Sunday, 14 January, 2018

Another busy week - Dad is looking forward to our cruise this coming week.  

We had the missionaries and Robyn over for dinner on Monday - always a fun time with them - we made it an easy dinner as we didn't have much in the fridge (since we were leaving Saturday).  

Tuesday was such a fun day for me - I babysat the Louws' girls for the day.  Their parents, Lisa and Ben, have four girls: Scarlett (6), Indiana (5) and twins, Harper and Macy (3 months).  Lisa and Ben wanted some time to spring clean the house and so asked me if I would look after the two older girls (another woman from church went over to look after the twins).  I love looking after these two girls - they are so sweet.  I planned a big day for them - we went to the library, then to McDonald's for a Happy Meal and a play in Playplace. Next, we went home and made brownies and played with my giraffes. Then, down to the park and lastly to the beach. I had Dad come to the beach with us because I wasn't really comfortable at having them at the beach by myself.  It was a really fun day - we are already booked again for Valentines Day. :-)

Scarlett and Indiana (Indi) reading in the library

Eating ice-cream at McDonald's

Playing in McDonald's Playplace

Making brownies 

 Playing with my giraffes

 Playing at the park at the bottom of our street

 At the beach

Wednesday was a get together with my friend, Maureen, from church (and an iced chocolate) and Thursday was meeting up with my teacher friends (and another iced chocolate).  It's always nice to get together with friends over an iced chocolate. :-)

My iced chocolate when I was out with Maureen

Robyn and I went visiting teaching Thursday afternoon - we went over to meet up with a new sister, Sheila Tennant, in our ward.  She and her husband moved into the ward when we were over in Canada.  We spent 2 1/2 hours there - we are all good at yakking, it turns out. :-). I find it's nice to go visiting teaching as it gives us a chance to really get to know our sisters - it just doesn't happen on Sundays.

That evening, Dad and I went to a fireside at the chapel which was broadcast from Brisbane.  An amazing speaker, Brad Wilcox, was over from the States to be a main speaker at FSY (For the Strength of Youth - youth conference).  He spoke on the topic of 'Grace' and was very interesting - he mixed stories, humour and gospel insight.  It was a lovely evening.  

I just HAD to have a facial before we went on our cruise, of course - such a relaxing time with Helen working on making my face smooth.  Dad's fun (NOT) was having our chiropractor manipulate his shoulder which has really been bothering him for a few weeks.

Yesterday, we flew to Brisbane.  Dad is our 'transportation manager' when we go on trips and he did a great job!  He was able to use our Qantas points (and money) to get us a confirmed flight to Brisbane and also a fabulous hotel there at a really low price.  Today, we flew to Auckland on Emirates Airlines.  Again, Dad got an AMAZING deal using our Qantas points.  He was able to get us Business Class tickets which included admittance to the Emirates lounge at the Brisbane airport.  We were treated to a delicious hot breakfast and then were able to relax in their comfortable lounge while we waited for our flight to be ready to board. 

 Emirates Airlines lounge

 Eating a hot breakfast in the lounge

Relaxing in the lounge drinking hot chocolate and reading a magazine

The flight was fabulous - the seats were so comfortable and reclined to lay flat.  The food was so tasty - we had a second breakfast (!) onboard - we chose yogurt and muesli since we had already had our hot breakfast.  When we landed in Auckland, Dad had arranged for us to catch a shuttle to our Airbnb place that we had booked.  We just have a room in a house for three days, but it's on the bottom floor of a four storey house, so it feels really private - the only thing that won't be fun is climbing up to the top floor to use the bathroom - eek!  

 Sitting in Business Class on the Emirates airplane

Breakfast on the Emirates airplane (Business Class)

Hayley's Airbnb place is about half an hour from Auckland's fabulous harbour. So after we put our stuff in the bedroom, we headed off to find out where our ship will be docked on Wednesday.  When we got there, it turned out that there were 2 Princess ships there (the 'Golden' and the 'Sea') - I felt much better knowing exactly where we have to go.

One of the Princess ships docked in Auckland where our ship will be docked on Wednesday

We are so happy to be here in Auckland and are looking forward to spending two days here before we board our cruise on Wednesday.

