The Weekend

I'm sitting here watching the closing ceremonies and blogging, so if things don't make a lot of sense, you'll know why. I have to say - too many speeches so far.....

On Saturday it was overcast again (yay). I still get that Vancouver anxiety whereby if it's sunny we have to do something outside.

So - as it was drizzly and Vancouver like we headed to Big Brand Outlet (along with the rest of Brisbane). They were having a massive (they like the word massive here - pronounced mahsieve) sale (as advertised in the Brisbane News) and we need patio furniture. Of course, they didn't have patio furniture so we ended up getting two things we don't really need. Shelves (for Cyp's office) and a little table for the guest room (which will hopefully help the spartan feel it currently has).

So, I'm not getting off to a good start on my new money saving plan. We still need patio furniture (yes need) and a barbecue. I'm working on a barbecue right now though - got a bid in on a weber (charcoal). Trying to get stuff before mom and dad arrive. I figure dad can do the barbecuing as he got lots of practice with coals in Hawaii!

We came home and watched the hockey game for a bit and then drove to Bunnings (much like Home Depot) where we didn't buy anything. I feel that we should find patio furniture that is on sale as it almost end of summer. This end of summer thing is weird - I keep forgetting it's March and thinking we're in October. My seasonal clock is all screwed up.

On Sunday we drove to Toowomba. We ended up taking the tourist drive -not sure what was touristy about it other than the little cart wheel that was on the road signage that we followed. Cyp and I kept saying "this reminds me of the Okanagan, Hawaii, La Connor etc" We keep trying to reference everything to places we've already been. We drove by the Walloon Saloon on the way there and Shulte's Meat Tavern on the way home. Cyp really wanted to stop at the meat tavern, I could tell. I think the area we drove through is referred to as the Darling Downs. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darling_Downs

I kept wondering what it looked like during the drought. It is super green now. It has been raining a lot here. I no longer feel guilty about my long showers and what with our solar powered hot water I almost feel like it would be a shame not to have a long hot shower.

Tawoomba was very pretty - up on a hill with lots of great parks. We hit the park in the middle of the city and it was great.

We went to a museum that was ok - it had a couple of crafts for Ellis which was good. Afterwards we did a survey for a free coffee. The woman conducting the survey made a comment at one point how nothing beats a free coffee. Cyp is always highly suspicious of free (I still like it) but he is usually right. The survey was a tad tedious - but both kids were very well behaved (Ellis had daddy's iphone and Rowan had mommy's wallet - I still think I have all my cards) which she commented on. I must admit they are pretty good - not sure what my problem is not being able to cope with them.

On the way home, we passed food to Ellis in the back, who in turn passed it to Rowan. This had Rowan in stitches almost the entire way home (1.5 hours). It was great.

Friday so Far

My resolve to be less of a grump vanished when I discovered that Ellis had thrown all our dishwashing tablets into the garbage (which I had already taken out).

"where did our dishwashing tablets go?" I asked of no one in particular.

"I put them in the garbage and you threw the garbage out." Ellis said (and then smiled).

My genetics then kicked in and I stormed past him out to the garbage outside where I had to dig through our gross kitchen garbage to find them. Some were still usable. He got the silent treatment on the way to school (the other part of my genetics) and as I was still storming around putting his lunch in the fridge, sheet in his locker, I noted he had gotten quite quiet. He was crying. I told him I still loved him but felt pretty bad. He looked pretty darn sad. I was just saying to myself (and I think I even blogged it) that he had turned the corner. But in the past two days he has broken my stuff (purposely), unrolled the toilet paper rolls (from the bathroom to my room) and now thrown out our dishwashing tablets.

I resolved on the way home after dropping him off to be less of a grump and try to say yes to some of the things he asked. Who was it that told me that - I think it was Barb. One of her friends decided to say yes to everything anyone asked her that day. Sorry if I have attributed this to the wrong person.

I keep intending to do it, but it is surprisingly hard for me. Maybe that can be one of my goals.

Thursday Swimming

So now an 11 am swim lesson doesn't seem that late anymore. It has become a challenge for me to get out the door by then and unfortunately, Rowan immediately falls asleep upon getting into his car seat. How annoying. I spend the morning try to get him to nap and then he goes to sleep in the car and wakes up grumpy for his swim lesson.

I also woke up extremely grumpy yesterday for some reason and Ellis could do no right in my eyes). I think Ellis did enjoy his swim lesson (Cyp comes down to watch). He swims without waterwings at his lesson and seems to do quite well.

