MWNews 53

We have lost half our bench space (counter space to Americans). William is tall enough to reach up onto the counters now. And he does not know the meaning of the word no. I do believe I have never said no so much in my life. We go hours where the only conversation we have is saying no to William. The kids just will not stop getting into things. Everything, everywhere, all the time. He just came walking in here with my water bottle, open, spraying water everywhere and then fell down across the exercise bike. I got up to see what was wrong but I only took the bottle off of him. He gave me a filthy look as if to say 'what about me, I am the one who fell'. I told him I was only interested in him not spraying water everywhere. He just looked away and sulked. He is now on his way back to annoy Maeghan some more.

I have told you he loves to climb into bed with Maeghan and then sit on her if she does not wake up. He thinks it is hilarious. If he hears you coming for him, he laughs and gets to the far side of the bed so you cannot get him off of it.

I just gave him some breakfast, eggs. He took two bites, ran off to bug Maeghan, and then came back 20 minutes later looking for the rest of his omelet. I had already eaten the rest of it and he was very upset by that.

Enough about what is going on now. I am here to talk about Christmas.

There were only a few of us here for Christmas. I guess it was not a few, but only Maeghan, William, Michael, Juanita and myself. We had a lot of presents that we had set out after the kids had gone to bed. Not that went to bed before midnight, but eventually, they went to sleep. We had already put their new trampoline and sand pit together and they were in the back yard. We got one of those trampolines with the netting around it so the kids cannot fall off. It is large enough for about three kids to be on it at the same time, but I have not checked the weight requirements to see if I can get on it. I am sure that is not possible, but the other day, Michael, Maeghan, William, and another kids from the neighborhood were on the trampoline. I don't know if that was too much, but it certainly would be as much as me. There was another time that four of the bigger kids from the neighborhood were on at the same time, but we have told them only two big kids at a time, so that doesn't happen anymore.

Speaking of kids in the neighborhood, Maeghan has lots of friends around us. Actually, only one across the street as she cannot seem to remember any of their names except the one across the street. They are all bigger than her. Michael has been playing ball with them in the street for a while and Maeghan was playing with Georgia, the kids across the street, for a while. At some point, several other girls showed up in the neighborhood. Two of them from next door, but I have not idea where all of them come from. Since Maeghan now has the cool toys, the trampoline, they all come over here now to play with her. Maeghan also got a new tv with a dvd in it, and they come over to watch movies with her also. When they come inside, they trash Maeghan's room, so we might not be letting them inside much more.

Most of the girls Maeghan plays with are around 6 or 7 years old. Some of them like to play in the sand pit with her, but they get too dirty so I don't think they will do that often. Maeghan and William got a sand pit from Michael for Christmas. It is like a small boat, with a roof over it and it holds quite a bit of sand. It has a storage area in the front of it, but the lid does not latch down, so the kids have thrown it around a lot and it never seems to be on the storage area. They hardly ever play in the street anymore, or at least the little girls do not. I do see the bigger kids riding their skateboards down the stree every once and a while. Some of them have bikes now, but that is mostly the ones at the end of the block and they seem to be part of another gang of kids around here. We also see some older teenagers who walk by on their to the beach almost everyday. I think there are about 4 or 5 of those and I have no idea where they live. It would have to be on our block as we are not on the way to the beach unless you actually live on this street.

Back to Christmas and what everyone got. William got a little car type thing that you sit in front of and move the levers and steering wheel. It makes a lot of noise. He also got a little elmo phone. It makes a lot of noise also. He got a teddy bear that sings and talks. He got some other stuff that I can't think what it was right now, but it all makes noise, so naturally, Maeghan had to show him all the noises they make and he only gets to play with the occassionally. He did get one thing that does not make noise. It is a little bike with trailor that you sit on and push yourself along on. It actually makes more noise than any of his other toys but that is because whenever Maeghan gets on it to ride, William tries to get on with her and Maeghan screams, William cries, and they make so much fuss about which one is going to ride on it that we have to take it off of both of them and tell them to play with something else.

That is one thing about William. He is fine, well not fine he is into everything all the time, but he will play with his toys and be interested in things while Maeghan is not around. But, as soon as Maeghan has anything or is in the room, William only pays attention to her. He tries to play with the toys she has, he tries to sit on her if she is doing nothing. He generally tries to do everything she is doing, all the time. Maeghan hates it. She is always squeeling about William trying to climb on top of her or he is messing up her playing or interfeering with whatever she is doing. I guess it will eventually get better, but William will always be bigger than her now, so he just tries to push his way into whatever she is doing.

William also loves to play ball. He will get a ball and bring it into where you are, sit on the floor and throw the ball. Not always to you, but he will throw it and want you to go get it and give it back to him. There are a lot of places where the ball can roll under something of go where he cannot get it and he tends to aim for those places so you have to get the ball for him. He really likes to play with the balls. He didn't get any for Christmas. In fact, I don't think he has very many balls. Maeghan always likes balls also and we would get her a new one most of the time we went out. She has lots and William plays with them. He doesn't really need any of his own.

