Busy, Busy, Busy and a reason to Celebrate!

Wow, I have been so full on of late that I have hardly had a chance to look at my computer. Except to check my friends blogs of course. My Christmas cards are all made and I am currently surrounded in a sea of them all waiting to be written in. I will get there. Now, the reason to celebrate. Our residency has come through at last and we are now Australian residents ( Yippee! I think ). With all the rivalry between Australia and NZ our kiwi family might not be too happy with us becoming Australians but at least we can stay in the country now. A means to an end. lol Itchy feet so it is time to head off on another camping trip, this time with some of Connor's rugby mates. Should be a hoot. We are going to a place called Blanchetown in the Riverlands. The campground is situated on the edge of the river Murray. Someone is bringing a boat for inflatable rides and I am looking forward to paddling down the river in my kayak. For those of you who haven't seen any of our previous river Murray photos it is like swimming in very watery mud. There is so much silt in the water that you can't see your hand 10 inches under the water. Its an experience.

Woo Hoo! I got an award

Look at what I have been presented by my lovely friend Mo. When I was living back in NZ Maureen would come over most Tuesday nights and teach me how to use GIMP. I must say that she is the most patient teacher and didn't need to repeat herself, well not too often. If these awards could rubber wall I would bounce it right back to Maureen. Thanks for all the patience and enthusiasm my sweet. According to Maureen's blog I now list 6 things I love and then pass on the award to 6 other blogs of my choice. Here it goes - (An Edit - It is 7 things you love and seven blogs. Doh!) Things I Love - 1 - Family -It is fantastic that we are all finally back together in the one country 2 - Friends - far and wide. You have helped me get through some tough times 3 - My new home - Adelaide rocks and the weather is fantastic 4 - Camping - It is so great to get out there and explore 5 - Technology - GIMP, Blogger, MSN, Email etc, etc. There is no reason not to be in touch 6 - Chocolate - I am a woman and that is enough, lol. Visit Haighs in Adelaide, the best 7 - Digiscrapping - I am no creator but I love using what others share. Thanks Now to pass it on to 6 (7 lol) other blogs that I enjoy. I have often left comments on their 4shared accounts but to most of them we have not emailed so hopefully it should be a lovely surprise. 1 - Annette, thanks for the wonderful email tutorial. I love your creative backgrounds 2 -Joni, what fantastic Christmas colours 3 -Pamela, don't have all the ABC's but certainly enjoy making layouts with what I do have 4 - Kim.b, you are so funny. Very talented too. 5 - Bethany, word art rocks 6 - Kathy, have just discovered your blog and yippee, more word art 7 - Cat, for asking me my first ever technical question, ha ha and your awesome tuts on GIMP Now just to contact you all TTFN

Hello To All

I got a lovely mention in Joni Gray's blog and consequently have had a few more visitors than usual. So, hi to you all, thanks for looking. I am thinking of printing the above layout for Eilish's friend Amy as a Christmas present. Its a shame that I can't find any 8x8 frames. Does anyone have any suggestions as to a way around this as I am sure there must be one. A quiet one today, gym and then off to visit a good friend. She has done wonders and lost a pile of weight. Looking more fabulous each day I see her. As a 'well done' I popped in with a lovely bunch of flowers, the same colours as my blog background actually. So, Well Done Dorothy! Credits: http://leatheo.blogspot.com; http://www.purescrap.blogspot.com; http://elegantwordart2.blogspot.com

Go Green

It was Sports Day for the kids school today and what a great day it was. Yesterday was a very hot 36 degrees and we were worried the day might be cancelled due to the heat. Thankfully a cool change came through last night and today was a pleasant 27 degrees with cloud cover.

Our family is in the green team so we all dressed up appropriately, though I did suggest Connor could take his finger out of his nose and just wear that :) He was not amused.

The school had drawn up a programme of all events for the parents so that we could follow our little darlings around and still know where the other little darling was. I have not seen so many cameras and video recorders in a long time. The Parent Paparazzi!