I tried to get Rowan to nap when we got home but he wouldn't and I was getting grumpier and grumpier so I said to Ellis - "let's go to the library and get ingredients for Lamingtons."

So off we set. On the way I apologized to Ellis for being a grump.

"I don't like it when you yell at me mummy." Man, did I feel even worse. The day sort of improved and Rowan napped for the car ride home (five minutes). At least it was date night and we got to go out. As noted, Rowan puts up a fight when he sees the sitters, but they say he stops crying about two minutes after we have left.

As we were driving home, we passed the Toowong Bowls club (about two blocks from our house) so we decided to pull in to check out. It was trivia night (last Thurs of every month) and they had the cheapest beer that Cyp has found yet. It reminded us of the University Golf club - kinda made me homesick.

Tried to resolve to be less of a grump on Friday.

Playgroup

When I woke up on Wednesday it was to discover a slightly depressed Cyp. It turns out our Wii had been lying to us about our weight. We hadn't put the "carpet feet" on the board which someone caused the Wii to think we were 5 kg lighter than we actually were. I had already had this blow a couple of days earlier. Who were we kidding - our clothes fit the same, we are still scarfing down our before dinner drink and our after dinner dessert. It was amazing though - even though I knew intuitively that the Wii was wrong, I still chose to believe it. I felt so small!

After Cyp left for work, I puttered around - Ellis woke up finally and I realized that we were going to be late for playgroup again. Madly dashed around gathering snacks, water etc and then we were on our way. I have switched Rowan's car seat so that he is facing forwards - he doesn't seem to really care. I remember when Tracey switched Ellis's seat around. She was driving El and Em around for some reason (probably had something to do with the fact that we had moved and she came to the rescue again). I also remember that Ellis could make the donkey noise on one of his songs. I think I short change Rowan - I just can't imagine him doing that at this point (even though he is the same age Ellis was). I cannot believe Rowan is almost one. Wouldn't surprise me if I accidently forgot his birthday (must make note now - it is in 6 days). I think I projected a lot onto Ellis at that age so in comparison Rowan seems a tad slow. I don't think he is - I just don't expect as much from him.

Rowan is driving me crazy though. He follows me around whining. He can't stand it when I leave him and go to another room. When we got back from playgroup, Ellis had a very large poop in his potty. Rowan is extremely curious these and immediately made a beeline for the potty. Argh! I grabbed him and shoved him into the hall and closed the door so I could clean up. Well - he started pounding on the door and wailing. He so badly wants to be part of the party. He already has second child syndrome down pat. It reminds me of how I spent my childhood - looking for Tracey.

He is also refusing to nap. I cannot get him to sleep. Even the old stand by (boob) does not work. Today I was just about ready to kill him. He thinks boob time is now acrobatic time - really we do not need to sign him up for gymnastics. He basically stands on his head while he is nursing. I am repeating my mistakes that I made with Ellis - I get so fed up, I put him in his crib where he wails for about 15 minutes. I then go and get him to try again. He finally gets it. When the sitters came last night he wouldn't let go of Cyp (who was trying to pass him over) and at the pool yesterday he eyed the swim instructor with great suspicion again. He is not an easy baby anymore.

After playgroup we went and got Ellis's haircut. No TV at this place and it appeared that there was no candy, but thankfully it was just hidden. The quality of Ellis's day is determined by the number of treats he gets. We hit the library, the park and then came home. I can't even remember what we then did, but it was probably the Wii.

Gone Bananas

One of the American moms (Sara - mom of Gillian and Phoebe) discovered an indoor play centre and asked us all to come check it out today. I had mentioned ti to Ellis yesterday - told him we were going to go to Go Bananas (this is a place in Richmond that Tracey took El and Em to when Rowan was newly arrived on the scene. So - this morning after I'd been up about 5 minutes, Ellis came bounding out of his room:

"I'm so excited to go to Go Bananas!" I then had to break it to him that it wasn't actually Go Bananas, but very much like it - his face looked a tad down. He has been talking about Grandmas and Grandpas and Emilies and Traceys and Maxes and Suzys a lot again lately. He wants you all to come visit. Today he wondered if we were going to move to Australia.

