MWNews 49

It has been a month and still no new posts. I still do not have my computer fixed, or it is fixed I just haven't paid for it yet. So, I am having to type this from Juanita's computer. If there are a lot of mis-spellings, ok, I mean more than the usual amount, then you can blame it on the keyboard and mouse, both of which I have trouble using.
I don't expect my computer to be back until after Christmas. We have Juanita's party and then Christmas to deal with, so I will not be able to get it until then. Hopefully, I will survive until then without my computer to play with. I have my new xbox and I am getting some new games for Christmas, so far I only have one, so when that happens, I will probably be playing that for a while and will not miss my computer so much.
Fortunately, I had just made a backup of all the photos on my computer before it went down, so I was able to restore them to Juanita's computer. I didn't copy any of our music files because we own most of the CD's they came from, but it is going to present a problem for Juanita's party as the only CD I have made for her has some songs the people at the party may not like. I was in the process of making a new one that did not have any objectionable lirics on it but never got around to burning it before the crash.
So, speaking of Juanita's party, that is in a few days, Nov. 25. She is having a party for he 40th birthday. She says it is because she never had a 21st birthday party, or an 18th, but I think the real reason is that it will be the first year she will be older than me. (I turn 39 next year in case you forgot.) Over here, it is apparently a big deal to have a 21st birthday party, so everyone can get drunk and make a fool of themselves, or something like that. She didn't have one and she is going to make up for it this year. She invited everyone from all over the country. She even included Laura and Penny, I think, but apparently they have declined.
So far, there are about 20 people coming, maybe more, maybe less, I have no idea. I do know that I have to cook for them all and at this point, three days before the event, I have no idea what I am going to cook. My BBQ is not big enough to cook on for that many people and my smoker has still never been used so I have no idea how long or how hot it will get when I cook with it. For the next couple of days, there is a total fire ban here in NSW (that is New South Wales for all those who read this in a foriegn language). A total fire ban means you cannot start any kind of fire, anywhere, which includes home BBQ's. You can get away with using a gas BBQ, if you do not get caught, so if there is still a fire ban when the party rolls around, I will be using that to cook anything I decide to cook. I don't remember if we had anything like a fire ban in Texas. Not a lot of trees to burn down, or not as many as they have over here. They do it when they expect hot temperatures and high winds, which is pretty much the whole time during summer. I think you can all remember the fires they had when we first moved to Sydney. Those were as bad as I have ever seen anything. All of Sydney and most of the country around Sydney were covered in smoke for about a month. I am not sure realise what that means, but I literally mean covered in smoke. You could not see more than a couple of hundred yards on most days and it went on for hundreds of miles, all the way from west of where we lived down to the ocean. Back then, we lived about a two hour drive from the water, so that was a long ways to go and the fires got as close as just across the river from us, about half a mile away. Some fires crossed the river and burned some of the houses near there, but for the most part, they were able to contain any fire that came across.
I remember going to one of our friends house, who lived in the middle of the fire zone and were forced to leave a day or so after we had been there, and we drove by some of the forest fires. You could see them about a half mile away as we drove back home and we had to detour around them to get to where we lived.
I have no idea why I have gone on about that and brought it up here on the Maeghan/William page, other than it is getting smokey here near us today and we have not heard of any large fires near us. I was talking about Juanita's party and the effect the fire ban might have on it, but that has little to do with the kids. It is just and interesting hilite of our lives we have to go through each year.
As far as I can tell, the series of events we get each year are the floods in September and October, and the fires in November and December. Then it doesn't rain for about six months and gets really hot around February. When I say hot, I don't mean the sustained heat we get in Texas, but it does get hot on the occasional day or two.
We just went through a few days where the temperature dropped to around freezing. They said it was the coldest it has been since they started recording temperatures. They had lots of snow in the moutains and to the west of here, in the Blue mountains, which are not really mountains but they will have to do for this part of the country. In some places, they had thirty inches of snow. We were just cold and it was very windy for a few days. Now, the next week, it is back to being hot.
I just had to go away for a few minutes. Maeghan had an 'accident'. We are starting to get a little worried about her. She seems to be doing 'bubbles' in her pants for about four or five months now. I have heard that this might be normal for kids who are potty trained to revert back when a new baby arrives, but it has been going on for a while now and we are worrying whether this might be indicating something is wrong with her bowels. I am really praying that it is just a phase she is going through. She goes back to the doctor next week. She was suppossed to go last week, but the doctor rang up and said she was going to be on vacation and wanted us to see a secratary or something while she was gone. We told them we were concerned about a problem she was having and really needed to see the doctor, so they rescheduled it for next week, Dec. 1. We will get to see here regular doctor at the spina-biffida clinic then, so maybe she can tell us something. Maeghan does do normal toilet sometimes, but it is not the norm lately. She always says she has to do bubbles, but when we take her to the toilet, she had either already done it in her pants or she says she can't do it once she gets there. As I have said, I am hoping it is just a phase and does not indicate anything is wrong.
Can you actually believe she is going to school next year. She will be four in February and we will send her to pre-school starting whenever the semester starts after that. (I have no idea when school is on and when it is off over here. I guess I will eventually figure it out but for now, I just follow along with what everyone tells me.) We are really not sure she will be able to attend. They expect everyone to be potty trained and ready to attend school before they go, but with Maeghan's current problem and the fact that she is still not big enough to get on the toilet herself, we might not be able to send her to 'normal' school until she can do these things by herself.
We are almost set on sending her to private school anyway. There are a couple around her that she can go to, including one just around the corner that she tells everyone is her school. She says that all the kids are waiting for her to go there so they can play with her and chase her. It is not that expensive to send kids to private school over here. The uniforms and things are almost as expensive as the schools and they are required to have all the pieces of the uniform, which includes skirts, and shorts and tops and jackets and hats and who knows what else. We were told just for one complete set of uniforms, it is around $300 and you need more than one every year. The tuition itself is just a little more than that.
The school I would like her to attend is over by where we used to live. It is a little more expensive but they are constantly adding on to it and it is suppossed to go from pre-school all the way through 12th grade. They have just recently added a whole new wing to it for high school, I think, and when I went in to get the brochures and stuff, it seemed really nice. The one near us is nice also, but it is only for primary grades and there seem to be a lot of kids that go there. More than I would think would fit at the school, from looking at the size of it. When we go by and see all the kids out playing, it seems to me there is very little organization to it, it must be freeplay time, and the kids seem to hang around in packs. Maeghan, being as small as she is and will be when she is attending school, might have problems with the older kids picking on her. I know that is something that we probably will have to live with and all parents learn to deal with, but it just seems to me that there is more of the bullying attitude these days and for some reason, it appears to more tollerated that it was in the past. Not that I have anything to compare it to, but from watchin Michael go through school and all the trouble he seemed to have, I get a little worried that Maeghan will get more of it than normal, because of her size. I guess we will just have to wait and see.
That is one of the reasons we want the kids to go to private school, although with William's current size and attitude, I don't really think he will ever have a problem with bullys. The other main reason is the lack of teaching that seems to go on in public schools. Not that I need to go into it a lot, but there is a lot of discussion over here about the number of kids who are graduating from 12th grade, and most of them do not even go all the way to 12th grade, and these graduating kids cannot read or do simple math or do anything that you would think the schools would be teaching them. Not a majority of kids, but enough that the numbers are rather alarming. And even the kids that do go on to take the HSC tests (don't ask, I do not understand it) do not get the grades that were seen even ten years ago.
Recently, they gave a group of kids a test. From public schools and private schools. The test had questions on it that were asked in the normal HSC tests given to tenth graders 20 years ago. Out of the ten questions they asked all the kids, the highest grade received was 3 on the math test and 1 on the english test. Most of the kids did not get any questions right. To me, that was really something to worry about, but the teachers association claimed that the questions were unfair and they did not teach those things anymore in the schools. I have no idea what they teach and I am really concerned about it, so I am guessing we will have to be really involved with the kids when they go to school. They did not break it down between private and public schools as to who did better but either way, that would seem to me to be a real problem.
I am being called away now to make dinner. We have a house full of people that I have to cook for and I have not started yet. I have a whole lot more to tell you. I did not even mention that it was William's birthday this past Saturday. He is now one and I need to talk about all the things he is doing and getting into now. I will try to get back on tomorrow to go through some of that but for now, I have to go. And, you know how I am about updating this blog, so it might not be tommorow, but I will get to it soon. In the meantime, wish everyone a happy Thanksgiving and I hope it is cooler there than it is here, No way to make a turkey in this heat but I will be thinking of all the good things you are doing over the holidays.
Talk to you soon

MWNews 48

I just thought I would add a quick note. My computer went down about three weeks ago. I think it is dead but we are awaiting some kind of resurrection, so it might make it back to life in the next month or so. I am writing this from work, so I don't have a lot of pictures to chose from on my work computer. This is an old one. Fortunately, I had just made a backup of my pictures before my computer failed. Hopefully, I can restore it when I get it back if for some reason the hard drive has also failed. I will attempt to transfer them to Juanita's computer but I am not sure I can get the software installed on her computer to allow me to do that. I might be attempting that tonight.
Anyway, there is a lot of news and stuff I want to cover. I know you are all waiting on further vacation stories, but I think I have forgotten most of that, so you might be spared further recitations. William is out and about. I think he has begun exploring the neighbors houses now as he has gotten into everything in ours. Never stops moving. I think I have mentioned that before, but he NEVER stops moving. He is always looking for something new to grab or get into and you can never open the fridge or pantry door without him hearing you and crawling as fast as he can to try to climb in. Forget it if you want to go to the toilet in peace. He either banging on the door because he knows you are in there or crawling up the side of the toilet when you let him in.
His favorite place to be is in the shower. Every time he crawls by the bathroom door, he checks if you have left the shower door open and crawls in if you have. He has even learned how to slide the door, so even if you close it, he can slide it aside and get in. Now, we have to keep the bathroom door closed to keep him out of the shower. He has now broken the sliding door, so we cannot easily open or close it. We have to lift it up to do that and he has not figured out how, nor is he strong enough to do it. But I am sure he will try.
Maeghan is still the cleverest baby around. She is still amazing in everything she does. One quick story from last night. She and William were in the bath (a small blowup swimming pool we got to put in the shower since the house has no bathtub) and she was complaining that William was splashing her. I told her she was splashing William also, so she said OH and didn't complain anymore. I said she was splashing me and I was outside the shower. She tried splashing in the other direction but she was not very successful. She was still splashing out through the door and I told her she was getting me wet. She told me 'Well, don't be stupid, wait out in the hall until I am finished!'.
She is still the cheeky one.
Well, I have to go. If I get everything up and running on Juanita's computer, I will post some more tomorrow or tonight. Otherwise, we will have to see about fixing or replacing my computer in the next couple of months. With all the stuff we have upcoming until Christmas, it might not be for a while. Hopefully, it is something simple on my computer, but I am pretty sure the CPU overheated and burned itself out, which means it is probably cheaper to get a new computer than fix the old one, but we will have to see.
Until next time.
Talk to you later.

