Today was another rainy day - we just couldn't believe it - we had the use of Julianne's car again and we couldn't get any lovely pictures of a blue sky. :-( Julianne said it was raining (tears) because they were sad that we were leaving Hervey Bay for eight weeks. :-) After dropping off Julianne at work, we went to a store to buy her a thank you card for allowing us to use her car (and her tv and dvd player) while we have been in Hervey Bay. While we were there, we found a cute card for Colin for his birthday (it has ladybugs on it and he likes them) and we also found a Aussie t-shirt for Alexander - it's so adorable - it has kangaroos all over it with funny captions under each one (Mike says I am not allowed to say anymore as I will be giving away the secret :-)
After that, we went to a real estate agent who worked close to there. He has a house listed that we wanted to check out - it's in a little town about 10 minutes from Hervey Bay called Booral and we would love to live there cuz it's country living, but close to the amenities of the city. We absolutely loved the house, but it's still a bit out of our price range. The house was built by the owner's husband (he passed away two years ago) and it is a truly lovely house with all the extras that you would expect from a builder building his own home. The ceilings are really high (9 to 10 feet), there are three bedrooms plus an office (which could be used for another bedroom), a huge lounge room with vaulted ceilings, a kitchen with TONS of cupboards, a dining room, a family room, and a laundry room. Each of the three bedrooms has a walk-in closet and the master bedroom has an ensuite. The verandah goes all the way around the outside of the house, there is a swimming pool, and a HUGE three bay shed which also has a full bathroom and an office included in it. The house sits on 1.25 acres of land and most of the houses out there are on similar parcels of land. The cool thing is that kangaroos are often seen on the property (and all around Booral, actually - we even saw some last time we were out there to visit friends). We told the real estate agent that we can't afford to buy it right now, but if it's still available when the exchange rate is better, we would love to put in an offer on it.
When we got back to town after seeing this beautiful house, we came home to hang up the laundry (I had put a load in the washing machine first thing in the morning) and to have some lunch. We spent the afternoon playing more card games and answering emails and trying to get ourselves listed for the flights to Brisbane and Sydney on Thursday. Mike spent about 13 minutes on hold with Staff Travel using our cell phone which is very expensive to call from. I suggested that we go out and try to use a payphone to make the call as I thought it would only cost 50 cents to make the call and then it wouldn't matter how long we were on hold. As it turned out, when we made the call on the pay phone, it was long distance and so the phone hung up on us after about one minute. After a lot more agonizing about what to do, we decided to go out to the airport (about ten minutes away) to try and talk with someone at Qantas about what to do. As it turned out, the only one in the whole airport was the guy at the Snack Bar - when there are not planes expected, he is the only one there. On the drive back to town, Mike remembered that we could use our long distance phone card that we use to call back to Canada. Instead of paying 88 cents a minute on the cell phone, we only had to pay 10 cents a minute on the phone card. It still took him 30 minutes to get through - they always take so long at Staff Travel. Anyway, he finally got us booked onto the flights and it looks like we will have no trouble flying stand-by. We should be able to get back to Ruth's (the lady we stay with in Sydney) by about 5pm. When we got back home, I called her to tell her that we were booked on the flight on Thursday, and she is looking forward to us coming back to stay with her for a week.
About 3pm we had to leave as we had to stop by the 'Cheesecake Shop' before we picked up Julianne. We have put gas in her car every time we used it (more than we used), but I still wanted to do something for her to say thank you to her for letting us use her car so much while we have been here. I (sneakily) brought up the subject of the shop as we passed by it on the way to her work saying how much we loved pavlovas from there and had she ever gone in there - and if so, what was her favourite. She told us that she loved their caramel mud cakes and so we bought her a half one on the way to pick her up. When she dropped us off at home, we gave her the cake and she was very surprised and very pleased. She actually said that she would serve it tomorrow night for dessert and then asked us to come to dinner at their place tomorrow. She has the day off work and will put a roast in the oven, she said - and then have the mud cake for dessert so that we can see why she loves it so much! We are looking forward to going over there for such a lovely meal - and hanging out with them will be fun, too.
As we had given Julianne back her tv and dvd player today, we didn't have the tv to watch tonight and so we spent the evening playing cribbage and answering emails. I am slowly getting caught up on answering the emails that are in my Inbox. I try to answer them within a week - I am doing pretty well at that so far. We will only have one more entry in this blog for eight weeks. We will write tomorrow night and that will be our last night in Hervey Bay until we come back here in February. We are a little sad that we are going to be leaving this beautiful place - we really love it here - but, it will be nice to see our family and friends in Canada (and knowing that we will be coming back here will give us something to look forward to). :-)
Monday, November 30, 2009
Today we had the use of Julianne's car again as we wanted to spend a lot of the day driving around Hervey Bay to take pictures of our lovely little town. Would you believe it! It was raining - and I don't mean just a little bit - it poured down - and for most of the morning. So, we decided that it wasn't worth going out and taking pictures of grey skies and grey ocean water (I mean, we HAVE been telling you that we've had blue skies all along - which we have - so we couldn't very well put up pics of grey skies, now could we?). :-)
We spent the morning playing card games and doing laundry. Christine, our landlady came over to tell us that her husband was watching a storm just south of us and told us that we should be careful if we were planning on going out in our car (there was a high wind warning). We ended up talking with her for quite a while. The storm/high winds never did reach us here in Hervey Bay, but apparently it did hit in a small town not far from here - it actually uprooted a greenhouse of a friend of Christine's.
We called Terri-Ann this morning to ask her if she could get on Skype so that we could talk with her and the boys. She wasn't sure if she could get on as James had connected us before and he wasn't home at the time. She was able to figure it out and we were soon talking to her and 'our boys'. It is so much fun talking with Colin and Caleb while watching their little faces. Colin loves to talk and Caleb likes to copy what Colin says and does - it's adorable. We could see Terri-Ann enjoying the boys talking with us. Colin blew us lots of kisses and then ran out of them, so I told him to make sure he has more for us when we get back to Canada. :-) Unfortunately, because of the bad weather, the internet cut out before we actually had a chance to talk with Terri-Ann. We phoned her to tell her what had happened - we didn't stay on long as it costs $2. a minute to call from our cell phone to Canada and she was also trying to put the boys to bed.
