Kt can read!

In the last few weeks the realization has sunk in that Kt can read.

I asked her to read some pages in a dr Suess book and she was able to read or quickly sound out most of the words.

I sat watching and listening in amazement.

Her teacher has started giving the students that are good readers word walls. These are lists of words that they can read themselves and when they return them to the teacher, she tests them (points to words and asks them to read them back to her). If they get the words right she gives them the next word wall.

Kt handed in word wall 4 today and has basically done one a night since they were first given out.

She is so enthusiastic, picks up the information so quickly and is just amazing!!!

Rain overnight

It stormed last night and Kt and I had a candle lit dinner (candles were out just in case the power went out).

The thunder and lightning were quite loud so I promised to stay with Kt in her room until she fell asleep.

I had just finished commenting on how I love sleeping when there is rain outside (particularly heavy rain).

Then I rolled over onto my other side (I was lying on a bean bag beside Kt's bed) and promptly fell asleep.

I slept for about an hour to an hour and a half and woke up quite surprised. Kt was silent so I imagine she had been asleep for a while too.

I headed out to watch TV and catch up on my tidying up.

By the time I got to bed I was very tired, but could not get to sleep.

Probably should have gone back to Kt's room!

This morning the pond was about an inch and a half full of water and I drained it with buckets and gave the garden a good watering.

It took me about an hour, but it certainly beats carrying bathwater from Kt's bath down the stairs and all around the garden.

Many things are starting to bloom ... I am amazed how quickly plants respond to rainwater!!!

Some of my plants are flowering for the first time ever, even though I have had them for a few years.

I am surprised to see that the agapanthus I transplanted earlier in the year are actually starting to flower before the established plants that have been in the garden for over a decade!!!

And my blue salvia, which lost all their flowers and i thought were finished their run have bloomed again!

The tanks were 1/4 filled by the rain although there was a leak so we probably had more. At the moment Uni estimates we have 500 litres of water in the tank.

I will have to drain it so that uni can do some repairs ... but I think it will only take another day or two for me to do that.

I also need to mulch the garden while there is moisture in the soil.

more lice

KT has been under attack from lice again.

I picked out two big ones that I just saw crawling on her hair while she lay in bed.

Head and ears and neck were covered in bites.

I did a lice treatment on Sunday and left it on for 1 hour instead of the minimum 30 minutes.

I covered every single bit of her scalp, every single strand of hair, not one was missed and put extra in the spots she said were itchy.

when I washed it off in the bath I also conditioned her hair with conditioner that had tea tree oil added.

I then dried her hair with the hairdryer on hot and I didn't just dry the hair I dried each portion of hair right down to the scalp.

I guess I was maybe looking for lice?

One big one had fallen out into the bathwater but I hadn't seen any others and was certain there had to be more.

She was wearing a white shirt as I dried her and I suddenly noticed a couple of very dead black lice had landed on her shirt.

I also found two lice stuck on her scalp "feeding" I presume, and I pulled them out by hand. They were alive and waving their legs at me. I put them in a solution of water and tea tree oil and they were motionless in minutes.

As soon as I removed them Kt said that she had been particularly itchy there.

I think I got about 8 adult ones in total by doing things this way.

It relies on you actually looking with your eyes and getting them while they are stunned from the lice treatment (or perhaps the heat of the hairdryer).

When you do lice combing, the hair is wet with conditioner and you can' see anything, you just have to comb through every section and see what you pick up.

I kind of like the idea of being able to hone in on them and nab them! Gotcha.

More hunting satisfaction I guess.

Will have to do a lice combing today or tomorrow to catch any eggs and any small lice that have hatched in the last few days.

Really thought I had eradicated them last fortnight but there was one day when I forgot to put tea tree oil and lavendar in Kt's hair ... wonder if a whole lot jumped onto her then.

still on the subject of wmv's

It has occured to me that since I have had troubles in the past with quicktime and also that kodak easyshare does sometimes appear to be unreliable (shutting down regularly and not responding), I might actually be better off converting my MOV files to WMV's so they can be viewed regardless of what is going on with quicktime and easyshare.

