A brush with fame....... and a haircut!

The one sport that I grew up watching was Rugby League. Unfortunately, (for my DH anyways) Ice Hockey is not a big sport here in Australia. Infact, ice hockey in Australia is near to non-existant - we have grass hockey but apparently that is definetly not the same if you speak to my DH.

I grew up watching Rugby League as my dad used to play it when he was younger. Now on the Gold Coast we have our very own team. To make it even better, the stadium is literally 5 minutes away from our house.

The Gold Coast team are called the Titans!! I am yet to see them play as it is off season right now. My DH and I got to meet two of the Titans as they were at our local Mall - Robina Town Centre.

My parents have season tickets to the Titan's games - I am hoping that they let us use them throughout the new year.

As for who the players are in the photo's - I have absolutely no idea - although I did find out the guy with the dark hair is Mark and he is a cutie patootie. (See, I managed to put my hand on his shoulder).

Other news in the homefront - I got a haircut!!! In these photo's I have long blonde hair - now I have short dark hair!!! It was getting so hot here and having long hair I just kept putting it up anyways. I needed a change and I love it. I am sure I will get some photo's at Christmas and will post my new look then.

A big shout out to my friend Eleonor - saw your photo's of your Christmas Light bus tour!!! You guys were freezing your butts off!!!! We celebrated Christmas by attending Carols by Candlelight at a park by the beach. What a difference a world away makes!!!

Till next time...............

Summer Fun - part 2

Here are my three gorgeous nieces from my Summer Fun blog. My dad is holding Madison (the eldest of the neices) and Chloe (the youngest).

The second photo is my middle niece Olivia.

My three cute little angels. Each of them is so adorable. I told my brother and sister's that they really made some cute kids.

Till next time..........

Summertime Fun

A few weeks ago we celebrated my mum's birthday and my parent's wedding anniversary. We had a BBQ lunch at my parents place, as you do in Australia, and then the kids and the men had an afternoon of fun in the pool.

I absolutely LOVE having my family all together for events like birthdays, anniversaries and especially Christmas. One thing that I especially love about my family is that all the kids get along so well with each other. I think it is wonderful to have cousins that live so close to each other and that you can see often enough and get along with so well.

On this particular day for some reason only the men went into the pool after lunch and ALL the kids followed in as well. All the kids just love the water - in Australia one of the first things you teach children is how to swim. Also, it is not uncommon for backyards in Australia to have a swimming pool.

The weather on this day was amazing - the sun was out, it wasn't too humid and there was a slight breeze. The last few weeks we have been having some pretty crazy weather - torrential rain, high humidty, floods, lightning, thunder - we have seen it all in such a short period of time.

Below are a few photo's: (I did download photos of my three cute neices but they disappeared - will try to post another time)

My three nephews Christopher, Liam and Andre' all love the water. Aren't they the cutest.

Till next time.............

A Touch of Nature

We have lots of beautiful creatures living in our neighbourhood.

My DH has made friends with all the lizards that live in our backyard. He has actually started naming them like they are his pets.

I have yet to see the Kookaburra's but I have heard them. You can hear them 'laughing' a mile away.

Canetoads - they are gross and disgusting but we do get alot of those at night time.

If you can believe me we also get bats here. I don't ever remember bats being part of the wildlife here on the Gold Coast but they are everywhere each night. Infact one early evening my mum and I went for a swim in the pool and there were bats flying overhead the whole time we were in the pool.

A few weeks ago I got some great shots of the lorikeets that fly around our area. I was going for a walk with my nephew and we hadn't even left the street that we live on when we found these birds eating from one of the trees in our up our street. They are beautiful birds but can be very noisy first thing in the morning.

Last night we heard an owl in the backyard - I tried to take a picture of it but wasn't succesful.

You just never know what creatures are hiding in the neighbourhood - I wonder what we will find tomorrow!!!

Till next time...............

Love You Nana..........

Apart from missing my family tremendously, another reason why I had wanted to come home was my Nana, the person I was named after. Over the past year she has been a little more forgetful and my parents made the decision that she needed to move to a care facility that will give her the freedom to still do as she liked but that also allowed for her to have somebody watching her all the time.

They found an amazing place called Hill View House - it is an aged care residence. When my parents first told me about my Nana moving there I was really concerned as I think back to dirty old nursing homes that smell. When I got to visit Nana, after arriving home, I was amazed. This place is beautiful. Nana has some of her old furniture in her room with pictures of her family all over the room. There are activities that she can participate in if she feels like - for eg. bingo, dances, movies, etc. She seems really happy there.

