MWNews 81

Maeghan can swim on her own now. She has always worn a floaty when swimming but she doesn't have to anymore. She can swim from one side of the pool to the other all on her own. We are really proud of her. She spends all her time in the pool just ducking her head under the water and then coming back up. She used to do that with the floaty on, but now, she will just stay under for a few seconds and then come back up. She really loves the pool. It has not really been warm enough to go swimming yet, but she wants to get in everyday. The only days she does not get in is when it is raining, which is kind of weird since she will be getting wet anyway, but it is just too cold to go in the pool when it rains, so she stays out then.

William is still a bit afraid of the water. Ever since his near accident, he has been really afraid of getting his head wet. Even in the shower, she refuses to stand under the water. Not sure if I related the incident when he went into water over his head without his vest, but I know he still has nightmares about it. He tells us sometimes that he had a bad dream about being stuck under the water. It makes me really afraid and I have bad dreams about it too. Since it was my fault he was in the water when it happened, I am really afraid of him being in the water over his head also, but he is getting better. I am hoping he will forget it someday and be able to have fun in the water, but I am in no hurry for it to happen. Just let him take his time and go in when he is ready.

He still has fun in the water, but never with his head getting wet. Just floating around in the pool and pretending he is swimming. Maeghan, as I said, can swim better than me at this point. Not that I am a bad swimmer, well actually, I am, but Maeghan is basically fearless. I still insist someone has to be within a few feet of her anytime she does not have the vest on and I still worry every time she takes off swimming, but she can keep herself afloat and seems to do ok, but I am always ready to reach her just in case she gets tired.

William will be four next month. Juanita's birthday is also next month. I am not sure what we will be doing. Maybe have a party for Williams birthday and then go out for Juanita's, but I have not made any plans yet. William thinks he already had his birthday. He is waiting for Christmas. We got him the new Roary dvd the other day and some other car or something. He thought they were his birthday presents, so he thinks he is now four. He tells you he is four now and he is ready for more presents at Christmas. Not sure how he will react when it actually is his birthday.

He is still hyper as ever. Sometimes, he takes a nap for three or four hours during the day, but mostly, he just goes and goes. We were having dinner tonight and I was sitting next to him. He did not stay still the entire time. Kept moving around in his chair, kicking me and constantly getting up and down. I kept asking him if he was ever going to calm down and just sit there, but he thought I was joking and kept moving around. I have no idea how he is going to handle school when the time comes. He wants to go to school, but having to sit still for any length of time will be a real challenge for him. Maybe he will have calmed down by then. Probably not.

Maeghan things Daddy is the funniest guy around. She always laughs at whatever I do. She is a really good girl. I think we got used to Maeghan being so calm all the time and that is why William is such a handful, but Maeghan has always been a good girl. Oh, she has her moments, and can be really naughty at times, but not a lot. That happens mostly when she is playing with William and gets frustrated with him. Since he is so much bigger than she is, she tends to think he is just as old as she is and doesn't understand when he does not listen to what she is telling him to do. She gets kind of bossy then and when he still does not cooperate, she tries to get him in trouble by yelling at him until he yells back.

Not that William ever talks in any voice that is not a yell. He is one of the loudest talking kids I have ever seen. He can whisper sometimes, but most of what he says is at the top of his voice and he never lets up talking. A constant stream of chatter is his way of life. He has gotten into the habit of saying Mom, Mom, Mom, all the time. It is one question or statement after another and he never lets up. He doesn't do it to me so much, but the words Mom, mom, mom are part of every conversation.

The grandparents are still here. I think they are staying until the end of November. Karen gets here sometime in November. She is staying for a week. I don't think she will be here for Juanita's birthday, so we might have to do something early for that so she can go with us. We will have to see what we are doing once she arrives.

The dog is still here also. Always jumping and trying to get into the house. He never stops sitting at the door either jumping up on it or whining to be let in. You cannot walk outside without him jumping up on you. One of his annoying habits is to bite at your feet while you are walking. The kids hate that although Maeghan does not let the dog come near her at anytime. The dog likes to jump up on you and that scares Maeghan, so she stays away from him whenever possible.

We have had a big contract at work so I have been having to work a lot of weekends and a lot more hours than I normally do. I spend a lot of time out in my office. It has a bed and a couch and a tv and the xbox out there, so when I take a break from work, I never really leave the office. William like to come out there and sit with me sometimes. Of course, William does not sit for very long and begins to make up games like jumping over the couch and the bed. That makes it hard to work or to watch tv, so I end up having to yell at him. It then becomes the saddest thing as he hangs his head and walks out. I hate it when that happens but he is just so hyper that it is impossible to work with him around. He needs constant attention and I can't always give it to him.

