I Dont' Think So

Hayz has been telling Mrs G that there is a little girl at kindy who keeps telling her she is ugly ... Understandably poor 'lil Hayz gets a bit upset about this. Apparently the same girl also pinches her.

I don't think Hayz is ugly ....

Regardless ....

I don't really have a lot news. I've booked a trip for Mum and myself up to Queensland in mid May. I promised Mum a holiday for her Christmas present, but chemo had to stop first. Chemo has stopped and she is in between treatments so we are going to jump on a plane, get off at Coolangatta and spend a few days on the Gold Coast. Apart from knowing that Mum wants to catch up with a friend I'm not too sure of what we will do.

I've had a bit of a crook back this week. I hurt it lifting a kid over a fence on Saturday night (have I already written about that??). It gets a little better each day but I haven't been able to exercise since last Friday and I'm getting a bit restless. I might be able to go out and do something on Saturday. Maybe.

Crying

We were watching a movie called 'Nim's Island' tonight (ie all of Clan Jones) and miss Hayz started crying. There was a part where Nim was 'caught' by a boy from a visiting cruise ship and they had a conversation while a volcano was erupting.

The boy ends up running back to his Mum & Dad after asking Nim to come with him. Nim says no because it is her island and her home.

Hayz started crying because Nim was all alone and couldn't find her Dad (who, at this point of the movie, was lost at sea).

We've always known LGR has a massive heart and is full of empathy. Now I've seen it in Hayz as well :-)

Birthdays Everywhere

There's been a million birthdays in my family this week (sort of) - and all within a few days of each other. As is my usual form I missed them all :-(

So, happy birthday to the girls just down the road and happy birthday to the bloke just over the hill.

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LGR went into town with Grandma yesterday to see the Star Wars exhibition at the Powerhouse. He enjoyed it, which wasn't much of a surprise. What was a surprise, for me, was seeing him get off the train that they caught into town. I managed to leave work in time to get them both from the station and was amazed by how grown up LGR looked when he dressed up a little. He's still my baby boy but each day he does new things which surprise me and make me proud.

LGR Computer Art (Age 5)

Return of the Son

LGR came home today. He's spent the last couple of days up in the mountains with Grandma. I'm not entirely clear on what they've been up to apart from:

• Watching craploads of Iron Chef on the Lifestyle Channel (unlike when LGRis at home ....)
  
• Visiting Jenolan Caves and taking a leisurely stroll through the Orient Cave
  

Each time we spoke to LGR he sounded quite excited. He also appeared to be quite excited to be home again today. Hayz certainly missed him and they gave each other an enormous hug at the front door.

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Mrs G went back to work today. Physically back, that is. She worked from home yesterday and today did what she euphemistically called a 'half day' - which means damned near a full day but leaving 1-2 hours early .... She survived the day and that's the main thing.

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Hayz had her interview for school next year yesterday. I missed it due to work (I've taken a fair bit of time off work recently and couldn't really justify any more without a good reason). Mrs G informed me that Hayz was very well behaved and performed, and Hayz informed me that she had a great time. The short version of events is that we will be getting an invite for Hayz to attend next year. 

It will be a thrill to not have to pay for kindy any more, and to only have one drop off and pick up each day. I suspect the kids will enjoy knowing each other is at the same school and will check on each other a few times each day.

It will be quite sad to know we have no more kids who are young enough to still attend kindy :-(

Flower

Mrs G had a few bunches of flowers delivered to her (or home) while she was in hospital. 

Poor Mrs G was in hospital for so long the flowers delivered to home started to die before she got back. I decided to take some pics to make sure she at least got to see them. Some of them worked out pretty well. I like the semi abstracted pics best ...

Holidays Part II

The second part of our 'holidays' was a trip to Bents Basin for some camping. We arrived just before 09:00 on Good Friday and somehow managed to get setup within about 2 hours. Putting up the tent was fun - it had never been out of it's packaging before but, in the end, was a pretty straightforward process.

What do we when we are camping? Not much on this one. We ate plenty of meat and bread (and not so much fruit and veg), went swimming and set some yabby traps. Yabbying was fun, but highly unsuccessful. We caught nothing but did end up with a few injuries out of the trip through the bush to the river. The kids played a lot of chess and we all played some soccer and cricket.

Easter Sunday was quite good. Hayz woke the tent up by loudly whispering (if you know what I mean) "LGR - there's choccy next to my bed" For his part LGR looked up, confirmed there was choccy and then went back to sleep :-)

Mid morning we setup an Easter Egg hunt for the kids and they spent a very pleasant 30 minutes searching for chocs, and then consuming the fruits of their efforts.

Home time was kind of amusing. 2 out of 3 cars going home wouldn't start - including ours. The batteries had run low due to a combination of air compressor use, radios and just leaving doors open for too long ....

Jumper leads are a very good thing!!!

As much as we all had fun it was very nice to come home. When we got back we all washed thoroughly, popped on a movie for the kids, had an easy dinner and were asleep by 19:30.