Terri-Ann told us that Mike's mom had called her to ask if we were going to be stopping in Vancouver on the way back to Toronto. So, after he was finished talking with Terri-Ann, he called his mom to fill her in on our plans. They were only able to talk for a few minutes due to the cost of calling on his cell. He reminded his mom of the web address of our blog so that she could read what we were doing on a daily basis here in Hervey Bay.
After lunch, we finally decided that we would go for a drive as we were experiencing 'cabin fever'. We ended up taking our dvds back to the library, going to the post office to get a stamp, looking for a water resistant hat for Mike to wear when he goes swimming in the ocean (couldn't find one), going for an ice-cream (chocolate dipped) at Hungry Jack's, and grocery shopping (we only needed milk today as we have enough at the granny flat to do us until we leave on Thursday - however, we also bought a 'mud cake' - chocolate cake - and some passionfruit pop). :-)
Julianne dropped us off at home and we ran into Rob Woodcott who is a member of the church. We chatted a little to him about a piece of property that is for sale on his street (he and Rosalea live in a town called Booral which is about 15 minutes from Hervey Bay - out in the country). An old woman is selling her two blocks of land - one with a house on it and the other with nothing on it - and we were wondering if she would sell just the house on the one block of land. After talking with him about wanting to wait until we buy, he suggested that we invest in gold and silver as a way to make up the difference between what we have to put down on the house and the cost of the house, so that we don't have to take out a mortgage. Neither Mike nor I are interested in purchasing gold and silver - we are not the risk taking kind when it comes to our money.
After visiting with Rob, we decided that we wanted to go through our papers that we had collected over the time we have been here - things like tourist information and store flyers and maps. After deciding which ones we are going to keep, we put them in a bag and put them in the storage bin that we have purchased which we are leaving here while we are in Canada. We added two sheet sets to the bin which we have purchased for beds for when we come back to Hervey Bay and have to find a place to rent (in case this granny flat is already rented out). We will also put cans of food in there that we don't use before we go - that way we will have something to eat when we get back.
After dinner, we watched one of our favourite shows 'Big Bang Theory' and, as usual, we laughed our heads off. That show is so funny - well, at least to us it is - and it's one of the few that we don't like to miss watching. The rest of the evening we spent completing our cruise blog (YAY, it's finally done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). We are going to do one more proofread of it before we send out the link to everyone. It has taken a LOT of time to finish it, but I think it has been worth the time and effort.
We spent the morning playing card games and doing laundry. Christine, our landlady came over to tell us that her husband was watching a storm just south of us and told us that we should be careful if we were planning on going out in our car (there was a high wind warning). We ended up talking with her for quite a while. The storm/high winds never did reach us here in Hervey Bay, but apparently it did hit in a small town not far from here - it actually uprooted a greenhouse of a friend of Christine's.
We called Terri-Ann this morning to ask her if she could get on Skype so that we could talk with her and the boys. She wasn't sure if she could get on as James had connected us before and he wasn't home at the time. She was able to figure it out and we were soon talking to her and 'our boys'. It is so much fun talking with Colin and Caleb while watching their little faces. Colin loves to talk and Caleb likes to copy what Colin says and does - it's adorable. We could see Terri-Ann enjoying the boys talking with us. Colin blew us lots of kisses and then ran out of them, so I told him to make sure he has more for us when we get back to Canada. :-) Unfortunately, because of the bad weather, the internet cut out before we actually had a chance to talk with Terri-Ann. We phoned her to tell her what had happened - we didn't stay on long as it costs $2. a minute to call from our cell phone to Canada and she was also trying to put the boys to bed.
Terri-Ann told us that Mike's mom had called her to ask if we were going to be stopping in Vancouver on the way back to Toronto. So, after he was finished talking with Terri-Ann, he called his mom to fill her in on our plans. They were only able to talk for a few minutes due to the cost of calling on his cell. He reminded his mom of the web address of our blog so that she could read what we were doing on a daily basis here in Hervey Bay.
After lunch, we finally decided that we would go for a drive as we were experiencing 'cabin fever'. We ended up taking our dvds back to the library, going to the post office to get a stamp, looking for a water resistant hat for Mike to wear when he goes swimming in the ocean (couldn't find one), going for an ice-cream (chocolate dipped) at Hungry Jack's, and grocery shopping (we only needed milk today as we have enough at the granny flat to do us until we leave on Thursday - however, we also bought a 'mud cake' - chocolate cake - and some passionfruit pop). :-)
Julianne dropped us off at home and we ran into Rob Woodcott who is a member of the church. We chatted a little to him about a piece of property that is for sale on his street (he and Rosalea live in a town called Booral which is about 15 minutes from Hervey Bay - out in the country). An old woman is selling her two blocks of land - one with a house on it and the other with nothing on it - and we were wondering if she would sell just the house on the one block of land. After talking with him about wanting to wait until we buy, he suggested that we invest in gold and silver as a way to make up the difference between what we have to put down on the house and the cost of the house, so that we don't have to take out a mortgage. Neither Mike nor I are interested in purchasing gold and silver - we are not the risk taking kind when it comes to our money.
After visiting with Rob, we decided that we wanted to go through our papers that we had collected over the time we have been here - things like tourist information and store flyers and maps. After deciding which ones we are going to keep, we put them in a bag and put them in the storage bin that we have purchased which we are leaving here while we are in Canada. We added two sheet sets to the bin which we have purchased for beds for when we come back to Hervey Bay and have to find a place to rent (in case this granny flat is already rented out). We will also put cans of food in there that we don't use before we go - that way we will have something to eat when we get back.
After dinner, we watched one of our favourite shows 'Big Bang Theory' and, as usual, we laughed our heads off. That show is so funny - well, at least to us it is - and it's one of the few that we don't like to miss watching. The rest of the evening we spent completing our cruise blog (YAY, it's finally done!!!!!!!!!!!!!!). We are going to do one more proofread of it before we send out the link to everyone. It has taken a LOT of time to finish it, but I think it has been worth the time and effort.