Maeghan got several other things for Christmas also. She got a Dora doll, a Dora sit-n-spin, and a Dora computer. It is one of those teaching things that teaches them lots of things. She has already figured out how to play some of the games, like matching pictures and playing the songs. It is noisey also. She also got a new baby. Not a doll, she has a baby. It talks and cries and tries to crawl, but we have not figured out how to get it to crawl more than a few steps yet. We think it might be broken but are not sure. Maeghan likes it. Last night, she had gone to bed and I was playing my game, when she came into the living room and was almost crying. She said her baby kept crying and she had dropped its bottle down beside her bed. She could reach it and her baby was crying. I had to go move her bed to try to find the bottle, it is a little thing, and when I did, she told me the baby wanted me to feed it. I didn't but after she had laid there for a while feeding her baby, she brought in to me and said it wanted more milk. She handed the baby to me, while still holding the bottle in its mouth, and when I took it, she sat on the couch and was happy to watch me feed the baby. I took the bottle out of the babies mouth and it burped, said mommy, then daddy and then went to sleep. I told Maeghan the baby was full and she should go back to bed. She left the baby sleeping on the couch all night.

I know I have told several people about Maeghan's braces, but I don't think I have put it in here. Maybe I did, but she does not have to wear them anymore. Now that I think about it, I think I did put it in an earlier post, but I am too lazy to go back and erase what I just typed.

Maeghan loves her trampoline. Of course, she says it is her trampoline and her sand pit. We have to tell her that they are Williams too. She mumbles something to herself when we say that but she agrees that William can play on them too. She is really good at jumping around. We think it will help strengthen her legs. We don't really have anything to base that on but we will ask the doctor next year if it was a good idea to get it for her. William is not really sure about the trampoline. He will sit there and let people bounce him around, but he doesn't look happy about it. Most of the time, he just tries to chase the balls around that are in there sometimes. He doesn't really try to bounce or anything and he has never tried to stand up.

He does love the sand castle. He is not allowed in it much anymore as he tends to try to eat the sand, but he loves the beach and he loves the sand pit. He gets absolutely filthy in there and has to have a bath immediately afterwards. There was a trail of sand, and I mean an actual trail, from the sand pit, all the way up the stairs and through the house to the bathroom the other day. Most of it is stil on the landing outside. I have no idea how he got so much sand on him and in his clothes, but it was everywhere. Maeghan usually gets sand on her feel and legs, but we wash that off under the outside faucet before she comes in. She usually has to have a bath, also, but she can generally wait for a while, as long as she does not try to get on any furniture or get on her bed.

I got socks.

Michael got some new clothes and a robot thing. He loves his robot thing but I have not seem him play with it lately. I told Juanita it would be fun for a while, but he would get bored with it doing the same things over and over again. I think he has already gotten to that point, but maybe not.

Juanita, got some dvds. The first four seasons of Gilmore Girls. We love that show but it does not seem to be very popular anywhere else. I have the fifth season but it is on my computer and I do not have my computer. It should take her a while to watch all the dvds, but she is already into the second season and I think she has just about finished that one. So, I might need my computer sooner than I think. We almost bought the fifth season, but decided to get Cars instead. Maeghan watches that everynight. We got her Toy Story also, and she watches one after the other for as long as she is awake. Every night.

I bought Juanita a Wii also. That is the new Nintendo game console, as if you did not know that. We had been looking at the and I said we would get one after Christmas, maybe when they went on sale or something, but on the spur of the moment, I decided to trade in my XBOX and her Nintendo Gamecube and all our games to get the Wii. It was a pretty good deal as I already have the Xbox 360 and most of the games we have will not play on that. They gave us enough back for almost the full price of the Wii, so it worked out pretty well. Michael was pretty upset and we had moved the Xbox down to his room when I got the 360, and he has several games for it himself. He kept his games. I don't know what he is going to play them on, but he says he wanted them, so he kept them. Now he does not have any games to play so he spends all his time on my 360, which is in the living room on the big tv, so no one can watch tv anymore. We took Maeghan's old tv and put it in our room, even though we have a perferctly ok tv downstairs that the other kids watch. They should be working on getting their own tv but they are not working on anything to help themselves out. But I won't say anymore about that.

We really like the Wii. It has the sports games, and we bought an extra controller which came with some other games. The main problem is we cannot get another nunchuk for the extra controller, so a lot of the games we cannot play two player. It seems there are no nunchuks left in Australia and they have thousands of them back ordered. I won't go into what a nunchuk is or what it does, just tell you that you have two controllers with the Wii, the Wiimote, which is the motion sensitive controller and the nunchuk, which is also motion sensitive. It attaches to the Wiimote and it allows you to do more things with some games. Without it, you can't play those games that require it. As soon as they get some new ones in, we will go down and buy one.