Maeghan rarely comes out to sit with me. I think she would like to, but with William there, he demands so much attention, she retreats into the house to get away from him. They like playing together, but Maeghan sometimes gets slighted when William always getting into trouble. I am sure it looks like, to her, that he is what we are watching and not paying any attention to what she is doing. I am sure she gets it that he is always getting into trouble, but sometimes, she just wants to be cuddled and it makes it hard when you have to keep one eye on William so he does not do something stupid and she can't get your full attention.

As of this writing, I am officially in the country illegally. My passport expired a few days ago and I have not sent it in to be renewed. I have it all ready, but I need to find a place that will give me an American money order. The state department only accepts American money and they do not accept cash or credit card, so a money order is the ony way to pay them. It is said that some post offices will let you buy an American money order but I have not checked into it yet. I need to do that tomorrow so I can mail in my passport and get it renewed. They say it only takes two weeks, but I am afraid they might find something wrong and then have me deported or something. I am sure I am just being paranoid, but the thought has crossed my mind several times. I am hoping my taxes are in order over there as I am not sure they are and one of the things the state department does is send in the application for approval to the IRS. If there are any problems, they do not grant the new passport and what happens after than, I have no idea. It is a worry, but probably will turn out to be nothing.

Once I have the new passport, I am not sure what happens to my permanent residence visa. It is on one of the pages in my current passport. I don't know if I have to go through the same process again to get a new one or do I just take it to the Australian Immigration office and they put a new stamp in it. I have read the original letter they sent me concerning my permanent residence, and it says I need to have something called an RVA in my passport if I ever leave the country or I will not be able to get back in. It doesn't say anything about what I do if I do not leave the country. I will try to find out what I need to do once I have the new passport.

Guess I should be going now. I need to get to bed so I can get up early and do some work. Have to have some proposal out by tomorrow and I have not started it yet. One of the biggest jobs I have ever attempted and I am the only 'expert' on this system, which is really a shame since I inherited it from someone who retired and I never really understood it before he left. Way too technical to get into in this blog, but it is a big job and I am not so sure that after it is done, they will have no use for me anymore. Once I get it converted, anyone will be able to support it and that means I have no job security as the only 'expert' left on this account. I am trying to get my project management certification done before that happens so I can fall back on that if needed.

So, after saying all that, the kids are in bed and I am ready to go there myself, so it is goodbye from me and it is goodbye from him (an old two Ronnies routine).

Until next time,

Talk to you later

MWNews 80

Maeghan lost her first tooth. It had been loose for a long time and it finally broke loose. We were at the shops having KFC and she said it was jut hanging there. After a few minutes, she showed it to me and said it had fallen out. Apparently, she had actually twisted it until it came out but we were telling her to ull it out anyway, so we were happy she did. I was afraid she was going to swallow it while she was eating. It is really small. About the size of two pieces of rice. Very small. I went over to the jewelery store next to the food court and got her one of those little plastic bags to put it in. One of the girls over there thought it was gross but the other was happy about it and wanted to see.

I think Juanita tried to send the pictures via a text message but I am not sure who or if it made it to everyone she sent it too. We took several with the phones. Over here, they put the tooth in a cup of water overnight and the tooth fairy comes and replaces it with money. I didn't suggest putting it under the pillow, I thought they might think I was crazy. (And as a side note, this computer is acting up again in that it is not typing what I am typing, meaning, I type a whole bunch of words and they do not appear on the screen for several seconds. It makes it hard to catch spelling mistakes and things, but I will muddle through again. As an example, I finished typing this whole sentence before I could see it on the screen.)

I think Maeghan was a little scared about her tooth. As I said, it had been loose for a long time and I think she was afraid of having it fall out. I can understand that as it is a little scary to have things falling off of you. I prefer adding more bulk as it then becomes a good thing if something falls off, you lose weight that way.

Another sign has occurred that I am getting old. My three, soon to be four, year old son now gives me advice on how to play video games. I think I have mentioned he had become addicted to the DS and carries it everywhere. Occasionally, he gets stuck and asks me to help him with something. I never play the DS, so I have no idea how to play any of the games but I give it a go and can mostly figure out how to get past whatever he is trying to do. Sometimes, I can't and he gets an exasperated expression and tells me to give the game back and he will do it or he keeps saying you have to do this and you have to do that and then gets frustrated and takes the game away to show me what I am supposed to do.

