Last post of the year!!

This morning, Ross and John headed out to finish off the shed. ABout 9.30, Ross dropped me into the city so I could wander around the shops. It was a beautiful day and still pretty quiet when I first arrived. I looked in a couple of stores and then headed to Myer. I looked at a lot of clothes although they had been completely picked through. I did however find 3 pairs of shoes that I ended up buying - the start of my spree!

I did a bit more in Myer before heading into the Myer Center. I wandered about there for ages and bought a few pairs of shorts which I needed as my old ones don't fit anymore. I tried on some jeans but none were doing it for me. I finally stumbled back out into the daylight and down one of the side streets in the mall where I found General Pants Co. I grabbed two pairs of jeans - one Levis pair and one from Sass and Bide. I tried the Levis first - no good - but the Sass and Bide jeans were perfect! I was so excited to find a really nice pair of jeans although they were the most expensive pair I have ever bought.

By this time it was around lunch time so I had a little pit stop at a sushi train to refuel before heading to Target for everyday necessities like underwear etc. Ross rang me and said he was on his way back from having lunch with his mate Scotty and he would pick me up so I wandered around for about 10 minutes more before meeting him and driving back towards John's place.

On the way I gave John and Caz a call and we agreed to meet at DFO near the airport to do some more shopping. We wandered around the various factory outlet stores and I ended up with 3 more pairs of shoes including a pair of black boots from Rivers that I got for $20 and a pair of light weight and water proof walking shoes from Colorado. Ross also picked up a pair of leather slides for next to nothing.

BY about 4.30 we were exhausted and headed home. We sat outside with a drink and some snacks before deciding to head out to find a pub so we could play some pool. We drove to the Newmarket Hotel which didn't have any pool tables but we had a couple of drinks anyway. From there we drove into the city and ended up in the Valley where we found an Italian restaurant for dinner.

It was quite a sidewalk show sitting there eating and watching the crowds of people walk past. It kept us entertained for ages. Eventually we decided to move across the road to the pub which did have pool tables. We staked our claim on one of the tables and proceeded to play pool for hours. It was not that busy in the pub which was good and the DJ was cranking out classic 80s tunes which was great! We ended up playing 7 games of pool - Ross and I won 4 although 2 of those were by default when John and Caz potted the white after the black. One game we still had 7 balls on the table and JOhn managed to sink the white after potting the 8 ball - hysterical!

About 11 we walked back to the car and tried to dodge the incredibly drunk crowds on the streets. We got home about 11.30 and put the TV on to watch the Sydney fireworks. Ross grabbed the sparkling wine from our visit to the Treehouses which we cracked at midnight. We watched the fireworks and then all of us headed to bed. It was a great night - Happy 2010!

Back in Brisbane

This morning we woke up with the damn crows at 5am - not happy! Ross got up but I put my eye covers back on and tried my hardest to sleep some more - not very succesfully. I got up about 7.30 and we had breakfast with the family.

Ross and I headed out to meet with our financial planner at 9. About an hour later we walked out with an update on our finances. Thank god the market is making a bit of a recovery!

We headed back to Ann's place, watched the last of the test match, had some lunch and then headed up the north coast again to see Ross' mate Matty and his wife Charlene. We hadn't seen them for a couple of years and their three girls, Sophie, Ella and Mollie had grown so much. We spent the afternoon catching up and talking about old times.

We drove back to John's place about 4.30 and spent the evening chatting, watching TV, playing Wii and eating Thai before heading to bed.

Last day in the Hinterland

We tried to sleep in this morning but nature conspired against us. Ross headed out to the hammock while I tried to get a bit more sleep. Once I finally surfaced, we showered and got organized to leave the resort.

We headed into Montville again and this time we had breakfast at a cafe next to the bakery. It definitely didn't match up to yesterday's brekky! From there we headed out and left the hinterland behind us. Once back down on the flat we thought we might stop into Steve Irwin's Australia Zoo. As we drove close, we could see the traffic was nuts so we decided to drive on. A good decision considering the traffic was backed up for 5 kilometers coming the other way and all of them were going to the zoo!

Instead we turned off and went to the Mt Beerburrum lookout. We thought it would be good to have a walk so we headed out of the car. We read the board which said the walk was 700m to the top and steep. We were suprised it said 1.5 hr return journey for 700m - we should have known better!

