Home group disaster

Last Friday we decided to try a new homegroup, as our current one is midweek and alternates guys/girls, so it's really fortnightly and often enough the week that girls are on I can't go because I'm late back from Canberra etc. which has meant that our hit rate in terms of going has been rather low this year so far. So we thought we'd give a new Friday night 'family' one that we'd been invited to a couple of times a try. Turns out our girls were the youngest there. Now our girls normally go to bed for the night at about 6pm, and this wasn't kicking off until then, so things were looking shaky from the start, and they didn't really pick up from there.

I've heard and witnessed lots of kids who when they are overtired, get quieter and are happy to sit in someone's lap or a pram etc., but not our girls! We took the port-a-cot for Olivia, but the room that they asked us to put her in was right next door to the outdoor area full of 20-odd people and had bright light shining in - which Olivia assumed meant a party was happening that she was missing out on, so that was a lost cause. I persevered for over an hour to no avail, eventually pulling her out so that the other guests could at least enjoy themselves without the background wailing! Of course she's not happy to sit quietly in someone's lap though (that's a thing of the past), so someone had to wrestle with her just to hold her for the next little while (and she's a real workout I can tell you - and people ask you how you lose weight after being pregnant!!).

In the meantime Ellen just wound further and further up with excitement to the point where she looked and sounded like she would burst out of her skin - zooming around, playing with every toy in sight and talking to anyone who would listen. Finally at 8pm we called it off as a really bad idea that we may revisit in a couple of years when the girls are older....maybe! So back to Wednesday nights and a more concerted effort to both get there on our respective weeks. An evening being child free to focus on God seems a great idea in retrospect afterall!

New camera finally!

Yes, it's true and I'm very excited about it. We finally managed to get a replacement camera by redeeming some points in a program (the jolly things are rather expensive to buy otherwise!). Anyway, means that we can start documenting the girls lives in pictures again - we've managed to miss only a little due to Aunty Tricia and Grandma taking a picture or two occasionally for us.

Here's a couple of recent one's of the girls...

Return to base camp

Today we arrived home from our week in the wilderness (or at least in tents) at Elanda Point on Lake Cootharaba, north of Noosa. Despite some interesting weather and the girls and Greg being under the weather at one time or other, we had a good time away and enjoyed doing something different as a family. Of course at the end of a week though I am very glad to be home with running water and a bathroom which isn't a few hundred metres away across a field littered with kangaroo droppings! So many things to be thankful for - a good reminder of the blessings that we have at home.

The girls of course loved the experience, Ellen spent a great deal of time chasing ducks (to feed them sometimes - if she hadn't eaten the bread first!), watching the kangaroos and goannas, observing the owls and enjoying the freedom of a beach on the front doorstep. The bad weather and storms don't seem to worry kids - as long as Mum and Dad are fine, they are too - nice confidence to have.

We did have a couple of experiences with rather bold goannas, which left me a tad wary - one came straight into our camp while we were there because Greg had brought back a hot chicken for lunch and was getting it ready for serving...the goanna was not to be deterred despite Greg and others trying to head it off, although finally got the message, but then for the next few hours it and a couple of others kept returning from all directions. We are NEVER having hot chickens for lunch again in a known goanna zone! This combined with the lady from the tent next door telling me that she'd been reading a book and felt something on her leg and looked down to see a goanna nudging her leg with it's head/tongue...I admit to being unnerved.

Anyway - we survived all that, had a great time, managed to squeeze in some windsurfing for Greg and I as well. In typical 'Ros' fashion I managed to break something on Greg's Dad's windsurfer while I was out on the water - unfortunately a long way from land, so Greg and Ellen walked out to see if Greg could help (Elanda is a very shallow lake that Greg being so tall, can touch the bottom pretty well anywhere) - and Arthur borrowed a canoe from a couple nearby, so Ellen had her first canoe ride on the way back in and was quite keen for her own 'spade' (paddle).

So - that's a quick synopsis of the camping trip - many more stories, mostly at my expense, so I won't share those here, but thanks for thinking of us. Hopefully this will be the first of many.

On holidays finally

Well, it's been a long while but we are finally 'on holidays' - our last official holiday (that didn't involve the shop) as a family was when we took Ellen away when she was 6 months old, so we are well overdue. The plan is to go camping for a week at Elanda Point, but with the cyclone developing up north, it may be only a few days before we're heading home again if the weather turns foul. I don't relish the thought of the two girls in a tent in wet weather for days on end!
Both the girls have been sick this week - Ellen with bronchitis and Olivia with a fever and spontaneous projectile vomiting (although she's very good natured through it all!), so we're delaying a day to see if they both get back to some degree of reasonable health. As a result apart from me being away in Canberra for a day or so, it has been a quiet week all round. My flight back from Canberra was delayed for a while, so with daylight savings that was a long day - I was glad to finally drive in to our driveway when I got home at 9.30pm...I'm not much of a late night person anyway, so I was struggling on the drive.
Anyway - hopefully I'll have some camping tales to tell on our return, and until then, hope you enjoy these photos from our sailing trip a few weeks ago - courtesy of Verna.