Anyway, he was still keen to check out Little Tigers so off we went. Of course, Rowan fell asleep as soon as I put him the car and the drive was only 20 minutes. We got to Little Tigers and Ellis was excitedly looking out the window - "is that it?" "nope, that's the Pet Barn" (same concept really). As soon as we got into the indoor play centre Ellis was off. I didn't see him until about an hour later when he stopped by for a cookie break. Note the sweat. It was nicely air conditioned - he'd just been playing non stop for the past hour. Rowan sort of enjoyed it, but he was pretty tired. At least he was free - not much longer though. Anyway - we got there around ten and didn't leave until about 1. I was exhausted and all I'd done was sit around watching Rowan steal shoes.

The mom who lives across the back had called me yesterday to see if we wanted to go to a nearby waterpark. As Ellis has daycare on Monday, I offered to go this afternoon. I was worried that Ellis would collapse from exhaustion, but we had an hour at home in between gigs and so I was relieved when she called to ask if we were still on.

The park is about a 15 min drive away along the highway -

we went over a new bridge in a place where I just did not expect a bridge to be (darn twisty river). http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?doflg=ptk&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=117167951934295914511.00048042adbff43f6938c&ll=-27.523191,152.965736&spn=0.073985,0.152092&z=13

We ended up in Jindalee at a great little park. Meg has never been there on the weekend but late in the day on a Tuesday seemed like a good time to go. Rowan loved it - it was mostly good for him - river parts that he could crawl along but then unfortunately, he would come to a river pool and just plunge in. It was just past crawling chin depth so I think he drank a lot. Ellis had a great time sending plastic beach toys down the river and racing back to the start to do it all again. There were a few river obstacles in the form of smaller children that would collect the beach toys as they drifted by only to have a wailing banshee of an Ellis come along to rip them out of their hands. They got smart and held them out to him as he played this game over and over. I got tired of bending over to rescue Rowan so pulled him out of the water (I've done something to my back - perhaps too much carting of 30 pound baby has done something). We left around 4:30 and were back in time for me to quickly fry up some lamb popsicles and oven bake some fries. Yum.

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Garbage Day

So, I've googled it extensively (ok - about 15 min) and I can't figure it out. People have been putting out piles of garbage in front of their houses these days. Tanya had told me about when they first moved into their place - there was a bunch of stuff left under the house by the previous tenants (old fridges, lumber etc) so they called the landlords and asked them to please remove it. The landlords sent some sketchy looking guys who basically hauled the crap out onto the curb. I guess extra garbage collection day was coming (in two weeks). Tanya and family's daily entertainment was watching the pile being added to and rummaged through for the next two weeks. Well, extra garbage day must be coming again. You would not believe the amount of stuff that is piling up on the sidewalks here. Our guest room is a tad spartan so I've been checking out the wares - there are at least 3 TVs per block, mattresses, dishwashers, fridges - you name it. Even Cyp is a tad perturbed by the amount of stuff that will soon be hitting the Australian Outback.

"Do you think they just shove it in an old mine somewhere?"

Yup - probably.

I drove by the location where I took my picture today. The horse was gone (darn) - I had been planning on scooping it. Every boy needs a horse.

Lamington National Park

On Sunday we drove to Lamington National Park - number 57 on someone's must do list

http://www.150mustdos.com.au/must_dos/lamington_national_park?result_13142_result_page=11 The largest subtropical rain forest in the world I read somewhere. Not sure if I believe it, but maybe. A Lamington is also a bakery treat here. I just had to look it up and it may be next on Ellis's and my to do list. Take a sponge cake, cut it into squares, pour chocolate icing on top and roll in dessicated coconut. Sounds yummy.

We timed our drive right and Rowan slept the entire way. The drive up the mountain was long and reminded both me and Cyp of the road to Hana. Switchbacks the entire way and many one lane stretches. Didn't see too many cars coming the other way thankfully. I didn't like the road much - it literally was on the edge of the mountain - no guardrail to stop one from sailing off the edge. I started to think about how high we were going and realized that I hadn't parked any warm clothes. Darn. Tanya had mentioned that they like to go there as it was cooler and a good escape from the heat. It was also raining.

We finally made it to the top (took us about an hour to drive 20 km) and piled out of the car. "What's the stinky smell?" asked Ellis. I figured we must be near some cows. It didn't dawn on me until the way home that I had driven through some rather large piles of cow poo. "it's like you were aiming for them." Cyp commented. Right. I never was very good about avoiding things on the road. I think I'm steering away from things only to find myself driving right through them. I got them on the way home too. Figure they will make a tasty treat for our ants.

Luckily it didn't rain much up the mountain. I made Cyp carry my umbrella the entire time which helped ensure it was sunny.

We walked by the bird feeing area.