Sunday, 7 January, 2018

Well, it has been eleven days since we arrived back home - things have been full-on on some days and not so on other days. 

Our flight home from Canada was quite long due to having to have long layovers in Toronto, Vancouver and Brisbane.  We were surprised to be upgraded to first class between Toronto and Vancouver - I can't remember the last time this happened as normally there are so many who upgrade at the gate.  After our four hour wait in Vancouver, Dad got our tickets for the next leg between Vancouver and Sydney.  The gate passenger service agent had assigned Dad to be upgraded to first class and had assigned me to be upgraded to Premium Economy (which is kind of in between Economy and First Class - in Premium Economy, you get a much larger seat which reclines further than Economy and you get nicer meals than Economy).  Dad asked the gate agent to swap it for the other way around.  How thoughtful was that, eh?  Once I got into First Class, I noticed that there was one seat which no one was sitting in.  I asked a flight attendant if she could check if Dad could come up there since no-one was sitting there  (this had happened once before when I was up front and Dad wasn't and they went back and got Dad and brought him up front).  The flight attendant said it was left empty for anyof the pilots who weren't flying the plane to use (there are usually at least four pilots on this flight).  I was a bit frustrated with it all when, by the end of the flight, no-one had used it and Dad could have been up there.  So, next time we fly and there is only one seat up front, it will definitely be Dad's turn to take it. 😃

While we were in Brisbane, we found out that our shuttle driver (who we had been trying to contact since before we left Canada and had had no response from) had sold his business and now we didn't have a ride home from the HB airport.  We contacted Robyn and not only did she offer to pick us up from the airport, but she also brought us some food for dinner (we arrived home at about 6pm on our Wednesday).  We are so grateful for her friendship!

After being home and resting up for two days, it was time for me to get out of the house, so I arranged to go and hang out with Robyn for the day on the Friday (she missed me, she said 😃)  I also had an iced chocolate (how I missed them in Canada) with my friend, Haidi, who has moved to Wales, but was back for a visit - it was lovely to see both of them again.  Everyone was happy to see us at church and, of course, asked us how long we were going to be back for. 😃

 Robyn with her iced chocolate

My lunch and iced chocolate

This week started out well - a lovely facial for me and dinner with Robyn and the missionaries and then another iced chocolate with my teacher friends.   Then, on Tuesday, I came down with a nasty cold - I hate being sick - so, since I was supposed to be babysitting two little girls on the Thursday, I took myself off to bed to rest up for two days.  I felt better by Thursday, but didn't want to pass the germs on to the girls (who have 3 month old twin sisters), so I just took another day off and rested up.  Dad took good care of me making meals for me. 😃

 We had a Canadian/Australian Christmas dinner on New Year's Day with Robyn and the missionaries (Elder Prows and Elder Choi) - a turkey/ham roast dinner

and pavlova for dessert 😄

Friday, I met up with the Relief Society presidency in my ward to discuss this year's Relief Society activities.  Robyn, the Relief Society president, decided we would go with just 6 activities this year to see if we could get more sisters coming out to them.  Fortunately, I had already worked on 12 for the year, so I now have six done for this year and 6 sorted out for next year.  After our meeting, we all went out for lunch which was really nice as we got to chat with each other and catch up with each other about what we had been doing over the holidays since everyone had gone to various places for Christmas.

Jan, Daphne, me and Robyn

On Saturday, I met up with some other teacher friends and had a good long catch-up with them - about 3 hours - and another iced chocolate.  Life sure is hard here in Hervey Bay. 😃😃

My teacher friends from when I taught at Kawungan - Ingrid, Sandy, Luise and me

Dad has spent a lot of time relaxing since he's been home which I have been glad to see.  He has made a few phone calls to set up appointments and mowed the lawn once with our lawn mower, but that's been about the extent of it.  I always like him to relax in January, as once the year starts, he gets quite busy with work.

