Quinn’s Baptism

Picture this: A garden party, or high tea if you will, with a beautiful shade sale made by Hubs…

… a crisp white table cloth covering a long table where delightful treats such as salmon sandwiches and freshly baked scones await to be enjoyed, and with this:

… as the centrepiece: 70 cupcakes; a mixture of chocolate and red velvet, delicately decorated with teeny tiny feet:

… made with love by yours truly. Picture people wandering around with a cup of tea in hand, mingling with the well-to-dos of Brisbane (and now, Townsville 🙂 ). Ha!

And now picture rain. Lots of rain. Rain for weeks before the big day, a day before, and on the day. Driving, pelting, unrelenting rain.

*sigh* Hubs and I had been planning Quinn’s baptism for a few weeks, and to be honest, we were convinced it wouldn’t rain. But alas, the weather had other plans. So inside we went, and a lovely time was, of course, had by all.

Quinn wore the “family” baptism gown that we had made for Chance from offcuts of my wedding dress, with the idea that all of our children would wear it. So far so good! There are button holes at the front where, for the boys we put cufflinks, and for the girls, pearl earrings. We will give these to the kids when they are old enough to wear/appreciate them. It’s one of many little traditions that Hubs and I are creating for our little family.

And, just like his brother before her, Quinn cried throughout the whole ceremony. This from a girl who, quite seriously hardly ever cries.

We did have a lovely time, and as usual, it was so great to see everyone and to share this special occasion with family and friends. Thanks y’all!

Whatever doesn’t kill you…

…gives you gastro?

When I last left you, we had conquered Sydney and were celebrating our victory in Gosford. We got an early start the next morning, hoping to clock up about 500km or so. We had a great run in the morning and decided to push through to our friends place in Kempsey. The cars were running beautifully and we were all in great spirits!

We bid our friends farewell around 3pm, and things went downhill from there. The falcon made it about 2km before it stopped. We tried again, but after the third time, and only a few km down the road, we reviewed our options and decided to ditch the falcon and trailer at our friends place and just keep on going. I jumped in the kombi with Hubs and Mum and Dad went ahead with Chanbe.

This man can drive a van.
2012-11-23 19.08.22
We met up for Maccas and fuel in Grafton at around 7pm, and decided to just push on to Brisbane. Mum and Dad took Chanbe ahead and we followed behind.

So we covered 800km in the first 2 and a half days, and then 900km on the last day. It was a long one, and we arrived home at midnight Queensland time (1am “our time”) about an hour after Mum and Dad. Chanbe was not ready to go to sleep after such an exciting day and it took another hour or so to settle him, so by 1am Queensland time, everyone was in bed, mostly asleep. Saturday was spent preparing for Chanbe’s birthday party on Sunday, while Hubs had some much needed man-time with his man-friends, and I headed out for a hens party which turned out to be just what I needed!

Chanbe’s birthday party was a great success and it was lovely to be surrounded by family again. Here’s the robot cake I whipped up for him: (actually, I bought a slab of cake and just cut it out and decorated it 🙂 )

2012-11-25 15.57.52

I haven’t downloaded any of my photos from my camera as yet, so you’ll have to make do with the phone photos for the time being. Monday was a lazy old day, and we caught up briefly with our nieces and nephew and Hubs’ sister. I came home feeling a little off colour, and within an hour, I had lost my lunch and was in bed. It came out of nowhere, but wasn’t going anywhere! After hourly “attacks” (for want of a better word), by midnight we thought it best I go to hospital, as I was a little worried about Baloo with me getting so dehydrated. So my mother in law took me to the local hospital and I was given some anti-nausea tablets and given 2L of fluid. They took some bloods and did a few other tests, but I was told it was “just” gastro and that I could go home at 4:30am.

So the good news is, we have family and friends around to help out in this tricky time, and hopefully this bad run is over. Hubs has gone down to Kempsey with his BFF today to pick up the car and trailer and I’m expecting him home in the next few hours. Chanbe is having a little grizzle to himself in bed, but will nod off soon, and I’m trying to decide what I actually want to eat, now that I’m feeling a bit better.

Yest it’s been a rough week, but whatever doesn’t kill you… well, you know the rest 🙂

And all that Jazz

A couple of my very talented friends invited me to the Brisbane Jazz Club Sunday week ago to hear them perform with some of their very talented friends. Among other things, there was a grand piano that was very grand; a lovely lass with an angelic voice; a saxophone with some deep tones; a cheeky bass; and 3 ukeleles played by 3 lovely ladies. And it was just lovely. Song after song, I was humming along. (Yes, I meant that.) They played 3 sets that were all very different from each other, and really kept the whole crowd entertained.

But the highlight for me was the 3 lovely ladies playing this song on their ukeleles, though it sounded (and looked) a little different!

London 2012

Something awoke me at 4:17am this morning. Was it Chanbe? I don’t think so. Was it the possum that lives in the roof? Perhaps? Or was it my subconscious telling me that the Olympics were on TV and that I should take my doona out to the couch and watch some coverage? Yeah, I think that was it.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it before, but I LOVE the Olympics. When I heard that Sydney was getting the 2000 Olympics, I knew I had to be there. I volunteered at the hockey and had the most amazing time, both at the hockey (we got to see a lot of games) as well as other events. In 2008, we had just moved to Melbourne, and I scored a temp job in the Channel 7 call centre, and got to see a lot of the coverage. I actually have a friend competing over in London in the swimming (go Brenton Rickard!!!) who did really well in Beijing (2 silver medals) and made it into the final of his first event in London, (100m breaststroke) which I watched at 5:10am this morning. (He came 6th, with team mate Christian Sprenger doing a great job getting the silver medal. Brenton’s world record that he’d held for 3 years also fell this morning.)

