The long weekend...back to school

On Thursday afternoon after work I flew to Sydney to spend the long weekend with Lani. I allocated myself a seat at the back of the plane to increase my chances in the unlikely event of a plane crash. I don’t see it as negative thinking but more a risk based strategy. But after flying each way at the back of the plane next to screaming children I might need to revise my strategy. Apparently airlines try to put children to the back of planes so it is less disruptive for the bulk of passenger particularly those at the front with more expensive seats. For the trip down to Sydney I had crying children in front, behind and on the seats across the aisle. Fortunately I had our MP3 player and it pretty much drowned out the noise.

On Thursday night Lani and I had dinner at my niece Carly’s place. My sister Jennifer, her husband Carl and my nephew Brent were all there. It was a bit of a get together to see Brent and his supermodel girlfriend Miranda Kerr before they headed back to New York on Friday. It was good to catch up with them all.

On Friday Lani and I spent the day at Jennifer’s place near the ocean at Clovelly. Julie drove us over there. We went for a walk over to Coogee Beach, had lunch and went for a bit of a swim in Gordon’s Bay. Unfortunately I didn’t have my swimming goggles to check out some of the marine life.

On Saturday Lani and I had some nice fish and chips in the Sydney Botanical Gardens and then watched the Australian Open women’s final on a big screen at the Opera House forecourt. They also had some tennis activities there and I had a crack at serving at a speed camera. I had previously had my serve measured at 185kph at the Sydney International tennis tournament quite a few years ago but only had a few serves with no warm up and the racquet handle was slippery. So I was looking forward to having another go and hopefully improving the speed. This time the racquet was OK and I had a few more goes but the speed camera was obviously not calibrated correctly because the best I got was 156kph and I know I hit the ball a hell of a lot faster than that.

Saturday afternoon Lani and I checked out some exhibits at the Museum of Contemporary Art. There was a collection of art by Paddy Bedford and a collection of video art 1965 – 2000. We were very unimpressed. I have a diverse appreciation for music but my appreciation for so-called art must be limited, or I just needed to inhale some substances to open my mind. I found a couple of things interesting but in general I thought my kids artwork was more interesting.

On Sunday morning we met up with Kali and her friend for breakfast at a café in North Sydney before I headed back home and Lani went off to the Hunter Valley for her marketing/sales conference.

Today the kids went back to school. Jasmine is in year 3 and James is in year 6. Both were quite excited about going back and Kim said they were ready to go at 7:30am. They both seem pretty happy with their teachers.

Kim has done a great job looking after the kids while Lani (and I) have been away. When I got back from Sydney I was going to cover the kids schoolbooks but Kim had already taken care of them. The kids have enjoyed having her stay.

Beach and rainforest

We have had a pretty good weekend. Yesterday we went to the beach in the morning. I took my wave ski and caught some great waves. Got smashed pretty bad a couple of times when I tried some new moves that didn’t quite come off. In the afternoon we swam in the pool and did some shopping at Harbour Town.

Today we went out for a walk thought some rainforest in the Springbrook National Park. We did the Twin Falls 4km circuit where you walk along a ridge taking in some spectacular views of the valley and out to the coastline, then you walk down into the valley through damp rainforest passing by several waterfalls. Jasmine enjoyed spotting lots of lizards on the track along the top ridge section and we also saw a blue coloured fresh water yabbie/lobster about 20cm long in one of the streams.

This afternoon the kids and Kim had a swim in the pool again.

I have added some photos to Flicka from the past few months.

Visitors, adventures, termites and DVDs

Krysti and the kids finished their 1 month stay with us on Saturday. We really enjoyed having them visit. Then on Sunday Kim (Lani's mother) arrived for a 2 1/2 week visit to help look after James and Jasmine while Lani goes to Sydney to get some training for her new job next week.

Lani will fly to Sydney on Tuesday and will be doing some "on the job" training with an experienced sales rep on Wednesday and Thursday then on Sunday afternoon she will travel to the Hunter Valley for a sales conference until Thursday. She will be gone for over 1 week! The kids have never been separated from her for more than one night. As Lani has 3 spare days in Sydney due to the Australia Day weekend, Kim has very kindly agreed to look after the kids on her own while I also fly to Sydney on Thursday afternoon straight after work and spend the long weekend with Lani.

A couple of weeks or so ago I discovered some termites in the base of one of our pergola posts. We also have had termites in our backyard fence but they have not concerned me too much. I would like to build a new colourbond fence but the neighbours are really old and don't really care. So we will have to pay all the costs if we want to do it. We have arranged for a pest company to come out tomorrow and kill the termites near the pergola post, check the rest of the home and spray the house for regular household pests.

We have watched a few DVDs lately. Nacho Libre was kind of amusing but I would only recommend it to people who like Jack Black's style of comedy. It has similar humour to Napoleon Dynamite. I also watched Monster House with the kids last night and thought it was a pretty good scary movie for kids.

New beginnings and some visitors

The past month and a bit has been quite a busy one.

The kids finished their school year with very good school reports. The teacher comments were very positive. James received the class Academic Award and scored very high in the state-wide benchmark exams.

Lani has resigned from Westpac and will be starting a new job as a Sales Rep selling pharmaceutical products (mainly incontinence products) to pharmacies. So if you have an incontinence problem Lani might be able to recommend some products to you.

I have also resigned from my previous employer and started contract work as a test analyst for Qld Police last week. So far I am finding the project that I am working on very interesting.

For the past 3 weeks or so Lani’s sister Krysti and kids MJ and Jessica have been staying at our house. John (Krysti’s husband) also travelled up and stayed for a couple of weeks. We also had Lani’s sister Jenna and her husband Jay stay for half a week. So the house has been quite full but we have had fun fishing, swimming, shopping, go-karting and playing some games. The fishing was pretty lame really, only one flathead caught in two trips but they were good adventures.

Jenna and Jay left today and flew out of Brisbane bound for the USA where Jenna will be working as an Australian diplomat in Washington DC. John also left this morning on a long lonely road trip back to Canberra with a lot of podcasts to keep him entertained.

We had a bit of an unfortunate incident early on Sunday morning. At around 2:30am we heard 3 muffled bangs outside followed by someone yelling out something and then driving away very quickly. I jumped out of bed to see what was going on but there was nothing to see. I thought the bangs were down the street so I just went back to bed. In the morning when I got up I surveyed out the front of our house and found that some mindless person had decided to smash the front driver windows of Jenna and Jay’s rental car, which was parked on the nature strip. It appears to have been a random act of vandalism. Apparently, some other cars and houses in the area were also attacked. Cleaning up all the broken glass was a pain. I would have looked a little stupid vacuuming the grass but it was the best way of picking it up.