Playing the Wii can be very tiring. There are some games on there, like the sports games, that require you to play standing up and moving around all the time. It gets to be exhausting. They have a Wii physical on the machine that is suppossed to measure how ready you are to play the games. If you take the tests it has, it gives you an age group that you are currently at. The idea age is 20. I scored at age 76. No one else has been game enough to try it, so I don't know if that is good or bad, but it appears to think that whenever I play the games, I am a 76 year old man and it adjusts to let me play a little slower than normal. You can only take the test once a day, so I have not had a chance to retake it.

I did get a couple of new games for the 360. One, and I won't go into it, is a role playing game and it can take years to play all the differnt scenerios. Michael and I have been playing it constantly since Christmas. I have about 70 hours play time on it and Michael had over a hundred. That is actual play time in the game. It does not count all the time you spend setting things up and checking on different things to make sure you have your character the way you want them. Michael has two games on it, one at 40 hours and one at 60. He stopped playing the 40 hour game when he did something wrong and forgot to save it before he did it. He does have a problem with saving games. He has twice saved over the top of my game. Fortunatly, I keep two same games and sometimes more on the machine, so I have only lost a few hours of gameplay each time. Now, I keep three saves out there and then, if I have a difficult part, I keep four or five.

Well, I should probably get going now. Juanita wants to use the computer and I want to play a little more of my game, before I have to do some work. I have way too much work to do to be playing games, but I have so much work, that I don't know where to start, so I will play the game while I think about it. Anyway, until next time.

Talk to you later.