MWNews 47

The Ekka. I already went through an explanation about what it is, so we don't have to do that again. In case you forgot, this is a short version of what it is about. Think Fat Stock Show or Sydney Easter Show and you pretty much have the idea
One good thing about the Ekka is that it is cheap. Only a few dollars to get in, unlike the Sydney show which is $30 each. Parking wan't that bad either, again unlike the Sydney Show. We had to drive around a bit to find any parking but we eventually found a parking garage that did not have any spaces but the man directing traffic took pity on us and allowed to park in an open space where normally you are not allowed to park. It upset the workman who were trying to fix a sign right over where we parked, but apparently, they got over it.

We took Maeghan, and William and Leslie and Anna. Jarvis was suppossed to go, but due to some creative scheduling by his father, he missed out. Let's just say his father picked an interesting day to take Jarvis back to his house and forget to bring him back.

William was sick, we took him to the doctor the next day, so he slept for most of the day as we kept giving him panadol. He did become lucid a few times when balloons were near and he cought a glimpse of them. I suppose I will have to go into the story of William and balloons, thought it does not really relate to the Ekka and I promised Maeghan I would make this post about her. Not that she has any idea what it says but she saw me adding the picture to it and wanted to look at all the pictures. I had to tell her I was typing and she would have to wait but she would not give in until I told her I was writing about her.

Anyway, William and balloons. For some reason, William goes crazy whenever he sees a balloon. We don't really know why but it seems we never understand anything any of the kids do. William will get all excited and start waiving his arms and legs and squeeling really excitedly whne one is near. He likes you to touch him with them but even if you don't, he likes to watch others play with them. Several times during the day, we would see balloons and start squeeling and carrying on about them. We had to get him one on the way home and he played with it and squeeled the whole time. Now, whenever we see balloons, we have to make sure we get one for William.

That is the story of William and balloons. Back to the Ekka. We got there just after it opened. It was the first day of the show. We had gone to the Sydney show on the first day and it was really not very crowded at all. Bad luck for us, but the Ekka has kids day on the first day of the show, so it was pretty packed for most of the day. Since we stayed for the whole thing, it eventually got thinner and easier to move around, but most of the time, we had to keep a constant eye out on the kids. Maeghan has developed the habit of whenever the pram stops, she jumps out to see why we have stopped. Most of the time, you do not even know she is not there anymore until you start to push the pram and it is lighter than it was. As a side note, we now have a two baby pram so William and ride and Maeghan can have a rest every once and a while.

We made the mistake of going in a gate that led directly into the kids ride area. If I had known that was what was there, we would have chosen a different gate. Now, I have to go off on a bit so a tangent as a very disturbing thing happened at this point. We all know the rules that you have to suffer through, I mean enjoy, the animals before there is any mention of going to the rides. It is a universal rule and everyone follows it. Well, little did I know that here in Australia, they apparently have never heard of this rule. I know they are isolated and not connected to the rest of the world but now knowing the animal first rule seems to me to be a total lack of contact with the rest of the world. I even took the time to go ask a policeman to explain to the kids that rides do not come until after you run through, I mean take the time to, see the animals. He looked at me like I was crazy. And, of course, I got no backing from Juanita. It just doesn't seem right and even now, I am feeling a bit woozy about the whole thing. We actually went on several rides before we even saw cow dung on the rode. It was just unnerving and I had to sit down for most of it. I have a condition and I just didn't think my heart could take it.

So, first thing that happens is the kids start telling us all the things they want to ride, which, by the way, was everything. We actually made it about halfway through the rides before I was overwhelmed by everyone and relented to allow this to happen. By then, we had reached something I did not know they were doing these days. Apparently, they now have kiddie roller coasters. They look just like a real roller coaster but they just don't go as high and as fast. At the Ekka, they had this one that was a kind of train thing, I have a few pictures of it, and it wwent around in a circle and up and down hills.

Now, I am not sure I would have gotten on something like that when I was a sensible little kid, but these kids wanted on that as soon as they could get on it. So I payed the money for it, discovering why it is so cheap to get in at the same time. They got a really long ride and seemd to enjoy it tremendously. Maeghan really loved it and even thought Leslie got bored after the second time around, it was pretty good for them.

After that, I tried once again to move on to other things in the show but was hooted down mercilessly and had to relent to letting them ride some more. They went to a jumping castle then. A really big one. It had two sections, one to play in and one that was a really big climb and slide down thing. As soon as they were let in, Leslie took off and we didn't see him again until they were finished. I am not sure where he was but Anna kept telling us he was ok. Anna wanted to climb up the big slide but we told her to wait at the bottom with Maeghan. Maeghan could not climb the rope ladder to get up to the top and she was really content to stay at the bottom and jump up and down. Eventually, we told Anna she could go up to the top and slide down. After she left Maeghan, Maeghan tried to climb the ladder. She couldn't do it, but the kid that was running the ride and helping the other kids saw her and came all the way down to the bottom and helped her all the way to the top. By half-way up, Maeghan had got the hang of it and could climb by herself but the kid stayed behind her and helped anytime she was not sure what to do. He was really helpful and I wish we could have done something for him or tipped him or something.

Once Maeghan reached the top, she went over to the slide part and sat at the top. It was pretty high and she was not going to slide down by herself. Anna tried to help, but she wanted Daddy to come up and help her. I was just about to when that same kid that was helping her before sat down with her, put her in his lap and slid down with her. She loved it and by that time, it was time for them to get off the ride, so she and the other kids left and were all excited about what they had been doing. It was hard to get all their shoes back on as they would not stay still. Eventually, we got them away from it and eventually, we got out of the ride section.

From then on, we just wandered around. I know there were things we did not see and things we did not do as there were whole buildings we did not even go into, but it was fun for all the kids. We got them hot dogs and chips to eat for lunch, although they were aussie hotdogs and not really fit to be called that.

Now is a good time to mention the food at the Ekka. They did not seem to have anything really good. At the Sydney Show, they have some areas that you just have to visit each time you go. One has a place where they sell some really good sausages. I didn't find a decent sausage at the entire Ekka. I am sure they were somewhere, but we didn't find them. The kids had chips, which were cold, (oh, did I mention that when I say chips, I mean french fries?) but they seemed to enjoy them. We saw and went to several petting areas where the kids could touch the animals. They did it, but they did not seem to enjoy this part of the tour.

To ilustrate how lost you can get at the Ekka, we were passing the stadium at one point and I was looking for a place to sit down for a minute. The train tracks run through the area, on a bridge above you and we walked under the tracks to sit at some benches on the other side. Well, little did we know that on the the other side of the tracks were all the big kids rides. This is the area where all the usually arcade stuff is. All the rides and all the games and everything that goes with it. We knew it was somewhere and we had not really been looking for it at that time, but there it was. So, of course, we had to take the time to walk through everything there. The first thing we did was get Juanita and I a couple dagwood dogs. Now, of course, you are thinking these are hotdogs with everything on them. You would be wrong. Over here, a dagwood dog is a corny dog. It is called something else but the name slips my mind at the moment. We got these because Juanita likes them and I decided to try them as I usually do not eat them when we are out. I can now tell you why as they were not the most appetizing things we have found. Juanita seemed to think they were ok but to me they were not very good at all. Tough and chewy and with horrible hotdogs in the middle. Maybe I was tainted by the fact that I put a ton of mustard on mine and nearly blew the top of my head off. The mustard was the hot english type mustard and it had been sitting in the sun for a while, which makes it even hotter. I nearly died. I could not breath and I could not cough and I could not make the pain go away. I eventually got it under control, but being the freak that I am, I ate a little bit more to make sure I had not just enhaled it wrong the first time. It all happened again and for the first time in my life, I had to scrape all the stuff off of my dagwood dog before I could eat the rest of it. If you know anything about hot mustard, it is not like hot peppers, but you cannot convince anyone over her of that. They think hot is hot and do not know the subtle differences in flavor and heat levels. English hot mustard is more of a burning of the nasel passages instead of the usuall hot burning the mouth you get from normal peppers or hot things. It attacks your nose and throat and doesn't let you breath and this was not any especially hot brand it had just been sitting in the sun too long and it was just uneatable. But that is enough of my pain, we should get back to the reason for this post about the Ekka.

We toured the ride area. We played a few games and the kids rode the merry go round and a few other things. The kids even won a prize each. It was on a game where everyone wins a prize, but Maeghan won the biggest one. I didn't win anything, which is unusual as I have been winning big prizes the last few times we have done something like this. We did finally manage to tear the kids away from this area.

