Australia Day Weekend in Loch Sport

On Thursday 24th January Marty and Julie and their kids met us at our place to travel up to Loch Sport together to meet Scott, Tania and the boys at their family holiday house.

Marty had previously borrowed our bike trailer, so he came to our place with it and we loaded up all the bikes on the trailer. The trailer has been used quite a lot and needed some maintenance done to it, so while he was at it Adrian has modified the trailer so we could fit Adrian and Marty's bikes on as well as the kids two mini bikes. Worked great! Thanks to Uncle Tamme for helping with this modification.

On Friday we took the kids fishing and then to the beach. Tania took Micayla out into the waves with the boogie board and helped her to ride the waves. Thanks Tania. I hate the surf, she would never have had that kind of fun via me. The kids were having fun in the sand and here is a photo of them after Adrian buried them in it. The boys wanted to go back and watch the cricket and we were going to stay at the beach with the kids, but I was keen to go back too. I HATE the beach (I'm a river person), I was getting a bit burnt anyway. Didn't realise how much until we got back to the house.

We went out to dinner at the pub at the Marina on the Friday night. The meal was delicious. We moved outside to where the 'band' was playing but it was way too cold and we soon headed home where we relaxed with some beverages and some movies.

Saturday we took the kids motorbike riding. The weather was a lot cooler so I'm glad we did the beach thing the day before. The boys rode their bikes out to the track while I towed the kids bikes on the bike trailer. 3 little mini bikes looked rather cute on the bike trailer. We were having lots of fun. I even had a ride on Adrian's bike. First I rode pillion with Adrian and then he let me take him for a ride. Marty and Adrian have the same bikes they bought less than a year ago. I decided I'd take Bailey for a ride on the JR50. The track was sandy and I was turning the bike around when Bailey revved the bike full throttle and the back wheel spun in a sandy patch and laid the bike down sideways. A stick tore threw my favourite jeans and this is the damage it did to my leg.

Bailey was fine. A few tears but hopped back on to ride again. Now he keeps talking about Mummy and Bailey falling off the "momerbike" as he calls it, and the bike "laid" down. It didn't really hurt that much. It looks worse than it is. I suppose I should be greatful I only fell off the JR50 and not Adrian's big bike. I was more upset about ripping my favourite jeans.

For the rest of Saturday we just relaxed. The boys watched the cricket while Tania, Julie and I went out for a long walk. Later Scott discovered a leak and Scott and Adrian ended up digging up the ground looking for a blockage in the sewage tank, eeewwww, they can have that job on their own. Ended up calling someone to come and empty it out. Turned out to be full of Tea Tree roots. Sunday we packed up slowly and headed home after lunch.

Thank you to Scott and Tania for inviting us so we could share in another wonderful and relaxing weekend.

Monthly Drinking Session

Last year was a great year for developing new friendships. I have met a lot of wonderful new friends from Micayla's prep class. We have now formed a group of 10 couples who get together each month for drinks. We all bring our own drinks and each couple provides a plate of nibblies. There is always way too much to go around. Us mum's see each other almost every school day and have become good friends, so it's a great chance for the husbands to get to know each other too.

Just before Christmas we visited Emma's house for Christmas drinks and for the kids to play and have fun looking at her house all decorated with Christmas lights. On Saturday night they all came to our house. It was raining so the kids were confined to indoors. The house looked like a tornado had hit it, but what can you do when they can't play outside. Even though it was raining it was quite warm.

The adults sat outside where we had the music set up and we were having lots to drink. Everyone was enjoying the music, some of it took us back to our younger years. We were all having so much fun, letting our hair down and we have decided that we need to have a girls night out, except it's going to be an allnighter. Maybe even get someone to drive a minibus for us and go on a pub crawl. Something none of us have done in years. Then we were talking about a girls weekend away and of course the guys spoke up and said if we were going away then so were they the very next weekend. It's great to see everyone, husbands and all getting along so well. We got to bed around 2.00am with a couple of sick and sorry bodies the next day. Me included! All I can say is I'm glad Adrian decided he was too tired to be bothered going on a bike ride, because I couldn't pick myself up off the couch until about 4.00pm on Sunday. Gotta remember not to mix my drinks. I blame Sherrell for making cowboys, he he he, it had nothing to do with a bottle of wine, some vodka and then some bicardi.