MWNews 52

We have the van back. It is not running and probably needs a new engine, but we managed to get it home to the driveway so we can figure out what to do with it. Enough about that though.
I am having trouble with this new format for the blogger. It I use the old method, posting from Picasa, it does not format it correctly. If I publish directly from the blogger itself, it works ok but since the two products are owned by the same people, Google, I would think they could get this straight. So, if the format changes from post to post, then it is not my fault. I haven't figured out how to control it yet.
This picture is from Juanita'a party. I am going to start this post talking about that and I thought you might like to see some of the weird people who turned up. In this picture, there is Maeghan, Juanita, and Juanita's mother, Beverly. Now you can have an image of the person who sends you all those emails, or the ones that get forwarded from Juanita that originally came from her. She usually dresses a bit differently, but the hair is hers.
Juanita's party came off pretty well. There were about forty or fifty people here. The weather was ok, not too hot. I had a ton of food. We were still eating it for a week or so. I spent three days cooking for the party, getting everything ready. I had planned on cooking most of the meat the day before and then just putting sauce on it and heating it up in the BBQ, but that didn't work out. The original plan was to cook in my smoker. If I have not mentioned it, it is like my old smoker in America, only much smaller. It is about half the size and I have had it almost a year now and have never been able to cook on it. It requires wood to cook. I tried charcoal, but it would just not get hot enough in the cooking chamber. They use a really cheap grade of BBQ briquets here and they don't start very fast, they take forever to get to a cooking temperature and then they only stay there for about 15 minutes. I have found some hardwood charcoal that I am going to try, but it costs $17 a bag and is not really practical for cooking long term. The smoker requires wood. I don't have any wood and unless I want to pay about a lot of money for a small amount of wood, I will have to buy it in bulk. Which, I have no place to store, so you see my problem.
I was going to buy the really expensive wood just to cook for the party, but they instituteded a fire ban on the day before the party. I think I have mentioned those before in that for a complete fire ban, they do not allow any kind of smoke anywhere, even if there isn't really a fire. For a partial fire ban, they only allow gas fires. We had a partial fire ban a few days before the party and I did not know when they would lift it, so I decided to use the gas BBQ.
Even then, I was going to cook the day before and do the reheat with sauce thing the day of the party. But, I never made it. I cooked and cooked and cooked. Five cakes, three different kinds of dip, little quiches, roasted nuts, raw chopped vegatables, lots and lots of stuff. So, on the day of the party, I had to start cooking everything on the BBQ. I got up at about 3 in the morning to finish up the deserts. I was so tired from that, that around 10, we went to the shops to get some ice and I went along to have a coffee and relax. We got a call around 11 that people were starting to arrive. They were not suppossed to be there until 4 or 5 that afternoon, but a lot of them were coming from out of town, so they began arriving as soon as they got into town. We headed back and I started cooking.
From 11:30 until almost 4:30, I cooked meat. Lots of meat. I had two different kinds of chicken wings, two different kinds of ribs, four different kinds of sausage. I might have finished before the bulk of the guests arrived, but I ran out of gas about halfway through. It was a good time to have a break anyway and I ran down to the store to refill the gas bottle. Also slowing me down was the amount of 'help' I was getting. Everyone wanted to jump on the BBQ and cook the meat. I politely said no each time, but it took saying no every 5 minutes to five or six people to get the message across. I know you might be thinking I could have used the help and anyone can turn meat on a BBQ, but you have never seen an Australian BBQ. There idea is to set every on fire and when the fire burns out, the meat is done. It doesn't matter what you have to do to get the meat to burn, put petrol on it, through it in the fire, as long as it catches fire at some point during the process, everything is how they like it. I stay away from the BBQ when someone else is doing the cooking as I cannot help but cringe when I see the process.
As I was using a lot of sweet sauces and marinades, I thought it best that I leave that part of it to me. I am sure they would have but the sauce on, had it catch fire immediately, and then when it was a blackened coating on the meat, removed the meat and claimed it was done, when what really would have happened was they had burned all the sauce off and the meat would still be raw. So, I spent 5 hour cooking it.
Now, if I do say so myself and I often do say so myself, I make some mean ribs over here. I used to make some mean ribs in America, but that was real ribs and not the country style ribs they have over here. Here, they do not really even sell the kind of ribs we would be used to, so there is not a lot of point in going to great lengths to find them. Even if they sell them, the aussies would blacken them to a crispy cinder and they would not be worth the effort anyway. So, when I say ribs over here, I mean the big meaty, fatty, maybe with a bone in them and maybe not, what we would call country style ribs in America. I have not been able to cook then in my smoker yet, but I am sure I will be able to make what is currently one of the most popular things I cook over here into a straight from heaven, mouth watering, make your momma cry rib that will not only fall apart when you look at it wrong, but will have the smoky taste of real America BBQ and I can begin to convert a whole country to what it means to BBQ!