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Today was our last day at church in Hervey Bay for two months - a bit of a sad day, but everyone we said 'bye' to said they looked forward to our coming back, so that made us feel good. The sacrament meeting talks were good today - they focused on the three fold mission of the church: proclaim the gospel (Elder Hurst spoke about missionary work and the importance of speaking up about the church to others), redeem the dead (Sister Pierce spoke about the importance of doing genealogy work and going to the Temple), and perfect the saints (Rob Woodcott spoke about the importance of doing all that we should be doing to become stronger in the gospel, like reading the scriptures, saying prayers, going to Sacrament, etc.). The speakers were really good and so the meeting went really fast.
During Sunday School, Trudy taught about how the Lord continues to guide the Church through revelation to latter-day prophets. She also talked about how Church correlation (everyone in the world focusing on the same thing and each auxiliary working together) was initiated and continues to operate today by revelation from the Lord to His prophets, that the purpose of Church correlation is to preserve “the right way of God” and ultimately it is intended to help accomplish the mission of the Church, which is to invite all people to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him”. The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve oversee correlation in the Church. Correlation includes: a. Maintaining purity of doctrine, b. Emphasizing the importance of the family and the home, c. Placing all the work of the Church under priesthood direction, d. Establishing proper relationships among the organizations of the Church, e. Achieving unity and order in the Church, f. Ensuring simplicity of Church programs and materials. Elder Bruce R. McConkie of the Quorum of the Twelve said that correlation is a process “in which we take all the programs of the Church, bring them to one focal point, wrap them in one package, operate them as one program, involve all members of the Church in the operation—and do it all under priesthood direction”. It is always interesting that even though we have been members of the church for such a long time, we are continually learning.
Relief Society and Priesthood was joint today as it is the fifth Sunday of the month. We watched a dvd of a talk given to Young Single Adults by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf that our branch president thought was relevant to all of us. The focus was on the importance of remembering who you are - that you are a daughter or son of God and that you are important. He also talked about dating (towards the young people in the church) and the importance of dating a variety of people so that you can find out the qualities you desire in a mate. As well he talked about continuing to strengthen your testimony by following what the leaders in the church have told us. Again it was so interesting to watch and listen to and before we knew it, it was over. We said good-bye to the friends we have made here so far and told them we would be back in February.
When we got home from church, we ate lunch and then sat down and watched the movie 'Supersize Me'. Everyone who has seen this movie has told us we would be grossed out by it, but we really weren't. To us, the movie seemed to be blaming McDonald's for the obesity and health problems that people in America (and other countries) have since the introduction of fast food. It talked about how McDonald's (and other fast food and junk food companies) spend billions of dollars on advertizing to get the kids to buy their products. They talked about how McDonald's builds Play Places to get the kids to come in there to play and then expecting food to be bought. I feel that if the kids are getting fat because of going to McDonald's, perhaps the parents shouldn't be taking them in there, or perhaps it should be a treat for them to go (like us taking Colin twice a month for a hamburger and fries with ketchup and an orange drink). Like everything else in life, self-control and moderation is the key - people need to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame others for their lack of self-control.
We were invited out to dinner tonight to Leanne and Bill Rostedt's home. They had invited a whole bunch of us over for an evening of food, fun and fellowship: President Brown and his wife, Diana, Elder Cox and Elder Hurst, Leanne's sister, Amanda and daughter, Talia, Kym and her sons, John and Ashley, their own four sons, Caleb, Reece, Baden and Ethan and a friend, Sam. We all sat around their kitchen/dining room/famly room to eat (meatballs, rice, vegetables, cake and custard) - very yummy fixings. After dinner, we chatted for a while and then we played Pictionary. We got into three teams of three and took turns drawing for our teams to get our team to say the word that Leanne had written on a piece of paper. Mike, Kym and I were on the same team. Some of the words were hard to draw/get like 'Alice Springs' and 'stupendous', but some of them we did well in getting like 'red pencil' (I got that one and drew a pencil and then to get red I drew a Canadian flag and pointed to the part of the flag that was red and Mike got it). The three of us laughed so hard as we tried to draw and get the others to try and say what the word was. It was a lot of fun.
Kym drove us home about 8:30pm (Leanne goes to bed very early as she gets up to start her day at 4:30am) and so we wanted to get out of there early. When we got home, Mike uploaded another web album to the blog with photos of the church Christmas party on it. If you want to see the captions, you have to click on the slideshow and you will see what I have written underneath each picture.
After that, we watched a great movie that we have seen before, but it was so long ago that we remembered very little of it. It's called 'Firewall' with Harrison Ford and if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you go out and rent it. It's our kind of movie - lots of action and no romance. :-) It's basically about a bank computer programmer whose family was kidnapped by a team who wanted him to transfer millions of dollars from wealthy bank clients into an offshore account. Well worth the money of a rental!
During Sunday School, Trudy taught about how the Lord continues to guide the Church through revelation to latter-day prophets. She also talked about how Church correlation (everyone in the world focusing on the same thing and each auxiliary working together) was initiated and continues to operate today by revelation from the Lord to His prophets, that the purpose of Church correlation is to preserve “the right way of God” and ultimately it is intended to help accomplish the mission of the Church, which is to invite all people to “come unto Christ, and be perfected in him”. The First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve oversee correlation in the Church. Correlation includes: a. Maintaining purity of doctrine, b. Emphasizing the importance of the family and the home, c. Placing all the work of the Church under priesthood direction, d. Establishing proper relationships among the organizations of the Church, e. Achieving unity and order in the Church, f. Ensuring simplicity of Church programs and materials. Elder Bruce R. McConkie of the Quorum of the Twelve said that correlation is a process “in which we take all the programs of the Church, bring them to one focal point, wrap them in one package, operate them as one program, involve all members of the Church in the operation—and do it all under priesthood direction”. It is always interesting that even though we have been members of the church for such a long time, we are continually learning.