We started up the trail and after about 50m of steep walking we looked at each other and asked if we should continue. How hard could it be? So we kept going. It was honestly the steepest trail I have ever walked up without steps. About 100m into the walk, our calves were killing us so we switched and walked up backwards for a while before our quads hurt too much and we had to switch back.

By this time I was swearing and muttering. I had worked up such a sweat. Each time I thought we were there, the trail simply turned and continued even steeper! But we finally made it and climbed the landing for a fantastic view over the Glasshouse Mountains. We took our time getting our breath back before heading back down which was just as painful as going up!

Once we were back in the airconditioned car, we were glad we had made the effort although I don't think we would have if we had known how hard it was going to be. From there we drove straight back to Ann's place to spend the night there.

We arrived about 12 to find Dad by himself as Ann was at work. Ross' foster brother Dennis and his wife Rhonda arrived not long afterwards. It was nice to catch up with them again as we hadn't seen them for 2 1/2 years since John's wedding. Ann came home from work about 1.30 and we had cold chicken and salad for lunch.

As usual for this time of the year, we continued to watch the cricket. I headed off for a nap in the afternoon and then we headed out to the Runcorn Tavern for dinner. On Tuesdays, they had a deal going - 2 meals for $25 including the salad bar - a bargain. We enjoyed dinner and a couple of bottles of wine while telling traveling stories.

About 9 we headed home and cracked the liquers we had bought for Ann and Dad. Ann broke open the Ferraro Rocher's which didn't last too long. We all headed to bed at 10 after a great night.

The recovery

This morning I got up and considering it was raining, I jumped on the cross-trainer for 25 minutes. It wasn't easy and I had sweated up a storm by the end of it. We had some breakfast and then headed to Chermside Shopping Center to hopefully go and see the new Sherlock Holmes movie.

We walked around for a while and then tried to get tickets but the upcoming shows were sold out. There were seats available at the 3pm show so John, Caz and Hazel headed home and Ross and I stayed to buy the tickets, wander around a bit more among the throng of Boxing Day bargain hunters and ended up in the pub watching the Boxing Day test match.

Just before 3, the rest of the family arrived and we headed upstairs for the movie. It was a packed cinema and the movie was pretty good. It left itself open to plenty of follow-on movies.

Back at home, we had (surprise, surprise) ham and salad for dinner. We played some Wii in the evening before heading to bed about 10 after a lazy Boxing Day.

Christmas Day at the Moore's!

We woke up reasonably early at Ann's place and Dad cooked up bacon, eggs, tomato and hashbrowns for breakfast which we ate with champagne seeing as it was Christmas and all. We just chilled out watching some TV until about 10 when we headed in convoy to John's place for Christmas lunch.

Caz's mum Hazel was there when we arrived along with John and Caz obviously. John played Santa and handed out all the presents. We did pretty well with a heap of stuff for the BBQ for Ross and a two-night getaway from John and Caz for the both of us. John and Caz had bought us all Christmas T-shirts which we all donned in the festive spirit.

After the present giving, we set up camp outside with some hors d'eouvres and some of Caz's mixed berry punch. Kelly and Alvin, John and Caz's tenants from Estonia, came over soon after with a platter of anti-pasta. We sat outside for a while before moving in for the main meal.

Caz had done well with lunch - ham, turkey breasts, salads and other bits and pieces. As always we pulled our crackers and cracked the wine, undid a notch in our belts and settled in for an afternoon of gastronomic overindulgence.

After the healthy lunch, out came the desserts. Brandy and macadamia Christmas pudding with custard, Ann's trifle, rum balls and apricot balls and of course the homemade Baileys. Needless to say we were stuffed by the end of it.

I took up my position on the couch for the afternoon and everyone else found suitable places to lounge. Dad and Ann headed home reasonably early and by about 4, everyone had left except for John, Caz, Hazel, Ross and I. I can't say any of us moved too much in the afternoon.

Ross and I felt obliged to get off our butts and go for a walk just before sunset. We walked for ages and it was great because we had been so full. Believe it or not, we were ready for food again in the evening. Plenty of meat and salad was left along with the desserts that we made the most of again. I think we all headed to bed pretty early full as very full things.

John's 38th Birthday!

This morning, Ross and I headed into the city to visit a Chinese medicine practitioner, David McCleoud. He prescribed me some herbal medicine that I could take in tablet form and I also had half an hour of acupuncture. The acupunture was incredibly relaxing even though I had a needle in my left ear, the top of my head, both hands, both feet and my tummy.