Once we left, we continued around the stadium. We were almost all the way around but stopped to get Juanita a coke. As I was standing in line, I noticed a little raised area across the path that seemed to have some tents and stuff on it. I was not sure if it was part of the show or not. We had to go a long way around to find a place where we could take the pram up. Once we were there, it did not seem like anything was still open in that are. We went all the way to the front of it and found a sort of kids show going on. It turns out this was a kids show area and we were in time for the last couple of acts for the day. We sat in the back but as soon as we sat down, the two kids who were up front, (not really kids but young people) were doing a singing and dancing act. The called themselves the bush rock and rangers and were doing jokes and dances and singing to rock songs they had apparently made up or written themselves.

Well, in case you have forgotten, Maeghan is just crazy for the dancing. She does it all the time and whenever she hears music, she wants to go and dance to it. We made our way up to the front and say down with the other kids on the front row. They were just going to start a dance contest and I knew Maeghan would want to do that. Not if she knew it was a dance contest but she would love to dance. When it started, a lot of other kids got up and started dancing in the front. Maeghan is a solo act and whenever there are other kids dancing, she will generally just watch it takes her a while to join in. That is what happened this time. All the other kids were dancing and she was just standing there until the very end. She finally started dancing but by the then the contest was over and they stopped playing music.

The people doing the act went through a few more jokes and stuff and then came thier finaly. The guy got a guitar and the lady sort of just introduced her and then they went into a really rocking number that they had apparently wrote themselves. I know the words were cute but I can't remember them right now. Maeghan was ready this time. She started dancing immediatly.

I have tried to describe Maeghan's dancing before. Other than saying it is really cute and she is really good at it, you just have to see her to understand. I just cannot do it justice. She has gotten to the point where she actually dances to the music and does things that keep in time with the beat and performs actions that we have no idea where she has ever seen it before. She raises her arms and twirls around and twists her body and bends her knees and twists down low. She will sometimes get down on one or both knees and dance from there and then get back up and dance some more. Her favorite thing is to twirl around and jump up and down and through it all, she keeps falling down and getting back up and keeping to the music all the time. She is really, really good at it. It makes me cry just thinking about it. We have no idea where all this comes from, but Maeghan loves to dance.

Other people were all noticing her at this point. You could see people in the back pointing at her and talking about her. The guy with the guitar noticed she was getting all the attention and he came over and got down on his knees and played his guitar in front of her while she danced. At first, Maeghan did not like this and grabbed my leg but after a few moments, she got used to it and started dancing again. It was all just wonderful. Afterwards, several people came up to me and told us what a good dancer she was and how cute she was. It is just amazing and probably just something we will have to remember as she will never do her really good dancing when I have the movie camera out, so we cannot get it on film. But, we will keep trying.

After this show, another group of people came up to do a show. They were from the Australia Zoo. In case you do not know, the Australia Zoo is Steve Irwin's zoo. It is near Brisbane and we have been by it several times. We always wanted to go there. If you haven't heard, Steve Irwin was recently killed by a stingray. I don't know if it is a big deal there, but over here, they have been running tributes to him almost constantly. Not that he was that popular over here. A lot of Australians did not like him. They thought he gave a bad impression of Australians and they thought he was s show off. Australians are not big on people who are show offs. Now that he has died, of course, everyone says they loved him but I remember all the times before when they were saying they wish he would go away. He was just not that popular over here. The government even tried to name a train after him. The first passenger train service that was to go from South Australia to the Norther Territory. But, most of the people protested and they eventually called it something else, but now I bet they are wishing they had named it after him.

Anyway, they people from the zoo were there to show some animals and do some kind of thing where they asked the kids questions and made fun of thier answers. They asked for volunteers from the audience and I told Anna to go up and do it. She did but when Maeghan and Leslie saw her go up there, they decided they wanted to go too. By then, they had all the volunteers they wanted, but Leslie and Maeghan just stood around near the lady while she asked the other kids questions.

The lady would hold the microphone next the kid talking and ask them their name and age and other things. Then the guy would ask them an animal question like what sound does a certain animal make or what kind of animal is he describing. Not very hard questions but most of the kids would need hints or help with getting the answers. There were none up there as young as Maeghan and Leslie and eventually, Leslie wandered away and didn't stay next to the lady. Maeghan stayed next to her the whole time and they went through about eight or nine kids before they were finished.

After she had done all the kids in the line, she noticed that Maeghan was still standing there. She asked the guy if they had time for one more question. He said no, jokingly, but she pursuaded him. She asked Maeghan what her name was and Maeghan said Maeghan. She then asked how old she was and Maeghan seemed hesitate, so Juanita told them three. They seemed amazed by this as they did not think she was that old. The guy then asked her what animal goes MOO. Maeghan looked at him like he was an idiot and said 'a cow'. Well, they were really amazed by this. They had no idea she was going to be able to answer this. The lady was going to give her a hint but when she said a cow, her jaw just dropped and she was really amazed. She asked the crowd for a round of applause for little Maeghan and how good she was. They gave Maeghan a little rubber crocodile as a prize and they asked her if she knew what it was. She said ' a crocodile' and they were amazed again. At the end of the show, they asked everyone for a round of applause for all the kids and expecially for their little dancer, Maeghan. It was just great. Maeghan did not notice, she just ran over to me and showed me her crocodile. But, everyone else was applauding for her.

The show ended at that point and we left. It was just really amazing and I had to tell everyone about it. It was great. After that, we went around to some other exhibits and saw a lot of other things. We were back near the barns and there was a lot of cow poop around. Maeghan and Anna kept telling us to watch for the cow poop and not to step in it.

When we were leaving, I was determined to find some speciallty food that you could only get at the Ekka. Near were we had entered the show, there was an international food section and we stopped in there. Nothing really great was there but I had a tortilla type thing that had a garlic sauce and goulash on it. It was neither garlic sauce or goulash, but is was not bad, even if it was cold when I got around to eating it. Juanita had a big baked potato, one with everything on it including cole slaw. The kids wanted McDonalds and I told them we would get it when we left, although they fell asleep as soon as we got in the car and did not wake up until the next morning.

While we were eating, they had an amatuer belly dancing show on the stage near us. I mention it, not because the show was any good, but because Maeghan started dancing again. Not like before, but enough so that several people noticed, including the dancers. She was tired though and Leslie was asleep in her spot in the pram, so we had to go and didn't stay for the end of the show.

Well, that was our trip to the Ekka. I am sure it is way too long and way too boring, but since this is the second time I have written it up, I need to make sure I back this one up before I try to post it. In all, it was well worth it. We all had fun and Maeghan still plays with her crocodile. I have more to post on the vacation but it will have to wait. This post is just exceedingly long. So, until next time.

Talk to you later
 

MWNews 46

I wrote a large entry into this the other day. I spent about two hours on it. Then, I went to publish it and my program got a fatal error. No where could I find what I had typed. So, the lesson here is, watch what you say, no one may be listening.

Got some more vacation stuff. I have about three more posts about our vacation. Then we can move on to the latest news. Which, since William has learned to crawl, involves typing two words and then telling William, NO. He is now getting into everything and most of our time is spent chasing him around the house making sure he is not pulling something on top of himself.

We forget, but we did not have this with Maeghan. She didn't crawl around much, until she learned to frog hop and even then, she did not go lots of places where she could no longer see us. She didn't start walking until she was around two, so we have not had to deal with a really mobile child in a while. He is constantly in motion and headed somewhere. We have the toys in a somewhat neat pile in the lounge room. Maeghan gets them out and spreads them around most days, but it never really gets too bad. Since we try to put them back in their piles most days, they are sitting there each morning when William begins wandering.

He has learned to climb up on top of the toys he doesn't play with and get to the little toys he likes to carry around. There is a picture of Maeghan in her little home-made rocking horse. I mention it because we still have it and William uses that to climb up to get the blocks. They are in a box behind the rocking horse. We put them there so William will not be able to get to the box and throw all of them around. He has figured out that he can climb in up through the rocking horse, (it would take too much explanation to tell you how this is done), and reach back to the blocks.

I mention all this as he is right now over by the toys doing just that. Climbing over the rocking horse to get to the blocks. He seems to have given up on that this time and has become interested in the swinging monkeys on the little castle thing.

But this post was to be about the vacation and I will get back to that shortly. It is mostly about Maeghan, so I thought I would get a few things in about William first, but I think I am done with that now, so I can proceed with the adventures. Although, William has been up for about 30 minutes now and he will be wanting someone to pay attention to him soon. I just got up to get a cup of coffee, and he noticed that I was in the room and started whining for me. But I ignored it, you have to be strong sometimes. He lost interest as soon as I sat back down and is now trying to get to one of Maeghan's toys that she does not let him play with when she is around. The both want to play with my new xbox controller. It is white and I suppose they are tired of playing with the old black ones and everytime I have the new one out, both of them are trying to get to it and play with it. Probably because they want to be like Daddy, but mostly because they just don't want you paying any attention to anything but them. By the way, typing Daddy and having it refer to me is really strange. Not something I have ever really thought about but I usually do not type Daddy, so I suppose it has not come up before.

The vacation. Right, back to that. Not that you would know it, but we just had to take a30 minute break for William. He is getting lonely now and wants all the attention. No one else is awake yet, so I had to go play with him. Not that he wants someone to pay with him, he just wants to be held so he can reach things that are higher than he can normally reach. Have I mentioned that he is constantly in motion. He will not stay still for any time. As soon as you pick him up, his head is going, he is looking around and trying to reach anything he can see. It is almost impossible to hold him anymore. He is too (ok, I have tried several words in this place and I cannot spell any of them, so you are going to have to fill in your own words that basically means he moves around too much as I cannot continue to try to spell things I cannot spell) fill in the blank.
While in Brisbane, (vacation talk), we went to the EKKA or I should say 'The Ekka'. I have no idea what EKKA stands for not do I know why it is called 'The Ekka', but if you don't know what that is, think Fat Stock Show or Sydney Easter Show and you pretty much have the idea.