It will make it easier for me to share with others too, without requiring them to download quicktime.

I have decided to, that due to the sheer volume of photos I take I am going to have to be more discriminating about what I keep.

At the moment my photo DVD's have about 999 photos each and that is for a period of one year ...

It is not uncommon for me to have 12 pictures on one subject each one a little different and me being reluctant to get rid of any.

I will have to add a culling stage to my photo sorting and be ruthless!

wmv

Well it turns out that I didn't give the newly created wmv files a chance.

On their first run through they play in a stuttered fashion with vision pausing and then skipping ahead to try and catch up with the audio ...

But on subsequent viewings everything straightens itself out!

So it appears that I can make the DVD's that I want to, in Windows DVD maker and mix digital camera videos with digital camera still shots.

I have already backed everything up now so I will not redo it for the sake of putting video and photos together ... but for the next one I attempt ... which will be photos (and video) from 2009 I will have a go.

I also discovered that in picasa I can quickly and easily create a little video made up of photos and it automatically saves it as a wmv file (which is how I stumbled onto the fact that my wmv actually does play properly after the first time).

Picasa also seems to allow you to quickly burn a cd or dvd using photos so I may play with that at some stage ... although I will admit that having spent so much time using and working out windows DVD maker I am not sure that I want to try too many others.

My computer also has cyberlink dvd suite which looks pretty good but perhaps a bit complicated ... allows you to slice video etc. And another program which is similar and again looks a bit complicated is windows movie maker.

Photo sort

I have been intensely working to get my photos sorted. I have made backup copies of all of Kt's photos from birth to the present and I had a go at making a photo slideshow DVD using Windows DVD maker.

It allows you to have a title page with a play button and scene selection buttons just like a normal DVD and then it plays your photos as a slideshow and you have the option to choose your own background music or how the photos change from one to the next, how long each photo is shown for etc.

I have made 4 DVD's in all this past week approx 6 hours worth of stuff from the last 6 years worth of photos!

Last year I also made backup copies of all the video uni took of her while his video camera still worked.

I am going to create a photo box to store all our DVD's, photo CDs etc and put them with our photo albums so everything is all organized.

I will also put in CD's and DVD's that others have given us eg Wedding photos etc.

I am having a bit of trouble with backing up and keeping video taken by my digital camera. It is saved by Kodak software as a Quicktime movie and quicktime is not compatible with windows photo editing software.

I tried changing my MOV files to WMV files which are compatible with windows but the quality of the resulting video was unwatchable.

I will attempt to make a Cd or DVD of my MOV files using Kodak Easyshare software and if this does not work I will have to try some other avenue ... perhaps AVI files.

It would be lovely to be able to have my photos and videos on one CD or DVD, but I will have to see if that is achievable with Easyshare or not

Our last day in the bunya mountains

On the Friday, we woke up early and packed up our things.

Everyone helped, even KT

Once we got the bulk of the work done KT watched "James and the Giant Peach" on the kids TV and video and uni and I took care of last minute things.

We were out by 10.45 ... check out time was 10am ...but I think that's the best checkout time we have ever achieved and this time we did it with KT in tow!

On our way out of the Bunya mountains we took a 2.7km bushwalk from Westcott along the "Koondali Circuit".

We stopped at Blackbutt for lunch (yummy) and a quick pitstop at Kilcoy.

Since we would be back in the neighbourhood just before the dog kennels opened we decided to pick out pooch up on the way home and all arrive home together.

Uni and Kt had also decided it might be fun to go out for dinner to Mamma's restaurant so we wouldn't have to worry about cooking.

Excellent plan!!!

I pretty much unpacked and put away everything on the night of our arrival home. Admittedly a lot of our stuff was destined for the washing machine, but I still think it was a terrific effort.

The mound of washing and ironing followed and I think I have commented on that already in this blog.

sorting out emails

Just came up with a great way to sort out my emails and must record it somewhere or I will forget how I did it.

Ok the first step is to go into my mail click on the first email in a given month eg 1st sept then go to the last email of that month and click shift and then the last email.