Back to Cropping

On Friday 19th January we started back at our first crop night for 2007. This was at Arty Pants, who will now be holding crop nights weekly, however I'll only do it monthly with maybe the occassional fortnightly one thrown in as well. It was great to get back into scrapping layouts again. Before Christmas I was making gifts, cards and bon bons, then I've been reorganising my scrap space into something more workable. I'd grown out of my space so I had to rearrange the way I stored things. I now have lots of room to fill again. Gotta make way for more stuff I plan to win again, like in 2006. I go to crop nights with Tania Graham and Laura Overdyk. This time though Laura also brought Michelle (her sister) and her sisters friend along, another Tania. It's a huge group gathering at the Arty Pants crop nights and it's always the same friendly faces, so it's a fantastic social night with people just as addicted to scrapping as us. Here are the layouts I did at the crop. I managed to get 2 double layouts done, which is really good going for me. I mustn't have talked as much.
It's hard to see but there is Heidi Swappe bling around the photos of Micayla and the dance title on the right hand side (thanks to Arty Pants, I purchased this with my voucher I won on their last online challenge). I've also added a couple of diamontes to the doodling on the bottom of the left hand side. You can get a closer look by clicking on my photobucket link, in the scrapbooking folder and click on the image to enlarge.
There is also some doodling coming out of the flowers on this layout and some white dot doodling on the title.

In Albury with the Fox's

On a spare of the moment decision we packed the car and drove up to Albury with Darren, Mel, Kealy and Deegan Fox. We didn't book accommodation, we'd thought we'd wait and see when we got there. We left at some ridiculous hour in the morning so we would have reasonable enough time up there seeing we were only going overnight. We found accommodation, which was about 14k's out of Albury. It wasn't the best of accommodation but it wasn't that bad either. We'd been fluffing around making decisions and finding our way around that we'd lost an hour, so we thought we are here now, they have 2 cabins side by side, this will do us. At least they had a nice pool with a big waterslide, and a restaurant within walking distance.

We unpacked our car as quickly as we could so we could go and get some lunch, we were starving, breakfast had been hours and hours ago, or so it seemed. We headed off to Ettamogah Pub where we had lunch and the boys had a beer in THE PUB. We had a bit of a walk around, locked the kids up in the lock up etc. It was really quite boring, there is not much there anymore so it didn't take us long to have a look around, once we'd eaten lunch.

It was stinking hot so we went back to the tourist park and went for a swim in the pool. The boys were watching cricket and sinking a few beers in the cabin until I went and dragged them down to the pool to join us. The kids were having a ball. Bailey couldn't wait to get in the water and had jumped in straight after me and before I had the chance to come to the surface myself. Lucky he can swim a little. That evening we went out to dinner after a couple of pre dinner drinks in Darren and Mel's cabin. We ate our dinner outside on the balcony and later went in to watch the kareoke. The kids were having fun singing along while sitting on the floor amongst other kids watching.

The next morning we checked out of our cabin and very slowly made our way home. First stopping at the "Fun Park" in Albury. It had a so called pool, a waterslide, you could feed fish, ride a train etc. We were rather dissappointed in the value for money but the kids were having a ball. We were given fish food to throw into this big tank full of fish and when you threw it in the fish went on a frenzy, splashing water over the top of the tank and onto us. The kids thought this was funny. They then went on the waterslide and as you can see by the photos, they were loving that. It was their first time on a waterslide.

We went home through Beechworth, where we stopped for lunch. We went out to a waterhole where there would normally be a waterfall you could walk around but with the drought there was nothing to see. This really dissappointed Micayla. We stopped off at Healesville for dinner. This is where we said goodbye to Darren, Mel and the kids and headed for home. It's was great spending time away with Darren and Mel; we have a lot of fun with them, the kids get on great together and everyone has a relaxing, easygoing, enjoyable time together. Big thumbs up to holiday together again, maybe we'll get to do that trip to Port Douglas we keep talking about.

We then made our way to Adrian's parents place to pick up the dog and I think we got home around 1.00am after lots of chatting. The kids fell asleep in Oma and Opa's bed.

Adrian's Birthday in Moama

Being in Moama later meant spending Adrian's birthday there. We celebrated by going out to dinner at the Harvest Hotel in Echuca. There were 18 adults and 9 children. Micayla and Bailey's Oma and Opa were there along with Max and Nola (who are the owners of the property we camp on and also the owners of the Emmy Lou, Canberra and Pride of the Murray paddlesteamers). Micayla and Bailey's Aunty, Uncle and cousins, Rochelle, Mark, Keiran and Taylah were able to join us as well. The kids had their own table with pencils and a colouring image on the back of their menus. This kept them busy for ooohh, 5 minutes. Their food was brought out almost immediately so when ours came out an hour and a half later, the kids were running around crazy with boredom. We managed to quieten them down though so we could enjoy our meals. Bailey idolised Keiran and would follow him everywhere, I think Keiran was enjoying being the big cousin. Lucky we were in the company of good friends and family so the hour and a half didn't seem so long, even though we were starving. It's nice to share an event like a birthday with friends and family who care about you.