But I digress. I mention this rib phenomanon because I was busy doing some other things while the food was being set out for the party. I was taking a shower since I had not had one that day. I did take some extra time, but no more than 15 minutes, and by the time I came out and was ready to get something to eat, all the ribs were gone. I had 20 pounds of ribs. Over a hundred of them, and it was the first thing everyone went for. I found out later that word had spread about how good the ribs were, even though I did not mess with the sauce like I usually do and it was a little inferior to me. Several people came up to me and mentioned that they had been told about the ribs and they had lived up to the expectation, but I did not get a single mouthfull. I even tried to steal one off of Juanita's plate but she caught me and I had to give it to back. We had chicken wings and sausages left over for days, but not a single rib. I am not sure how this word of mouth thing started, but next time, I get the first lot off the grill and the others can wait until they are served.
We did have a lot of alcohol at the party. Not as much as I thought we would have, but then again, I drank at least a half a case of beer during the day. I had started when I first started cooking the meat and it seemed that anytime anyone noticed I did not have anything , they would bring me another beer. I don't really know how much others had to drink. I know a few of them only drink wine and I did not see a lot of that and there did not seem to be a lot of hard liquor around, other than something they were drinking called cowboy shots that smelled so sweet, I don't know how they could manage to drink it. But, I do know they went through at least four or five cases of beer, if not more.
I did not see a lot of Juanita during the party. She was with one group or another and it seemed a lot of the men wanted to talk to me. I have no idea why. We know how talkative I am and expecially when I have something else to be doing. But, everyone seemed to want to ask me questions all the time. About everything. Work, computers, sports, computers, living on the ocean, computers. You get the idea. Everyone has a problem with their computer and they think I know how to fix them. It gets to be too hard to explain each time, so I have just started making things up. Most of the people have no idea what I am taking about and if they do, they seem to think I should know what I am doing, so they agree with me to make it look like they know what they are doing also. There is one fellow, the husband of one of Juanita's friends from Brisbane, who has working in networking for as long as I have worked on mainframes, so he startes some really long conversations that I really have no idea what they are about and we seem to have really long discussions about something neither of us is really understanding. But people see us talking and seem to think we know what we are talking about and come over to listen, then wander away when it immediately gets over their heads and they don't understand what we are saying. Neither do we, but neither of us admits it.
I did make a speach during the party. I had it all worked out what I was going to say and as I remember it, I didn't get to most of the things I wanted to say and had planned out, probably the alchohol, but it seems a lot of people were impressed by it and made comments to Juanita's for several days afterwards. I don't really remember what I said but everyone seemed to like it and I gave Juanita her eternity ring during the middle of it. Juanita was embarrassed, which was really the point of making the speach, but she loves her ring and she seemed to like the speach.
Since this was Juanita's 40th birthday, I did make a point of telling everyone that she was officially older than me now. A lot of people seemed puzzeled by this, but I assured them that I was going to be 39 next year and she was a year older now. That seemed to put them straight.
I know I have gone through this whole post and not once mentioned the kids. That is the real reason for this blog, to keep people informed of what is going on with the kids all the time. But, I look at it this way. When the kids grow up and they go back to read through some of the things they said and did that I recorded here, they will get to see what their mother and I did when Juanita officially turned 40. I have not idea what we can do when she turns 50, but I suppose I should start planning that one now.
I will mention that both Maeghan and William had a ball during the party. Maeghan had a lot of her little friends there and they all wore fairy costumes. I have a picture of it and was going to use it at the beginning of this post, but I couldn't resist showing the world a picture of Beverly before she put on her party outfit. I am sure she will enjoy knowing that everyone who reads this will know what she is like on a day to day basis.
William loved all the attention she had, being passed from one person to another and always getting everything he pointed at. I know he spent a lot of time trying to get onto the table, but since this was before he started walking, he couldn't stand up to see what was up there. The next day was William's christening and the party was supposed to be his birthday party also, but since we had already had one on his birthday and we had another one the next day for his christening, I am sure he did not miss out on anything.
For his christening, we had another party at the house. Most of the same poeple came and I had to cook a lot more food for them. I had the leftovers and made some little wraps. I had planned on cooking more sausage but never got aroung to it as I fell asleep during this party and Juanita was left to deal with all the people. I was really tired from the day before and my back had started hurting sometime during the process, so I lay down to rest it and immediately fell asleep and didn't see most of the people arrive or leave.
I was awake for William to open his presents. He loved them all and Maeghan helped show him how to play with each and every one of them. She is good that way. If either of them gets a new toy, Maeghan will spend the time needed learning how to play with it before she lets William have a turn. She does this so she can point out all the new features and all the things that you can do with the toy so William does not have to waste his time figuring this stuff out for himself. She is a good baby.
Well, now that I have used all this time talking about Juanita and myself, I have wasted your time in trying to find out new news about the kids. Sadly, you will have to wait until next time I feel the urge to type endlessly on this tiny little keyboard before you can get any new news. I will go over the Christmas show and all the things the kids received for Christmas. That should be fun. So, until next time.
Talk to you later