This selects all the emails from 1st to last day of september ... from there I go into edit tab and click on move to folder.

I created a new folder with a title like sorting out emails
and then a subfolder within this folder called september 2009.

All my september received emails are now in this folder. I also go into sent items and do the same to my september sent emails. ie. click on the first one for september, then go to the last one for september and click shift then the last email.

Again I go into edit, choose move to folder, select september 2009.

When I have all the september emails in September 2009 I sort them according to subject so that I have sent emails and received emails on the same subject one on top of the other. I do this by going into view tab and then choose sort/then click on subject and also either sort ascending or descending.

I can now easily compare emails with the same subject and decide which one to keep so I don't have double, triple or quadruples of the same information.

When I have gotten rid of duplicates etc I sort the folder back into date order again

view/sort by/date received/descending or ascending.

Anything I want to keep in its entirety gets moved directly into my information to keep folder and all that is left in my inbox and sent items box is the current months emails!

I will still of course need to transfer July/August and September emails into my email diary, but this should be easier when everything is all in one place and in date order etc.

Very pleased with myself!

Really glad I studied part of that computer course at home. Unfortunately I didn't finish it but have got plenty out of what I did do!

On our next day in the Bunya Mountains

After our late night at the observatory, we (uni and I) were in no hurry to get up early.

Kt of course had other ideas and surprised us by only sleeping in for one hour instead of the 2 to 3 we were expecting.

I got up reluctantly and we had a normal breaky while uni slept in. He would be making pancakes for us later, but rather than wait without breaky until mid morning I decided to just have two meals.

After pancakes we sat in the kids lounge and watched a video of Snow white and the 7 Dwarfs, which we all really enjoyed.

Then we ate a spaghetti and sausage lunch before finally leaving the house at about 3pm!

We went for a short 500m bushwalk before arriving at the starting site for our Clydesdale horse and cart tour to the top of Mowbullan Township.

This was a 45 minute cart ride, with 2 beautiful Clydesdale horses. The views were spectacular, the pace was slow and steady and Kt along with the two other young girls on board, got to sit up the front up high near the driver.

Kt even got a turn holding the reins. We have a photo on uni's camera .... will have to try and figure out how to get it from the camera onto the computer!

We all had a great time, Kt in particular!!! We were very proud of her for volunteering straight away to sit up the front. She is such a brave girl these days!

That night was meant to be our dinner at the Cider Gum restaurant but when we got back from our ride there was a note slipped under our door to say that dinner was cancelled as they did not have enough bookings to keep the restaurant open.

If we had wanted to we could have ordered from their menu and had them bring the meal to our accommodation, but we decided to just make a meal at home instead. Their prices were pretty high ... much more than normal take away would be.

We had a great night, Kt and uni cooked dinner together and we had a delicious dessert. We had a much earlier night and started preparations for packing up in the morning.

rain and play doh

I have just returned from the markets and the rain held off until I came home.

It has rained very little in the last 3 months and it is lovely to watch the grey sky and gentle rain and listen to it in the background.

My plants really need it ... and it gives me an excuse not to start painting the fence this morning.

Yestereday KT and I made pink play doh.

We haven't made play doh much this year ... we were doing some once a month last year when she was at kindy but usually we have only made it in the holidays this year.

I had pink food colouring from the cake supplies we bought for this years birthday. She was pleasantly surprised when she asked if we could make pink play doh and I said yes!

We started early and Kt did most of the mixing and pouring in of ingredients. I only helped with the stirring when it started to get hard to stir.

We had perfect playdough in no time and it was a fabulous colour!!!

Making your own playdough is definitely a money saving way to go ... it costs about $10-15 initially to get your materials and they should make at least a years worth (12 batches, 1 a month) of playdough instead of buying playdough at $10 for 4 small tubs.

If you only make one colour at a time you also avoid the inevitable mixing of all colours to make one brown lump!!!!!

I felt like baking today ... something about the weather ... but i did not have enough butter .... hmmm might have to go shopping but not really in the mood

On friday I had a fairly hectic day ...