When The Kids Are Not Skiing

This year we took up the kids mini bike. Scott and Tania and Marty and Julie also took their's with them. We found this great little track out near the Five Mile Boat Ramp. It was like a little circuit with hills and bumps for the kids to have fun on. Erwin also had his 4 wheel drive and had a little fun through the puddles and hills himself. Bailey just loves the mini bike and can't wait till he's riding his bike without training wheels, so he too can ride the motorbike. He rides it with Adrian but Bailey controls the throttle. Micayla is already almost grown out of the JR50 and we maybe buying her the next size up pretty soon. Bailey will be on the JR50 for some time yet though. Us girls just sat in our chairs relaxing with our books in hand and just watching the kids have fun; and the big kids too. I didn't get any photos of this to share with you because I captured it all on video instead.

Micayla and Mitchell Going Doubles

The are really getting good at kneeboarding now. Here you see Mitchell and Micayla going doubles. It was great to get Micayla on with Mitchell because he is really good at it, and it helped Micayla to move outside the wake. She is getting really confident now. Mitchell is good at everything he tries. He even nearly got up on the wakeboard, which is actually an adults board. He did get up but not for long, but that was only because the board was too big for him. Mitchell is actually a bit of a dare devil and will go hard at everything, without thinking of the consequences; to him there are none! We have been starting to get a bit lazy and slowing down with getting the boat out in the water, and only getting it out in the afternoon and just lazing around camp prior to lunch. But now the kids just want to ski and then kneeboard and biscuit and then another ski. The boat is getting out in the water earlier now. It's so great to see the kids having so much fun. Its awesome for them to experience new things all the time and getting out from in the fresh air and sunshine.

Micayla's 1st Time On Skies

Yeah, what a little Champion. Her very first time on skies and she popped right up out of the water on her very first go. She did so well and she loves it. From then on she had a go every day. The second day she had a bit of trouble getting up, I don't know why, it just wasn't working for her. She got upset and didn't want to do it anymore. But the next day she was up and off again. When she is skiing, an adult sits in the boat holding the other end of the rope, which also has a handle on it, so if they fall off and forget to let go of the rope the adult holding the other end just lets go. Steve Overdyk was holding the rope for her and as she popped out of the water, Steve fell out of the boat. I wish we got it on video, it was soooooo funny. I thought Micayla would've been upset for sinking, but she too was laughing at Steve. Mitchell Graham also got up on the skies and between Micayla and Mitchell there was no stopping them. The other kids have yet to get up the courage. Brandon and Bailey are a little too young yet, they just stick to the biscuits.

Christmas/New Year in Moama

We decided to go to Moama later this year. As mentioned in the post below, we had Christmas at home with Adrian's parents. Then Adrian went with the boys motorbike riding for the next 3 days. He went along with Darren Fox, Scott Graham, Marty Peters, Steve and David Overdyk and a whole bunch of other people. They were meant to go to Licola but because of the fires ended up going to Tallanghi (not sure of the spelling), which is up near Kinglake. I couldn't wait for them to get home because that meant I could start my holiday as we were leaving for Moama on the 29th.

It was great leaving a little later because that meant our New Years party was at the beginning of our holiday instead of the end, when we are all thinking about packing up and going home. So with it only being 2 days into our holiday we were all ready for a party. And what a party it was. It was a black tie, cocktail party. But all that meant was you had to come to the camp fire wearing a tie. Us girls went to a little more effort dressing up than the guys. Adrian had a flashing bow tie, Scott made a cardboard one and wore it around his waist covering the fact that he was only wearing his jocks (for a little while anyway). Tania wore a tiara that ended up on Micayla's head and I wore half my costume from the 1920's Murder Mystery night in the Hunter Valley.

The night started off pretty slow with cocktails being made here and there while sitting around the fire. Then the rain came. Luckily we were on the edge of it and only got about 20 mins of rain, but we had an awesome nature provided firework show with the lighting. Because of the rain it made us move to under the blue tarp where all the cocktail ingredients were and this is where it got pretty messy. Cocktails were being made one after the other and then we started making our our concoctions. We started adding different coloured liquers to the Cowboy shots, making them cowgirls, a green one we called cowhoofter and one that turned out brown we called cowshits. We were having so much fun we were falling over because we were laughing so hard. We were drinking shots from unusual places and we were dancing the conga and lots of other "dancing" around the camp fire. Lets just say I don't think I want to see the video. We finally crawled into bed around 3.30am.

This mess was early in the night. I don't think I was capable of taking a clear photo by the end of the night but the table was definately not this neat by the end of it all.

Unfortunately when this photo was taken Bailey was fast asleep in bed so it's just the 5 of us. We are with Adrian's parents, Micayla and Bailey's Oma and Opa.
I just love this photo of Micayla and her Oma.