MWNews 51

This will have to be a quick note. We are about to leave and pick up the van. I'll tell the story now, but might not have time for anything else.
Michael, as you might remember, is supposed to be on his way to Perth to live. No money, no job, and a place to live for just a month. But he is off as soon as he can get out of here. We owe him some money, so we are keeping that for an emergency plane flight back when this adventure has run its course. He says he is not coming back, nothing to do with us, and he will move to Brisbane next, but I think he might be back sooner than he expects. To give you some idea, he has decided to take some of his toys instead of clothes because he says he can always buy more clothes when he gets there. I think we might have talked him out of that idea, but we will see. It gives you some idea about how ready he is for this move.
Anyway, I mention this because we were on our way to the airport to drop him off. We got about halfway, still on the main highway from here, just before we turn off to go into Sydney, and I noticed that the van was kind of shaking or vibrating a little. I thought it might be the rode, but I had the cruise control on and I put on the brakes to slow down and turn it off. The vibrations stopped and I went along a ways costing down a hill. I did not step on the gas but as the car had not vibrated anymore, I put the cruise control back on. This caused a large cloud of smoke to billow from under the hood. I immediately started to pull over and stop in a phone box section.
A little side note, in Australia, most civilized places, they have phone boxes along the rode every kilometer or so. It is really a great convience, although it only connects to the local govenment sanctioned insurance company. In our case, the NRMA. I have no idea what NRMA stands for, but in other states they have RACQ and NRMH and things like that. There are other insurance companies you can get, and most of them are cheaper, but these apparently have something to do with the govenment at some point and they allow them to put these call boxes along the rodes and they allow their service trucks to use the emergency turn around places on the freeways. There are other perks they are allowed, that other companies are not, but I am pretty sure they are now a private company but have retained the rights to these services. Not sure how that works nor why the other insurance companies have not sued them for access, but it does work out well for those who have these specific insurance companies.
Unfortunately, the van does not carry this insurance. We have the mandatory insurance, which covers everything in an accident, but we do not have rodeside service. We had it when we were in Queensland, but have never put it on the cars we have now. We meant to, but never got around to it. Lot of good that does us now.
As I pulled into this service area, really just a wide spot on the shoulder of the road, I noticed that the car was either barely running or not running at all. I had very little brakes or steering, so I would assume the car was not running, but there was still a lot of smoke coming out from under the hood and it seemed to be sputtering. I got it stopped and turned off the key. The smoke went away immediately and the car wasn't really doing anything anymore. I tried to start it back up, but it would not start. At that point, we were about 45 minutes from the airport and we have about two hours before his flight.
I let the car cool for a few minutes and tried to start it up again. It tried to start for a long time, but when it eventually caught, it started putting our smoke again and running very rough. I turned it back off. Being the normal Jernigan mechanic, I went to look under the hood to see if maybe a rabbit or a squirrel had crawled up in there. I looked for these telltale signs because I knew if it was not something as obvious as that, I would not be able to do anything about it nor even recognize what the problem was.
No rabbit or squirrel.
At this point, we are officially stranded. I picked up the courtesy phone and found NRMA on the other end of the line. They said they would be glad to come pick us up, for $300 cash and the cost of towing. It seems they have planned for people like us, who want to join in an emergency to get the free towing from roadside service and they have tacked on a 48 hour waiting period from the time you join until you can use the service. They charge a $300 emergency joining fee if you want to bypass the 48 hour waiting period. I suppose that makes sense to them, but it puts all those people, like us, who are actually having an emergency in a bad spot. Seems only the rich can afford emergency service, and if you are rich, you probably have the roadside service anyway, so it really comes down to a tax on the poor. But I digress. I am sure it makes sense to the insurance companies and I am sure it makes sense to everyone else, just not to the people who actually need the service. It doesn't cost them any more to allow people to join and use the service. They still get their joining fee and a years worth of payments, so I am not sure what other justification they need to not allow people to use their service unless they know in advance that they are going to need it. I suppose it means that they can collect fees from people who might not use the service instead of allowing people to join immediately who actually will use it and they might lose money on the deal. But now I have really digressed.
The phone operator did give us the number of another towing service in the area. I have no idea whether these people were any good or honest, but they are recommended by the NRMA, so we have to assume they are reliable. I called them. They wanted $180 cash, up front, before they would come out and pick up the van. I did not have $180 cash on me, so that was not an option.
At this point, we are 45 minutes away and we now only have about an hour and a half before his flight leaves. The cutoff time for checkin is 30 minutes and they absolutely, positively, do not allow anyone to check in for the flight after that. We called the airlines. They were very helpful. They said they would wave the 30 minute checkin time. With no way of getting there, that was an interesting concession on their part, but it did not or would not help Michael. We asked if he could be scheduled on a later flight. They said not without 24 hours notice. We said we did not know the car would break down 24 hours before. They said they will make a note of that. We asked if he could get a refund on his ticket. They said no, the tickets were non-refundable. Juanita was doing all the talking to them, I still do not speak Australian, and she decided the best course of action was to hang up the phone and not begin a verbal abuse of this arilines.
We started calling friends at this point. Juanita's phone is a pre-payed phone, which means you pre-pay a certain about of credit and you can only use that until it runs out and you have to renew the credit on the phone. Long story, but it is to help parents keep their kids from running up hugh phone bills. Michael bought this phone for himself but decided he wanted Juanita's phone instead and they traded.
Her phone ran out of credit. Michael's phone was not charged. My phone was charged, but not very much. We had the car charger with us but we could not start to the car to use it. We could plug my phone in to re-charge it, but that would run down the battery. So, we made the calls we could, until my phone ran out, and then we decided we needed the phone more than we needed the battery and plugged it in.
About this time, a nice policeman pulled up alongside our car. I had just tried to start the engine again and it poured out smoke so he thought the car was on fire and stopped to help. I explained the situation to him. He offered to take two of us, there were five adults and the two kids in the car, to the nearest train station. Juanita decided it would be best if those she and Michael took the offer so they could try to make the airport from the train. I told them it would probably not make it and they would have to pay the airport excess fee for taking the train to the airport, which is about $15 a person, but they said they would try anyway.
They left but Natalie was still calling friends to see if they could come help. She got ahold of Adam's sister, who lives near us, and she said she would come pick them up. She said she could only take three people in her car. Not sure why, but I didn't ask. That meant she could take Adam, Natalie and one of the kids. I said Maeghan would have to stay with me. About 20 minutes later, his sister called back. She said some friend of hers would also come and she could take people in her car. That allowed Maeghan to ride with them but left me waiting at the car. They arrived about 45 minutes after that.
In the meantime, I had called Juanita to see how they were going. It was 09:50 and his flight was leaving at 09:55. If they were not already at the airport, they would not make the flight. They were still at central station with the next train due in 10 minutes. I told them there was no use in going all the way there, so they decided to return home. The reason they were not at the airport yet was that apparently, there was a fire alarm along the tracks and their train had been delayed along the way. They might not have made it anyway, but it seems Michael was not destined to go to Perth on that day.
After Adam's sister had picked up everyone but me, I called Juanita and told her she would have to arrange with Adam to have him pick up my car at home, and drive to the train station to pick them up when they arrived. They would then have to drive up to where the car was broken down and pick me up. I later decide that it would be cheaper for me to just walk to the train station and come to where they were being picked up and we could all be picked up at the same time. It is about a 5 mile walk to the train station from where we were and I had to carry everything that was in the car with me so it would not be vadalized and stolen while it sat on the side of the road. I did manage to walk all that way but finding a mountain shortcut to climb and take me to the station in about 3 miles. It was up a steep incline and over two fences, but I managed to do it without getting arrested for traspassing.
So, two hours or so later, we are all home. The car is on the side of the rode about 45 minutes away and we have no way of getting a tow truck there to pick it up. Juanita started calling tow companies to see if they could pick up the van, bring it to us and do it all for under $200. No luck. But she did find a company that would tow it to their yard and keep it until we were ready to have it delivered to us. It turns out today is the day we want it delivered. So, we are on our way to see how much it will be, and arrange for it to be delivered when someone will be home.
Juanita is standing over me ready to go, so I am going to end this story now. Not a lot about Maeghan and William in this issue, other than to mention that a big reason for getting someone to take them home from the broken down car was that William was all over the place, climbing into everything and it was becoming a real chore to keep him settled. But I have to go, so I will let you know how this turns out in the near future. I'll get back to the more fun stuff at that time. Until next time.
Talk to you later