Went to visit nanna in the morning and had planned to miss that day's school parade but when I told Kt my plan she said she thought I might miss out on seeing her receive a kippa paw. She had been caught doing something good in the playground fairly recently and thought it would be close to the top of the box.

I ummed and aahhhed for a bit and decided I could delay my visit to nanna.

On our way out the door I made sure I had my handbag and a shirt that I needed to return to nanna, since I intended to go straight from the school to her house.

I also thought I had better make a last minute toilet visit. Once i got in there I flushed it to clear it and was horrified to see the contents of the toilet rise up towards the surface.

After a moan of annoyance ... as i was now running late ... I unblocked the toilet, finished my own contribution and held my breath as it flushed normally.

Then we ran out the door and headed off for school. I got out of the car, got my handbag, looked for Kt's school bag and couldn't find it. Of course it had been left behind at home ... i usually only carry one bag to school and since I had my handbag over my shoulder I completely forgot about Kt's bag.

Back in the car we headed back home through unbelieveable school traffic, got home, got the bag and returned again to school.

We managed to park a bit closer and I got out of the car only to discover that Kt had wound down her window for the 2 minute drive to school. I put her out of the car with both bags, started the car and closed the electric window ... in the meantime the car in front of me had moved out of the way so I drove further forward and even closer to the school. Kt followed on foot carrying the bags!

Then we rushed up past the parade area and I tacked Kt onto the end of her class line just as they were heading to their spot.

I couldn't put her brain break or drink bottle in the classroom because it had been locked, so I decided to let Mrs Sands know where it was once I left the parade.

I was hoping they would do the kippa paws early and I could leave before the end of parade.

No such luck though, as it was a whole school parade, the first one of the term and of course there was plenty the principal wanted to discuss.

After a quick text to nanna I found a spot standing up at the back so I could make a quick getaway.

I made eye contact with Kt and waited.

They started handing out kippa paws at the end of parade at about 9.30. When there didn't seem to be any more I prepared to leave, but then they brought out the playground boxes. You should have seen Kt's excitement, so I waited, hoping her name would be called out.

Unfortunately they only picked two names from the P-3 box and two names from the 4-7 box and neither of them was hers.

Then parade was over!!!

HMMMfff

I waved goodbye to Kt, found Mrs sands and then headed to nanna's house.

I stayed there for about 1 hour before heading back home to go out with uni to look for a new fridge and freezer for downstairs.

We had a look at the goodguys and as usual, discovered that the price we wanted to pay was not going to get us the product we wanted.

We want the new fridge and freezer before Xmas so we can store our Xmas food in it .. so we will have to keep an eye out between now and then.

temporarily cut off

I seem to be temporarily cut off from my main email addresses at the moment ... am hoping this will sort itself out on its own.

So if you have sent me any emails today or yesterday I will not have received them.

You can try my live address instead I should be receiving mail there.

I had a good day yesterday sorting through Kt's stuff. I have been purchasing clear plastic storage containers to put all her Lego, little people farm animals, etc in. These containers are small enough to slip in under her bed and each one is for one type of toy so I am hoping to restore order to her stuff and avoid having to spend hours searching in various different places to find x my little pony or y farm barn/tractor etc.

I will probably do the same for some of my stuff eg bellydancing gear etc that is not being used at the moment.

Under the bed in a dust proof container sounds like the perfect solution.

I really do find it hard to get rid of things or throw things out ... especially if they cost a lot of money in the first place, or would cost a lot to replace if I change my mind and restart an activity later down the track.

I'm not too keen to sell stuff on eBay anymore because I did tend to spend a lot of time there and would easily find other things to spend my newly made money on ... and that kind of defeats the purpose of clearing your house of stuff only to bring in new stuff!!!

Yesterday while I was out shopping for storage containers it started to pour with rain!!!

My clothes got an extra rinse out on the line ... my garden got a much needed soak ... and to my delight it rained heavily on my way home from the shops too so I was able to get my car washed for free.

It still had a fine mist of dust on it from the last two dust storms, but now it looks fabulous!

