After our breakfast, Dad and I went for a long walk on the beach. We absolutely love doing this - one of the blessings of living in HB. :-) As we were walking along, we saw what looked like little rocks or spheres of sand on the sand. All of a sudden, the rocks/sand spheres started moving. Imagine our surprise! It turned out that they were really little crabs. They must have heard our feet on the sand and so they started moving like crazy - Dad took some video with his camera which I will attach at the bottom of the blog. It turned out that there were tons of them all along the beach. We got to the point where one of us would walk from one end of the group of crabs and one of us would walk from the other side to see where they would go. It was so fun to watch them move away from us as we moved towards them. As soon as the crabs could find a place to dig a hole, they did - they almost went sideways to dig under the sand.
On Tuesday, a bunch of us from the ward went to help one of our sisters organize her belongings. Kym, our Relief Society president, is going on a mission and needed to get a start on getting her things packed into boxes which can be stored while she is away (she is renting a house right now, so can't just leave things as they are). Kym is really into crafts and so today we tackled that room - and when I say 'really' into crafts, I mean REALLY into crafts. I couldn't believe the amount of stuff she had in that room. It took six of us working on it and we worked for five hours. When we left, it was looking pretty good. Right after that, four of us went over to the hospital to see one of the elderly sisters in the ward. Judy is a lovely lady - she was very vibrant when we first got to HB, but a couple of years ago, she had a stroke and now she seems to be going downhill. It's sad to see her so frail - she was happy to see us all, though, and we had a great time yakking with her.
On Wednesday, Dad and I made the long 31/2 hour (plus eating time) drive to Brisbane to have Dad's MRI done at the Wesley (private) Hospital. This MRI is a special one for Dad's problem and so it couldn't be done in HB. I was wondering what the MRI machine would look like, but when Dad came out of the room afterwards, he said it was quite big around. When I've heard about MRIs before, it seemed like they were always making people feel claustrophobic as they were so close to your face. Dad described the machine as like a tube, but it was over a foot from his face to the machine. Dad put headphones on with classical music piping through it. The fellow who was performing the test was also able to talk to Dad through the headphones as he was doing the test. Dad said that the machine was SO loud that it was hard to hear the music. The fellow testing asked Dad every now and then if he was okay and Dad said 'yes' each time. The tester had put an IV pick (Dad's words) in his arm and at some point during the test, they injected a contrast dye into the IV. The guy asked Dad if he could feel it going through his body, but Dad couldn't feel anything. The test took half an hour to do and after Dad changed and paid the bill (EEK!), we were off and driving back home. Dr. Kua will call Dad with the results by this coming Wednesday - we're not worried about the results as we feel they will be positive - it's just a little unnerving not knowing what/when the next thing to do will be.
On Thursday, I got a massage from a new place - I saw an ad for it in the paper and gave them a call. A guy named Ali called me back and set up an appointment for me with him. I spoke to both the manager of the place and to Ali about how I wanted to be sure that I was going to get my full half hour on the massage table since the last place I went to rooked me both times (50 mins for an hour massage and 20 mins for a half hour massage). I was assured by both that I would indeed get my full time on the table as they leave 15 minutes in between clients. Ali is a sports massage therapist and so I was wondering if he would be too strong to do a nice relaxing massage. I told him that the previous massage therapist had been really rough and that I had not liked it. I needn't have worry one little bit - Ali was fabulous! I am looking forward to my next massage which is going to be this coming Thursday. I can see a monthly massage in my future. :-)
Dad and I had a hearing test each after that - they were being offered free by the government and so we definitely wanted to take advantage of that. The test was simple and only took about ten minutes each. It consisted of us having headphones on, listening for sounds and pressing a button when we heard a sound. Sometimes it was hard to decide if we heard the sound or not as they were quite soft at times. But, we both passed with flying colours and don't need to come back for two years now.
Friday was a busy day for me - Dad had a bit of a rest day. :-) I decided that I wanted to get my hair cut before coming back to Canada. I love my hairdresser, Christa - she always does a fabulous job! One time when we were staying at Jennifer's, she and I went to Walmart and I got my hair cut at a place in there. I was so disappointed with the cut I got (and the cost of it), that I swore I wouldn't do that again. My hair is all one length now and I think it looks really good.
That afternoon, I drove to the RSL (returned serviceman's league) club to meet up with the grade one teachers from Kawungan State School. I have been trying to get together with them since we got back from Canada (this was the third attempt to get me there) and I finally made it. There were nine of us there and we had such a great time! Of course, we talked a lot about teaching (the good and the not so good parts) and also talked about kids and grandkids. Fiona also asked me when I was getting back so that they could all start asking me to supply for them. It's so nice to be loved! :-) I really appreciate the way they treat me like one of them.
Saturday was spent grocery shopping, doing laundry, cleaning the house and getting things ready for our dinner guests. Last night we invited Lloyd and Sandy McKay and the missionaries over for dinner. We decided to have what we had last weekend when we had Robyn, Geoff, Diana and Bishop over. We had a different dessert, though. Dad had tried to make butter tarts during the week (not available in Australia), but they didn't taste the same (a crunchy crust as opposed to a flaky crust and a different flavour filling as you can't get corn syrup in the stores here so we used a glucose syrup/water mix which is the same consistency as corn syrup, but not the same flavour). We served the butter tarts with ice-cream and strawberries (Elder Packer and I had yogurt instead of ice-cream: he's lactose intolerant and I wanted to try and keep to my eating plan). Everyone raved about the butter tarts, so Dad was happy about that. :-) We had a nice evening getting to know Sandy and Lloyd better - they sure have lived interesting lives. I am looking forward to our next dinner party (whenever Dad and I are both back in HB).
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