Relief Society and Priesthood was joint today as it is the fifth Sunday of the month. We watched a dvd of a talk given to Young Single Adults by President Dieter F. Uchtdorf that our branch president thought was relevant to all of us. The focus was on the importance of remembering who you are - that you are a daughter or son of God and that you are important. He also talked about dating (towards the young people in the church) and the importance of dating a variety of people so that you can find out the qualities you desire in a mate. As well he talked about continuing to strengthen your testimony by following what the leaders in the church have told us. Again it was so interesting to watch and listen to and before we knew it, it was over. We said good-bye to the friends we have made here so far and told them we would be back in February.
When we got home from church, we ate lunch and then sat down and watched the movie 'Supersize Me'. Everyone who has seen this movie has told us we would be grossed out by it, but we really weren't. To us, the movie seemed to be blaming McDonald's for the obesity and health problems that people in America (and other countries) have since the introduction of fast food. It talked about how McDonald's (and other fast food and junk food companies) spend billions of dollars on advertizing to get the kids to buy their products. They talked about how McDonald's builds Play Places to get the kids to come in there to play and then expecting food to be bought. I feel that if the kids are getting fat because of going to McDonald's, perhaps the parents shouldn't be taking them in there, or perhaps it should be a treat for them to go (like us taking Colin twice a month for a hamburger and fries with ketchup and an orange drink). Like everything else in life, self-control and moderation is the key - people need to take responsibility for their own actions and not blame others for their lack of self-control.
We were invited out to dinner tonight to Leanne and Bill Rostedt's home. They had invited a whole bunch of us over for an evening of food, fun and fellowship: President Brown and his wife, Diana, Elder Cox and Elder Hurst, Leanne's sister, Amanda and daughter, Talia, Kym and her sons, John and Ashley, their own four sons, Caleb, Reece, Baden and Ethan and a friend, Sam. We all sat around their kitchen/dining room/famly room to eat (meatballs, rice, vegetables, cake and custard) - very yummy fixings. After dinner, we chatted for a while and then we played Pictionary. We got into three teams of three and took turns drawing for our teams to get our team to say the word that Leanne had written on a piece of paper. Mike, Kym and I were on the same team. Some of the words were hard to draw/get like 'Alice Springs' and 'stupendous', but some of them we did well in getting like 'red pencil' (I got that one and drew a pencil and then to get red I drew a Canadian flag and pointed to the part of the flag that was red and Mike got it). The three of us laughed so hard as we tried to draw and get the others to try and say what the word was. It was a lot of fun.
Kym drove us home about 8:30pm (Leanne goes to bed very early as she gets up to start her day at 4:30am) and so we wanted to get out of there early. When we got home, Mike uploaded another web album to the blog with photos of the church Christmas party on it. If you want to see the captions, you have to click on the slideshow and you will see what I have written underneath each picture.
After that, we watched a great movie that we have seen before, but it was so long ago that we remembered very little of it. It's called 'Firewall' with Harrison Ford and if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you go out and rent it. It's our kind of movie - lots of action and no romance. :-) It's basically about a bank computer programmer whose family was kidnapped by a team who wanted him to transfer millions of dollars from wealthy bank clients into an offshore account. Well worth the money of a rental!
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Since we had stayed up so late last night, we actually slept in this morning and it was very nice. After breakfast, we spent the morning cleaning (oh joy, oh bliss). First, we started with the kitchen floor - I wasn't sure when the last time it had had a proper cleaning and so it got done three times: once with soap, a rinse with plain water and then again with vinegar - it sure looks clean now! :-) After that, it was time to clean the bathroom (NOT one of my favourite jobs) including the floor with vinegar. We don't have a vacuum so I couldn't do the carpets, but the tile floors are sparkling clean. :-) I was sweating by the time I was done the cleaning and so I sat down on the living room floor under the fan to cool off. Even though it gets hot here, we find that the fans are effective enough to cool the place down. Sometimes we do have to put it on 3 (high) for a little to get it cooled down fast if we are just coming in from outside and they haven't been on, but hopefully that means that we won't have to use the air conditioner a lot once we buy a house. I prefer fresh air (in a house and in a car) much better than air con (as they call it here).
After that, we played a few games of cards - we leave them on our kitchen table as we are always sitting down for a game or two - and then we had lunch. After lunch, we played some more games and then got ready to go to the church Christmas party. Everyone was asked to bring something for it (an entree or a salad) and so I decided to bring 'Char's Meal' which is pasta with spaghetti sauce (this time with hamburger) and shredded cheese melted on top. It was always a favourite with the girls when they lived at home and it's easy to make, so I figured that it was a good choice.
Christine and Chris asked us if we would go early to the chapel to help set up for the party and we were happy to do that. Since they don't have a gym yet as part of their building, they just have regular chairs to sit on during church time and so we took all of the hard plastic ones and stacked them and just left the nice soft cushy ones around the outside of the room. After that, we set up some tables outside which the food would go on and then decorated the tables and put up garlands and ornaments around the courtyard. If you have already looked at the slideshow of the chapel, you would have noticed that there is a courtyard of grass in the middle of all the buildings and that there are seats (benches) around the outside of the courtyard. This is where we held the eating part of the party.
I couldn't believe how much food had been brought by everyone (there were about 80 people there) and yet, by the time we had all finished eating, there was very little food left. Perhaps being out in the fresh air gave everyone a good appetite. It was lovely being able to hold a Christmas party outside and we were all wearing our shorts and sandals, too - wouldn't be able to do that in Canada, eh? :-) After dinner, Santa came and gave the primary children all a gift (each parent had been asked to provide a $5. gift for their child to be put into Santa's sack) and a loot bag. Then, since there were loot bags left over, the youth were asked to come up to see Santa - it didn't take long for them to get there once they realized they were getting a bag of goodies. :-)
After dessert (cupcakes and pineapple with ice-cream), we all went into the chapel where a program was presented. The children played a game of 'Bob and Statue' which they really loved playing. Basically it's like the game of Statue where you move around to the music and then have to stand still like a statue when the music stops - the difference between that game and the 'Bob and Statue' game is that when the music stops the first time, you have to bob (crouch down and be still) and the next time the music stops, you have to stand still like a statue. The game continues like that alternating between bobbing and being a statue and you have to remember which one you have to do when the music stops. The Relief Society President is also a music teacher at a primary school and so she had brought some castanets along for the children to use while they sang another song - that was fun for the children as well.
