Today was just a quiet day at home.  I dusted nearly a half of my models, some requiring a damp cloth (the trick being not to wipe off decals with the dust).

This evening we went to All Bar Nun for Doc's birthday drinks and dinner.  Had a lot more drinks than dinner! :)  Doc jumped out of a perfectly good aeroplane this morning so was fun to hear about his experience with that.  The sweetie wanted to come home a lot earlier than I was ready to .. doh..!  But otherwise quite a pleasant evening :)

The first half of the long weekend was great.

Friday night we went over to Nat and Andrew's and met Suki.  Soooo cute!  Had pizza for dinner, then played some Wii music (some bits of it were fun, others were tedious), Singstar, Wiiracas and Mario Kart.

Saturday we went to Belco markets for breakfast and to look at fish shops.  Got back and got some housework done then spent a good chunk of the afternoon doing fish stuff.  Stu did a big tidy of the fish stuff in the garage and I cleaned out the danio tank and took the five danios back upstairs.

Sunday was doing more housey stuff when I started having an immune reaction.  So went and lay down around lunch time for a couple of hours.  The rest of the afternoon went in slow motion.  Did do a little tidying of my hobby room, so at least the day wasn't a complete waste :/

Today was just a mopey blah sort of day.  Did a jigsaw.  Ripped some of my cds.  Did the food shopping cause we had to.  That was about it really.

I did freecycle a couple of inkjet printers which was good.  Although a bit sad giving away a printer I spent $300 on back in the day.  Nowadays it's practically cheaper to buy a new printer than it is to buy new ink.  So stoopid.

Had a good time just wandering around and looking at things.  Barely spent any money.  I did buy five daffodil bulbs.  And a Moove (the mobile Moove man kinda convinced me).  And a hot dog and fairy floss for dinner.  Quite annoyed that you can't buy fresh fairy floss anymore, you have to buy it in a plastic bag :(

Took 383 photos.. here's just a few of them :)

Ferris Wheel and tower from the car park.  The walk back to the car felt like a lot lot longer than the walk from the car!

Working steam engine

These guys look a bit like our next door neighbour's goat

Goat closeup

Goats have really freaky eyes..!

Sheepdog goat!

Donkey trial

Alpaca

Ducklings!

This was one massive pig!  The area smelt like pork (before roasting) .. can't imagine why!

Bubbles!!

Orange juice stand (this girl had her butt out whenever we went past)

Wall of bubble machines

Kazza the dwarf...

Mobile Moove man (Nat getting a drink)

Catching a wave

Ferris Wheel (would have been nice to go up - maybe next time)

Rides

Kitty with a moustache.  We were trying to take pictures through the bars and the dude came along and opened the cage for us :)

I so want one of these!  This thing (apart from the way cool little house around it) has a tv and dvd/cd player built in!!  Andrew said all we need is water-proof wii-motes for spa-wii-ing :)

I always like the cake decorating.  This ship was my favorite

Icing flowers are amazing!

This was straight out of the Women's Weekly Children's Birthday Cake book..! Lame!! Especially since it won a prize

Flowers

Flowers

Woolworths fruit/veggie display

Onions in the veggie display

Chocolate fountain

Back to the pigs.  Noticed this time that all the piglets' tails were docked :(

Camel race

They race to a bucket of food at the end of the track

This kid looked as if she owned the place.  She was in everyone's way of the view, so we couldn't help but laugh when she later fell off trying to get on or off.

They were running about 45 minutes late and we had to go, but the Hiluxes started up as we were half way round the track)

Flying Hilux!

Well.  Not exactly.  I still need to upload photos to conspiracy, and there's a few pages I want dedicate to food, hotels, Engrish and manhole covers (!) that I'll do on conspiracy.  

But if you wanted a good summary of our Japan trip last year, here it is!

It's not going to be all in one page for too much longer, as any Google searches pointed at it will kill my traffic (there's 14mb of images!!).  In a few weeks I'll split it up so the front page of the blog is just an index page.

Yesterday morning Stu got up relatively early and we went into town.  

Got to see the new Canberra Centre parking light system.  This is so totally brilliant.  Rhodes shopping centre should pay attention to this!