Our big news since we got back, though, is that we have booked a cruise - we are so excited!  We were hoping to go on a cruise to Fiji this month, but they were all booked up.  We hummed and hahed about going camping (too hot and too many people since it's school vacation), flying to Tasmania and renting a car there and driving around the island for two weeks (many places booked up due to school holidays) or just staying home.  We decided to check out other cruise lines besides 'Princess' who we preferred to sail on.  We really didn't care where we cruised to by this point, we just wanted to go on a cruise.  We found a really good deal online for a balcony cabin on 'Royal Caribbean' which we couldn't pass up.  The cruise starts in Auckland, New Zealand, so we are flying there a few days before the cruise begins to spend some time looking around that city - we stopped there for one day on our cruise down in 2009 and really loved the city, so we thought we would take some time and check it out some more.  We set sail from Auckland on the 17th of January for two weeks - we hit a number of cities in New Zealand and then a few in Australia before landing in Sydney on the 31st of January.  We will fly back to Hervey Bay that day.  We are not sure when Dad will start working again for this year, but the courses usually start in February, so we figure we will have a few days rest before he starts up again.

Sunday, 12 November, 2017

This week was another week of prepping for Dad - he still hasn't heard if the course is going on for sure - the last he heard was that his boss was trying to secure permission to use some company's airplane for this practical course.  Dad reckons the prepping will be valuable in the future even if this course doesn't happen.  He has basically been prepping from 9am to 5pm each day with only a short break for lunch. 

I have been able to go to a few exercise classes this week which I was really happy about - back to Tai Chi, Aquafit and a new class called 'Bands and Movement' which was pretty much as the title suggests: a lot of using the stretch bands and a lot of walking back and forth in the room.  It wasn't exactly exhilarating, but I find that I am more likely to 'get up and move' if I have a class to go to, so I might try this class again when we are back in town on a Friday. 

I also got in a little pampering this week: a facial, a haircut (I got foils put in my hair this time - Christa, my hairdresser, chose to put in three different dyes) and a lunch out (with Robyn).  Robyn also came over for dinner twice this week - once the missionaries joined us.  We have a new missionary in our ward who just arrived this week and it was nice to get to know him and hear the message they shared about the 'Plan of Salvation'.  Elder Prows used some visual aids which his sisters had made for him to use out on his mission - I thought that was really sweet of them to do that for him.

 Just thought you would like to see what my hairdo looks like after Helen has finished her facial on me - she does some massaging of product on my face and then puts on some more product which needs to be left on for a while - during that time, she massages my head and this is what I look like when she is done :-)  I told her that she had outdone herself this time

Showing the colours of my new 'dye job'

My new haircut

 Robyn and I went out for lunch to a cute little cafe called 'Cereal Addiction' which also sells American cereal - I ordered a sumptuous roast beef toastie and Robyn had the taco toastie and then we shared half with each other

 Robyn and her iced chocolate - we both had one - very yummy :-)

Our missionaries - Elder Prows from Utah and Elder Choi from South Korea

Elder Choi has never had pavlova, so we made him one for dessert - he loved it - and so did we! :-)

Last night, I babysat the Louws girls - Scarlett and Indiana - who are 6 and 5.  I have babysat them a few times and they are adorable little girls.  Neither of their grandparents live in Hervey Bay, so I guess I am like a substitute grandma when I am in town.  I brought over books to read to them, a puzzle book to work on with them plus a cookie mix to bake with them - they loved doing all  of the activities and it was fun being with them.  Their parents, Lisa and Ben, just had twin baby girls, Harper and Macy, last month, so I got to get a little cuddle in with them when Lisa and Ben came home - it's so nice to cuddle with little babies. 😄

Sunday, 5 November, 2017

Dad was back to the grind this week prepping for his upcoming B777 practical course.  It's been so long since Dad's been around that airplane, so he is a bit rusty.  He spent most of the days this week working on reviewing the tasks the students have to do and preparing paperwork for the course.  His friend, Niles, who has taught this course many times before, shared some of his resources with Dad which I thought was so nice of him - and Dad was so appreciative of that also. 

While Dad was prepping, I was socializing or rather relaxing and socializing:  Wednesday, I had a facial; Thursday, I had a massage (as did Dad) and Friday, I met up with my friend, Bronwyn, for 'afternoon tea' (of course, I had my 'usual' iced chocolate 😊).  It was great to catch up with Bronwyn again - she and her husband had just returned from a trip to Ireland, Scotland and England, so she and I spent most of the time talking about our experiences in those countries (even though it's been 30 years since we all were in the UK and over 10 years since Dad and I travelled to Ireland, I could still remember a lot of our time there and how much I loved travelling in those countries).  I still want to go back to England again - I love London - and I also would love to see the Lake District and Bath and surrounding area.

