It's been a while since I last posted - and heaps has happened. A lot of my regular readers know much of it but just in case here's a summarised version.
On the 30th November and 1st December we were in Wagga Wagga. Unfortunately it was for a very unhappy reason and I can safely say that nobody who was there wanted to be there. There was a silver lining to the very dark cloud - the kids got to hang out a bit with Nanna, Aunt LJ and UA and even great Nanna. Both kiddies were very well behaved in the seemingly endless trip there and back and very few tantrums were had.
Hayzey had her 2nd birthday while we were in Wagga. It was very low key but she didn't care. We all gathered around a muffin at breakfast time; placed 2 candles in it and sang happy birthday. It was a very sad day to remember such a wonderful event and the extremes of emotions seen on this day were massive.
I've been to Melbourne and back in a single day. I suffer from vertigo and am mildly claustrophobic so the flights didn't impress me a lot. Especially when the plane rocked from side to side just before landing in Sydney. Or when we hit turbulence will being (seemingly) about 20m above the ground at Melbourne.
All in all the day seemed to be a bit of a waste of time - although I got to meet some colleagues and see the Melbourne operations. I also had some nice sushi rolls for lunch so it's not all bad ...
The other obviously worthy thing that's happened was a trip down to Canberra to see Pampar and Jan. It was pretty mellow - and I suspect Pampar wasn't too thrilled to be dragged into Civic just so we could try to get thru some Christmas shopping.
For me the trip is noteworthy because of my introduction to Crackenback beer. It's brewed by the folks at Bluetongue and is an entirely drinkable and satisfactory beverage. I shall have more. I was also able to sample some Bluetongue Ginger Beer. This was nice - not the same as the Lager but still good. Both were very pleasant surprises.
Sunday morning was quite nice - the kids both slept in (I had the pleasant of slumbering next to Hayzey in one bed and Mrs G shared the other bed with LGR), I went for a rambling sort of run and we all popped in to a nearby pool for a swim. It's fun to play with the kids in the water. The lessons may have made some difference but neither of them are close to swimming yet. All in good time.
The trip home was kind of funny. As we left Canberra it looked as though a massive fire was erupting in some bushland somewhere but I don't believe it turned into much. Apparently there was another one at Marulen but we didn't see that. What we did see was a pretty good storm between around Exeter. We even had to slow the car down. By the time we got back to balmy old Sydney the sun was out and it was hot ... but not our house. We'd left the air-con running all weekend. Oops.
So that's my summary. From now on I'll try to keep it a touch more regular.