The Ekka is kind of hard to see. It is not laid out very well and it spreads across several places that I am not entirely sure are there when the Ekka is not in town. I know we never went down to that area when we lived there but when the Ekka comes to town, this whole area is converted to a show. There are buildings and livestock areas and all sorts of things that I did not know were there. The problem is, since it is not designed as an exhibition area, it makes it hard to find anything or no where you are while you are there. I am certain we did not visit everything, and we were there from the time they opened to the time they closed. We spent a lot of time backtracking and going through things we had already been through.

I have to go now. William is throwing a fit and wants breakfast. I cannot do both, so I will get back to this later, probably today, so I can tell you more about some of the things Maeghan did during the Ekka. Until then.

Talk to you later 

MWNews 45

Not a lot happened in the last two days. William started walking and Maeghan cooks her own dinner, but they both remain humble about it and do not try to lord it over anyone.

Actually, William cannot walk yet. He has discovered that he can crawl around and get into things now. In the past, he would either roll around or call out to someone to pick him up. Now, since he learned how to crawl on our vacation, he can get into just about anything he wants.

He has found Maeghan's old castle/play thing. This is the toy I talked about a long time ago when she was in the hospital and there was this toy/castle thing she really liked and we were looking for one for her. Of course, you remember that. But, even if you do not, we still have it here and Maeghan still likes to sit in it and play. William has found out how to get in and out of it.

It has a little arch on one side and a door on the other. He can crawl through the arch or even open the door and let himself in. Now, anytime you put him on the floor, that is where he heads. He crawls inside and plays with any toys that are in there. It is just big enough for him to stretch out across it without touching any side and he will spin himself around in there and play with each little section. Each side of it has a different toy on it, from a little mirror to things you can bend and play with. He is quite happy to lay in there and play with each thing or play with any balls that are in there with him. He will roll to one side of it so he can open the door and look out at me sitting at my computer. He likes to do that and then laughs when I see him doing it.

He and Maeghan get along great. He still thinks Maeghan is the greatest thing ever. It does not matter where she is or what he is doing, if Maeghan makes a noise or walks into the room, he stops and stares at her and if she acknowledges him in anyway, he starts laughing his little laugh. Now that he has teeth on both the top and bottom, his smile is really cute. I have some pictures of it that I will be sending, but for now, he is still the cute little baby. A lot more noisy than Maeghan ever was, but only when he wants something, like food or a toy or to be picked up or anytime he feels he is not getting the attention he deserves. He is loud and insistant when that happens.

He will still not sleep the night in his own bed. He has gotten used to sleeping with Mommy while she was in Brisbane and now wakes up sometime in the night so he can be brought into bed with her. I think he might go back to sleep like he used to if I take him out and feed him until he falls asleep, but lately, I have had to work during the night, so I do not have the time to do that.

Ok, I have mentioned work and I have mentioned vacation, and I have even mentioned Brisbane, all of which have different stories to tell, but I probably only have time for one or two of them, so the question is, which one. I suppose it will have to be vacation as we had a wonderful time, for most of it, and I am sure since we cannot show you all the pictures, there are over two hundred of them, I can at least tell you everything we did. Kind of like a slide show with words. The best part is you cannot skip ahead as I might say something really interesting at anytime and you cannot afford to miss anything as the interesting parts are so few and far between. It is always good to have a captive audience.

Let's see, I told you about some of the trip up there. We spent three days in Airlie Beach/Whitsundays/Great Barrier Reef. I would like to say the food was really good there, but we did not eat at anything that served really good food and we ate at a couple of places that were bad. So, talking about food is out of the question.

The first day we were there, they had a nice little market along the beach. It was interesting because it was not the usual stuff you see at these types of things. A lot of it was the same, but it did not repeat itself over and over again, where every third stall sold the same things as the previous ones. This one had a lot of unique stuff. We did, however, disturb some couple in a van when we parked, but that is another story.

The last picture, from the previous post, was of the beach at Airlie Beach. It was vey nice, with the pathway and market just along the trees you can see along the beach. The shops and restaurants are just beyond that. They also have a little inland pool around there that Maeghan swam in. I have a picure of William there on the grass when we was first trying to crawl. Not that you can see it in the picture, but he was up on his hands and knees and was rocking back and forth trying to get going. He has since leared how to do this, but back then, it was his first time.

All the islands and water were very pretty around there. Again, I have some pictures I can send, but they do not have anyone in them and if I am not there to explain what you are looking at, they kind of lose their appeal. We can move on from there, but I might go back to it every once and a while.

William is nearly impossible to hold now. He is always in motion trying to grap things and look around for something new to look at or grab. He weighs 11 kilos and is really strong, so you cannot do anything but try to maintain your grip on him when you are holding him. He will just not stay still for any length of time. You end up having to put him down just so he will stop squirming. Juanita was just now complaining about him getting into everything here at the computers, so she put him on the floor. He is under my chair now, so I cannot move until he moves away.

On the way back from Airlie Beach, we tried to visit some of the places we drove past on the way up. There are several little tourist towns along the way and we spent several hours each day looking at stuff. We took our time coming back, not only because we wanted to see everything we could but because we were not in a hurry to get back to stay with Angela. That is who we stayed with while we were in Brisbane and suffice it to say, it was not the most pleasant environment. With all the kids and all the constant fighting and complaining, it was hard to just relax. And the kids were making noise too. Maeghan loved it. She loved playing with Jarvis all the time and he seemed to like playing with her. Anna is a little too big for Maeghan and the other kids are her siz but they are too young for her to play with yet. Shayla, Angela's youngest, is a real bully. She has leared to hit and push and be obnoxious with anyone her size and Maeghan is not used to that at all. So Maeghan lived in terror anytime Shayla was around. But Maeghan loved playing with all the kids all the time. She picked up a couple of bad habits, like shrieking and crying whenever she does not get her way, but I think she is already over most of that since we have returned.

William enjoyed watching all the kids all the time. He would just sit and watch them perform for him. He liked to get on the floor and roll around with them, but they there were too many small toys and things there to do it without someone supervising him. Plus, he was sick for most of the trip, as we all were, so he would get really miserable at times. He got so bad one day, before we left Brisbane on our drive, that we took him to the hospital. That is where you go when you do not have a local doctor. The doctors there just said to keep giving him panadol and if he got really worse, to give him anitbiotics, but they said the antibiotics would probably not work and would probably make him worse, so we never go around to getting the prescription. He was getting better by the time we started the drive, so it was not too bad.

Maeghan and I were sick with colds for most of the trip. We are still getting over it, but Juanita did not get sick until the last day and is still pretty bad now. It is ok during the day, but starts to hit you at night and before you go to bed. I got so bad, and so has Juanita, that I could not really speak at night or in the morning. And the cough that goes along with it was hard on Maeghan and all of us. Juanita still has it, but we are all doing ok now.

I guess more of the trip news and the other stuff I was going to talk about will have to wait. Juanita is waiting for me to take a shower so we can go do the shopping. It is Thursday and we always do the shopping on Thursdays. As soon as I get through with my meetings normally, but this morning I had meetings from 2 in the morning until about 9, so she has had to wait extra long while I typed this. William has started to get cranky and I have no idea where Maeghan is, so I suppose I have to go.

As you can see, I am trying to type more often, but as this is only two times, it hardly presents a trend. Maybe it will be, mostly because I have a lot of pictures I want to put in here, but if not, I can always email the pictures. I am sure you will enjoy them.

Until next time, talk to you later. 

MWNews 44

Maeghan is speaking Spanish now. We don't really know what she is saying, but that does not seem to matter as she speaks very slow and very loud so we can understand her. She learned Spanish by watching every episode of Dora ever made 400 times. For those of you who have not been in contact with any humans younger than 10, Dora is Dora the Explorer, but if you did not know that, then the speaking Spanish part probably went over your head anyway.

We have just returned from vacation in Queensland. That is north of here, where Brisbane is but we only spent a few days in Brisbane. We bought a car DVD player for Maeghan and William to watch on the long drives. I have copied or purchased most of the episodes of Dora and that is what Maeghan watched, all the time, over and over again. Each episode is about 30 minutes long and there are at least 30 of them, but I am pretty sure, after listening to them while driving, I can recite most of the dialogue to you verbatim. Not that I picked up any Spanish along the way.

A lot of times, Maeghan will be talking about something and then start speaking Spanish in the middle of her conversation. It doesn't really mean she is having a conversation with anyone, she can have whole dialogues by herself, but it is kind of strange if you are not really following along that closely in the first place and she suddenly interjects Spanish words into what she is saying. Makes you think you have missed something really important in her life and she has just passed you by on the evolutionary scale.

Speaking of vacations, yes, it has been a really long time since I updated anyone on this here blog thing. I don't really have any excuses for it other than anytime I thought about doing it, something else would come up and I would not have the time. It takes a couple of hours to come of with all this witty dialogue and constant repartee. And there is the added burden of having no idea how to spell repartee, so I either have to stare at it for a long time and decide if it is worth my time to look it up or just ignore it and move on. As you can tell, moving on won this time. I think maybe writing in this was kind of good for me while I was in the family way. Not that I wrote that often back then, but it was certainly more often that I have been lately. Therapeutic is the word I think I am looking for, but after staring at that for a long time, the word itself probably has no meaning at all and I just made it up. Now that I am recovered, except for those long painful memories of the labor, I don't seem to have the urgency to keep this thing going and keep everyone informed. But, as you can tell, I am back and hopefully, as I have said many, many times, this time will be different.