Me with yet another iced chocolate - so yummy - Bronwyn doesn't like getting her photo taken so I just get her to take a pic of me when we get together 

We had the missionaries over for dinner on Thursday (I forgot to take photos again 😐) - Elder Evans (from Perth) and Elder Choi (from South Korea) - and, as usual, we had a lovely time chatting with them while we ate and then listening to them as they shared their lesson.  The new thing that they do for dinner appointments now is share a message which they will be sharing with one of their investigators later that week - it's kind of like a practice for them.  This week's message was about the ten commandments - it was a good review.  In my Book of Mormon study this week, it was about the ten commandments as well and one of the questions I had to answer was 'which commandment can you work at this week'.  I chose to work on 'keeping the Sabbath Day 'more' holy, so we discussed a bit about that with the missionaries.

Sunday, 29 October, 2017

What a relaxing week this has been - another week of camping.  This time we decided that we wanted to go and do some sessions in the temple, so we booked ourselves into a campground about 15 minutes away from the temple.  The campground was really nice, although it didn't have a pool which was a little disappointing.  The woman at the campground told me that they couldn't have a pool as the campground was in a flood zone.  We went to a temple session on Tuesday evening, Wednesday morning and Thursday morning.  It was great to see that the sessions were so full.  We love going to the temple - it is so beautiful and peaceful inside and it's always a spiritual experience for us.

Lunch on the way to the first campground - we bought subs and then had a little visitor join us (see below)

 Dad's first meal he cooked on the barbecue - they were yummy 😊

 We took a selfie just before we went into the temple

 Then, a woman came along and asked if she could take a photo of us

We spent our time at the campground reading, playing games, doing puzzles and I did some knitting.  On Friday morning, we pulled up camp and drove to the next camp which was only 45 minutes away (towards Hervey Bay).  We chose this campground because it had a pool and the weather was quite warm.  As it was a weekend, there were a lot of kids in the campground, but they were well behaved and we didn't mind a bit.  We went to church on Sunday to the Nambour ward and were made to feel welcome - we were even asked to give the opening and closing prayers for Sunday School.  It is so awesome that wherever we go, we can go to church and things are pretty much the same. 😊

 Eating lunch outside in the fresh air - fabulous!

We did pretty much the same thing at the second campground as we had at the first campground - other than going swimming at this one - they had a really nice pool and the water was the perfect temperature.  They also had a hot tub which was a nice bonus.  There's an outdoor store here called 'BCF' (it stands for boating, camping, & fishing) and they sent us a $50. gift certificate so we thought it was a good time to buy the little bbq we have been wanting to get for camping.  It's called a Weber Baby Q and Dad used it this week to barbecue hamburgers and hot dogs which were delicious - they taste so much better when they are cooked on the barbie. 😃  Dad and I have loved camping so much in our beautiful new camping trailer that we can't wait to go again - Dad has already chosen our next spot and we do hope to go next week.

 A wild turkey in our campground

 Our set-up in the second campground

A beautiful jacaranda tree - hard to see from the photo, but they have the most beautiful purple blossoms

 Dad cooking on the Weber Baby Q - he loves it!

 In the evenings, we played 'Gin Rummy' and 'Farkle' - the latter game is played with 6 dice and is so much fun

 Another jacaranda tree we saw on the way home from church

Me swimming in the pool at the campground - one of the days, we took our puzzle books and snacks to the pool, took a dip when we got there and then sat on the deck chairs to do puzzles and eat - this is the life 😊

Sunday, 22 October, 2017

Tuesday was another visit to the doctor to have another excision done on one of my freckles that he was not happy with.  He is a very thorough doctor and so if he is the least bit concerned about something on our skin, he will check it out.  On Thursday, he checked out how the stitches looked and he was very pleased with the progress of them.  He also told me that he had received the results back from the biopsy and it was an all clear - yippee!!!