MWNews 50

Once again, it has been awhile. I think that will always be the case, no matter how I try to keep you updated. You might have noticed that this blog has a new format. Then again, maybe not. Apparently, they have updated the Google Blogger to a different version and it has some new things. Not that I can tell what they are, but it says they are new. You might also notice, if not now, then later in the post, that I am still using Juanita's computer. I cannot type on this keyboard. I should be able to as I type on my laptop all the time, but for some reason, I cannot get used to her keyboard. It does not feel right and things that I expect to be in certain places are not there and I end up over typing lots of things I have already typed. In fact, it has taken me about ten minutes to type the little I have typed so far. I will persevere, but this really is frustrating. I want to make sure you know what I go through to get these things published. Not that I am one to complain. I take it all in stride and never let my personal pain and suffering get in the way of your good times. So on to the merriment and I hope I can get at least some of the thoughts and antics of the twins in here before I throw this thing across the room.

Maeghan is amazing. William is amazing also and I will get to his amazing bits in due time, but first I need to mention some things Maeghan has been doing that are just absolutely delightful. I know I have mentioned several times in the past about her dancing and wanting to go to the club and dance all the time. She is always asking when we can go to the club and if we say we have to wait until payday, she tells us she has money and she can take us to the club. She usually has fifty cents or some odd amount of change, but whenever we mention money to her, she goes and gets her purse and gets her money out.

Anyway, we went to the Christmas carol night at the club. They had a big stage and lots of outdoor stuff for kids to do. Not that we did any of it as it was extremely crowded on the front lawn where they had it. We never actually made it down to that part of the entertainment, but we could see the stage from inside the club and we could hear the music. It wasn't a very good concert or anything and a lot of it was local glee clubs or something singing things that were not really Christmas carols. They also had the current Australian Idol champion there, or the one from last year. I am not sure which, I don't really follow it. But that was not the part we went for. We went to have dinner, then let Maeghan do her thing on the dance floor. It had been about a month since she had been able to get out on the dance floor when we have been to the club. We go about once a fortnight, you will have to look that term up if you live in America, and usually spend some time with Maeghan so she can dance. They have set up a kids area, sort of, where the kids can sit and watch movies, so lately, that is where Maeghan has been since it also allows William to get out of the pram and play.

But this night, Maeghan was in another world with her dancing. I know I have attempted to describe this over and over again, but I cannot really convey the absolute amazing ability Meaghan has to dance. Since most of the people were there for the Christmas things, Maeghan had the dance floor to herself most of the time. She doesn't really mind people watching her, but there is this one lady that seems to always be there, who comes up to Maeghan and tries to pick her up and dance with her. Maeghan will always leave the dance floor if this lady is there dancing. So, if there are other peope on the dance floor with her, she is constantly watching them to make sure they are not going to sneak up on her and try to dance with her. Luckily, on this night, there wasn't anyone like that. Maybe one lady, but she was just telling Maeghan some new dance moves to try.

And that brings us to another attempt by me to tell you about Maeghan and her dancing. On this night, she was absolutely fabulous. She was rocking and twirling and moving her arms and dancing all around. She even did some things where she would skip sideways across the stage and clap her hands at each end of the slide and then slide back the other way. All of this in perfect time to the music. There were whole tables of people who just sat there and watched her in amazement. I would say, in all, there were about 40 people who sat there and watched her for a good half hour and clapped and laughed and were just enthralled by her performance. It was one of those times that if I could have got it on film, it would live forever in her life and be a true peek of what she is capable of. I don't know if she will ever get involved in dancing in the future, but she just seems to be a natural at it. I hope we don't do something to screw it up like forcing her to dance when she does not want to, but it would really be nice to find out if she really has this amazing talent and she can do it because she loves it. Right now, it just might be something she likes doing for a little while, but as good as she is, I do hope she follows up on it someday. Then again, you are probably saying this is all just a father praising his daughter, but I think she really does have talent and if there was anyway I could encourage her, I will try to do that.

Speaking of film, I did manage to get some really short segments of her dancing on my cell phone. It takes really grainy movies, six seconds at a time. I am in the process of trying to figure out how to get them transferred to the computer so I can send them to anyone who wants them. Right now, I can play them using Quicktime and they are ok. I can play them with Windows Media center, but you do not get the sound with them. Not that the sound is anything you need. The phone only picks up very little sound and only if it is close to the phone. I was about 30 or 40 feet away from Maeghan most of the time, so you cannot really hear the music she is dancing to. Plus, there are people walking between me and Maeghan during most of it, so that presents another problem. The movies are not too bad, and you can get some idea of what she was doing, six seconds at a time. As I keep saying, they are not great, but I can put them together and email them to anyone who wants to see them. In all, it is about 4 meg, so it will be large email if you do not have broadband.

