Saturday 10 November 2007

Long time between drinks

I can't believe that it is over two months since I last posted - where has the time gone to ????? I know we had a month in Spain but it certainly doesn't feel like we have been home a month already - tomorrow will be 4 weeks since we got home and it feels like we were never away !!! (As is usual with a holiday).


You can read all about our holiday adventures in our Holiday in Spain blog http://holidayinspain07.blogspot.com/ if you are interested in what we got up to. For those who want the abridged version - we had an absolutely fantastic time - I truly loved Madrid, Toledo and Morella (and left a little of my heart in each of those places) - we drove 6400kms in the 4 weeks excluding bus trips and were approximately 88 hrs in transit on our holiday.

We got home and the next day it was back into work - luckily we had taken Monday night off from Coles work as I am not sure we would have managed that too well. We didn't seem to suffer from jet lag which was good. A couple of longer days at work saw me get the September accounts out the way and then we were pretty much back to normal.

Well except for the 7-1am shifts which we were doing at Coles as the night fill manager was off on compo and the lady who normally stands in for her was on leave and Al was running the fill each night - those couple of weeks weren't funny. The window of time to get things done between work and work wasn't really enough to do anything so we seemed to find ourselves running around like headless chooks (at least that was what it felt like some nights) and thank goodness it was only 2 weeks. The extra money came in useful but, quite honestly, I would rather not work those hours and not have the money.

Kaitlin has, once again, done very well at school - her results continue to be of a very high standard and last night we went to the Sports Award dinner where she received full colours for softball and was voted Most Promising softballer for 2007. She is very excited about going to Queensland Academies for Health Sciences (QA) next year. We still have to buy her new uniform and get her tablet / slate. I still can't really get my head around a paperless school - no doubt it is something which works otherwise they wouldn't be going ahead with it but I can't read more than two pages on a computer screen never mind study from books which have been downloaded onto the hard drive !!!!!

My aunt (Mom' sister) arrived from Durban on the Tuesday after we got home from Spain and we have had some lovely jaunts with them - either when K has been at work or all of us together. We took Cynthia down to Bangalow to the markets there (on a Sunday) as we were looking for a grass tree to replace the one which died after we moved him from the driveway - he didn't like his new home and so cacked it !!!! Very miserable of him because he was a lovely looking plant. Anyway, went down to Bangalow (about 1 3/4 hrs south of here into northern NSW) to see the grass tree guy who is normally at those markets but he wasn't there - bugger !!! We did manage to find another guy who only had one very sad looking grass tree but he mentioned that he had a nursery about 20 mins north of the market and gave Al his card. So the following Saturday we took all the oldies down to that nursery - what a lovely place and so many different plants to choose from at really reasonable prices. We landed up buying two grass trees (young ones which had been seeded) but he said that they should have good foliage within 6 months and should start to trunk in about 2-4 years (hope it is 2 rather than 4 years !!). We still have to decide where we are going to put the second one. We have moved a couple of those big pots we had placed on the pavers around but are still not 100% happy with where they are so will be moving them around again before Christmas no doubt.

It has been so lovely to see my aunt again - we haven't seen her since we left 8 years ago and we always seem to have some good laughs when we get together.

For all that it's been so long since I last posted that is about all the news from this side of the world. We have just got back from working and K is off baby-sitting - not sure what time she will be home but I am sure that unless it is in the next hour or so, I am going to be fast asleep.

Take care everyone, have a great weekend and drop us a line when you have a chance - we would love to hear what you have been up to.