Ooh, my first post, how exciting. Its nearly Christmas and we have so much going on as usual. Tommy is going to be baptized on Saturday and then we have the end of year Primary Christmas Pool Party following, so it is going to make for an exciting day!! We have our Karratha Branch Christmas party on Friday night, Jared's work Christmas party on Tuesday night and Olea has her school end of year party tomorrow. Olea and I will be making smiley face biscuits to take along (that's if she doesn't eat them all before we get there) :-D
We have Anne-Marie staying with us at the moment and she will be staying for Christmas. She is Olea's new big sister and I don't know what Olea is going to do without her when she is gone. Olea thinks Anne-Marie is the best thing since lollies were invented. Anne-Marie has been staying with us for 4 months now. She lives in her caravan just outside our laundry. She is taking time out from her Nursing degree to save some money, and Karratha would have to be the best place to do that!! Anyway, back to Christmas, we still haven't decided what we are going to do yet because it is just so HOT in Karratha. 43 degrees is the average temperature these days and we kinda wanted to have a family tradition of playing cricket or going fishing in the afternoon, but who wants to do that in this heat? Maybe fishing won't be so bad if there is a cool breeze down at Hearson's cove. Jacob is getting a fishing rod for Christmas so we better make this present worth while.
The kids really would love to spend Christmas down in Nannup because they love the farm life and they love their Nanna and Pa. Maybe because grandparents have usually experienced enough peaks and valleys with offspring so that they do not overreact and also they don't get over involved which makes for an enjoyable experience. Here's hoping!! They also get to do fun boy things like motorbike riding and rifle shooting with Pa. NOW you know why they would rather be there!!! They may spend some time in Nannup during the school holidays while Jared goes to Busselton to catch up with some friends for a week. I'm not going because I am finishing off summer semester and plus we were only in Perth a couple of months ago.
That Perth trip was an interesting trip to say the least. Our car broke down between Carnarvon and Geraldton and we had no mobile phone coverage. It was about 11pm, pitch black and we were stuck in the middle of nowhere!! Jared had to pull over a truck and hitch a ride to the nearest petrol station which happened to be a place called Billabong. When he got to the phone box, he realised that it didn't take coins and would only accept a phone card!! Can you believe it!!! Jared ended up reversing the charges to Tasmania to see if anyone could ring up the RAC for us, but no luck. No one would answer. He then rang Adam Chapman and Tracy was up feeding Joseph (thank goodness) so she rang the RAC and had them arrange for a tow truck to come and help us out. Unfortunately the dill pickle at RAC said that they didn't have a truck big enough to cater for all of our family and our car so we had to wait until the next day for them to arrive. They ended up turning up at 11am the next day. The kids were pretty good sleeping in the car that night although I was kinda scared when Jared took off hitchhiking. I think I may have watched too many crime scene investigation shows and CSI's :) It was quite hot waiting for the tow truck because we had no aircon and the FLIES WERE ATROCIOUS! I HATE FLIES. Looking back now, it was quite funny because can you believe it, the tow truck decides to break down about 20 km outside of Geraldton. It took about 2 hours to fix and we thought that we weren't going to make it to Nanny's 94th birthday celebration (the whole reason for the trip to Perth). We hired a car in Geraldton and ended up staying the night in a beautiful beachside cabin in Dongara. What a beautiful place that is!! We got up the next morning and drove 4 hours to Perth and made it to the party. I'm glad we went because we were able to catch up with my uncles, aunties, cousins and extended family that we haven't seen in a long time. Jared also was able to obtain 100 names for genealogy on my Grandmothers side of the family from my Dad's cousin Wayne and some great photos. I just need to get the spirit of Elijah now. Time and a season for everything I say so maybe when I have some more time!!