I am sure she would have received some kind of ovation when she left that night. There were that many people watching and even the people walking by would stop and comment to us about how wonderful she was and what kind of talent she seemed to be showing. About the time we were going to get ready to go and everyone would have had a chance to clap for her as she was leaving, they started a fireworks show at the concert. We all raced out to see it and did not get the chance to let her have her moment. The fireworks show was really good and Maeghan liked it. William sat through the whole thing and never cried to seemed to take any notice. There were some really loud ones and William just continued to sit there and look bored.

Which brings us to William. Not that I am finished talking about Maeghan, but I am reaching the point where I can no longer type and I need to say a few things about him. He is basically walking now. He just turned one and he can walk pretty much wherever he goes now. It is still a little rocky on his feet, but for the most part, he prefers to walk instead of crawl. Unless you are chasing him and then whatever means he currently has available to him is how he goes. If he starts standing, he will attempt to run, not well, but he will attempt it. If he is sitting down, then he is gone. He can crawl faster than any of us can chase him. If he gets a head start to something or you are tying to pick him and he thinks it is a game, then you cannot catch him. He is one of the fastest crawling babies I have ever seen. Not that I have a lot to compare it to, but he is just plain fast when he crawls.

He can also climb everything now. Even if he can't, he will try. One of his favorite things is to go into Maeghan's room in the morning and wake her up. He is always up first and if he sees Maeghan in her bed, he is off and gets there and climbs into her bed to sit on her faster than you can tell him no and try to catch him. William is also big, so Maeghan is not very appreciative of him climbing on top of her when she is sleeping and waking her up. He weighs more than she does now, and he is only slightly shorter than she is. He is a big boy. I am always amazed when I pick him up as to how heavy he is. I can carry Maeghan all the time, but William is just too heavy to try to carry for any length of time. He spends most of his time in the pram. Except for when he is riding in the shopping trolley, once again, a term that is not used by Americans. You need to substitute shopping cart for that term. William likes riding in the shopping trolley. Mostly, because the trolleys over here have four independent wheels. I don't remember that being the case in America, but maybe it has changed. Basically, it means you can spin the trolley around in a circle while still moving forward. William loves that. We walk down the shopping centers, yes, they have shopping trolleys in the shopping centers because that is where the grocery stores are. Anyway, we walk down the halls spinning the trolley as we go. He loves it. Maeghan does to, so she usually stands up in one end of the trolley and William sits in the seat and I spin them around as we walk from shop to shop. William has learned that he can stand in the trolley also and hold on to the sides. That is another big thing for him, now. I don't spin it when he is standing, but he just likes the new feeling of standing up while he is moving.

Other news, we took Maeghan to the doctor last month. It was her annual or semi-annual checkup. They said she was doing great, or as great as can be expected. We know she will always be weak in the legs and she will always be small, but they said there was nothing else wrong with her and she was doing just fine. One thing they did do was tell us she did not have to wear her braces anymore. We forgot to put them on her before we left as we have noticed that she tends to fall down a lot more when she is wearing them than when she is not. She still falls down a lot but it seemed that with the braces, she was having trouble catching herself when she was about to fall and she tended to hurt herself more with them on. So, having forgotten to put them on before the doctors appointment, they checked her out without the braces and told us there does not seem to be any reason to have her continue to wear them. So, bottom line, she no longer wear the braces for her legs. The doctors did tell us we need to keep her in supportive shoes, no sandals, but if the shoes were strong enough to support her ankles, then she doesn't have to wear the braces anymore. So, it is great news.

Speaking of William walking and climbing everything, today he climbed out of his cot, so now we have to watch him all the time. No where is safe now and he is very energetic about getting into stuff. He watches Maeghan most of the time and if she can do something or goes somewhere, then he tries to copy her and go there too. Maeghan can crawl over the couch and get into this little corner area where she is not supposed to be. William has always wanted to get back there and so far he has never been able to. But. he say how Maeghan does it and now he can do the same thing.

I have lots of Christmas news and I never did tell you about Juanita's party last month, but the kids are starting to get a little noisy and I can not longer concentrate on this keyboard and keep and eye on them, so I will have to cut this short. I'll get back to it as soon as I can, but I always say that and I don't seem to make it. Maybe this time. Anyway, I will try to remember all the things I was going to say and type them in next time. Until then.

Talk to you later.

By the way, I typed in this whole post and when I tried to send it, it failed and I lost everything. But, having had that problem before, I made a copy of it before I tried to send it and was able to recover the copy. So, I suppose this time, someone was actually listening. And, the new blogger has a better spell checker. It seems to work for me. It does flag Maeghan as mispelled everytime and I cannot find a way to add it as the correct spelling, but at least it seems to work now so I can spell check everything each time. Not that it checks grammer or that I used to the correct words, but it does tell me if I mispelled any of them.

Talk to you later