The Visitors...

We have had quite a few visitors over the past couple of weeks. Firstly, we enjoyed a visit from Matthew and Meredith who ventured up here on a road trip from Canberra. They stayed for nearly a week. During their visit Matt, Meredith, Jazz and I went fishing. We pumped up some nippers but they didn’t stir up much action other than Meredith getting bitten twice while handling them, so we resorted to strips of mackerel and things started to happen. Jasmine was the star of the day catching a flounder, whiting, bream and flathead without any help. She was even starting to give Matt and Mere some tips on how to catch fish. All the fish we caught were pretty much undersized so we threw them back. We didn’t have a camera with us and I wanted to get a photo of Jazz with her mighty 35cm flathead (legal catch), so I kept it alive in the bait tank, brought it home, took a couple of photos of Jasmine holding it then drove about 4 or 5km to the nearest river and released it. And yes, it we still quite alive and swam away. We also went on a really nice 4km rainforest walk with Matt and Mere at Springbrook. The trail took us past several waterfalls and there were some beautiful valley views out to the coast.

Bob arrived on Tuesday morning last week and looked after the kids for the second week of the school holidays. Bob was happy to soak in the sunshine and read several books while here. We did go to the beach on one day and there were probably 100 boats or so several hundred metres off the beach. At first I thought they must have been checking out a pod of whale or something but soon noticed that there was some jet boat ocean-racing event going on. The boats were so quick and there were several helicopters chasing them along the coast. We also saw some rubber dingy races just down the beach from us and they were exciting to watch as they punched through surf break and caught some serious air at times. We enjoyed having Bob stay, particularly the kids. They are hoping that he might visit again soon or in the next school holidays.

The last of our visitors were two guys in suits…the local missionaries. It was quite funny when they dropped in; for some reason I had only just thought to myself that it has been quite a while since we have had any missionaries knock on our door and no less than 30 seconds later the door bell rings. They came quite close to dinnertime which we thought was a little poor but Lani had cooked plenty of food so we invited them to stay for dinner. Funnily, Lani had cooked spring rolls and fried rice and they happened to be the Chinese-speaking missionaries for the Gold Coast area.

Yesterday James had his birthday (9yrs) and we had a birthday meal at home. He received some presents but mostly got cash to buy presents and start up his own bank account. Unfortunately, his allergies have been not too good for the past several days and today I came home from work early to pick him up from school and take him to the doctor. He is going to take some stronger medication for the rest of the week to clear him up, so his body can recover. I also spoke briefly with his teacher today for the mid-year parent-teacher interview and she said he was a wonderful student. It is just nice to know that James has settle in well and is making good progress both intellectually and emotionally.