I hate that when grownups tell me how to play the games, or what passes for grown ups around here, but to have a three year old be better at the games than I am, well I am sure it is just a matter of time before he is able to push me over and tickle me instead of the other way around. He is already big enough that he it hurts when he hits me or wrestles with me. We have to keep telling him to be gentle when he plays with the other kids and he is bigger than most people his age.

William and Maeghan get along most of the time, (and this typing thing is driving me crazy) but they generally end up fighting. I think Meaghan has figured out ways to get him in trouble all the time. She knows he is bigger and stronger and she cannot always get her way, so she goads him into doing something that gets him in trouble to make up for not being able to push him around.

Right now, Maeghan is on school holidays for two weeks. Actually, she has one week left. She is at a birthday party right now, so William is bugging me constantly. So, in addition to the typing thing, William is driving me crazy. He found the xbox last night, Maeghan wanted to play the Pinata game. While I was getting it out, William found the Cars game, so he has been asking to play it constantly since then. Since Maeghan is gone, he has a chance to play, so I set it up for him. Unfortunately, he does not know how to get from one game to another, so when one ends, he is in my ear asking me to change it to another. Amazingly, if he tries to follow the game, he can usually win, but he doen't do that often, so it takes him a long time to finish any one game.

The other problem is he wants to play all kinds of things that are not unlocked on the game. I have to constantly explain that he can't play as that character or play that race until he wins the other ones. It is a lost cause trying to get him to understand.

Well. this has bugged me long enough. I am sure there are other things, but I can't stand it anymore, so I am going to close this. William is here bugging me again and the mother in law wants the computer. She hasn't said anything, but she is sitting behind me and I am sure that is a subtle hint that she want to play on facebook or something. Gusee I will be going.

So, until next time

Talk to you later

MWNews 79

Thought I would write a quick note. Not feeling well. Have a nasty cold so it is hard to concentrate.

As you can see from the picture, Maeghan is less than impressed for having to sit in the tree. We had to force her up there and then we all walked away so she thought we were leaving her there. Actually, we didn't do that but she thought we were. William wanted to get up in the tree also. We have that picture but this is them together.

The picture was taken at Bobbin Head. We had not been back there in a few years. We went to see what had changed. Basically, nothing. It was still the same although they were renovating the shops where the boats are so nothing was open over there. They did have a different coffee shop open that was not open last time. It was ok but very busy.

It costs $11 go get in there now, per carload. That is one of the reasons we had not been back. Most of the very popular national parks now charge to get into them. Bobbin Head would be a nice little drive on my way home from work if it were free. Since it isn't, I never go that way, but I could. Of course, it would add about an hour to the drive, but sometimes, for a change of pace, it might be nice. But not for $11.

They have added a small wildlife sanctuary near one end of the park. It was actually worth the money since it was free. They have some wallabies and other animals in there, but since it is new, there is not a lot to see. You just kind of wander along the paths and all the animals are in the trees around you. Maeghan was tired around this time, so she was in her wheel chair. More about her new wheel chair later. At one point the paved path diverted off back to the entrance and William took the longer dirt path. It went up and around a couple of small ponds. Lots of kookaburros up there, along with ducks and other animals.

At one point, we were walking along and William started pointing and saying animals, animals. I thought he meant in the field next to us, so I pointed the camera out there trying to find them. I could not see anything but he kept saying animals, animals. I said where and he said right there, pointing at a tree that was about three feet away from me. In it was about a five foot lizard climbing the tree. It was one of those lizards that flairs out its neck and hisses at you. Fortunately for me, it was just trying to hide from me and would stay on the other side of the tree. The tree was not very big, so I could see most of it and I tried to get a picture, but it kept running around the tree so all I could get was its legs wrapped around and part of its head. William thought it was neat.

While we were there, we got to see some big birds diving on some fish in one of the ponds. They actually would catch them and fly away with a fish in there claws, just like in the movies. There were big cockatoos and others. The pond was not very big and there were trees all around, but they seemed to be able to avoid crashing into anything. I have pictures of that too, but since there is no movement, it is hard to tell what the picture is showing.

The grandparents are here. Been here for about a week or so. They are staying until the end of November. They took over Maeghan's room, which is the biggest room in the house, and Maeghan is in with William, which is the smallest room in the house.

Yes, we have moved again. This house is in Long Jetty, near where we used to live in Shelly Beach. I might have mentioned it before, in my last entry, but I am too sick to go back and look. We have a pool here and a really big back yard. It is great, except the kitchen which has no cupboards or bench space. There is a converted garage out back that I use as an office, rec room and sometimes sleeping quarters. It is probably the biggest room in the house but it is separate from the actual house. There is a big patio in the back for BBQ and such. So far, we have had three parties out there of over 30 people each. Seems this is the place to come for birthday parties and such. I am guessing there will be more excuses for people to come over when the weather gets warmer and you can swim in the pool all the time.