After that, we sang carols amidst readings from the Bible (Luke 2) which talked about Jesus being born. There were also some musical presentations - a trio (the R.S. president's sister and two sons), a quartet (the trio plus Trudy - another lady in our branch) and a two solos (by one of the R.S. President's sons). It was a lovely evening and I was very pleased at how many people I knew that were there even though we have only been here for three weeks. The party started at 5pm and we were finished cleaning up and home by 8pm. Mike took some photos of the party and he will put them into a slideshow tomorrow for you guys.
After that, we played a few games of cards - we leave them on our kitchen table as we are always sitting down for a game or two - and then we had lunch. After lunch, we played some more games and then got ready to go to the church Christmas party. Everyone was asked to bring something for it (an entree or a salad) and so I decided to bring 'Char's Meal' which is pasta with spaghetti sauce (this time with hamburger) and shredded cheese melted on top. It was always a favourite with the girls when they lived at home and it's easy to make, so I figured that it was a good choice.
Christine and Chris asked us if we would go early to the chapel to help set up for the party and we were happy to do that. Since they don't have a gym yet as part of their building, they just have regular chairs to sit on during church time and so we took all of the hard plastic ones and stacked them and just left the nice soft cushy ones around the outside of the room. After that, we set up some tables outside which the food would go on and then decorated the tables and put up garlands and ornaments around the courtyard. If you have already looked at the slideshow of the chapel, you would have noticed that there is a courtyard of grass in the middle of all the buildings and that there are seats (benches) around the outside of the courtyard. This is where we held the eating part of the party.
I couldn't believe how much food had been brought by everyone (there were about 80 people there) and yet, by the time we had all finished eating, there was very little food left. Perhaps being out in the fresh air gave everyone a good appetite. It was lovely being able to hold a Christmas party outside and we were all wearing our shorts and sandals, too - wouldn't be able to do that in Canada, eh? :-) After dinner, Santa came and gave the primary children all a gift (each parent had been asked to provide a $5. gift for their child to be put into Santa's sack) and a loot bag. Then, since there were loot bags left over, the youth were asked to come up to see Santa - it didn't take long for them to get there once they realized they were getting a bag of goodies. :-)
After dessert (cupcakes and pineapple with ice-cream), we all went into the chapel where a program was presented. The children played a game of 'Bob and Statue' which they really loved playing. Basically it's like the game of Statue where you move around to the music and then have to stand still like a statue when the music stops - the difference between that game and the 'Bob and Statue' game is that when the music stops the first time, you have to bob (crouch down and be still) and the next time the music stops, you have to stand still like a statue. The game continues like that alternating between bobbing and being a statue and you have to remember which one you have to do when the music stops. The Relief Society President is also a music teacher at a primary school and so she had brought some castanets along for the children to use while they sang another song - that was fun for the children as well.
After that, we sang carols amidst readings from the Bible (Luke 2) which talked about Jesus being born. There were also some musical presentations - a trio (the R.S. president's sister and two sons), a quartet (the trio plus Trudy - another lady in our branch) and a two solos (by one of the R.S. President's sons). It was a lovely evening and I was very pleased at how many people I knew that were there even though we have only been here for three weeks. The party started at 5pm and we were finished cleaning up and home by 8pm. Mike took some photos of the party and he will put them into a slideshow tomorrow for you guys.
Friday, November 27, 2009
We were lucky enough to be able to have Julianne's car for the day again today. After dropping her off at her work, we went to Crazy Clark's (like a discount store) to look for a large storage bin to leave our stuff in here when we go back to Canada. We decided to look all around the store so that we knew what we could purchase there for when we get back and have to buy things for ourselves for wherever we end up living. There are a lot of items there that are at a good price and don't need to be great quality (like kitchen utensils, etc.). We didn't find a good deal on bins, so we next went to Big W to look for one. We didn't find anything useful there either, so we next went to Coles and the butcher shop to buy our twice weekly groceries. I really enjoy going to this butcher shop - we only needed a little bit of hamburger for a couple of meals we are having and so it was great to be able to say to the woman at the shop just how much we needed and that we needed it in two lots. The woman who served us had served us last week and remembered that we were from Canada - when we told her we were going back, there but weren't looking forward to the cold, she said that she would love to change places with us. She loves the cold, she told us - she used to live in Canberra and that place is cold in the winter.
We took a few more pictures of Hervey Bay as we were driving around - we still have more to get and are hoping to be able to do that on Monday if we can borrow Julianne's car again. We would like to take a few photos of the places that we talk about in our blog, plus a few of things that we find interesting here (like an empty lot of land right in the middle of a street with houses built all around it). Once we get them all taken, we will put them in a little slideshow on the side of the blog.
After bringing home the groceries and having lunch (we had yummy meat pies and chips from the corner store), we decided to go out to Sam's Warehouse to look for a bin and we finally found a really good one. It's large and really solidly made - we will put all of our stuff here that we don't need to take with us (like sheet sets, papers, kitchen/laundry soap, etc.) and leave it with one of our friends until we get back here.
By the time we were finished with all that running around it was about 2pm and so we hurried and got into our togs (bathing suits), lathered ourselves with sunscreen and took off for the beach. We parked at Julianne's work and went down to the boardwalk. We decided to walk for a bit along the boardwalk until we could find a better place to swim. The boardwalk is a lovely place to walk along - the city has built it so that both pedestrians and cyclists can use it and it goes on forever - it's so nice to walk along it enjoying the view of the ocean and the lovely sea breeze that comes off it.
We walked for about 15 minutes and then found the perfect place to swim - there were also other people swimming there which makes me feel better about going out in the water. We swam there for about 30 minutes and it was so wonderful. The water close to the shore was so warm, it was like bath water temperature. It was so easy to just enjoy being there and relaxing and getting cooled off. There aren't any big waves here in Hervey Bay, but there were a few little ones today and we laughed as they came in and at times bowled us over (well mostly me :-) It was hard to get out when it was time to go - and it was cold walking up to get our towels, too (I know you all feel bad for us about that
When we got home, we played a lot of card games - we really like playing cribbage (loser and winner) and we seem to take turns winning and losing (although Mike says he lets me win a lot). :-) We did watch a little tv - we watched a show called 'Wire in the Blood' - it's a cop show - we had borrowed a dvd from the library of the same show and we liked it so much that when we saw that it was on tv, we decided to give it another go to see if we liked it as much (and we did).
