Welcome 2019

Happy New Year everyone!  Hope you had a great festive season with your family.  Consider all the spending and preparations we all do leading up to these public holidays, the celebration hours with the people we love intend to go out the door very fast. 

 

My youngest daughter has been in Brisbane since Christmas Eve.  Majority of her stay has been at her sister's house but I managed to have a week with her. She returns home on 13th January after we have my parent's 50th WA party.

On Christmas Eve we had dinner at a local pub then went to Christmas Mass at church. Our family Christmas dinner was at my eldest daughter's house.  Boxing Day we were with my parents in the afternoon. We were first greeted by the neighbour's cat at the gate. He is a cute young cat who loves to hang around with my cat.  Our cats didn't want to know my grand daughter but she was very keen to chase them. What did you get for Christmas?  I got a couple of DVD movies, a ceramic cup of BB8 (a robot character from the latest Star Wars movies), a Brisbane edition Monopoly board game, a plant in a little tea cup set and other little miscellaneous items.

Its already the fifth day into 2019! We had a quiet NYE by having our annual supper picnic at a nice park until 12:30am. Local fireworks went off at midnight for about ten minutes. On NYD we went to the cinema to see Aquaman. On Wednesday I had a day at home doing some spring cleaning while Rachel went to  a waterpark with her sister and partner and two friends of theirs. Yesterday we went to Old Petrie Town.  Its a mini village street up in olden days with afew houses (as businesses now) and a couple of small museums. On Friday nights they have local flea markets and free entertainment until 9pm.  We came home with afew reading books. For $15 I got two books on 50 shades sequel, one on craft and three of the old Golden Books series. I used to read them when I was a child.  This time I will read them to Krystal.

 

This month will be busy watching tennis on TV and returning back to a couple of craft workshops and bowling.  My old league has been transferred to a different centre to start play on 13th January at but I am staying at the same centre I have played at for the past three seasons.  The Manager at the centre has introduced a new league starting on 20th January but the starting time will change to 6:30pm.

Better go and start preparing my craft workshops ready for this month's meets. I have three weekend meets this month.  One of them is scrapbooking only for 9 hours and preparing pages ready for upcoming meets intends to take time to prep.  The lady who runs this group has changed the venue too! Apparently the old venue hall hire charges went up quite high!!

Have a great weekend!

 

Christmas v's Weather

This may be the last blog entry for 2018.  Next week will be Christmas and I have been busy with break up parties, catching up with a small group of friends and Christmas preparations and shopping since my course ended last week. Tonight is my bowling break up party and prize presentation at a community hall near the bowling alley.

Don't know if you had heard but we had a tropical cyclone Owen further up the QLD coast that hit land for the second time this summer.  I think the cyclone started to form in the Coral Sea about a month ago. Because I was so busy with assignments I didn't catch all the reports about this cyclone.  All I really caught that Owen didn't want to leave the country in a hurry. I assume the cyclone cross the coast as a low category TC and moved towards Northern Territory border. But I did hear: once it got to NT it done a U-turn and came back to QLD again as a Category 3 storm. The cell hit inland about 3am this morning.  I haven't had the TV on today to know what report damage was done.  But I am pretty sure it hit in a low populated area. Since the storm has downloaded to a tropical low and its forecast to travel down in a southeast direction and reach as far down as Sydney in afew days. Brisbane has been forecast to have a storm and heavy rain to arrive tomorrow but I am not so sure if this low will even reach as far down this way.  Even when I looked at the radar online, the rainfall doesn't look really that heavy. Its looks to be more light to moderate in most areas down the coast. From radar, it seems to be more rain from a normal low and a tropical low is following. Been chatting to one of my long time friends via Facebook this morning for over two hours. She lives in Central QLD and she was telling they had a line of thunderstorms passing thru all morning. 

Better sign off as I need to get ready for our party tonight. I won't be drinking because I am the taxi driver for other people.  All the best for a safe and happy festive season with your families and loved ones. Remember: Don't drive naughty, drive nice this festive season.

Welcome summer!!

Today is the last day of spring but I wouldn't call it spring in Queensland.  Summer hit early and parts of the state had severe thunderstorms, dust storms and now bushfires in Central QLD. I am sure they would like to have rain falling now to stop these bad fires. I thought I heard on the news last night about a tropical cyclone on a lookout in the coral sea. If it forms and hit inlands of further coastal towns in QLD, I would say its abit early to have a tropical cyclone now!  Normally we don't hear about them until January. Further north and west in our state had heatwaves this week with the temperatures in the 40s (degree Celsius). Now that is what you call a true heatwave!!! About two days ago we had a hot day with the temperatures in the high 30s down here but it was a gusty dry wind that made the afternoon quite uncomfortable.