Maidenwell Observatory

Last Wednesday night at 7.30pm we headed off to the Maidenwell observatory for the "moon and stars" show. http://www.starsabove.com.au/

It is about 30 minutes from the Bunya mountains to Maidenwell, but it took us more like 45minutes.

All of the brochures for the show had pictures of everyone rugged up wearing beanies, scarves etc, so we made sure we were fully protected.

I wore long johns under a pair of fleecy trackpants, thick socks and joggers. I put KT in thick woolly tights under a pair of fleecy trackpants too. On the top half I wore a long sleeved thermal undershirt with two more light long sleeve layers on top and a big heavy jacket. Kt wore the same configuration. We also took gloves and beanies.

We arrived early and there was only one other car load of people ... we thought that would be it, but by starting time there were something like 25 people!

First we headed outside to view the stars that Astronomer James pointed out with his green laser pointer. Maidenwell apparently has had all its streetlights changed to allow maximum view of the stars with little interference from other lights.

Then we headed "inside" the shed where he keeps his telescopes.

There were three big telescopes set up in a row and there was bench seating all around the perimeter of the shed. We had to divide ourselves up into three groups to share the telescopes.

Jim turned off the lights, started up the theme from "Space Odyssey" and before we knew it he was rolling back the roof of the shed to reveal the night sky. I think I would have like to see this from the outside too!!!

He had a ladder set up beside each telescope so that kids could climb up and easily look through the eyepiece, the ladder was also there for the adults to use to steady themselves so they didn't go crashing into the telescope.

If I had a better memory I would be able to relate all the things we looked at, but what I do remember was that each picture was different and interesting.

I think the first think we viewed was one of the the stars that makes up the pointers ... to the naked eye it looks like it is only one star but through the telescope you could see that it was actually two stars side by side.

Kt had a look and could not see it and we worried that the night would end up being a total loss for her. I looked next and could see two very bright lights ... like two torch lights.

We both tried to help Kt be positive about the whole experience and we told her she would have to take her time and look into the eyepiece and adjust her head position and move her eye around until she saw something. I told her to imagine she was a detective looking through her magnifying glass.... looking for stars.

We held our breath as she looked at the next site which was a star system/galaxy ..... she looked in for a minute and then she said "I saw it" and with great delight she continued to fully take in all the rest of the stars. This second one was really spectacular, it looked like a burst of yellow fireworks. There were so many stars and they were in a spiral shape ... it was like an explosion of little lights. This one was my favourite!!

The next one we saw was an open cluster of stars and this looked like a smattering of very bright stars a bit like diamonds scattered on a dark velvet cloth.

We also got several close ups of the moon. It was incredible to look at its whole surface and then focus in on all the craters. It was really bright to look at too, Jim ended up putting an orange and a yellow filter on it to cut out some of the glare.

Uni was really impressed with the close ups of the craters while I particular liked being able to see the whole of the moon ... we were about 2 nights off a full moon so most of the moon was visible.

Jupiter was right next to the moon and very very bright ... at the moment it is directly overhead in the night sky.

We closed in on her and 3 of her moons. They were all the same size and in a perfectly straight row .... quite fabulous! Jupiter was kind of stripy and apparently egg shaped although it wasn't obvious to me!!! LOL!!!

Overall the show went for 2 hours and by the end Kt was getting tired. She did look at everything though and got up onto the ladder by herself ... often looking for longer than either I or Uni.

I was keen to find the nearest toilet .... and uni was keen to buy merchandise!!!

We came home with this years and next years calendars with information on where the stars will be in the night sky etc. He also bought a couple of solar system DVD's which should be of interest.

I think it was a really amazing and magical night and I have caught myself looking up at the stars much more regularly!!!

By the time we got back to Pepperbury and got Kt to bed it was 11pm. Neither uni or I were quite ready for bed straight away although I was tired.

We watched a comedy DVD and ended up falling asleep at about 1am.

I fully expected that we would all sleep in the next day ... so I wasn't worried about the lateness of the night.

Little did I know Kt would only sleep in for 1 hour ... waking up at about 8.30am!!!

tidying and sorting

I spent the morning sorting through KT artworks from this year.