Some time during the evening, Mike went outside to take the swimsuits down off the line and he found that a frog was sitting on the ledge outside our patio door. I looked at the frog and he was so cute - so nice and green and smooth and he was not moving a muscle - I had to check to see if he was real after the trick that Christine played on us with the snake. When I looked at him closely, I could see movement in his throat area so I knew he was real. We watched him for quite a while wondering if he was going to see and eat the spider that was close by, but he made no move to do anything. The spider was big and ugly and so Mike killed it and still the frog paid no attention to it. Mike took a few photos of the frog and the spider and then came inside. After a while, I checked to see if the frog was still there and now there was a brown toad sitting near him and this toad was eating the spider. Mike went outside and took a few photos of the frog and the toad together (they are at the end of this blog).
I spent the rest of the night emailing - I had a few to catch up on and am still working on that - Mike watched tv, played a few games of solitaire and did a few puzzles in a puzzle book that we bought for him. I couldn't believe it when I looked at the clock after finishing up the emails and saw that it was 1am. I didn't even feel tired which was strange as I had been tired during the afternoon since we had to wake up early to be ready for Julianne. I was happy to be able to get an email sent to my teacher friends at school to let them know how things were going over here. Some of them were obviously on the computer when I sent it as not long after that, I received four emails back. I am missed they tell me and they asked me to come and see them when I come back to Canada.
Spider (on the left) and frog on the ledge outside our patio door.
Ugly brown toad and pretty green frog on the ledge outside our patio door.
Thursday, November 26, 2009
I had a hard time getting to sleep last night - and, would you believe it, ended up waking up at 10:40am this morning. I couldn't believe it when I called out to Mike to ask him the time (there is no clock in our bedroom) and he told me how late it was. He had woken up about 90 minutes before me and went on the computer while he waited for me to wake up. I put on a load of laundry as soon as I got up as I had to do two loads today and they had to get up asap on the line. After that, I needed to get something to eat and since it was so late, we ended up having brunch instead of breakfast and lunch.
While we were eating, Christine (our landlady) called her dog, Josie, but I thought she said 'Sue', so I answered her. She told me to be really quiet as there was a snake in the yard and she was going to kill it. My heart sank into my feet, I think. I hate snakes with a passion - I once walked ten feet around a DEAD snake. Mike and I continued to eat our brunch, and a little while later, Christine yelled to us that the snake was on our patio. I freaked some more. I quickly held tight to the screen door which was closed, but doesn't latch. Then, I closed the glass door to the patio and stood staring at the snake (and was really scared). Mike told me he would watch it while I finished my breakfast, although I was no longer hungry by this time. Mike said he was amazed at how still the snake was and I was amazed at how fat it was since it was so short.
Christine was talking with her neighbour who was in her yard and I couldn't understand why she wasn't coming back to try and kill the snake. I wanted to yell at her to hurry, but she had told me to be quiet so I thought that I wasn't allowed to make any noise in case it frightened the snake away and she wouldn't know where it was to kill it. Mike turned around from looking at the snake and was talking to me and when he turned back to look at the snake, it was gone. We were both a little worried at this point. I heard noise and Mike looked out the window and Christine was talking with the missionaries and she had the snake in her hand. All of a sudden, I realized that the snake was fake - I told Mike that I was going to have to hurt Christine. :-)
It turned out that she had seen in the snake somewhere on her property and had called her neighbour over to help her kill it (shhh, they're not supposed to kill them so we're not telling anybody here that she was going to do that :-) Anyway, she and the neighbour have a system where the neighbour uses a rake to hold the snake still and Christine then uses a shovel to cut it in half. When she tried to cut this snake, a 'bunch of eggs' fell out (stuffing). She thought that we had put it there, so she thought she would throw it on our patio and see how we would react. She figured that if we had put it there, we would laugh and she would know that it had been us. I told her then that I was going to kill her. :-) We all got a good laugh about it afterwards, but even thinking about it now gives me the heebie jeebies.
After we all settled down from that 'adventure', the missionaries came inside and chatted with us for about an hour. Elder Coy is from Adelaide, Australia and Elder Hurst is from Provo, Utah. They have been assigned to be our home teachers (they will come to visit us once a month and leave a spiritual message with us) and so today was a 'get to know you' day. We talked a lot about ourselves and our family and they shared a lot about themselves and their families. The message they left with us is how we need to keep spiritually strong by nurturing ourselves (praying, reading the scriptures, going to church). They likened us to a tree - if a tree is not nurtured (nourished) by water, sun and good soil, it will eventually weaken and die. So it is with us - we need to make sure that we continue to do all the right things so we stay strong.
We spent the rest of the afternoon writing emails, playing card games and chatting. At about 5pm, we went for our daily walk. We have decided that this is the perfect time to go for a walk since the heat of the sun has cooled and there is still a lovely breeze and it's still light. What I am finding is that when we are inside and being a bit lazy in a day, it's hard to get motivated to get out and walk. Today was one of those kind of days, so I had to just tell myself to get a move on and get outside. Once we were walking, it felt good to be out in the fresh air and to be getting some exercise. When we got home, we fixed dinner and then we watched two tv shows. The first was 'Glee' - it is such a cute show about a high school glee club. The second was called 'Rush' and it's an Australian cop show - it turned out to be a pretty good show, actually - you almost felt like you were there at times.
