Jan 22, 2009

International Traveling

Interesting Times Hmmm, well I'm packed... even if Nicole and Eloise aren't.

And I thought I'd better just write a little note before I take the computer off-line and we get ready to set off for the airport for our trip to the UK.

To the land of erstwhile plenty. Will the high streets be deserted wastelands, the tumbleweed blowing gently past Woolworths and Next? Will the banks be open? Who knows.

All I know is it's going to be damn cold!

We dropped the dogs off this morning at the doggy hotel up at the Sunshine Coast, which was a bit of a tear as they watched us getting in the car from the exercise yard barking plaintively "Don't go! Don't leave us here with this piped music and hydrobath!"

And as we run our supplies down I am out of coffee and surviving - just - on hot chocolate.

Still we're looking forward to seeing all you family people and friends. Once we get there.

Jan 14, 2009

Quiet Life

Making Coffee Not too much going on... Eloise has acquired some tap shoes from Claire at Nicole's work and various other things such as (curse) a Fairy Palace and (curse) "a cottage that is a house that is cosy" toy which are keeping her occupied.

We are having to ration her YouTube use as she is well on-target for busting our 12GB bandwidth for the month. So we are introducing her to computer games instead.

Other than that, the weather's been nice and we have been out walking in various forests a lot. There are lots of trees that have been blown over in storms so it is a bit of a challenge getting around in the woods, with paths blocked and so on, but we're seeing lots of spiders which Eloise likes.

Yesterday my shoelace came undone and Eloise decided she wanted to do it up. So we sat down whilst she performed this feat whilst Matilda rustled around in the bushes. I jumped nearly a mile when a foot-long dragon-lizard came out of the bushes and ran across Eloise's legs and into another bush with the dog in hot pursuit. Eloise didn't bat an eyelid. She thought it hilarious.

Other than that it's back to nursery and trying to keep up with the swimming.

She's going through some interesting if frustrating changes at the moment, becoming quite shy and almost scared of certain people and not as naively friendly towards everybody as she used to be. She doesn't like certain people to look at her and sometimes decides that she doesn't want to be someone's friend. I'm thinking that this is all mental development around socialisation and the seperation of her as a conceptual individual from "people" at large. She's certainly had a couple of instances of seperation anxiety at nursery which is quite unusual.

Still at least she isn't shouting at us so much....

Jan 6, 2009

Sunrise on a New Year

Sunrise Happy New Year to everybody.

I'm sure you all had a lovely time, subject to the usual climate caveats.

We had a pretty quiet one; Josie and Adam drove up from Melbourne to stay with us for a few days and over-indulged the night before so staying up til midnight was a bit of a struggle for them but during the day we went up to Mount Glorious and had a barbecue on the edge of the rainforest as the sun set.

It was nice and cool in the mountains which was a refreshing change from the torpid heat down in Brisbane.

We've had to go swimming a few times to stay cool. Eloise is gaining confidence and nearly-swimming around. She's loving the waterslides and we had a little diving competition. She needs to work on the diving concept a little; she hasn't mastered the whole "head goes in first" thing.

Planning for the UK-trip-athon is advancing and Nicole has a day-by-day schedule drawn up that takes few prisoners. We're looking forward to it - apart from the flight and the goosepimples.

I seem to remember that getting out of a warm bed into sub-zero air makes my legs excessively itchy. Now there's something to look forward to.

Jan 1, 2009

Happy New Year

Made Up ...from the girl who got bought make-up from Christmas.

Early Riser

Tamborine Mountain On another occasion Will and I went out for a day trip.

He had the bright idea of going to see the sunrise. Unfortunately this meant getting up at 3.30. In the morning.

So with only two hours sleep, for one reason or another, it was up and at 'em and we got down to Nudgee Beach for about 4.20 and entered into a mysterious world of slowly building light, and wrong tides.

Will wanted to go down to Lamington NP afterwards but we decided that that was a bit ambitious so opted for Tamborine Mountain instead. We had a very pleasant walk down by Curtis Falls whilst having not the faintest idea of what time it was.

We got back to Brisbane a little after midday and I think I was in bed asleep by three. In the afternoon.