Had some breakfast at Gus' in civic then I got a card for the parents while Stu got a hair cut.

Came home and packed, then headed off to Sydney.

Arrived at Luc&Lizzi's around five pm to take a donut photo of Ryan.

Then headed to the parents' place.  The plan was to go out to dinner so we decided to go to "Tropical Restaurant" Chinese in Jannali.  The food wasn't that bad (I actually really enjoyed the BBQ pork with garlic sauce) and service was pretty quick, but they enraged me by not providing free tap water (you had to buy bottled water or soft drink).  It was a BYO place, although "alcoholic beverages only".  So there was no way to get a free drink of water.  This, while perhaps not illegal unless they were licensed, is downright *rude*.  I refused to buy a drink at all, and will never be going back there.

This morning we went to church with the parents.  Then went and got Stu a coffee at a cafe in Jannali.  Then came back for a parish lunch, which my aunties and uncles and some of the parents' friends came along to for my parents' 40th (ruby) wedding anniversary.  Wasn't too painful heh :)

After lunch and dessert we came back to pick up out stuff and photograph parrots..

Then headed home, via the little brother's to say hello and happy anniversary to them.  Had a lovely long hold of Yingarna (she is sooo beautiful!) although didn't take any photos to prove it.

Was later filled with rage at people who don't know how to merge.  Apparently there'd been an earlier accident on the Hume Highway.  We drove maybe ten kilometres in first gear just crawling along north of Goulburn.  Then got to some road works where the two lanes merged into one.  At that point the traffic jam vaporised.  No trace whatsover of it.  How can you go from two lanes at 5km/hr to one lane at 100km/hr ??? Fricken fricken!!  I hate people.  Truly I do.

There was actually water in Lake George, but we were pretty exhausted and just wanted to go home, so just took some snaps from out the window.

Now it's nearly midnight.  Because we haven't spent nearly enough time at home this weekend :(  *sigh*

After lunch Bring It Home delivered all our Ikea shelves.  Stu wanted to build one, so I started clearing out the books from the shelves.  It's going to be a long process!  Got the easier books moved the garage, but have been going through Stu's books which have all gotten mixed up after two moves and putting them back into categories.  In the end he built all three of the Billy shelves, and I got maybe a third of the books moved to the garage or sorted out.

Had an extremelly refreshing swim before heading out to Bunnings to get some brackets, and then do our food shopping.  While we were shopping a change came through, and temperatures plummeted (it's 17C now) and a nice strong wind blew all the hot air out of the house - hurrah!!  So I sit here freezing, but need to leave windows open to reboot the temperature in the house.

Had these for dessert - nomm!

Arrived around lunch time, and made ourselves some toasted sandwiches.  The house is huge - lots of living space, three full bathrooms, but only four bedrooms.  Very well equipped though.

Some time after lunch some of us headed down to the local beach (the little one at the north end of Malua Bay area).  Went for a snorkel and saw lots of cool fish, and then had a good long swim with a giant stingray - was awesome!  Then it decided to swim away, so I couldn't keep up with it :)

Came back for beer o'clock, and had a couple of awesome roasts (pork and lamb) for dinner.  Unlocked all the cups on Noah's DS, and later we watched Star Trek.

On Thursday it was quite overcast.  It was Lily's birthday so we went to Mogo Zoo (see separate link for pictures).  Note to self:  don't try to go to any of the keeper talks next time!  All the hoards of people were mostly doing the same thing in the same order, so you just couldn't move in the place.  The pathways are all so narrow and it was stiflingly humid and a bit rainy and so we all got peopled out very quickly.  So much so that we didn't even have the energy to see all of the zoo.  Headed back to the house for a big lunch of stirfry and chicken kebabs.

Got completely bored out of my brain in the afternoon.  Was totally kicking myself that I didn't bring jigsaws or other things for me to do.  And whenever I went anywhere near the Wii, all the kids would jump up and want to play too (even when they were all otherwise occupied).  Since there were only two wiimotes, it wasn't very practical to play with more than two.  It was all a bit frustrating.  Had a bit of a meltdown and went and hid for a while.  

Later in the afternoon sat around and nibbled junk food while having a little party for Lily.

