Beach...Shark?...Karaoke...Pass out...Work

On the Saturday we went to the beach in the afternoon. The kids and I dug a large hole, which filled with water when the tide came up. Then James decided to dig another hole but further up the beach. We always end up digging holes at the beach. One of these days I am going to just take a garden shovel down with me so we can dig a really huge hole.

I spent some time in the surf on both Saturday and Sunday with my wave ski. The surf was a bit messy so it made things difficult but I managed to catch a few OK waves on Sunday. While I was out the back of the wave zone I was sitting up with my legs dangling over the side and something soft lightly bumped my foot. It scared the hell out of me. I put my feet up on the board and had a look in the water but could see nothing. About a minute later the surf rescue helicopter flew past. If there were anything to worry about they would have spotted it. Since they kept on flying down the coastline I figured I was safe. Maybe it was just a jelly blubber. There are so many aircraft flying up and down the coastline, if there were any dangerous sharks swimming around they would be spotted. My back pulled up pretty good afterwards the surf, so I was very happy with that.

We now have a new DVD player with a karaoke function so we had some fun with it on the weekend. Jasmine was really getting into it and enjoyed singing ‘We Will Rock You’ by Queen over and over again.

Monday was not a particularly good day for me. I had another one of my pass out episodes. For some reason injections and stomach cramps cause my blood pressure to plummet. This time is was stomach cramps. I fell off the toilet with a thud apparently. Luckily I didn’t fall forward and put my head through our new shower screen door. Instead I fell sideways and crashed heavily onto the floor with my right shoulder. I didn’t bump my head but my neck had like a side ways whiplash. I had to take the day off work because I had a very sore shoulder and neck plus a headache all day. I’m feeling a lot better today but still not too good.

Lani was called in to do some paid relief teacher’s aide work at the school today. Hopefully next year she can pick up some more work, or even better, she might get lucky and pick up full time teacher aide work.

Baptism...Award...Jedi...Lost...Replaced

One of my goals this year was to get my back strong enough so I could paddle a wave ski. It still isn’t brilliant but I felt it was good enough to possibly ride a wave ski in the surf. So last Saturday I purchased a wave ski. Unfortunately Lani was not well and I had to take Jasmine to a birthday party, so a venture into the surf was not on but I had an hour or so to kill so I took it for a paddle on the Broadwater. I paddled out to the Seaway, caught a few very small waves at Wavebreak island and then rushed back to pick up Jazz. I would have done 2 to 3 kms of paddling. On Sunday I was going to baptise the wave ski in the surf but my back was too sore from all the paddling on Saturday! Good news is that I have recovered and hopefully I will be in the surf tomorrow.

Jasmine was awarded Lower School Student of the Week this week for being such a great listener and busy worker.

James is going through a bit of a Star Wars phase at the moment. It kind of started after we submitted a Star Wars video James and I did a few years ago to Aust Funniest Home Video Show. The competition was to play out your favourite movie scene and we did the “I am your father” scene. We didn’t win anything. James then started going around the house making all kinds of sound effect noises while swinging a plastic light saber around pretending to be a Jedi master. This week James bought himself the Lego Star Wars PS2 game which he describes as “the best game ever” and “cool as”.

Lani is still busy working on her Teacher Support course. She chased up on what was going on with her submitted assignments today and they reckon they haven’t received anything yet! Not a particularly good start. Everything has to go via snail mail and communication by the telephone, which is a tad stupid and behind the times in my view. It is costly and slow.

We have also received further news from the insurance company and it appears that we are going to get our pergola roof replaced.

Hot water, pests and other stuff

Well, our new Solarhart hot water system has now been installed to replace the old one that was battered by hail.

We also had some pest control guys come and spay around the place and do a pest inspection yesterday. Unfortunately we had active termites near our side fence so we had some termite treatment added to the bill – total $550. But what can you do? Got to protect your house and hope you aren’t being ripped off. The pest control company was referred to us by someone in the industry who we trusted so I’m hopeful we were not ripped off.

We have had a decent amount of rain up here lately. Been good for the garden and the local dams. My Sir Walter turf that I put down earlier this year is quite lush. It would certainly recommend it, not sure how well it goes with frost. But it has handled the dry weather really well. Mowing it was a bit of a challenge last weekend because it was so lush. Had to change the catcher frequently.

Lani has started her Education Support course through Queensland TAFE open learning. She only started a couple of weeks ago and has already completed her assessments for 2 modules.

The kids are going well at school. Jasmine has just jumped a level in her reading books. James sat some tests recently and we don’t have all the results but he came 3rd in his class in a spelling test.

Just one last thing. Check out the following links to a website that John C told me about.

  Johnny Go-Go
  JJ-Cool
  Jazzalicious