I just get so nervous and excited for all the athletes competing and wish we had foxtel so I could watch whatever I wanted. I’d love to see more hockey in particular, but that is up to the powers that be at Channel 9. So I watched over 4 hours of coverage this morning, (mostly swimming) and had my morning sleep after that. Hee hee! This whole staying-with-my-parents-so-I-can-watch-the-olympics-while-they-babysit thing is sweeeeeeeet!

Oh, and Hubs is coming up for a visit in a few days which will be really lovely. It’s going to be a great couple of weeks!

Woah Mama!

Hubs and Chanbe and I are on our way to becoming a family of 4 🙂 I’m not quite 14 weeks pregnant, and check out this belly!!

Here I am wearing the same top in my first pregnancy. Except that in this photo, I was 20 weeks pregnant…

I heard that in subsequent pregnancies, you show a lot earlier, but this is ridiculous! Ha ha. Anyway, everything is going very well. The first trimester coincided with some of the hardest weeks/months of my life, but I’m feeling much better now. Chanbe and I have all but recovered from our nasty colds, and we are enjoying the gorgeous sunshine that Brisbane has to offer. My diary is filling up nicely with catch-ups, and the grandparents are loving having us (Chanbe) around.

So there you have it! The next lot of big news I’ll be sharing will be the location of Hubs’ internship next year, which we will find out in the next 2 weeks. Let the fun begin!

It’s what I do

So you know how I broke my foot a few months ago? And how I was still recovering from gastro last week? Well, as they say, bad things come in threes, so I needed the trifecta.

Enter the V-Slicer for onions. Exit a chunk of my fingertip.

Oh Yeeeeeaaaaahhhhh. I did it while we were preparing for Dad’s retirement party last Saturday. Actually, I did it after it had started, so my dear mother in law swept me away to the chemist to get some goodies to wrap it up with. (Thanks Ma!) It’s still sore when I bang it on things (often) but I believe it is healing well.

So that’s it for me as far an injuries/illnesses go for a while, okay???

Gastro Boy

We are all currently recovering from a bout of gastro that Chanbe may or may not have brought home from mothers group or day care. Oh, and we also shared it with the rellies we stayed with in Melbourne (sorry AA & Co!) before Chanbe and I flew to Brisbane on Tuesday. Oh, and now my Dad is feeling unwell. Did I mention we are up here for his retirement party on Saturday?

Yeah, I’m feeling pretty bad, and not in the “funny in the tummy” way. I’ve got the guilts, big time. I know that these sorts of illnesses happen a lot with kids, and we have been very lucky not to have had too many bugs go through the family (so to speak). It’s the “passing the sickness on to others” that I’m feeling bad about. I know people understand but I hate being the one to pass it around.

Sorry everyone! Will a cute baby-cino photo help? Feel better soon!!

babycino

 

We’re home

(This post was supposed to be published last night…)

Aaaaaaah. It’s 11:30 on Wednesday night, and we weren’t planning on being home til tomorrow afternoon, but here we are. Chanbe is in bed, and in a few minutes time, we’ll be joining the little guy in dreamy-dream land.

We left Kempsey at 9:20am and planned to spend tonight in some random hotel in Goulburn, but we decided to press on and try our luck. We had a big break around 6:30pm so once we got back in the car, Chance was ready for sleep. we did the last 3.5 hours in one hit and although the yard is ridiculously overgrown, it felt so nice to pull in.

It’s so funny to think that we were in Queensland yesterday morning; that Hubs went for a swim in the ocean at 6am; that Chanbe had a power spew in the car not far over the NSW border (coincidence? hee hee); and that our long-awaited, much anticipated, wonderfully enjoyed trip to Brisbane has come to an end.

I guess there’s only one more thing to share! Road trip photo!

Wifey’s last night in town

It’s just after midnight, we are leaving Brisbane in a matter of hours, everyone else is in bed, and I’m watching the Australian Open Men’s final. It’s amazing. I can’t go to bed!

I may also be trying to delay our saying goodbye as long as possible. It’s been such an amazing 2 months being around family – it’s hard to imagine having to do everything with only the 3 of us. It has certainly made trying to decide where to go for Hubs’ internship next year very tricky.

We leave after lunch and we’re aiming to be home sometime Thursday. There is so much packing still to do, but still seemingly a lot of tennis to watch! (go Nadal!) Oh, and this is my first blog written and posted on my new Galaxy SII. I hippie to work out all the quirks soon for future posting!

We’re sailing! Part II

Not only is Hubs keen on sailing, he also wanted to do a bit of windsurfing while we’re here. We had originally thought about going to Lake Cootharaba – a favourite camping spot for both of our families – but with everything that’s been going on, it’s been a bit hard to plan, so we decided on a sailing and BBQ weekend right here at Woody Pt.

On Saturday we got the windsurfers out and it was perfect conditions for beginners with a nice, gentle breeze.

It was also a perfect day for sharing grapes:
(Chanbe with his friend Athena) 

The wind really picked up on Sunday, so my aunty and cousin brought their sailing boat up for a bit of a go.

We also had a bigger crowd:

I just love those days where you’re surrounded by family and great friends, enjoying the company and just hanging out. Oh, and taking walks in the park…