While I was having my acupuncture session, Ross chatted with David who prescribed some things for him too. We walked out an hour later with a big bag of medicines.

Back at John's place, we had some breakfast and about 12, we drove into Southbank to meet up with Ann and Dad at the Ship Inn for lunch. It was a beautiful day so we sat outside enjoying watching the people walk past whilst sipping our drinks. We had lunch and chatted for a while before Dad and Ann headed off to catch the train home again.

Shortly after, Dee arrived. She had just flown in from Melbourne and was spending the night in Brisbane before heading off to Wellington for Christmas Day. Unfortunately, all this travel was for work :-(.

We walked to the Pump Hotel and found a spot on the balcony upstairs to continue having a drink or two. After finding out that they didn't serve food, we moved on and ended up driving to another spot on the other side of the river. We found a great spot at one of the restaurants/ bars with open air seating. The place was packed with after work drinkers celebrating their last day or two of work.

We sat there and drank two bottles of wine between us and had some snacks while watching the sunset and the lights come on on the Story Bridge. It was really nice.

About 8, we were all pretty shattered so we dropped Dee back to her hotel and headed home. We sat up for a bit before all of us head to bed full of too much alcohol and crap food.

Heading up to Brisbane

This morning Ross and I set the alarm for 7 and got up to go for a walk. We walked for about 50 minutes along the coast, up hills and back again. It was beautiful this morning and heaps of people were out and about. It was a great walk and we ended up back at the apartment around 8.30 to find John and Caz having breakfast on the balcony. We had some breakfast with them before packing up our stuff and checking out of the apartment.

Caz drove us up to Pacific Fair where we stopped for coffee and and some food. Caz and I wandered around the shops for about an hour before meeting up with the boys again about 12. I did some last minute Christmas shopping before we headed back to the car.

We drove back up to Brisbane and stopped off at Ann's place. She pulled in the driveway 3 seconds before we did! We had some lunch with her and Dad and caught up on the latest news. Ross and I hadn't been to Brisbane since 2007 so it was nice to see all the work that Ann had done on the house. The new kitchen that Dad helped her with looked great and they were working on the laundry the day we arrived.

In the afternoon we went to an electrical store to sort out one of the Christmas presents before leaving Dad and Ann to drive to John and Caz's place. This was the first time that we seen their place and the renovations. They have put so much work into the house and it is looking really good.

We spent the night watching Inglourious Basterds after Caz cooked a yum meal of turkey steaks with cous cous and carrots. We stayed up for a while longer before heading to bed. Zeus the 3-legged cat decided to spend the night in our room but about 2.30am I kicked him out as he was licking Ross on the head and being a general nuisance :-).

First day on the Gold Coast

Ross and I slept in until 10 this morning - it was wonderful! John and Caz had headed out so we called them to meet up. We headed out to the Tweed Heads shopping center (in NSW) to run a few errands. I needed to post some Christmas cards, get my mobile up and running and get some money.

We had a coffee and wandered around a few of the shops before heading back to the apartment. From there, we walked down the street and had lunch at Grilled - a gourmet burger place. I had a chickpea burger - yum! We wandered on to a pub and played a few rounds of pool while having a beer (score check - Cherie and Ross 3 vs John and Caz 1).

We headed back up stairs to get changed and then walked across the road to the beach to go for the swim. It was a bit chilly initially but once you were in it was quite nice. We floated about for a bit before I got to cold and headed in with Caz.

We got back in time to shower and change before catching a taxi up the coast to go to Dracula's dinner theatre. We had VIP tickets and lined up with a few others before the venue had opened. Once inside, we gathered with a whole bunch of other in the foyer before being allowed through the crypt door into the house. We had a glass of champagne and looked around while waiting for our ghost train ride to the theatre. About 20 minutes later, we boarded the train in couples.

As predicted, it was pretty lame but there were a few scary moments where they either snapped photos or took video of us. Once upstairs, we found our seats and ordered a drink. Our appetisers arrived pretty quickly and we were entertained by the 3 piece vampire band for a while before the main meal came.

The performers finally came out and did some introductions etc. Then we had our dessert - yum! We ordered more drinks and then settled in for the show. It was the longest build up to a production I had ever been a part of!

The performers came out and performed Vampirates which was basically a bunch of skits with no real plot but mostly they were pretty funny. The waiters also kept us entertained. About 10 the show finished, we settled our bill and then headed out to find a taxi home. We got back to the apartment about 11. It was a good night out although it was a little random and definitely dragged on a bit.