I have kept one example of each type of artwork (sometimes 2 or 3 ... as I could not help myself), but the rest have gone into and filled up the recycling bin.

I am yet to decide how best to store the pictures I am keeping ... and there is still 1/4 of the year left to go so I imagine there will still be a few more to come.

I noticed that the prep classroom has things very well organized eg labelled boxes which say what kind of item is contained within them (for things like sequins, paper chain pieces etc) and they have their bigger blocks and things in larger clear or see through boxes.

It got me thinking that perhaps we can do the same thing here eg ... all the leggo of a certain size could go into a large clear box, all the little people farm toys could go in another etc.

At the moment I just stick things into boxes with other things that are the same size, but it makes it very difficult to find things as there is no particular or order to putting things away.

I think I can store some of these boxes under kt's bed or in her new wardrobe too, so that we have more space in the loungeroom.

I was supposed to write about our holiday today but I might leave that until tomorrow.

Kt came back from her 3rd and final visit to the school dentist. The good news is that her teeth are good and they didn't have to do anything! I am very very relieved!!!

Another little boy in her class came out this afternoon and told his carer in an excited voice "i have really bad teeth" hmmmmmm as excited as he sounded I didn't want to hear the same news from KT and since she looked a bit tearful this afternoon when I picked her up I was a bit worried.

Tomorrow Kt starts swimming at school so I am off to label all her swimming stuff and do another lice combing this afternoon.....

soap fairy ...

Before I continue my holiday log I will just mention that today is the first day of term 4, so KT is back at school after 2 weeks holiday and it is also the first day back at work for uni who has had the last 4 weeks on holiday.

The house is quiet and very messy, my routines all went out the window over the last few weeks and I have a strong urge to re-establish order.

We are planning to host Christmas this year so I have the next 2and a half months to get things sorted out before the holiday period begins again.

I also need to finish painting that fence!!!! I don't think I have gone near it for about 2 weeks!

Ok enough of the good intentions ... back to the bunyas ...

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On our second day we woke up bright and early (me and KT) and had crumpets for breakfast.

We dressed warmly for the cooler mountain air and once Uni had also woken and breakfasted, we headed down to explore our surroundings.

Uni started us on the 4km scenic loop bush walk. When we went to take our first photo of the trip we discovered that my camera battery was dead. I have to have it recharging right up to the moment I want to start taking photos. Very disappointing, but luckily uni has a camera phone so we did get an occasional holiday shot.

As always the Bunya mountains bush walks are lovely. There was a lot less water there than last time we had visited (before KT was born) and in fact the water fall was only a trickle which took us a bit by surprise.

After about half an hour of walking we passed some older girls and their parents who informed us that they had been walking for an hour an a half. I smiled at the girls feeling certain they were exaggerating the time. We had only been walking for half an hour and I thought we were close to half way at the time.

Another hour and a half later when we finally cleared the rainforest I realized that they had been accurate!!! LOL!!!

We did stop a lot to look around and to allow KT to climb the stranger fig that Uni had climbed 20 years back when he was a kid etc.

By the time we were done I was ravenous! Also very keen to use the toilet since we had completely depleted our water bottle supply.

And so continues the legend of the soap fairy .....

I often feel frustrated when we go for adventures out and about and find that after going to the toilet there is no soap for washing your hands especially when I know we are about to stop for a picnic lunch. I thought I could overcome this problem by buying a product from avon that is in a tub and you carry with you and wash your hands with it ... but I found it messy to deal with and only used it once.

I came up with my own solution to collect the slivers of soap left in the shower once you have used most of your bar of soap.

I don't like to waste things that I think are useful and I had no drama using soap up until it was nonexistent after which I would stick it onto the new soap.

Unfortunately Uni does not share my passion for using every last drop of things (soap, toothpaste, tomato sauce, milk etc) and for some unknown reason it would drive him absolutely crazy when I attached a tiny slice of old soap to the new one. :-P Men!

Anyway after his regular objections I started to collect these little bits of soap, leave them to dry on the bathroom basin and put them into a ziplock bag.