Also on our trip we had the opportunity to catch up with a lot of friends whom we haven't seen for AGES. We spent a lot of time with Dion Hayman (one of Jared's good friends) Mark Glossop, Belinda and Damien, Sam and the Chapmans. Can't forget my lovely sister Simone and her gorgeous family too. Didn't get to spend too much time with Aunty Christmas (Kristin) but we did catch up with her at Nanny's 94th Birthday party. I enjoyed spending time with Dion and the family and hanging out at Scarborough beach. The kids loved him of course because he is a policeman. He was great with the kids especially Jacob when they went swimming together in the Ocean. He will make a great Dad some day :) Hmmmm, what else did we do, oh yes, how could I forget, we went to our old Ward in Merriwa to see Adam's son be blessed (Joseph) and Michael Chapman receive the Arronic Preisthood. Jared also went to the temple with Adam and Michael to do baptisms. I looked after Leah and Kevin Kleins kids (and also my own) outside the temple. Had a great time with the kids, we went to the park across the road from the Temple and the kids played around in the temple pond out the back to kill time. I'm glad they all got to go to the temple for such a special occasion. I can't wait for Ammon to turn 12 next year and he also will receive the priesthood and we will be able to go to the temple with him. I just wish my Dad could come along too as I know how much Ammon looks up to him :(
More on our trip to Perth. We stayed in the city for a week or so on Hay Street. It was a handy place to stay as we could catch the red cat into the city and it made accessing friends a lot easier than if we had stayed way up North of the river with the Chapmans. They offered for us to stay in their caravan but we thought we would make a holiday of it and stay in an apartment. Our holiday was extended just slightly because we had to wait for our car to be fixed. It ended up costing us $8000 just for the car but we love our huge car so much that we wanted to keep it. I'm sure people were wondering why the heck we just didn't buy a new one but at least now we know it will be a while before it needs fixing again!!
Towards the end of our holiday we felt like we needed a change so we decided to stay in a cabin at Quinns Beach caravan park. It was lovely too, but then again, what beach isn't? Our trip back to Karratha wasn't that much more easy than the one down. As soon as we arrived in GinGin we happened across a serious car accident with one man deceased. The fire brigade had to turn around and go home because they new the deceased and couldn't bring themselves to cut him out of the car so they had to call Midland fire brigade which was going to take at least 2 hours. We waited for about an hour but then we decided to take a 100 km detour. The kids ended up having gastro all the way home the poor little things. They were all throwing up except for Tommy Tuckers. He was sick in Perth with gastro though :( It was so heart wrenching watching Olea leaning up against a tree and vomiting. I'd never seen her sick before :( They were very good on the way back though because Nana and Pa bought them an early Christmas present consisting of a DVD player and some movies. They are the BEST.
Ammon hasn't been allowed to play the xbox since we have been back on our holiday. We have come to the conclusion that he has an unhealthy addiction and that he could be doing better things with his time. For him, it is an all-consuming activity which has been deemed "cybercrack" by some. He would wake up as early as possible in the morning to play before school, as soon as he got home from school, and every possible opportunity he had, he would be on it. His eyes and ears would crave it, just like an addict craves another hit or high. I did some research on it and it showed that playing some video games raises the amount of dopamine in the brain to a level equivalent to a hit of speed. Hmmmm, sound like me and caffeine although it has now been 1 week since I have had a drop of it. Yee haaaa for me! I'm now no slave to caffeine as I so chronically was!! Just like drugs can addict the body, media can enslave our minds. EEEK!! Just glad that he is spending more time with Jared playing chess and playing handball with his brothers. Speaking of which, the boys love playing handball soooo much that they got to school at 6:30 in the morning a couple of weeks ago because the were so excited to play. Surprise surprise I ended up receiving a concerned call from the deputy principle wondering what on earth my little guys were doing at school so early!! Well they are just such responsible little guys getting themselves dressed in the morning and jumping the fence and crossing the road to get to school! They just didn't read the time properly!! They thought it was 7:30 instead of 6:30!! This is what happens when they have a lazy mumma who wants to sleep in every now and again. NOW they have to come and at least say goodbye to me so I can check the time!! Hee hee.
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