Miserable.
The drive home from Agnes Water on Wednesday was miserable. Tansie and I were feeling OK, but Brooke was not. We were all needing some food in our bellies so we stopped at a cafe for brekky. We sat down at a table under a covered sidewalk and our food arrived at the table – just in time for it to downpour. Sideways. We tried scooting our table back but eventually had to move to a different table a little more protected from the storm. When we were finished eating, Brooke wasn’t ready to get in a moving vehicle, so I filled the car up with fuel to buy her some time. Unfortunately with a solid 7-8 hour drive ahead of us, we had to get going. Poor Brooke spent the entire trip sitting with one leg tucked up under the other, head forward (inches from the dash and air con vents), puke bag in hand. She was miserable. She made me pull over a couple times to get some air and ease her stomach, but aside from that and a lunch stop, we had to keep going. I think the only thing that saved her is that she realized we were not in that boat from hell and she knew it could be worse… She will kill me when she realizes I took this picture, but I had to capture what those 7 hours of her life were like.

Lunch.
We stopped for a late lunch at the restaurant at Aussie World. I wanted the girls to try the damper, which is an Australian bread, typically cooked over fire. Brooke was able to eat a few bites, and the break was good for her. We all got a kick out of this sign.

Shop.
We did a little shopping there, ran through the shops and then drove to the Opal store and the hide store. None of us wanted to fork over the cash required for an opal, but the girls couldn’t resist the temptation to bring home a kangaroo hide rug.

Literacy.
We got home just in time for me to freshen up (or as crazy old man skipper says….get my sparkle on) and rush out with Jay to a meeting at Ty’s school. All of the prep teachers shared with us the methods they are using to teach the children how to read, write, and do math (or maths as they say here). Fascinating stuff. It was very informative, and helped connect the dots to some things that Ty has been talking about in the evenings. I am looking forward to watching him learn these skills in the coming months.

Library.
In one of the first days of school, Ty came home with a library book. There wasn’t a note about how long he could keep it, so we read the book, then put it back in his backpack. This week Mrs. Hanrahan wrote a note in Ty’s boomerang book asking if we could send back the Diggers book. Um. We thought we did. We asked the teachers at before school care and after school care if they had seen it. Mrs. H looked through all of the bags at school. Nobody has turned it into the library. :(. So we have to call the library next week to find out what we need to do to make things right. Ty has been earning gold coins for various things, and we have told him that he will have to use the coins to pay for a new library book if we have to buy one. Hopefully this will be a good lesson and he will take better care of things in the future. But I keep telling myself…. He is only 4 years old. A library book is a big responsibility. Now he knows.

Anniversary.
One of my employees has been working for Deere for 25 years. I organized a celebration to thank him for all of his great work over the years. I was stressing over putting together a morning tea that would be enough food for basically the whole branch, but decided to go against the grain and do what is done in the US. I ordered a huge sheet cake instead of a traditional tea. Ordering that was interesting…. I went to Woolies, the grocery store, and they said they could bake a sheet cake. I asked if they could put a John Deere tractor on it (the HyVee bakery could do this, no problem), but the lady looked at me like I was crazy. She said I needed to go to a specialty cake shop for anything other than words. Um, ok. So I guess we will just write “congratulations Wayne” and the number 25 on it in green and yellow icing. “No, ma’am, we can’t do yellow icing.” What?!?! You just put yellow food coloring in with the white icing and mix it up….what do you mean you can’t do yellow?!? Ok fine. Just do green… So I went to Big W (like Wal Mart) and bought some JD toys. The end result turned out pretty good! Everyone seemed to like it.

Cortisone.
Jay is still having problems with his back, so he finally was able to get a cortisone shot on Thursday. He felt some immediate relief but is hoping that the pain will be completely gone by the end of the weekend. Fingers crossed!

Currumbin.
The weather was decent on Thursday afternoon, so Jay and the girls picked up Ty once school was finished and ran down to Currumbin so the girls could see the Roos and koalas. They have opened up most of the park again, and they turned the treehouse into a kids zone. They ran through the park in about an hour, pet a kangaroo, held a koala, and bought some Uggs.

They stopped at Burleigh on their way back to eat tacos (yum) and see the beach one more time.

Chinese.
Friday night was their last evening in Australia, so I took them to the Chinese restaurant in Sanctuary Cove. I hadn’t eaten there before, but it was delicious! We were finally all feeling 100% back to normal after our boat ride from hell, and we were finally able to laugh about it. And we did. A lot.

We walked around and did some window shopping. There wasn’t really anything happening – no bands (except for one guy that I don’t think was singing karaoke but am not positive), so we went home. I was exhausted so the girls went to the tavern by themselves. The band was playing “older people” music, so they didn’t stay out too long. They came home and packed. 😦

Swim.
We had Ty’s second solo swim lesson on Saturday morning. A combination of cooler water and weather, the subconscious knowledge that Aunt Brookie was leaving that day, and exhaustion from a busy week, all made Ty’s swim lesson a disaster. We have decided to give him a swim lesson break until all of our company comes and goes, and then we will put him and Lily back into lessons at Gullivers. The heated and covered pool is nice, and hopefully by then they will have some new coaches. :(.