Off to Queensland

This morning we were up reasonably early to get our ride to the airport. We arrived at LCCT about 8.30 and our flight was at 10.20am. Because we had the premium seats, we sailed through check-in and then headed to The Coffee Bean for a drink. We did a bit of duty free shopping and then headed through immigration in time to get to our boarding gate.

We boarded the plane and settled in for the 8 hour journey to Coolengatta. We sat on the runway for half an hour while someone was looking for their passport so we took off half an hour late. I watched an episode of Fawlty Towers (a true classic!) on my iPod before we even took off and then once we took off I watched The Boy In The Striped Pyjamas - definitely not a comedy!

We had some lunch and then I pretty much read my book for the rest of the flight and by the time we landed I was half way through My Sister's Keeper. The flight was painless but long.

So we waited for our bags which took over an hour to arrive because the conveyor belt broke down twice. The first time it stopped, about 50 bags had come out and had been collected so when it stopped, about 150 people that were left were standing around wondering, like us, if they had managed to lose that many bags! Eventually our bags came out and we moved on to customs.

Unfortunately we had decided to declare a packet of M&M type chocolates. This meant that despite showing the customs officer the chocolates, we still had to line up with 100 other people to have our bags scanned. Luckily, we were not in Line 3 where all the people were having their bags searched. Out of all the people on the plane, only about 3 people we saw walk through without undergoing some kind of scan. Ridiculous! Obviously this meant that we were really late meeting John and Caz. It took us over two hours from when we landed to when we got out. We figured the customs officers were getting paid overtime if they worked past 10pm.

Anyway, we finally made it and Caz and John drove us to the apartment on the Coolengatta beach. We sat up for a while catching up before heading to bed about midnight. Finally home in Aus.

Off to Adelaide

This morning I woke up reasonably early and caught a taxi to the airport for my 9.50 flight to Adelaide. I bought a youghurt and a coffee at the boarding gate and was surprised that the flight was already on final call 30 minutes before we were due to take off. I too a quick scull of my coffee before throwing it away and stashed my yoghurt in my bag for the flight.

I ended up with a spare seat next to me so I spread out and read my book and ate my yoghurt and before you knew it we had landed in Adelaide. Dad was at the boarding gate to meet me and we picked up my luggage and headed into town for something to eat. I picked up a SIM card before we headed home and we spent the rest of the day chatting and catching up as well as relaxing. Dad had bought me some flowers for my room to welcome me home.

I spoke to Sonja again and things were not going so well. Ian had arrived home from a Cross Country meet in Thailand and had gone in to visit Brian today with the rest of the family and he was really struggling seeing his Dad like that. Brian was now on a respirator to help his breathing and to take some of the pressure off his lungs and ribs. He was fully sedated and they were still worried about the bleeding.

I rang Julia and asked her to go see Sonja and help her with anything that she may need. Her and Phil had just come back from the Singapore Grand Prix and they were shocked to find out the news about Brian when they returned today.

I spoke with Ross and the company had organized the SOS Medical team to become involved.

It was a pretty stressful day for everyone involved. I wish I could be there to help out more.

Catching up with family

Ross and I spent the day in Melbourne city browsing through the shops and enjoying another great summer day. Ross ended up with a backpack full of my new clothes and shoes - bless!
We headed over to Southbank for lunch and ended up at World, a great little bar where we had salads and sipped white wine over looking the Yarra River and watching the world go by.

From there, we headed to Flinders Street Station to catch a train out to Watsonia where Ross' brother Bruce lives.

It was great to catch up with family over take-away Indian and wine. In the picture from left to right are Christine (my sister-in-law married to Bruce), Caz (other sister-in-law married to John), Ross, Brooke, Bruce and me. You will probably notice that Charli is draped over our laps as the poor thing was dragged out of her bed to be part of the photo :-). So the whole family was there except for John who had just returned to Brisbane from Darwin that night. Wish we had more time to catch up and hopefully now we live closer to Aus this can happen more regularly.

First day of the New Year!

Well, today is the first day of 2009 and I have decided to copy Jen Foss' idea of having a blog capturing a photo a day throughout the year.

As you can see from the picture, Ross, his brother John and our sister-in-law Caz are recovering from the festivities last night. KL put on an awesome fireworks display which we watched from the balcony. There may have also been one or two drinks involved too :-).

Hopefully we will get round to taking down the Christmas decorations soon!... HAPPY NEW YEAR!