More vacation thoughts. This time, speaking of the recent trip we attempted. We decided a while back that instead of going to Tassie for Christmas, we would take a vacation together. Really, our first one that was not the result of some illness or other medical emergency. We decided we would try to visit parts of Australia that we had not seen before. In my case, that would be almost anywhere, but we have had some trips through the country that can be counted as seeing some of the country. This time, we thought we might stop at some of these towns and places to see what it is there is to see.

We decided on going north to Cairns. That was our plan for many months, but when it got down to actually planning that trip, that is 28 hours of constant driving just to get there and does not include any stops along the way to see anything. Cairns, by the way, is in far north Queensland. Not the very top of Queensland, that is still another days drive farther north, but it is about the largest city in that direction and once you pass there, there are not a lot of real roads or pathways to travel on to go any farther. There is Cape York, at the very top of Australia, but there is not really anything there to see and it is a long drive through a lot of nothing to get there. We will probably never make it that far north in Queensland.

So with a trip all the way to Cairns out of the picture, we decided to only go about two thirds of the way there. We planned a weeks worth of traveling, one way, to get to and see the places along the coast of Queensland. Not that most Americans will have any idea where any of these places are or what their meaning is, but I will mention a few of the more prominent ones in the hope that it will at least sound familiar.

Our first stop was Hervey Bay, pronounced for some unknown reason as Harvey Bay but I have learned not to ask for explanations on why things are pronounce the way they are. This is significant because Hervey Bay is opposite Frazier Island. Frazier Island, as I am sure we all know, is the largest island on the world made completely of sand. You might wonder why anyone or anything would want to make that claim but just so you know, this island is 100 miles long and about 30 wide. It has its own rivers and lakes and forests. All on an island that is made completely of sand. There are no rocks, no outcroppings of boulders, just sand. And trees grow on it. Lots of them. It is apparently the only place on earth that has a forest growing in sand. Anyway, look it up on the internet. It is very interesting.

Having said all that, we did not actually visit Frazier Island. We could see it from our cabin and we wanted to go to see it while we were there, but the trip we wanted to take was all booked and we did not find another to go on with short notice. You cannot drive to Frazier Island and even if you take the ferry, only four wheel drive cars are allowed there. Whale watching is also a big tourist attraction there but we didn't make that either. All in all, we did not find the real attraction of the Hervey bay area. Granted, we were only there for one day and we did drive the tourist drive along the beach, it was very beautiful but then again, it is always beautiful driving along the coast, but we did not do any of the tourist things while we were there. Maybe next time.

Out next stop was Rockhampton. Cowtown to all the locals as this is supposed to be the beef center of Australia. I am not sure how it can be called the beef center as it is on the east coast of Australia and there are a lot of areas where I would think there is more beef produced, but that is what it is called. You can tell they take is seriously as most of the buildings have a statue of a cow sitting out front or on top of the buildings. We were told that there was not a lot to see there unless you drove down to the coast, about thirty minutes away, so we did not plan a lot of activities in Rockhampton itself. One the only full day we had there, we did drive down to the coast towns and see all the tourist sights. It was very nice, except it was windy and looking like rain all day, but it was worth the trip. We did find out, too late, that there are a lot of things to see and do in Rockhampton and we never got to do any of them. Once again, maybe next time.

Our last stop, and the one we spent the most time at was Airlie Beach. That will probably mean very little to almost everyone, although everyone we met or talked to seemed to know where and what this place was (I had never heard of it before this trip). But, for a more familiar name that maybe even isolated Americans will have heard of is the Whitsundays. This is a group of 74 islands that are at the beginning of the Great Barrier Reef. The reef stretches north from there, but most people go to the Whitsundays to see it. Some the islands are Hayman Island, a very, very expensive place, Hamilton Island, it has its own airport, and many, many others. You might have heard of Hayman and Hamilton Islands. We did not go to either of these but we did take a day trip around the islands and stopped on several. I do not recall the names, although one was Whitehaven where we had a BBQ. They did snorkeling from the boat at one spot but neither Juanita or I were game enough, or strong enough swimmers, to try it. Juanita did take Maeghan out in the glass bottom raft so they could see reef from that perspective. I stayed on the boat with William as I seemed to have gotten seasick on the hour long trip out to this spot. I got over it and it did not occur again, but for a while, I was a bit queasy. By the time we had left that area and headed to our next stop, I was alright.

Next up was a bush hike. This time, I was to take Maeghan on the bush walk and leave Juanita and William behind. If I had thought about it, we might have just stayed on the beach and not made the climb, but I was foolish and went anyway. We were told it was a brief, easy 15 minute walk to a lookout where you could look at the beaches far below. Now, any sane person would have figured out that if you are starting at sea level and you are going to a place where there is a view of the beaches from a great height, there was going to be some climbing involved. But I took there 15 minute, easy walk speech to heart and headed out with Maeghan. To be fair, it was only about a kilometer in distance and a lot of it was a gradual climb, but the first hundred yards or so are a steep set of steps that are very uneven and very irregular so that Maeghan was unable to navigate them herself and I ended up having to carry her up them. She did manage to walk about half the way up by herself, but our pace was so slow, that we were still climbing while most of the group had already passed us on their way back. When it became clear that we were one of the last ones left on the climb, I picked Maeghan up and carried her the rest of the way there.

Once there, it turned out there was a little wooded platform that you could stand on and take in the views. I won't go into the Vietnam family that was on the same cruise we were on and the problems they had and were causing the entire time, but suffice it say that there were about 15 of them and they had taken up residence on the platform and were not about to move for anyone. I left Maeghan at the steps up to the platform and pushed my way through to get some really good pictures, pictures that I thought were not going to be worth it at that point as I was totally exhausted from making the climb carrying Maeghan, but after seeing them on my computer, they are well worth it and I wished Juanita could have been there to share it with me. I did take a picture of Maeghan at the top, but we might as well have been anywhere as there was no way to put her in a position to get her and the scenery into the same picture, due the afore mentioned Vietnamese family.

I decided we should probably head back as I did not know how long it would take at Maeghan pace and we and the Vietnam people were the last ones left at the top. I found out right away that going down was going to be harded than going up and we were almost immediately passed by the family and were the last ones. So, I picked up Maeghan and carried her down the twisting and winding trail and then down the treacherous steps back to the beach. To be real honest, I did not think there was anyway I was going to make it and I thought they would have to come up and help me with Maeghan, but I made it and did it with no ones help and I am really proud of Maeghan for not complaining or making a fuss for the entire trip. She kept telling me she could do it and she could walk but I was worried we would take too long getting back, so I kept carrying her. We made it back and it turned out that they were just starting to load the first people into the raft and take them back to the boat, so we actually had a little more time than I thought, but we were in the second raft back and other than running aground on the way back to deeper water, the tide had gone out while we had been climbing, and being totally exhausted when I returned, it was well worth the effort. The only regret being not being able to share it with William and Juanita.

Our last stop was a BBQ on the beach on the white sand islands. It was really nice and we have a lot of pictures of the whole trip. The water was really cold but that did not stop Juanita and Maeghan from getting in it and getting wet. Juanita even put William in the water. He did not like it at all but eventually got used to it and might have had a little fun. He was scared of the waves as this was his first time in the ocean, but I think he will get used to it. Maeghan was the same way and now she loves the water and the beach.

It took about two hours to return to where we started from and we were totally exhausted by then, but all in all, it was well worth it. I can see this place as a regular place we would like to visit, although in the future, we will probably fly there as it is both cheaper and less tiring to do that and you do not really need a car while you are there.

I can see this entry has gone on for a very long time. I did not mean it to be a trip report and I have a lot of other things to write about. William is now beginning to have a definite personality and there are a lot of things I can say about him. He is just now starting to crawl. He has learned peoples names and knows who you are talking about when you say look at someone. He is very ticklish and has a really funny laugh. And, he is so big now. Maybe I am just used to Maeghan and how she was and still is, but he is big. Big arms, big legs, big belly and he weighs almost as much as Maeghan. Only a kilo difference between the two of them. It makes Maeghan feel very light when you pick up one of them and then the other. It is a reminder of how small Maeghan really is and it brings up some issues that we are going to have to face with Maeghan, but I will leave that until it actually comes to pass and we have to deal with it then.

Maeghan can do a lot of things for herself now, too. She has her little step that we keep in the bathroom so she can get on and off the potty by herself. She is really proud of herself when she does that and you should see how big she smiles when we tell her how big and clever she is. She count and say her ABCs without any errors now and she gets most of the songs she sings right now. No more messing up with the lyrics or anything. She can ever recite whole books by herself. I don't think she is actually reading them, but she can look at her books and tell you what they say on each page. It is probably from having them read to her so many times, but she does this on her own now and sits and reads to herself all the time. She is really smart. I don't know if it so amazing because she is so small and does not look like she should be able to figure things out or she is just normal and all kids are like her. She is still an amazement every day with the things she says and does. Just truly amazing.

I will have to go now, but as I keep saying, there is more to come. We still have the trip back to cover and I have all the things William and Maeghan are doing. I will get them into this forum as fast as I can. I hope there are still people reading this and have not given up on any new additions.

Until next time, talk to you later.

MWNews 43

Ok, I have a little more time this morning. It is 1:30 in the morning and I am up working, but I have a little more time.

I told you William had a new tooth. He has also started talking all the time. He doesn't say anything, but makes noises all the time. He likes saying bub bub bub and dad dad dad, or just makes noise all the time. he is alos trying to get moving all the time. He gets up on his knees and trys to move forward by kicking his legs. He can roll over by himself. He rolled off the bed the other day, so now we have to watch him all the time. He hasn't quite got the knack of sleeping all night, but he only wakes up once and then he wakes up for good around 5 in the morning.