I still had some minutes left on my phone and it was going to expire tomorrow, so I called my mom. It was nice to talk with her (and not have to leave home to do it). I am bugging her to get Skype downloaded onto her computer and for her to get a webcam so that we can talk with each other and see each other at the same time when we come back to Australia after our seven week visit in December/January. It will likely take Mike to sort it out and get it done - my mom is not a fan of computers! :-) I have to say that I am impressed that she is actually reading my blog each day AND answering my emails (and not with short emails back, I might add!) :-)
While we were eating, Christine (our landlady) called her dog, Josie, but I thought she said 'Sue', so I answered her. She told me to be really quiet as there was a snake in the yard and she was going to kill it. My heart sank into my feet, I think. I hate snakes with a passion - I once walked ten feet around a DEAD snake. Mike and I continued to eat our brunch, and a little while later, Christine yelled to us that the snake was on our patio. I freaked some more. I quickly held tight to the screen door which was closed, but doesn't latch. Then, I closed the glass door to the patio and stood staring at the snake (and was really scared). Mike told me he would watch it while I finished my breakfast, although I was no longer hungry by this time. Mike said he was amazed at how still the snake was and I was amazed at how fat it was since it was so short.
Christine was talking with her neighbour who was in her yard and I couldn't understand why she wasn't coming back to try and kill the snake. I wanted to yell at her to hurry, but she had told me to be quiet so I thought that I wasn't allowed to make any noise in case it frightened the snake away and she wouldn't know where it was to kill it. Mike turned around from looking at the snake and was talking to me and when he turned back to look at the snake, it was gone. We were both a little worried at this point. I heard noise and Mike looked out the window and Christine was talking with the missionaries and she had the snake in her hand. All of a sudden, I realized that the snake was fake - I told Mike that I was going to have to hurt Christine. :-)
It turned out that she had seen in the snake somewhere on her property and had called her neighbour over to help her kill it (shhh, they're not supposed to kill them so we're not telling anybody here that she was going to do that :-) Anyway, she and the neighbour have a system where the neighbour uses a rake to hold the snake still and Christine then uses a shovel to cut it in half. When she tried to cut this snake, a 'bunch of eggs' fell out (stuffing). She thought that we had put it there, so she thought she would throw it on our patio and see how we would react. She figured that if we had put it there, we would laugh and she would know that it had been us. I told her then that I was going to kill her. :-) We all got a good laugh about it afterwards, but even thinking about it now gives me the heebie jeebies.
After we all settled down from that 'adventure', the missionaries came inside and chatted with us for about an hour. Elder Coy is from Adelaide, Australia and Elder Hurst is from Provo, Utah. They have been assigned to be our home teachers (they will come to visit us once a month and leave a spiritual message with us) and so today was a 'get to know you' day. We talked a lot about ourselves and our family and they shared a lot about themselves and their families. The message they left with us is how we need to keep spiritually strong by nurturing ourselves (praying, reading the scriptures, going to church). They likened us to a tree - if a tree is not nurtured (nourished) by water, sun and good soil, it will eventually weaken and die. So it is with us - we need to make sure that we continue to do all the right things so we stay strong.
We spent the rest of the afternoon writing emails, playing card games and chatting. At about 5pm, we went for our daily walk. We have decided that this is the perfect time to go for a walk since the heat of the sun has cooled and there is still a lovely breeze and it's still light. What I am finding is that when we are inside and being a bit lazy in a day, it's hard to get motivated to get out and walk. Today was one of those kind of days, so I had to just tell myself to get a move on and get outside. Once we were walking, it felt good to be out in the fresh air and to be getting some exercise. When we got home, we fixed dinner and then we watched two tv shows. The first was 'Glee' - it is such a cute show about a high school glee club. The second was called 'Rush' and it's an Australian cop show - it turned out to be a pretty good show, actually - you almost felt like you were there at times.
I still had some minutes left on my phone and it was going to expire tomorrow, so I called my mom. It was nice to talk with her (and not have to leave home to do it). I am bugging her to get Skype downloaded onto her computer and for her to get a webcam so that we can talk with each other and see each other at the same time when we come back to Australia after our seven week visit in December/January. It will likely take Mike to sort it out and get it done - my mom is not a fan of computers! :-) I have to say that I am impressed that she is actually reading my blog each day AND answering my emails (and not with short emails back, I might add!) :-)
Wednesday, November 25, 2009
Today was a rather uninteresting day. We started off by putting in the laundry - we did two loads - first thing in the morning as if you don't do it right away first thing, the clothes don't have a chance to dry until late at night. The washing machine takes about 90 minutes to wash just one load, so by the time you do two it's almost noon it seems.
We spent a lot of the rest of the morning filling out my forms to register for teaching in Queensland and to supply teach once the registration is done. I have been putting this off as I hate filling out forms - they are so long and tedious. Once we got going, we realized that we are not going to be able to put in these forms yet anyway. I was hoping that I could put in what I had and just get the two things from Canada that I needed and then send them off from Canada as that would be cheaper than sending the whole package from there. As it turns out, if I don't send a criminal record check or a paper saying that I have applied for the criminal record check, they won't even look at my file. Since I can only apply from Canada for the criminal record check, I am going to have to wait until I get back there, get that plus a reference from my principal, then either pay a lot to send the forms/papers to Australia or wait 'til I get back here and then send them in.
After a few card games, Mike had to do some work on the computer so I watched 'Murder She Wrote'. Mike then took himself off to bed as he was not feeling well. He has been feeling draggy for three days now - we are not sure what it is - it could be that he's not sleeping terribly well since we are sleeping on an air mattress. It could also be that we don't have a couch to sit on (only wooden kitchen chairs) so there's no support for the neck when he is sitting down and no place to relax on.
In the afternoon, it started to rain and we were so excited - we felt like the 'natives' - we even rushed outside to take some photos of it. I would attach these pics to the end of this entry, but you can't tell it's raining - just that the pic is greyish and seems out of focus. It only rained for about five minutes, but the grass is even greener than it was before the rain - it's so neat that it doesn't take much rain for the grass to be affected.
Around 5pm, we took off for our walk - we walked for about an hour - just around the neighbourhood. Each day we are going to go for a walk, Mike checks out the map and works out a route for us to go. Today we walked along the roads for a bit, but then walked for quite a while up a greenbelt. It's amazing that here it's not like in Canada (yet) - you can be right in the city and still be able to feel like you are in the country. In this greenbelt, there is nothing besides grass and trees - it's really beautiful, and so peaceful to walk through.