Safe travels.
Jay took the kids to rugby while I drive the girls to the airport. I am writing this 26 hours later, and the girls are stuck in Dallas. They missed their connection from Dallas to Des Moines and are on standby for the last flight of the day. If they miss it, they won’t have another chance until tomorrow morning. :(. Brooke did pretty well on the flight, until the landing which was a little bouncy. Poor thing lost 8 pounds while she was here…

Air con.
Oh the joys of living in a rental. See, if I was home and my air conditioner was acting up, I would hire an actual air conditioner repair guy that knows how to repair the type of air conditioner that we have in our house. But we are in a rental, at the mercy of the property manager and his “mate” that knows a little about air conditioners and does some service work on the side. So this guy has been out 3 or 4 times, all at odd evening hours (which now makes sense since I found out he isn’t really an air con repairman full time). Every time he complains about Carrier air conditioners, says the squeaking is just what Carriers do, and says he can’t do much until it throws a code. Well, when I was dropping the girls off at the airport, the air conditioner burned up. Literally burned up. There were no flames, but the smell was terrible. Jay opened all of the windows and when I got home an hour later it still smelled bad. The air con guy came back to the house and pulled the fan out of the attic. He said something about how it might take a while to get parts, and he is going out of town for his real job, so it will not be any earlier than Friday before he can fix it. IT IS SATURDAY!!!!! Oh hell no. This chic doesn’t go without air con for an entire week in an Aussie summer. So that will be a fun battle to fight with the property manager. Ugh. Thankfully it hasn’t been too hot, a nice breeze, so during the day we can open all the doors and windows. But at night we have to close things up. We don’t have any screens and I don’t need any critters or mozzies coming in. We turned on all of our fans and slept sort of OK. Fingers crossed it doesn’t get too hot.

Valentine.
We spent our Valentines Day doing yard work. Ty went next door to play with Taj and Logan. Jay mowed. I trimmed all of the hedges (by hand). Then Jay went to the store and brought home flowers. So sweet. And then he made me my favorite meal – fettuccine Alfredo. All the single ladies out there…marry a man that can cook, change diapers and oil like a pro, and watch the kids while you sneak away for a girls’ weekend without complaining a bit. I love you, Jay. Thanks for putting up with me and my drama. :). We almost had a guest for our Valentines dinner, as I wasn’t sure if the air con guy was going to leave or not. He finally left, leaving me to enjoy my dinner with the 3 loves of my life.

Pool.
Sunday morning we hung out in the pool. Lily is getting so brave. She wears a little floaty vest and can kick her way around everywhere. Hot tub to big pool and back again. When she got tired I cuddled with her on the patio furniture and she took a little nap on my tummy, wrapped up in her towel. Sweet moments.

Workout.
We went for a bike ride to the marina for lunch, then we stopped at the store to pick up a few groceries. When we got home we decided to go for a buggy ride to see if we could find any of the rental homes on the market. I ran (a bit) and walked (mostly) alongside the buggy – first attempt at exercise in a long time. I am out of shape. For real. It was a beautiful day, though, and it felt good to try to do something healthy. We found the only house in Hope Island that is available. The pool looked nice, but it looked pretty small. With Em moving in, we can’t really downsize. The realtor sent over a list of about 10 homes on the market – 9 in Sanctuary Cove. We are going to look at some homes on Wednesday. Fingers crossed. We asked our realtor if the owner of our home would take a little more rent to let us stay until December. Would be awesome if he says yes. I’m not stressing too much – I’m sure it will all work out fine.

Girls.
The girls made it home! They got to Des Moines around 11:00 PM. Long trip, I’m sure they are both looking forward to sleeping in their own beds and eating real food. But I am sure they will miss being in a place “that reminds me of Hawaii. Not that I have ever been there but I have watched a lot of Dog the Bounty Hunter.” And where “No, this is Sanctuary Cove. We buggy to Sanctuary Cove. We have to walk to Surfers Paradise.” Or where you can go on an adventure where “I was afraid I was going to lose control of all bodily functions and was stressing because I didn’t have a spare set of swim bottoms.” Or where “dingos” supposedly exist. The memories will last a lifetime!!

More sisters.
The paper chain for the next round of sisters is getting super short! Jess and Em and Jason and Brianna are arriving on Friday!! So so so excited!! It’s about to get crazy down under… The next time you hear from me (unless something amazingly unexpected happens this week), they will have arrived! Yippee!!!!!!!!

Rest.
Sunday evening I couldn’t wait to dig into the leftover fettuccine. Yes, I had just “worked out”, and no, it didn’t make me want to eat healthy. Quite the opposite. I was starving. Jay and Lily went back to the marina to rent a couple movies. He brought home Gone Girls, which is fitting for today since the girls are gone. Lazy rest of the day planned. One side of my brain is telling me to log onto my computer and do some work. The other side is saying “um, no.” I think I will listen to the other side.

Until next time…g’day mates!