Infact, she seems extremely happy there. She is one of the more alert residents - alot of the people living there are quite elderly and just sit and chant all day or just keep to themselves. I have to say that I am lucky that Nana isn't quite that ill. She is just a little forgetful - I am not even sure if she truly recognizes me - I just take each visit a day at a time. My mum said that she thinks she does know who I am as she was asking about me coming home, 'When is she coming home?' she would say to my mum. I try to visit once a week - I have to go when my mum goes as my Nana will start talking in her native language, Maltese, and I don't understand what she says when she does this. Also, I don't think I am strong enough to get my Nana out of the sad moments that she does have. On my last visit to see her I went with Mum and Dad and it was amazing how both my parents pepped Nana up and made her laugh and smile. I don't think I could do that.

Seeing my Nana like this really makes me think how fast people can deteriorate - the last time I saw my nana was back in 2005 and she was fine. Infact she was getting my DH and I to write down a family recipe - something that she used to make us a long time ago. I think back now and realise maybe she knew she was slowly forgetting things and that was why she was so adament that we write this recipe down.

Something I have learned, and probably always known, make time for your family. Never take them for granted. Especially Grandparents, we have alot to learn from the elderly.

Till next time...............

Garage Sale

What do you do when you have a whole lot of crap and you need to get rid of it………. You have a garage sale. Well, at least that’s what we did a few weeks ago.

When I moved back home I did A LOT of spring cleaning and getting rid of things that I no longer used or needed. My theory was, if I didn’t need it for the last four years while I was in Canada I probably didn’t need it at all. I don’t know about you, but I tend to hold on to everything that is given to me or I have bought over the years, even if I am not using it. When I started working for Disney Cruise Line I soon learnt how to live with the bare minimum as I just didn’t have the room for it. I also learned not to get too attached to material things as I usually wasn’t able to keep them with me for too long.

The last 8 years of my life I have really learnt how to down size – and in a big way. I think the only items that I haven’t been able to let go of are photo’s. Even if I don’t look at them every day, I like to know they are there for me whenever I need to reminisce.

So,we had our garage sale. My parents (check them out in the photos – aren’t they cute), woke up extra early and were kind enough to let me and my DH sleep in. The garage sale was scheduled to start at 6am – there were ‘keener’s’ at our house by 5am!! Now, on one hand I think that it is awesome that we had people willing to buy stuff so early. But, on the other hand, ‘Get a life’!!! Did you know that there are people who go to garage sales EVERY weekend!!!! I cannot imagine getting up every single Saturday morning at 4am to go to garage sales!!!

I loved watching the different people that came in to buy stuff. Garage Sales really welcome all types of people. We had some really friendly people and some not so friendly people. My favourite were the people who walked into the garage did a quick look around and then leave. I wanted to remind them that it was a garage sale – all they are going to find is somebody elses crap! We weren’t selling antiques, we weren’t giving away gold – just crap! Not to say we had total crap there………… we had CD’s, Kids books, novels, photo frames, etc

At the end of the day we made just over $100 – I know that doesn’t sound like much but really, it was stuff we were just going to get rid of anyways. When we were done for the day we gave all the stuff as a donation to the RSPCA store. It was actually a good feeling that we could do this – they were extremely happy with the donations.

In other news, November 8th was Steve Irwin Day in Australia. A day where we celebrate the memory of Steve Irwin and all that he did for the wildlife. For this day people were encouraged to wear his traditional Khaki. My dad got into the spirit of the day and went hunting in his Khaki in our garden at home. Check out the picture!!

For all my friends in Canada…………. I can only imagine how cold you all are at the moment. Me, well lets just say today was really, really, really hot and we went for a swim in the pool after the garage sale.

Till next time…………..

I'm Back!!

Yeah!! Finally we have the internet hooked up at home............ so I am back in action with my blog. I have a lot of past blogs that I didn't get the chance to publish so I will keep you all updated on what's been going on over the next week.

As for me........... things here are great. I love my new job. I am obviously still learning alot of stuff and have alot of questions but I am enjoying it. Most of the customer's have been very understanding with the fact that I am still learning stuff - so I have appreciated that.

Last night we had a girls night - my sisters, sister-in-law, mum, aunt and my sister's mother-in-law all went to see Menopause-the Musical. It was a funny show - obviously about menopause. There were alot of 'white-haired' people in the audience - I think we were some of the younger people there!! We now know what our mum is going through - God help us (and her) and we now know what we have to look forward to as well. Really it was good for a laugh and a fun girl's night out.




Well, as I said earlier I will catch up with what I have been doing the last month. Again, sorry about not blogging more often but now I have connection with the rest of the world so you will be hearing alot from me from now on.

Till next time..........