"Do you want to feed the birds Ellis?"

"no" said Ellis.

Ok - they were pretty birds - see picture of said bird on blog post. I walked into the info centre to figure out what we could do and then we sat and had our lunch. Rowan was fascinated by the bush turkey and Ellis inadvertently fed the birds some of his peanut butter sandwich. I think you can guess what picture goes with that story.

We walked in the woods a bit, walked in some gardens (Ellis tried to lose us on the trails) and then did a treetop walk which was quite impressive - it gave a bit of a thrill as it did seem to need some repair and was quite high up.

I wanted to give Rowan some exercise, so I kept putting him down on the walkway but he just wanted to go and leap off the ledge (this was a raised boardwalk - not the treetop walk - believe me, he was strapped in good on that one). He loves ledges or maybe he just wanted to get at the dirt. Not sure.

Ellis decided he did want to feed the birds, but the bird feeders were on their lunch break till 2 so we had to skip. That just made him want to do it more.

On the way home we stopped in Canunga and I picked up some meat pies (best ones in Queensland - well, maybe not), being sold by an elderly Scottish born man. I got his life story - the tail end of which went like this:

"got here in 95 and have been saving up since to get home - too old now, lost my home as two of my big customers went bankrupt on me and you just can't ever get back on your feet when you're this old."

Then he proceeded to say - "have a nice holiday." at which point I said - "oh, I've moved here."

He perked up at that - "oh, you'll love it here!"

Drove the rest of the way home through towns with names like Wonglepong and Jimboomba (Cyp wondered if a three year old had done the town naming) but then we'd go through a town with a name like MacLean.

It was a good night as Border Security (the new season) was on. Hooray!

Yay- the Weekend

On Saturday we hit our first garage sale in Brisbane. Yes - the acquisition of more crap that I will have to deal with when we move has begun. It was at the church in St. Lucia (the suburb where the Uni is). It was quite the event - we should have gotten up earlier - looks like there was some good stuff. I just got crap as noted. Actually, that's not quite true. I picked up two lamps - one to disassemble so I could scrounge parts for our floor lamp and one that looked like it would be good in Ellis's rather dark room. Those were both 2 bucks. I got a hairdryer (my most expensive purchase at $5), a waffle iron and beaters (both $1), 5 puzzles, connect 4 and a small paul tshirt (that's the monkey) all for $5 and a glass for $.50. I was feeling pretty pleased with all my purchases. Cyp just had a big old frown on his face, but grudgingly carted everything back to the car. When we got home, I ignored the kids while trying to put the floor lamp back together. Cyp was slightly critical of my efforts as the light bulb does not really stay upright, but it mostly works. Ellis likes his new puzzles, but Connect 4 kept him entertained for ages. Yes - it is mostly comprised of what look like green and pink poker chips. They are now scattered hither and yon around the house. Rowan is at that great age where toys most be dispersed to every corner. He picks up something and I'll find it later in a drawer somewhere. Yes - I'm guarding my keys.

We decided after I got the lamp back together to go for a drive up Mount Cootha as it really is at our back door. Plus, Rowan was being a difficult non-napper so we thought throwing him in the car would help. We drove up the mountain and sure enough when we got to the parking spot for the Grey Gum picnic area he was out cold.

We headed out even though it looked like a storm was brewing (it was supposed to be nice this weekend) and hiked down down down. We got to the turnoff and discovered that our trail was closed so we continued on. Found another trail - looked rough, but you know me - poor Cyp had to haul the stroller up what looked like a washed out creek. I did help. We came to another spot where we had to make a decision - go left and walk for another 3 km or go right. I don't know why I even considered going left, but we did stand there for about 5 minutes trying to decide. Ellis wanted to go left but we came to our senses and went right. Two minutes later, Ellis said "I'm tired. you can leave me here and someone else will come and stay with me until you get back." (I think he was hoping it would be the girls, whom I think he has developed a mini crush on).

We continued on and hit the road so I walked back to the car and left Ellis and Rowan with Cyp. I must remember that for next time - maximum walk length, 1 km.

As I walked I passed the TV stations. They are all located on top of Mount Cootha. It is quite funny. All of a sudden there is a big news story and you see the news trucks peeling out of their lots to drive 5 km down the hill to the city.

That said - we get great reception living right by the mountain (hill) - it's great!

Sunday morning I got up and decided to use our new waffle maker. Yes - there was a reason you always see these things at a garage sale. The other sad part was that my beaters came with the wrong attachments. Sigh.