I am still studying my course.  Only have got two assignments to finish off by next Friday which means a lot of late nights coming up. Its hard to do any work while its so summery here and have no air conditioner.

December will be a busy month with break up parties in both craft and bowling. My parents will have their 50th Wedding Anniversary before Christmas but I will organised a surprise event at their home address in the New Year.

Also I have Christmas preparations to do after I complete these assignments. For once I am looking forward to this Christmas as I will be celebrating the festive season with both of my daughters this time. Rachel will arrive at Christmas Eve to stay at Monique's for a couple of weeks. I will be having our festive season dinner over at Monique's.

Better sign off as I have one assignment to finish off before I head off to do some errands this afternoon. Yesterday I spent over 6 hours on completing one final draft of the assignment. My hand was so sore by the time I finished.  Might you these assignments I am working on are not little couple of pages. Most of them are about 20-30 pages long. The last assignment will be over 50 pages to complete.  

Have a good weekend!  I will have two craft meets on this weekend which I will have to plan for later on today as well.

My springy report

Well... I don't know what happened to September as its almost the end of October next week. May as well report what's been happening for two months now as I somehow missed a month.

Face to Face workshops at college ended in September.  Only have my prac hours and five assignments to complete by mid December.  I am going to try to get all the assignments done by the end of next month. 

In the afternoon of 8th September I taken Monique and Krystal to the Redfest.  It's a strawberry festival held annually in Cleveland.  This year they celebrated their 60th year!! It was Krystal's first time to attend to any festival event and she seemed to enjoyed herself. She had one pony ride and a lot of going down the big slide.  We thought she would be scared of fireworks but she seemed to like them in the sky.

In the afternoon of 28th September I went Putt Putt on the Gold Coast with my bowling league. We all arrived by 1pm to have a BBQ lunch then spent the rest of the day playing 3 courses of putt putt. I didn't bothered doing the scores for myself or my friend but I did remembered I had one in hole twice.  I invited Monique and a small group of their bowling mates to play too.  We all loved it!  We were the last to leave at around 8pm.  Around 5pm we stopped playing for a short while as a typical brief storm passed over from the hinterland. Other people from my league left before or just after the storm left the Gold Coast.

Earlier this month I had a nurse care position for over a week to care for a medical condition patient who had day surgery to their eye.  I had to be their taxi driver in their car as the patient wasn't allowed to drive for a week. I had to take the patient to their post op appts, pay their bills, do some housework and go shopping.

Rachel was done in Brisbane for over two weeks. She went home yesterday. Majority of her stay was at her sister's house.  I managed to spent 4 nights with her this time. We went social bowling, seen two movies and played online games. We played Word Connect. 

Last Saturday we had taken Krystal to see her first Disney movie at the cinema.  We had seen The Little Mermaid.  Personally I thought she was too young to sit through a whole movie but surprising she managed about half the movie.  If I can recall I think my daughters were school age by the time I introduce them going to a cinema. Only because I know they couldn't sit still long enough when they were under 5 age group. Same reason for dine in restaurants. 

Better go as I have a assignment to work on.  It's due on this Friday.  Have a good November!

Getting older!

WOW!  Winter is coming a close soon.  It might be cold in southern states still but Queensland will start warming up.  We had one summer temperature day while the EKKA in Brisbane was on this month. Today is the first day in ages since we had seen any rain this winter.  I don't know how many of readers around the world had heard or seen in the media reports about the severe drought our farmers are experiencing in Australia.  Some farmers haven't seen rain for about five years now.  Afew organisations had organised a fund raise event to help our farmers.

Almost time to say Goodbye to August later this week.  Still have the cough virus.  I had heard it could take up to three months to quit.  When it first started in June I suspected the virus was going to hang around for most of the winter season.  When we had comfortable warm temperatures my cough did stop for part of the day but as soon as night time begins the coughing attacks comes back  I did get worse once I am in bed.  I had a lot of late nights because of this cough and a lot of sleep ins when I could.

There were two birthdays celebrated this month.  My birthday and my eldest daughter.  I just had a quiet day on my birthday but I sure made up this weekend.  On Friday night I went out for dinner and movie with my friend.  We had seen the second Mamma Mia. Yesterday we went to the Redcliffe Kite Festival.  Thank goodness yesterday was a wonderful day to see many kites flying.  We had a lot of different kind of kites of all sizes. Tonight after bowling we will go to the RSL for dinner as I have birthday vouchers to use.