Check out Eilish on the Tug'o'war, second from the back. I asked her if she had noticed that you could tell she was working hard as her thigh muscle was very prominent. Her reply, "Oh, is that what that is. I just thought it was a really big wobbly bit on me." Kids, gotta love em.

Both kids did well for their teams and Green came in at second place.

Go Green!

Finished

Its a bit early for Christmas stuff I know but I am very excited at finishing my background layout and header. Turn your sound on and you will even hear that I have added a playlist, tee hee hee. What can I say? I am chuffed. Now all I need to do is add a credit listing to my blog thanking all the lovely people that I downloaded papers and elements from.

Just an update

Hi everyone! No pic today as I have been side tracked by too many other things. You may have noticed that the look of my blog has changed a bit. This is still a work in progress and I hope to have it sorted shortly. I sent an email to a lady in the States asking if she could tell me how she changed her blog backgrounds. I received a lovely email and tutorial that she had written up for me. Unfortunately I have now lost the tutorial when Gary rebuilt my computer (yes, again). Luckily I had written down the basics, good old paper and pen, and have been able to sort things out. So a very big thank you to http://mentalimagez.blogspot.com/ for your wonderful help. We have been very busy here lately with Melbourne Cup Lunches, Nippers, camping and still sorting out things for our residency. Gary, Eilish and I all went for xrays on Monday morning and the whole family are booked in for medicals on Friday morning. Hopefully this is the last of it all. The teachers over here are still busy striking, with the schools being closed at least once a fortnight this term so far. There is even talk of them walking off the job all together and not coming back til the new year starts. At least the weather is good and we have plenty of things to do if this happens. Though Eilish is a bit concerned that they may all miss out on their end of year graduation. Guess we will just have to wait and see what happens. Has anyone started thinking about Christmas yet? I am still chugging away at my decorations and have even managed to decide on a design for my cards (just need to make them). Gary has been talking about me making a Christmas cake this year as he missed out on one last year. Poor boy. Credits for blog background papers and elements go to: http://shabbypumpkin.blogspot.com/

A bit slow off the mark

Here are some belated pics from our weekend away in Bundaleer Forest.

We took a friend of Eilish's with us (Amy) and also loaded 5 bikes on to the top of our camper trailer. As you can see from the first pic we are quite well stacked. Bundaleer Forest is about 230km north of Adelaide.

Just before we reached the forest entrance (and end of cell phone range) a text came through from one of our fellow campers advising that there was a good chance of a complete fire ban for Saturday due to high winds and temperatures over 35 degrees. I do wonder if we can actually go camping without something untoward happening, but then where would the fun be in that.

It is decided that we will all carry on and improvise over the cooking situation once we got there. The large logs in front of our camping site surround a large campfire area (now out of bounds). We are the first ones to arrive thus getting to pick the best camp site, yay for us. It is heating up now and the flies are coming out in droves, time to don the fly hats. If you look at the pic of the kids sitting around the table you can see some of them in hats and others protecting their food and drinks with plates etc.

On Saturday morning I was cooking pancakes for 4 families on my gas stove as were had the only one when the park ranger came by and said that the fireban had definitely been issued and we were to pack up the stove as soon as brekky was finished. Bugger. How to cook a bbq dinner for 4 families was now becoming interesting.

The ranger said that if we took ourselves up to the stone hut we could cook in there on our gas stove only, no fires. As you can see by pic 5 we were creative in our cooking efforts, bacon and eggs for Sunday brekky.

Before I forget, we saw our first wild brown snake on Saturday afternoon. It was meandering its way through the middle of our camp ground and was under the dining tables when we spotted it. Gary and I leapt up, Gary to get a big stick and me to get my camera. Unfortunately Gary had managed to herd it out of the campground before I had my camera ready and I wasn't to keen to go looking for it. We all wore shoes for the rest of the weekend, lol.