Since our day wasn't that exciting and there wasn't much to write about, I thought I would share with you some of the other things that I have been keeping a list of that I thought might make interesting reading. The first is the toad population: many years ago these brown toads were brought in to this area to help curb the beetle population. They did that, however, now they are overrunning the land and they cause quite a havoc in gardens and to some animals. They are ugly things, too - we saw two of them on our patio the other night and watched them catch/eat a couple of huge beetles. The beetles were flying into our glass patio door - when we heard the noise, we went to see what it was. We then watched them (that's when we saw the toads sitting ever so quietly on the patio stones) and the beetles keep flying up and landing plop on the ground - we couldn't understand why they wouldn't use this ability to fly to get away from the toads. Next thing we knew, the beetles fell to the ground once again and the toads hopped up and in one fell swoop (or rather, gulp) ate the beetles. Yuck! Our landlord was outside the other night making a racket and when we looked out the bedroom window to see what was going on, he told us that he was killing the toads - he hits them over the head with a big stick or shovel and then scoops them into the garbage. Double yuck!!
Another interesting thing has to do with their money. There are no pennies in Australian currency. They decided many years ago to do away with them - I think it's a great idea. Goods are still priced to the penny (eg: $2.99 or $1.12), but when the total is rung up on the cash register, they round the amount up or down to the nearest 5 cents. So, for instance, if the total ends in a 1 or 2, it's rounded down to a 0 - so if the amount is $1.12 for example, they ask you for $1.10. If the total ends in a 3 or a 4, it's rounded up to a 5 - so if the amount is $1.14, for example, they ask you for $1.15. It works the same if the total ends in 6 or 7, they round it down to a 5 and if the total ends in 8 or 9 they rounded it up to the next 10. I guess in the end, it all works out fairly evenly with regards to the 'pennies' and it's a lot easier not to have all those pennies in your pants or purse. Also, I love the way that the taxes are included in the advertized price. What you see on the item you are buying is what you pay (so no more having to add 13% to your total). The amount of the GST is listed on the docket (receipt) so you know how much you are paying, but it doesn't seem as painful this way when you are buying something.
We spent a lot of the rest of the morning filling out my forms to register for teaching in Queensland and to supply teach once the registration is done. I have been putting this off as I hate filling out forms - they are so long and tedious. Once we got going, we realized that we are not going to be able to put in these forms yet anyway. I was hoping that I could put in what I had and just get the two things from Canada that I needed and then send them off from Canada as that would be cheaper than sending the whole package from there. As it turns out, if I don't send a criminal record check or a paper saying that I have applied for the criminal record check, they won't even look at my file. Since I can only apply from Canada for the criminal record check, I am going to have to wait until I get back there, get that plus a reference from my principal, then either pay a lot to send the forms/papers to Australia or wait 'til I get back here and then send them in.
After a few card games, Mike had to do some work on the computer so I watched 'Murder She Wrote'. Mike then took himself off to bed as he was not feeling well. He has been feeling draggy for three days now - we are not sure what it is - it could be that he's not sleeping terribly well since we are sleeping on an air mattress. It could also be that we don't have a couch to sit on (only wooden kitchen chairs) so there's no support for the neck when he is sitting down and no place to relax on.
In the afternoon, it started to rain and we were so excited - we felt like the 'natives' - we even rushed outside to take some photos of it. I would attach these pics to the end of this entry, but you can't tell it's raining - just that the pic is greyish and seems out of focus. It only rained for about five minutes, but the grass is even greener than it was before the rain - it's so neat that it doesn't take much rain for the grass to be affected.
Around 5pm, we took off for our walk - we walked for about an hour - just around the neighbourhood. Each day we are going to go for a walk, Mike checks out the map and works out a route for us to go. Today we walked along the roads for a bit, but then walked for quite a while up a greenbelt. It's amazing that here it's not like in Canada (yet) - you can be right in the city and still be able to feel like you are in the country. In this greenbelt, there is nothing besides grass and trees - it's really beautiful, and so peaceful to walk through.
Since our day wasn't that exciting and there wasn't much to write about, I thought I would share with you some of the other things that I have been keeping a list of that I thought might make interesting reading. The first is the toad population: many years ago these brown toads were brought in to this area to help curb the beetle population. They did that, however, now they are overrunning the land and they cause quite a havoc in gardens and to some animals. They are ugly things, too - we saw two of them on our patio the other night and watched them catch/eat a couple of huge beetles. The beetles were flying into our glass patio door - when we heard the noise, we went to see what it was. We then watched them (that's when we saw the toads sitting ever so quietly on the patio stones) and the beetles keep flying up and landing plop on the ground - we couldn't understand why they wouldn't use this ability to fly to get away from the toads. Next thing we knew, the beetles fell to the ground once again and the toads hopped up and in one fell swoop (or rather, gulp) ate the beetles. Yuck! Our landlord was outside the other night making a racket and when we looked out the bedroom window to see what was going on, he told us that he was killing the toads - he hits them over the head with a big stick or shovel and then scoops them into the garbage. Double yuck!!
Another interesting thing has to do with their money. There are no pennies in Australian currency. They decided many years ago to do away with them - I think it's a great idea. Goods are still priced to the penny (eg: $2.99 or $1.12), but when the total is rung up on the cash register, they round the amount up or down to the nearest 5 cents. So, for instance, if the total ends in a 1 or 2, it's rounded down to a 0 - so if the amount is $1.12 for example, they ask you for $1.10. If the total ends in a 3 or a 4, it's rounded up to a 5 - so if the amount is $1.14, for example, they ask you for $1.15. It works the same if the total ends in 6 or 7, they round it down to a 5 and if the total ends in 8 or 9 they rounded it up to the next 10. I guess in the end, it all works out fairly evenly with regards to the 'pennies' and it's a lot easier not to have all those pennies in your pants or purse. Also, I love the way that the taxes are included in the advertized price. What you see on the item you are buying is what you pay (so no more having to add 13% to your total). The amount of the GST is listed on the docket (receipt) so you know how much you are paying, but it doesn't seem as painful this way when you are buying something.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