He is still big, or big in comparison to Maeghan. He weighs 9 kilos and Maeghan only weighs 11, so he is catching up pretty quick. He had some more shots the other day. I don't know what these are for but it was his six month shots, I think. He goes to the doctor tomorrow, or today since it is so early in the morning. Just for a six month checkup. There is nothing wrong with him but he has to be checked to be eligible for healthcare.

Maeghan went to the doctor to be measured for new splints yesterday. She is not happy about it as she has not been wearing her old ones for a few days. It will take five weeks for them to make the new ones, so maybe she will have some more time when she doesn't have to wear them. Although, they did put some new padding and some new velcro on her old ones, so I suppose she is expected to wear them all the time.

She was unhappy yesterday so we bought her some new shoes. Actually, she had had an accident and made her shoes wet and she needed some more anyway, so we got her some black dress shoes. That made her really happy. She likes new shoes. She says she can run fast now. They are black with a velcro strap across them that has a purple butterfly on it. They are purple on the inside also. We told her that they were purple, one of her favorite colors. She held up her finger to us and said, I think they are black mommy. It was cute.

Speaking of cute, I have a list of a few things she has done that were really, really cute but have never written about them. These happened over the last few months but I wrote them down so I could pass them on.

Once, we were going somewhere, I forget where and we had just gotten in the car. She usually asks for her cup on water when we get in. She has a couple of cups with lids on them so she does not spill them. (I know I have heard of people who do not go anywhere without a cup of water but I just can't think of anyone who comes to mind immediately.) When we gave her her cup of water, she took a drink and told us it was not cold water. (She has to have cold water, another trait she seems to have gotten from someone in the family.) We told her we did not have any cold water and she was unhappy about it but didn't say anything else immediately.

About five minutes later, she had started singing songs. She knows about thirty different songs and she likes to sing them in the car. She was busy singing along when we heard her start one of her own made up songs. I don't know what the first part of the song was but her big finish was

I have my water
But I am not upset
Because my water is not cold

I know it does not really read very funny, but we thought it was hilarious. We started laughing all the way to where ever it was we were going. She had to keep asking us what was so funny but she did not understand when we said it was her.

After that, she started singing about everything that was going on in her life. That is her new thing to do, or it was, she hasn't done it in a while. She would make up songs about whatever was going on or whatever people were saying around her. You would be half listening to her and then hear her say something or sing something about what had happened several minutes ago. she really strings out the last words of her song and then looks at you and bows. If you start clapping, she will continue to bow and say thank you very much. Of course, that lets her know you are listening so she starts hamming it up and doing all kinds of things and then bowing when she is finished, like she has put on a great show. Which she has, but she seems to know that she can do anything and get applause for it.

Another thing she said the other day was when we were driving through the Entrance, that is a town near where we live. I think I have mentioned it before. It is where they feed the pelicans. Anyway, when you go across the bridge over the lake, you can see the ocean and the beach from there. She always wants to go to the beach so when we were going over the bridge, she said lets go to the beach. I didn't say anything but after we had crossed and were going down the road, she tried to get my attention. She said daddy, daddy and I said yes Maeghan, another game we play all the time but this time she had a question for me. She said, I was just wondering, does this car turn around. She wanted to turn around and go back to the beach. Again, this doesn't read as well as it sounded but I had to pull over I was laughing so much. It was so cute.

There are all sorts of things she says and does that are so cute. I guess she is like all other kids but she does keep us laughing and entertained all the time. She absolute loves to dance and sing. She does it all the time. And not just simple moving around dances but some really complicated dances where she will bend her knees and do the twist and rock back and forth and spin around and wave her arms and just generally dance to the music. Sometimes, she does not even need music to dance, she just makes up her own songs and dances to them.

A few times, when we took her dancing at the club, the dance floor was too crowded for her to do most of her dances, so I had forgotten how complicated and inspired some of her dances can be. But, the last time we went, there was no one on the dance floor and she really put on a show. She was spinning and jumping and waving her arms all around. She really was having a good time and maybe I am biased about it, but she is really good at it. She seems to actually dance to the music and not just move around while the music is playing. Her dances are coordinated to the music and while you can see some of the things she does she has copied from other people or been taught in class, but most of them are things she could not possibly have seen before and she is just making them up. And, sometimes, she will sing along with the song. I don't know if she has heard them before or not, but she seems to know the words to a lot of songs. Maybe she hears them in the car with her mother, but some of them are not played on the radio anymore and she still knows the words. She gets excited when a song comes on that she knows and can dance to. It is just a really fun and special thing to do when we take her to the club so she can dance. Yesterday, when we were going to my work and she was going to the doctor, we had to pass by the club on the way. She had just asked where we were going and I told her to my work. As we passed the club, she said there it is and kept saying pull in, pull in, you are passing it. It took a minute for me to realise what she was saying and when I pointed out to her that that was the club and not work, she said, 'yes it is' and I said 'no it isn't' so she said 'oh, but we could go to the club instead'. Another really cute thing to say and she knew it because she laughed when she said it.

In other news, I am doing fine. No problems, although my scar has started itching and sometimes hurting. Not a lot, but I am aware it is there all the time. I suppose it will go away eventually, but it has been a while and I might have to mention it to a doctor at some point.

Both Juanita and I are on diets again. We are trying to lose 50 kilos each, by Christmas. Not really possible but we have been on it for two weeks and hope to stay on it for the next year or so. We are in the new house and we only have to cook for ourselves, so it makes it easier. Maeghan is eating nothing but junk food all the time and we are trying to think of ways to sneak vegetables into her. She likes rice and I can usually hide things in the rice but we are not eating rice right now, so I have trouble making a small portion of rice just for her. We bought some pre-packaged rice dinners but she does not seem to like those so we have to find something else. We are not eating bread either but we have to keep some on hand because Maeghan likes toasted cheese sandwiches.

Michael and Natalie and Adam are living downstairs. We have to buy Michaels food but he is cooking it for himself. So far, it has not been too bad. Maeghan is always wanting to go downstairs. Even when we have dinner, she wants to go downstairs and she will tell us she is not hungry and doesn't want to eat just so she can go down there. We have to make her sit at the table and eat with us.

Michael is still going to school, sometimes. He is in the last semester of his senior year. I don't know what classed he takes or what he is required to do but he does seem to go most of the time. He has to ride the bus from here to his old school. According to him, the earliest bus does not make it to his school on time, so he misses first period. Apparently, the school has said that is ok. He had some work experience for a couple of weeks where he had to go to a shop and work each day instead of going to school.

Natalie and Adam pay rent to us, if you can call it that. It is not very much but we do not have to pay for their food anymore, nor cook it for them, so it seems to work out ok. Neither has looked for a job but they are applying for rent assistance so maybe they can pay a little more if they get it.

I got a new smoker. They have never sold the old smoker type I had in America over here in Australia. I have been looking for one for a long time. Finally, they have a small one for sale, at least they did. I have not seen them in stores lately so maybe no one bought them and they discontinued them. But I bought one. I bought it several months ago but Juanita said I had to wait until my birthday to take it out of the box and then we were moving so I decided to wait until after we moved to put it together. It is about half the size of my other one in America. It seems to be designed well as it has the smoke stack in the right place and it has several baffles to control the temperature. It even came with a thermometer with degress in Farenheight. It must be made in America but it is a local store brand.

You cannot get the right kind of charcoal over here, only cheap stuff that you should really not be cooking with. I am going to look for a good wood supply but you cannot get real cooking wood either. They do sell the right kind of charcoal at the place where I bought the smoker but it is really expensive for a very small bag that would not even last one cooking session. I did put some of the cheap charcoal in it to season it before I cook. The charcoal does not get to a very high temperature. I had to put some really wet wood in to get it up to cooking temperature and then it only went halfway. I assume when I get the right wood, it will get hotter, but I will have to wait and see. I did see that it was not sealed very well. It leaked smoke from several places where it should not. Mostly around the door, which you would expect, but a lot around the smoke stack where it joins the smoker. The fire box did not leak at all, which is good, but it seems to have sealed the baffles when it has heated up. I will have to take a hammer to it to make them move back into cooking position. I had them wide open when I was testing it. Maybe by this weekend, I will have it ready to cook something, although I have not really found anything I can smoke yet. They do not really have the right kind of ribs over here. They have what they call American style ribs, but they are really small and appear to have been cut down from the whole rib we get in America. I asked about a brisket and they said I could get one but I am not sure how long it will take nor how much it will cost. I will probably just smoke some of the small ribs but since we are on a diet, we cannot have the sauce so I do not know if I really want to do that. Maybe a chicken or something before I move on to real BBQ food.

Well, I suppose I should be going now. I have a meeting in an hour, so I need to get something to eat before then. I haven't really talked about everything that has happened since Christmas but since I have forgotten most of what I wanted to write about, I suppose it does not really matter. So, for now, this is all I have.

Talk to you soon 

MWNews 42

Once again, it has been awhile and this post will not be very long. I just wanted to report on William. He has gotten his first tooth. He grizzles all the time, so we knew something was wrong and now we know. He has a little tooth on his bottom gum. It is not quite sticking out yet, but you can see it is there.

He is in the dining room right now having breakfast. I have to go to work soon, although I have already been working for a couple of hours but we have to take Maeghan in to the doctor today. She is going to in to be measured for knew splints. The old ones are getting a little too small. She has not been wearing them for the last couple of weeks and she is doing fine as far as we can tell. She can even walk around in her slippers, which she couldn't before because she they did not support her ankles enough and she kept rolling her feet over. Hopefully, she will not have to wear her splints for much longer. She really likes not wearing them and I think she can walk and run a little better without them. But, she still has a problem with balance and falling down a lot. The splints help support her legs and make them stronger.

I still have a lot of things to tell you about what Maeghan and William have been up to, but I have to go. We are settled into our new home and we like it so far. It is starting to get cold and we do not have enough heaters, so we will see what it gets like. I am going to buy a couple of room heaters to see if that helps but if it gets really cold, we might have to all wear jackets all the time.