Had some beer, then they got chinese takeaway, but we were all still full from lunch and the party that we didn't get much.  Tried to teach Potty Monty Python Fluxx but he just didn't "get" it so that was a bit of a fizzer.  Had some wine and watched some of Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince, and started to feel better.

Friday we headed down to the Tomaga River with the boat.  Except Stu and Annie kept on driving past the turn off, so we thought they'd missed it.  Waited and waited for them to realise they'd lost us and turn around but they never did.  So we went driving to try and find them.  Eventually we saw them and thought they were following us, but then they turned off *again*.  We couldn't understand it and it was very frustrating.  Eventually we gave up and went to the river.  The others turned up shortly after - turns out they'd just decided to go for a drive.  It would have been nice if they'd told us they were going to do this so we didn't stress out about it :/  Not happy Jan!

Went for a little putter up the river on the boat with Potty

Stu and I swam across the river to get to the sand flats on the other side, but hadn't considered how hard the shallow muddy reed beds would be to get across.. oops.  But saw lots of shell fishy thingies, and a soldier crab (a dog had scared all the birds away).  Crossed the river again downstream where there were no reeds :)

We left some time before the others, and couldn't get the key to work on the front door (it does work, but is very fiddly).  Wandered around the back of the house to see if there was another lock it would work on, only to find the back bathroom door wide open .. oops..

Nibbled on some random food.  Later in the afternoon Potty and I went snorkelling again, but it was quite rough, and lots of churned up gunk in the water, so couldn't see much (not that there was that much to see anyway - most of the fishies must have been in hiding).

Finished off the beer.  Kerry made pizzas for dinner, but none of us were particularly hungry.  Watched Flightplan on tv.

Saturday morning was pack up and go home.  The fridge was still *full* of food - probably enough for another week :/  So of course half of it got thrown out :/  I won't mention the dishwasher incident.  *sigh*  Was only too glad to go home basically.  Although we did stop into The Scottish Restaurant so Stu could get some brunch.  Finally home around lunch time.

Then headed out to Yass for Stu's family's party.  Was a really wet day, but at least a lovely temperature :)  

Heaps of great food, ate way too much!  I still haven't had any dinner.. hrmm.. :)

Tonight I dug out my Star Destroyer and started building it while watching Love Actually :)

Love Actually is one of Fifi Box's favourite movies.  She saw it over and over again at the cinemas.  And I have to admit that it's grown on me too.  The first time I saw it I enjoyed it but it passed my test of repeated viewings, and in fact I think I enjoy it more each time.  Or maybe it's just Christmas :)

Got home and almost immediately went out again to do the shopping.  (via Dumpling Inn for shredded beef Peking style :) ).  At least Coles is relatively peaceful at eight pm, even three days before Christmas.  

Have got food organised for the next few days, although we didn't buy much in the way of "real" food tonight - just lots of snacks.  Roast pork will be had, but probably Christmas Eve since we have other plans for Christmas Day.  

And plane spotters should open this URL in Google Earth and go squeeee!!

Friday was the second of three Friday work parties where entirely too much wine was drunk but it was a pretty good party (and I did a round of Christmas trivia).  Dinner of pizza, but ate entirely too much when my stomach wasn't ready for food yet.

Saturday was up at stoopid-o'clock after not having gotten much sleep the night before, and my stomach still wasn't ready for food.  So packed a three-tonne truck full of stuff instead.  Only then did I get hungry.  But then it was off to Hall Showground for yet another party.  This one was a lot of work, but did get to wander around for a while in the morning and even go on a few rides.  Nat wants to go next year.  Packed and unpacked the truck again, and got home at 6:15pm.  Whereupon I had a shower and then we headed out again - to Nat and Andrew's new place.  More pizza for dinner, and Wiiing.  And raspberry nomms for dessert :) Got home very late.  Lucky we didn't fall alseep at the wheel on the way home.

Sunday was collapse in a heap day.  Did pretty much nothing all day.  Kinda needed it.

The bogans moved in on the weekend.  Already being loud and bogany, and parking on the nature strip in front of our house.  This is the one thing I really really dreaded from new neighbours.  Guess God is just laughing at me.  They do have a pretty cool fish tank though, and a cute little puppy.  Should prolly go down and say hello to them soon...