Better go as I have things to do this afternoon.  Have a good spring/autumn season! 

Goodbye Double J's!

WOW! I can't believe half of 2018 is now over. Where is this year going? Christmas will be here before we know it. I haven't had much thought about Christmas as I am more too focused on other priorities right now. Have you?

 

Early June my youngest daughter was in Brisbane for a week. She stayed at her sister's house so I only managed to see her for three visits as I was busy with college attendance at the time. She mainly was down because the bridesmaids had their dress fitting done and ordered in. It should be around October by the time their dresses are created and delivered. Apparently the bridal dress has arrived and my daughter and I had organised to pick up later this month.

 

In early June I had a full day in Toowoomba with my best friend. We visited two museums. The first one was about the history of trains and trams and the second museum “Cobb and Co” was all about the history of past transportation modes before engine runned vehicles were introduced in Australia. I really enjoyed it! There was another museum we could of visited but it was temperary closed for renovations.

 

Do you like winter? This time of the year isn't my best friend because I am not fuss with the cold temperatures and secondly I intend to cop the common colds and flus which unfortunately it bite me harder then I predicted. Had to have two weeks off college in June because I was quite sick with a mild chest infection and asthma cough. It was more the asthma cough that knocked me about because it mainly happened early mornings and evenings, especially when I try to get to sleep. I only get this kind of cough when I have the flu like symptoms. I had this cough since I was a teenager but since I stop regular swimming the asthma cough returned. After I visited a GP I had a change of medication for my asthma. They now have a new kind of asthma puffer which you only take once a day with the blue reliever. This new puffer is more like a powder kind.

 

This month I started my vocational placement at a childcare centre. Its about a 5 minute drive to the venue.  Might consider leave the car at home and walk to VP as it is getting to become a nightmare of finding off street parking near the centre. Most times I have to walk about 1/2 km to get to work.  I attend two days a week for about 16 hours.  The first two weeks I was working with the pre-schoolers. On Thursday I taken a real ten pin and my toy bowling set to VP.  The kids enjoyed playing with the set for a short while. One child managed to gain a strike. I wonder how many kids asked their parents at pick up if they could go bowling (at a real centre).

 

My grand daughter turned two this week. She has been attending part time daycare for a while now and she has really picked up a lot of new things to learn. Of course she has this typical toddler behaviour too! She is starting to identify who is in the photos now. A couple of weeks ago I asked her if their pet dog is a dog? She just looked at me and started to laugh!! It was the way she looked was priceless!! Just wished a camera on record to show evidence but I am not sure that moment will never will happen again.

 

Well better get into studying before the day ends.  I have four assessment booklets to finished off.  I have one question left to answer for one booklet but it requires some online research to find the answer.  Have a good August!

 

Winter on the way!

Where did May go? Today is the last day of autumn but guess what?  Winter has started in some states of the country. Canberra had night temperatures in the early minus digits. Glad I don't live there!  The cold weather isn't my best friend!  Do you prefer winter or summer? We are forecast to have cold nights for afew days this week.  Supposedly make a trip to Toowoomba this weekend and going by the weather bureau it will be cold at night.  Better make sure I really pack winter clothing. 

This month all I done is study and more study. I have completed three assessment pieces. Yesterday I finished off all the professional courses online.  Wish I had known about this years ago!  But it was probably not even existed when I needed it. This course was about Raising Good Kids with Dr Kaylene Henderson. She is a medical health specialist based in Australia.  For any followers/readers who are Educators in children's services, Teachers in schools or new parents, I strongly recommend to check out her website. https://drkaylenehenderson.com/ The three courses are for Educators and parents who need to learn and understand more about child's behavioural strategies. I don't know how much the courses for outsiders but I was studying it because it was one of the subject requirements for my course study. I still have another online training course to do. There are eight modules to study! But this one will involved Early Years Connect.

My youngest daughter is currently in Brisbane for only this week. I managed to see her on Monday night at the bowling alley.  Plans to catch up again tonight at a different centre.  Because she is one of the bridesmaids in her sister's wedding the bridesmaids will have their dress fitting this weekend.

Better go and get some study done this afternoon. I lost my morning as I had issues trying to logged on to a particular website  I had to end up visiting the service in person.
Depending on which hemisphere you are from, have a good winter/summer!