Soccer Girl

Hayz got her soccer uniform over the weekend. It will probably still fit her when she turns 10. The shirt and pants are both size 8 (she currently wears size 3 or 4 for most things). The socks come up to her hips when she puts them on. The drawstring on her shorts can go around her waist ....

I haven't seen LGR in his gear yet but in a beautiful little twist of fate both kids are number 5 in their team, and have both size 8 shirts!!!

Holidays - Part I

I've sort of been on holidays for a bit now - I took the Wednesday and Thursday prior to Easter off and then had the Easter weekend. It was nice to have a break; and nice to be able to look after Mrs G a little bit (she's stubbornly independent at times and doesn't always respond positively to expressions of concern).

So what have I been up to?

Last Wednesday started with a bit of a sleep in and then dropping the kids at school. After this Mrs G and I went out for some shopping - some DVD's, BBQ coals and some camping stuff .... In the afternoon we kicked back a little and watched 'Australia' - the movie directed by Baz and starring our Nichole and our Hugh.

I was captivated by Nulla - the half-caste aboriginal kid. I couldn't help but see Hayz in him; particularly in the clear brown eyes, hair colour and strong, open gaze. For me it personalised the movie in a way that the leads could not.

The afternoon saw us at soccer training for Hayz. I'm not sure how or why but she suddenly figured out soccer and ran rings around everyone. She potted at least 8 goals in their training game and was close to unstoppable. Mummy and Daddy were both very proud :-)

Dinner was provided for us courtesy of LGR's school. They had heard we were going through some interesting times and decided to help out by providing a meal. Nice sentiment but I don't think we really needed it.

Thursday was the day of the end of term assembly for LGR. It was nice for both myself and Mrs G to be able to attend - made even more thrilling by LGR getting an award. He has made massive improvements at school this term and we loved seeing it be acknowledged.

The afternoon was a lot of camping prep activities. As always we packed a billion things .... One day we will get better at packing for trips and not take everything we own.

We had some dinner guests on Thursday night - Aunt BJ and her new (old) male associate. It was quite a pleasant evening which has highlighted by LGR serenading us on his guitar while we ate dinner :-)

Home

Mrs G came home from hospital last night. In the end she was in hospital for 10 days to get her gall bladder removed ... Not a bad effort.

Apparently walking out the hospital door was what you would imagine it would feel like to walk out of jail - and being in a car again was like a ride in a fun park!!!

Beautiful Brown Eyes

The kids and I went to visit Mrs G at the hospital (again) and LGR started telling us about a song he learnt at guitar lessons called 'Beatiful Brown Eyes'.

Miss Hayz piped up with "I have beautiful brown eyes. And a beautiful face."

I suspect modesty is not one of her character attributes.

Mrs G is travelling well today - there's been a substantial improvement in the last 24 hours and even her doctor finally said she was improving. They still need the final op on Monday but there's real hope she might be home on Tuesday.

As an extra special treat she has been given permission to go to the park opposite the hospital tomorrow and have a picnic lunch with us :-)

Remembering

This pic was taken just over 4 years ago ... They've changed a bit since then.

How Can The Same Thing Happen To The Same Person Twice

Forget the title - it should be 'Three Times'.

Mrs G is going to have her 3rd lot of surgery in about 10 days .... at this stage she will get shifted to a new hospital on Monday and have something done to fix something. I don't know much more than that and neither does she really. I guess the shock of finding out you are still crook when you feel like you are improving is a nasty one.

Mrs G may get to come home next Tuesday or Wednesday. Maybe.

On top of that poor 'lil Hayz is crook - she's thrown up 3 times this afternoon. The last time was just as we pulled into the driveway after coming back from hospital. All over the car ...

Smells good.

Another Day, More News

Today was day 5 or 6 that Mrs G has been in hospital .... Starting to feel like a long time. She was given the bad news that she is unlikely to go home any time before Saturday. This didn't make her happy.

Having said that the mood was noticeably brighter when the kidlets and I visited this evening. Mrs G was far more talkative and the kids were much better behaved than on previous occasions.

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I gave the kids a bath and dinner before we went to see Mrs G. We had some very special 'Iron Chef' moments.

The first was the kids playing 'Iron Chef' in the bath. LGR was Bobby Flay and Hayz was Cat Cora. Hayz was making a coconut and fresh air sausage :-)

The second was from me. I was cooking up some seafood (salt and pepper squid and some octopus) and wanted the wok as hot as possible. I put in some peanut oil and let it heat up. It started smoking so in went the occy, then a quick wrist flick to get it moving in the oil.

WHOOSSSHHHH!!! 

The oil caught fire and it looked fantastic. There was  beautiful sear on the occy and both kids thought the fire (which was probably close to 2 feet tall) was terrific. It only lasted 3-4 seconds but the house was filled with smoke and we turned on every fan we could find, opened all the windows and blasted the air con thru the downstairs ....

Much fun :-) And the food was pretty tasty too.