I thought we could use them when we go camping .... and of course now I can carry them in my handbag when we go far afield and take one out each time we use a soap free public toilet and then leave it there for whoever else comes after us to use too. If I think I am likely to return to that toilet again I leave a bigger soap sliver, if it is only a one time visit I use a smaller sliver!

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After returning from our bushwalk we had a late BBQ lunch at "Pepperberry" at 3pm.

Just as we were finishing our meal we got a visit from a friend KT had made the previous day.

It was a king parrot .... these guys are green with a red head and are very friendly and not afraid of people at all.

They have regular feeding sessions at the bunya mountains kiosk area, but we brought some bird seed so we could feed some birds off our own verandah.

Uni went to get KT a handful of birdseed while she chatted to the bird, meanwhile I continued to eat my lunch as I was still 1/4 ravenous!!!

When uni poured a handful of food into Kts palm the bird leapt onto her arm and started eating it.

Kt was delighted! She stayed perfectly still and let the bird eat and it was hilarious to see and hear it cracking and dehusking each seed with its beak.

It wasn't long before its mate joined us and uni filled his own hand with seed and joined in the feeding.

I still wasn't prepared to be parted from my lunch and continued to nibble away, but things got cut short when I crunched on my carrot and the birds took off in shock!!!

Oooops .......

halfway through the mountain

Feeling a bit more settled today.

I have gotten half way through my ironing pile ... although at the moment I have a clothesline full of clothes ... so by this evening my ironing pile will have tripled again!!

I have lice combed Kt's hair and found only a few eggs ... battle drawing to an end.

I have washed the dog ... I hope she is actually cleaner now than when I started because she has rubbed herself through grass and dirt to get herself dry!!!


We have had a fabulous holiday in the Bunya Mountains.

The first day we headed off at about 10.30am and slowly made our way stopping for morning tea and to buy some bird seed in Kilcoy.

We took the Benarkin turnoff and stopped at Emu Creek campgrounds for lunch. Uni has apparently passed this many times and always wanted to stop there so we took this opportunity to do it.

We liked the spot so much we will add it to our list of possible camp sites. It has toilets and showers and is quite secluded ... but when I looked at the facilities I didn't notice if they had hot and cold water ... so the showers may be "cold" showers ......


We got to the Bunya Mountains at about 4 o'clock and found our accommodation in no time.

This time we stayed at "Pepperberry". Uni chose it for its privacy, 3/4 wrap around verandas and its spaciousness. It had 3 bedrooms and could sleep 6 people, 2 lounge rooms (1 of which was particularly meant for the kids).

When we got in KT had to choose which room she wanted as her own. She ended up picking the one with the desk in it and she tucked pink teddy and fluffy into one of the beds as soon as I had made it.

We had to take our own linen, sheets, towels and pillowcases, but they provide pillows, doonas, blankets and electric blankets.

We had a great fire which Uni kept well fueled through the cold nights.... with plenty of twig and pine cone gathering help from KT!

We were really pleased to discover that they had a DVD player and a video player ... the details on the Internet had been sketchy and even a phone call to the Bunya mountains accommodation centre couldn't clear up this issue for us.... they manage so many places they don't know exactly what is in each one and were not prepared to send anyone to look and tell us!!!

Although we had intended to have an early night, finding your way around a new place, unpacking, cooking dinner and cleaning up afterwards takes time.

I turned on Kts electric blanket about an hour in advance of bedtime only to discover that it was not plugged in at the wall when I got her to climb into bed!!!!

Arggghhhh ... luckily it did not take long for it to warm up ... and it was so warm she ended up being on top of the covers for ages!

When I finally curled up on top of my warm electric blanket it took all of minutes to fall asleep!!! This was a blessing as I usually can't fall asleep easily in a new place the first night.

very quick post

We are back and we had a great time.

Lots of fun!

Will elaborate in the next day or so.

Very glad to be home .. currently completely unpacked and working through our holiday and regular household washing.

Mounds of ironing waiting to be started too!

Putting another lice treatment through KT's hair tonight ... still battling on.

School holidays end Monday and Kt is looking forward to going back.