We are thinking of taking a driving trip in July or August. We are going to go up north, where the weather is warmer. It is too hot in summer, but it should be ok during the winter. We don't know how far we will go or even when exactly, but I have eight weeks of vacation to use before next year and we plan on taking a couple of weeks and taking a trip. We will go through Brisbane at some point and we might stop and kidnap a couple of the grandkids, probably just Anna, but she is in school now and I don't know if she will be allowed to miss very much. We might go all the way to Caines but that is about a three day drive from here and could prove to be a little too far. We will probably end up around the southern end of the great barrier reef, not that we will go out in the water and see it, but at least we can say we saw part of it from above the water.

We have to go now. Maeghan will not wake up, she was up until midnight last night, so I have to carry her to the car. She is still the cutest thing around and William just adores her. He watches her all the time and laughs everytime she comes in the room. That is one sure way to make him happy, set him next to Maeghan. She just laughs and watches her and stays happy that way.

Maeghan loves the back yard and wants to play all the time. She has her jumping castle in the garage and even has friends that come over now and play with her. She calls everyone her best friend and everytime we pass the school around the corner, she says that is her new school and all her friends are there. She says when she goes to school, all her friends are going to chase her and they run really fast so she has to run really fast. She says she will chase them too, but she gets to go first.

I really have to go now. This picture is from Maeghan's favorite beach. She says all beaches are her favorite beach, until she actually gets there and then she says this isn't her favorite beach and when are we going to her favorite beach. She loves the beach, by the way, and it is too cold to go now. We had a hard time convincing her of this and she still wants to go all the time. She points out that it is warm outside and maybe we can go to the beach but we haven't been lately.

We still have to take her to the club so she can go dancing each week. She loves dancing. She has a new play group she goes to but she had to quit her ballet classes. They wanted to move her in with a lot of bigger kids and she was still recovering from her broken collar bone, so we didn't take her back. She dances at church and playgroup, so maybe that is enough for her.

Ok, I am going now.

Talk to you later. 

MWNews 41

Once again, it has been awhile, and I am finding it very hard to type. Maybe because I have not done it in a while. Hopefully, I will find most of my typos because, as you know, this spell checker is not very good. But, I think it is kind of like riding a bike, except you use your fingers and don't have to wear a helmet.

There is a lot of stuff I want to include and report on in here. So much stuff, I have no idea where to begin. It gets intimidating trying to remember all the things I have to write. I think my plan is to just start from now and report on the most recent stuff and if I remember something from a while back, I will try to include it. It means you might have to miss out on a lot of things but it would be impossible to include it all in one session and I forget easily.

To start off with, we had a nice thanksgiving dinner the other day. The fact that it is April and it was Easter Sunday doesn't really matter, the weather was about right and I had gotten a turkey a few months ago, so it was time to cook it. I think it was just about thawed. It has been sitting out since Christmas. It is about a month early, but I think I might just do this every year. If we have thanksgiving during November, it is hot and you cannot really cook anything that you would normally cook. But in May, and apparently April, it is cooler and we can fix real thanksgiving things, instead of salads and warm weather foods.

I mention all this because Maeghan seems to like the dressing. I am not sure she actually eats it, but she asked for it everytime we had it. (We have had dressing the last two days. We still have some left. No more turkey, but we have dressing.) Maeghan tasted it the first time but didn't eat it. And when we had it the second night, she tasted it again, but she didn't eat it again. She didn't say she didn't like it, like she normally does with things she does not like, so maybe she will eat more of it the next time. (Which is tonight when we have sausages and dressing, but don't tell anyone.) She ate the turkey, she likes chicken, and she ate the potatos. We had corn too, but I put garlic in it and it did not taste right. I didn't have the green beans or yams or anything else good. Just turkey and dressing and mashed potatos and corn, but it felt like a thanksgiving dinner, so as I said, we might do this every year. I am thinking Laura's birthday, May 25. That would be about the right time of year for it. I have mentioned the high price of turkey over here before, so it has to be a treat type of thing. I got this turkey for ten dollars, though. It was not very big but I was walking by a butcher shop around Christmas time and they were advertising that all their turkeys were ten dollars, so I got one. It has been in the freezer since then.

Moving on, William is in the other room doing his yelling thing. He likes to lay on the floor and make really loud noises. It sounds like he is wanting you to come in and look at him, but he does it even if you are in the room with him. He just likes hearing his own voice, I think. Sounds like a Jernigan to me.

He can roll over on his own now, William that is. Michael still can't, or apparently he can't. He only lays on the couch and watches television. William trys to pull himself along on the floor. He will roll over on his belly and prop himself up with his arms, then kick his legs so he falls forward a little. He was after a little toy the other day and pushed himself a couple of feet across the floor to get to it. I then had to move it because he would bang his face against it and that did not make him happy, but he did manage to get all the way over to the toy. Maybe all this crawling around on the floor will get him some excersize. He is still really chubby in the legs and arms, and getting more so every day. (Again, sounds like a Jernigan.)

For all who do not know, Maeghan broke her collar bone a few weeks ago. She was playing on the slides at McDonalds and fell while climbing the ladder. She has climbed the ladder a hundred times before but this time she apparently slipped and fell backwards. I was not there but apparently, there was another little boy there with her and she says he did not push her or anything, but no one saw, so we can't be sure. Juanita was there feeding William at the time and did not see it happen either, she just heard Maeghan start crying and saw her on the ground. The other little boy said she fell and he was trying to help her up. No one at McDonalds or anyone else in the play area tried to help Juanita. They all just ignored her. One lady came up and told her there was a medical clinic in the shopping center, so Juanita took her over there. They did not do anything for her either, at the medical center, they only called an ambulance and did not even examine her.

I got there before the ambulance arrived, the nurse was still on hold to the ambulance company. That is a whole other story about the ambulance services here, but we will not go into that. They did not arrive for another 20 minutes. By that time, Maeghan was a whole lot calmer, but she was still in a lot of pain. No one would give her anything to drink because they thought they might have to operate but I said a little bit of water would not hurt. She was laying in the pram where Juanita had to put her. Juanita had to push the pram all the way from McDonalds to the medical center while carrying William and dodging cars. I was at physio at the time and did not know any of this was going on. Juanita could not get ahold of me as I had turned my phone off.

When the ambulance arrived, they had me put her in and Juanita rode with them to the hospital. The closest hospital was Wyong, only two minutes away, but they said Wyong hospital did not have a pediatrics section, so they would have to go to Gosford hospital, which is about 30 minutes away. I took William home to stay with Natalie and then drove to the hospital. I only arrived about two minutes after the ambulance did but they would not let me in since I did not come through the emergency entrance. (I parked the car and walked in through the hospital.) They were really busy at the time and I had to wait about 15 minutes before they would let me past the emergency room waiting area. I was just about to walk in anyway when one of the nurses noticed that I was upset, so she let me in.

Maeghan was just about to go in for xrays when I got in there. They had put her head between blocks so she could not move it and she apparently had not moved from the position they had put her in when they layed her down. She would not turn her head or move her arm at all at that time but she was not crying anymore and seemed to be enjoying the cartoons on the television. They still would not let her have any water and she was crying for ice and water.

I went with her to the xray room. It was hard to do, but Maeghan is so used to being in hospitals and having things done to her, she was really, really good about it. She did not cry at all and would try to move into the positions they wanted her to be in. She wanted me to hold her hand the whole time, but I had to leave the room everytime they took a picture and she would turn towards to me when I left. I had to keep telling her not to move. The doctors or nurses would tell her to look at a spot on the wall or something and she would do that as soon as they told her to. She was really good about it even though it lasted about 30 minutes.

After that, she was a little better. She would turn her head and move her arm a little. She would still tell Juanita and I that she was hurting and that her arm hurt but she would not cry about it. The doctors came around almost immediately and said they could not see any major damage and since she was moving her arms and legs now, and moving her head around, they did not think there was anything major wrong. They said she had a broken collar bone and that there was nothing they could really do for that. No plaster or cast or anything. She only had to wear a sling for a few weeks. Of course, they did not have any slings small enough to fit her, so they ripped up a sheet and made one. It was still too big and Juanita made her one when we got home, but they said there was nothing else they could do for it. We still had to wait in the hospital for several hours while they got her records from her other doctors about her back. The doctor seemed to think there was something wrong with her neck and she wanted to compare it to her other xrays from before. It turned out she had just been laying wrong on the bed and the xray technician did not really know what she was doing. They took her for some more xrays and and these came out fine. All in all, we were there for about 8 hours. It wasn't too bad and Maeghan did finally get her ice and water and she got to watch some movies on the tv.

Maeghan is a lot better now and doesn't tell us her arm hurts anymore. She is still sensitive about anyone trying to pick her up and she will wince away from them when you try to do it by lifting her arms, but she does not wear the sling anymore and does not seem to have a problem doing anything. She has coped with it really well. The only big problems she had was sleeping and putting her thumb in her mouth. This might have cured her of doing that as the arm she could not use was the one she would use for her thumb. She could not really get comfortable at night and spent the first couple of nights sleeping with me in our bed. She has since gone back to sleeping in her bed, with Natalie, and doesn't seem to have any worrys about it anymore. She still will not climb ladders and is very carefull going up and down steps, they seem to scare her now and she will always want someone to hold her hand, but other than that, she is back to playing like she used to. I have just now realized that she does not play on her little play castle anymore and we have taken down the jumping castle so I don't know if she would play in that if it was up, but there does not seem to be a whole lot of things she will not do anymore. I hope that means this is behind her and she will forget about it soon. It is kind of hard to describe what this type of thing is like for a parent but I guess everyone already knows what we go through when things like this happen. There is always that little extra thing to worry about with Maeghan, but I am sure there will be many other falls and accidents to come, so we just have to get used to it.