For lunch on Thursday, which actually was our anniversary day, we went out to celebrate Dad's birthday.  There is a restaurant here called 'Hogsbreath' which sends out a coupon for a free meal if it's your birthday, which you can redeem any time during the month of your birthday.  Dad chose a prime rib and pork ribs combo meal - he said it was most delicious.  My chicken guacamole on a bun was okay.  We didn't go out to celebrate our anniversary as there aren't really any amazing restaurants in Hervey Bay, so we just bought a chocolate mud cake and enjoyed every morsel of that. 😃

Dad with his meal at 'Hogsbreath'

Chocolate mudcake - our favourite Aussie dessert next to pavlova

On Friday, Dad worked on modifying some items in the trailer while I worked on sewing up a knitted teddy bear which I had made.  Yesterday was Homemaking at church and the activity was making up Christmas boxes for needy children overseas.  Each of the sisters were to collect at least 6 items to be placed in a box for either a boy or girl aged between 2 and 13.  One of the items was 'something to love' and so I wanted to put the knitted teddy bear in my box as something to love.  I was very pleased with how it turned out - it was so cute - I wish I had taken a pic of it to show you.

Since we were filling up Christmas boxes at Homemaking, I wanted the theme of the refreshments to be Christmas-based.  So, on Friday, Dad and I made up 20 bowls of jello (first layer red and second layer green) and some sugar cookies.  It turned out that the cookies were quite a bit of work - we had to divide one recipe in half and add green gel food colouring to one of the halves.  Then, we had to cut out circles in the dough and then use a Christmas tree cookie cutter to cut out a tree in each circle and then change the trees to the other colour of cookie (see pics below).  They looked fabulous, but it sure took ages to make them.  After they cooled, we spooned melted white chocolate on the edges of the cookies and sprinkled 100s and 1000s over the chocolate - yum!

One of the Christmas cookies - with a green dough tree cut out and laid into the plain dough cookie

Yesterday, Dad and I met up with Robyn before Homemaking to put together the rest of the refreshments - we made a Christmas tree shape with grapes and different kinds of cheese (I love Pinterest - I get so many great ideas on there).   Only seven ladies showed up for Homemaking, but we had a really good time together.  We ended up assembling 29 Christmas boxes - some ladies, who were not able to make the meeting, gave us items beforehand to use to fill boxes for them.  We were really pleased with that effort.  We enjoyed our time after the meeting, eating food and chatting and getting to know each other better.

 Sandra and I filling Christmas boxes

All the Christmas boxes we assembled

Christmas trees made out of cheese and grapes (with a celery stick for the trunk and a cherry tomato for the ornament on top of the tree and little sprigs of rosemary)

The red and green jello (we added whipped cream on top)

 A plate full of cookies

Me eating jello and whipped cream (it was yummy!)

Sunday, 15 October, 2017

This week has been so relaxing - we went camping!  We had chosen one city to go to which was quite a ways from Hervey Bay, but since a ton of rain was predicted, we decided to stay close to home in case we got flooded out (we didn't!).  We ended up choosing to go to a little town called Bargara which is about 90 minutes north of Hervey Bay.  It was a fabulous week! 😌

There are two campgrounds in Bargara and both received favourable reviews on TripAdvisor, but we chose this one called 'Absolute Oceanfront' as it was smaller and quieter than the other one.  The campground is right on the ocean, as the name suggests, but there was no beach there, just a bunch of very large rocks.  Our campsite was 4 sites back from the water's edge - it was lovely going to sleep to the sound of the surf.

We spent our days reading, doing puzzles, knitting (me), dipping in the pool and playing games.  We were planning on doing some geocaching, but by the time we were ready to go, the rain had started and it didn't give up enough for us to head out.  We even  had to take down the trailer in the rain which was fun (not!).  The trailer canvas held up and we didn't get any rain coming inside the trailer.

Dad and I really enjoyed being out in the fresh air every day and just doing not much of anything.  We love our camping trailer and are looking forward to many more trips with it.

View from our camping trailer

View with the camping trailer in the pic

Dad ready to eat our first meal on this camping trip - hot dogs, salads and baked beans

Me enjoying breakfast in the fresh air

Dad working on a crossword puzzle

Camping in the rain - our flip flops and mat which were outside the trailer ended up floating away - fortunately, with the help of a flashlight, we found them not far away - we just had to laugh 😃