match at Palmer Coolum Resort... very hot (35 degrees) but brilliant tennis: the girls arrived by helicopter :)
We then moved on to Noosa where we spent Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our good friends, Sid and Betty. Great apartment with pool/tennis court and our own spa: which Oli wasn't out of and where we sat watching the stars!
On Christmas Day, we all went back down to Cotton Tree, Maroochydore until 3pm to help with the Community Lunch organised locally for anyone who's alone on Christmas Day. Our job was 'meeting and greeting' and it was an incredible experience as well as being quite an eye-opener. There were around 500 people who turned up: very sad actually, with some elderly people whose families were 'too busy' or 'doing other things' but we all made sure that a good time was had by all and there were many happy faces: brilliant. Oli was playing and helping with the cricket and he had a fun time with the many kids who turned up.
Back to Noosa at 4pm and then out again with Sid and Betty to an AMAZING restaurant in Noosa for Christmas Dinner... fabulous food and company and the pianist played 'Summertime' for me: result.  Back to the apartment and a glass of wine in the spa: what an fabulous end to a wonderful Christmas.
Merry Christmas everyone! :)

Spiders... and more spiders... and even more of 'em...

Poor Jeff!  I woke this morning at 5.30am to the sound of the vacuum cleaner.  Very unusual to hear anyone else using it in this house, particularly at that hour of the morning, so I decided to investigate... I could hear Jeff cursing and banging around in the bathroom and it transpires that he'd opened the door, walked sleepily in and stumbled straight in to a large spider's web.  On glancing around, he realised that a huntsman spider's eggs had hatched: around 200 tiny little spiders were scurrying and jumping around the bathroom... thank goodness it didn't happen to me: I would have been on the first bus out of here!  Jeff then proceeded to vacuum them all up: no mean feat as they're fast movers!  Jeff's my hero.

Summer Hols

Oli has now completed primary school!  He starts High School on the 29th of January.  I start in my new teaching jobbie then, so now we're kicking back together on our summer hols.  Jeff has 11 days off over Christmas too so we're planning on what to do.  It will be lovely to spend some time together.
Jeff's mate and his two sons from Bideford came over and stayed with us for a few days en-route to New Zealand.  We have caught up on the gossip from the UK and they caught up on their sun-tans and surfing!  We went to Noosa one day when the surf was ENORMOUS and we were also lucky enough to see a koala in the wild too :)
We're moving on the 5th of January to Eumundi.  When we leave a rented property, we have to get the carpets cleaned as well as cleaning EVERYTHING so that we get our bond of $1500 back.  I thought I may get in a cleaner to ensure I didn't miss anything, but when the quotes were coming in at $450-$475 dollars, I decided to do it myself: that's several pairs of shoes.

Heatwave and Packing

I am up at 5.45am and the temperature's 26 degrees already! We're having a heat wave at the moment here, with tops of 39 degrees forecast for today. Unbearabubble. I am trying to get stuff packed as we'll be moving just after Christmas, but I keep coming out in a sweat....  We don't have air-con in our rental; just fans.  Fans are fine but, with this heat, they're just circulating the warm air!  Thankfully, our car does have air-con: we wouldn't survive an Aussie summer in Queensland without it. 
Change of plan. I've decided that today, I'll drop Oli off at school (last 3 days for him), do some washing (it drys on the line in an hour at the moment), pack some books up and then go to the beach to cool off. That's my day sorted.