I have a whole lot of other stuff to talk about but this is getting too long. Maybe, and I have said this many times, I will get to this more often. I have taken to putting notes in my phone whenever Maeghan or William do anything I want to put in here. I have several built up right now but they will have to wait until next time. I also have lots and lots of pictures that I need to publish and include here, but I don't know when I will get around to that either.

In the meantime, we are moving soon, in two weeks, and I am not sure my internet connection will follow me. It is suppossed to, but we could be offline for a while until it gets switched to the new address. I will write more about the move and where we are going and all the things I have to tell about Maeghan and William next time. That should be soon, but for now, everyone here is alright and doing good. No major issues or problems to report. I have gone back to work but am still working from home. Easter has come and gone and we just packing up to move, so until next time.

Talk to you soon 

MWNews 40

Well, I am back. It has been several months since I last posted and I am not sure how much I will go back and tell you about. I will have to check out my last post to see what I was talking about so I can start from there.

I meant to create this post right after the operation but never got around to it. I am not sure I can do it justice now, but I will give it a shot.

I don't know who reads this and maybe it will just serve as a warning to Maeghan and William when they are old enough to read this. I want to talk about the operation and some of the things that I went through and what can be expected from an operation like this. It is not really about Maeghan and William, but I will get back to them soon enough. I just want to make sure I get the message across. Whether anyone reads this and takes any notice, I cannot tell, but just in case, here it is.

DO WHATEVER YOU CAN TO AVOID THIS OPERATION. Whatever you need to do, lose weight, stop smoking, execise more, eat better, do it now and try to reverse anything that will lead to you having this operation.

I know Daddy went through it and thousands of people go through it everyday, but I am not sure the extent of what this operation does is made clear. I found it is quite different to hear about someone else going through it and having it done to yourself. I have said before, it is really different to hear what they are going to do to someone else and then hearing that they are going to do these things to you. You tend to pay more attention and hear more of the details when they are telling you about taking your heart out and holding it in their hands while they cut into it. I am not sure I needed that kind of detail but they didn't ask if I wanted to know and just told me about the procedure as if it was something that they do everyday. Which they do, but not to me.

Anyway, the classes I went to and the information they gave me was really helpfull. It didn't really help at the time, but when I was actually going through it, it was helpfull to know what was going on and what to expect. As you probably know, my biggest fear was the tube down the throat and not being able to breath or swallow and just to let you know, it is as bad as you think it will be but not as bad as it could be. I suppose it is all the medicine you are on at the time, but you do know it is there and it does cause discomfort but you don't really care at the time and it does not last long, or actually, it doesn't last long enough for you to really remember it.

Day one, the day of the surgery, is not something you really remember and there is not any pain during that day. I remember bits and pieces but I have no idea when any of it took place or really where I was when anything happened. I remember some doctor telling me we were going to go into the theater soon and I remember entering the doors, but I have no idea what happened after that. I remember the nurse asking me some questions after the operation but I have no idea when that happened nor what she asked. I am told Juanita was in the recovery room for a while and held my hand but I have no recollection of that. She says I did not look good and I didn't really look like I was alive. I tell you that so that you can be prepared for it if you ever have someone close to you go through the operation. While it is fairly difficult to go through it yourself, it is also very hard on those around you as they do not know what is going on or what to expect and the only thing they can do is wait. That is very hard to do and is not as appreciated as much as it should be. The doctors and nurses try to help but this is something they go through everyday and don't always remember that it is something most of us very rarely do. I think, as I remember it when we were kids, that we had a good way of dealing with it in that we would always go out to eat during the operation. Not that we did it often and we have always joked about it but it seems like a good idea for those who are waiting and helps take the mind off the wait time. Not that Juanita and her parents did that, I have no idea what they did during the operation, but the nurses and doctors recommend that you go home or leave the hospital during that time and let them call you when something changes. I am pretty sure I would not want to be called on the phone if something happened but it is probably a good idea to get away for a little bit during that time.

Anyway, the part I want to talk about is the first few days after the operation. It is a miserable time. I would never want to go through something like that again. It is not so much the pain as you are doped up very well but your whole body hurts and any movement makes it worse, to the point that you will lay in very uncomfortable positions just to avoid having to move. And, even now six weeks after the operation, it is not so much the pain that you have, it is the threat of pain that you could have. Any little movement or gesture could cause you pain and you have to think about it constantly. Not that the pain is bad, don't misunderstand, it is the memory of what the pain can be like and the threat of that happening again that keeps you wondering what will set it off next. The only real pain I have now, and have had for several weeks, is the pain you get when you cough. You can partially control that and keep it to a minimum but the real problem occurs when you have to sneeze. That, even today, is the worse thing that can happen. It just plain hurts and makes you feel like your chest has imploded. And, it lasts for several minutes afterwards so it is not just a pain while you sneeze but it is ongoing for a little while afterwards. I sneeze at least two or three times a day and it is agony each time and does not seem to be getting better.

However, aside from the coughing and sneezing problems, I am feeling much, much better. I started physio yesterday and will continue that for twice a week for six weeks. Since I had already been riding my excerise bike for a month, the physio they put you through is very easy but it did help me to know what types of excerises I need to be doing. I ride the bike for ten minutes everyday and I have started using weights at the same time, holding them in my hands and raising my arms a few times. Overall, I think I am doing pretty good. I can ride the ten minutes with no problems and will up it to fifteen minutes next week. I don't get any pain when I lift things and can pick up Maeghan and William now with no problems.

That was and has been one of the main problems in that I have not been allowed to pick up the kids. I did it occasionally but it would cause some pain sometimes, so I did not do it often. The only really setback I have had was when I started driving again.

Juanita's brother came over for a few days last month. He was here with his girlfriend and they were looking for a bus, yes I said bus, to buy and take back to Tasmania so he could convert it to a mobile home. The bus they really wanted to look at was in Mudgee, which is about a five hour drive from here. Juanita and I said we would take them so I drove all the way there and back in one day. There wasn't any real problems doing it but for the next three days, I was in a lot of pain and I am guessing that it was all the driving that caused it. Everything I did after that was painful and I had to let Juanita drive for the following week. On the good side, they did end up buying the bus and had it shipped over to Tasmania on the boat. As a side note, we found out that it costs more to ship a car or bus over than it would actually cost to ride the boat over with the car or boat. If you take the boat across, with your car, it only costs $59 dollars for the car, and it is free during some parts of the year. If you just ship the car over and do not ride with it, it cost $800. Since it only costs about $200 per person to ride on the boat, it is cheaper to do that than ship it on its own. It was much more expensive to ship the bus but I do not know the axact price they paid for that. The flew over and met the bus when it arrived instead of riding with the bus as they were told there weren't any seats left.

But anyway, I have not really had any problems driving since then but if we drive any distance, I let Juanita drive home. I go back to work in a week and a half and I will have to drive back and forth from there during that time but hopefully, since there is a whole lot of time between trips, I will recover enough to drive back home after work. As I said, it is not really the driving that is the problem. I just makes me sore afterwards.

Well, I don't think I made the point I was trying to make with this post. That being avoiding this operation at all costs. Maybe someone will listen but I never did so I never changed anything to avoid it. I am now, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life but I wanted to give everyone else a warning about it and give them a reason to avoid it. I know I will do everything I can to make sure Maeghan and William never smoke but I also know I cannot really control that, I can only tell them I would appreciate it if they did not. They will never smoke in my presence but I cannot control what they do on their own and after they leave home. I just hope I can get the message across.

I think I have typed enough for now. I have a lot of stuff to cover since my last post, so I should be posting more often for a while. Most of it, I have already forgotten but for now, I will let everyone know that everyone here is ok and doing well. Maeghan is doing ok and the doctors do not see any problems with her. William is getting bigger and should be bigger than Maeghan before he turns one, or at least he is headed that way. Juanita still has pain from the pregnancy, but hopefully, it is getting better. Everyone else is doing fine and I will report on what they are up to later.

I want to tell everyone thank you for your help and thoughts during the operation. I want to thank Laura and Penny for coming over. I know they were not here for the operation and their visit was too short to spend as much time together as we would have liked but I really do appreciate the effort they made to come over and give me a chance to see some of my family before I had to go in. I miss everyone so much and it really helped to have them here.

I want to thank Daddy and Momma for their help in letting me know what to expect and understanding what it is like to go through this. As everyone kept telling me, if Daddy can go through it, then I shouldn't have any problems. Not that it made it any easier, but it did help to know that it does get better after a while.

I wanted to thank Juanita's parents and her sister for coming over and helping Juanita through this. I know how hard it was for her and having her family here to help and support her was meaningful not only for her but was very helpful for me knowing that she did not have to go through this by herself and she had someone to lean on when I was not available.

But most of all, I want to thank Juanita. She has been through a lot since I came over and we have lived through some very tough times together. We have two wonderful children and have gone through more than anyone should have to go through with each of them. With Maeghan's problems and the problems Juanita had during Williams pregnancy, it has been a very hard on each of us. Now, with my operation and her still having problems from the pregnancy, she had to go through most of this on her own. Of course, I was there to help but I really needed someone to lean on during that time to get through it myself and she has and always will be there for me.

I want to thank you, Juanita. Not just for Maeghan and William but for just being there for me. I hope I have been as big a help to you as you have been to me and I wanted everyone who reads to know how much I love you and appreciate what you mena to me and to thank you for just being the special person I have always known you to be. We will be married five years next month and I am sure that the next five years will see us begin to prosper from all the things we have had to deal with up to this time. It will get better from here and I will be feeling better and able to do more things so that we can enjoy even more our life together.

Thank you again, Juanita.

And thank you everone else and I look forward to telling you all about everything that has happened since Christmas and the last time I posted. I love you all and will speak to you soon.

Later