Not that the cold weather has stopped the kids from getting in the pool already. They and Juanita have been in several times, when the temperature gets above 20. The water is still freezing and 20 degrees is not very warm, but they could not wait. It is supposed to get to 32 this week, for one day, so I a sure they will spend it in the pool. Supposed to rain on the weekend, but we need the rain anyway.

Not sure what else I had to say. It has been a while, so there is a lot. But I am not feeling well and Juanita will be home soon. And I have to go work, and I have to play my game, so I have a lot to do. Trying to keep busy. William is out back playing with the dog. The grandparents brought the dog. He used to play with it all the time in Tasmania but only plays with it occassionaly since it has been here. He has discovered the DS. That is, the Nintendo DS. He plays it all the time now and it may have replaced his constant carrying of cars. He still tries to carry the cars, but he has to use two hands to play the DS and he just not have room to hold them anymore.

He plays all the games but mostly Cars and Madagascar. He is actually good at it, not the games but making it do what he wants it to do, which is usually not what is required to play the game. In the car game, he likes to get the car ready and jum off the cliffs. You are supposed to drive on the track, but he races off the cliffs and sees how far he can jump. He does it over and over again and seems to have fun with it.

Maeghan has discovered that there is a mini movie in the game, but neither of them can remember how to get to it again. They watched it over and over again, but now, they cannot find it anywhere. I have no idea how to play the game, so I am no help. I suppose they will stumble across it again someday.

Well, I was trying to close this off and get some rest but went off on another tangent. This time, I will go for sure. Except to say Maeghan has gone Hanna Montana crazy. She gets online and searches out Hanna Montana videos. I have saved her some searches for it, so she can just go to those, but she sits at the computer and watches everything she can find. She found out about it on my new iPhone. Ues, I have an iPhone. I was due to change contract at the end of August and the new phone came out about that time. So, I renewed the contract and got the iPhone along with it. And, amazingly enough, I love it. I play on it all the time. That is how Maeghan found about the ability of it to get online.

We were going to the drive in to see Hanna Montana, and Harry Potter and one other movie I can't remember what, and I pulled up the movie trailers for the movies. She saw the Hanna Montana one and wanted to see more. So I found some more and now, she is always asking me for my phone so she can watch the videos. I showed her how to do it on the computer so she can go there now, but she likes holding the phone in here hand and watching them. And since Juanita or her mother are always on the computer, the phone is her only option for now.

Ok, I said I was going and now I am. Apparently, I have to fix breakfast for everyone. And I am sick. Serve them right if they all get sick too. Not that we want that, but maybe a runny nose or a headache, nothing serious like what I have, which is the creeping crud.

So, until next time

Talk to y'all later

MWNews 78

It's been so long since I posted, I don't really remember what this whole thing was about. I think it has something to do with the kids but we will see how it goes as I type.
The main reason for the delay is the internet problems I have had over the last year. Mentioned many times and complained about many more, lets just say it has not been an ideal situation to try to upload files and pictures to the internet. It takes so long and fails most of the time, that I just got tired of dealing with it, so I gave up blogging until the situation got better.
Well, it might be getting better. We just moved house again. I think that is once a year for every year I have been in Australia. I am sure that is some kind of record. Not too far from where we live now and closer to where we were when we lived at Shelly Beach. About a 20 minute walk to the ocean but farther from Maeghan's school. It is about 100 meters from where Maeghan and William went to pre-school, so we will see about getting William back in there next term.
I don't know if anyone has heard, but there was a child care crises here in Australia and most of the major child care centers closed. That was about a year ago and since then, several of them have re-opened or changed ownership. Where William was going actually did not close but lost most of its clients as they thought it was going to close so the parents pulled the kids out, which of course, caused it to eventually close anyway. William had already left by that time, which was around the first of the year, but at the end, there were only three other kids in his group and it was plain to see that they could not continue on like that.
So all this leads to the fact that we will try to get him back into the school where Meaghan used to go and he went for a couple of months. It never closed and is one of the better schools around in that it trys to prepare the kids for school so they can attend at the minimum age of 5, which is what Maeghan did. It is very competitive getting kids into it, but since William and Maeghan were there before, we think we might have a leg up for getting him in again as soon as a spot opens. And since it is barely a two minute walk to get there, that will be really convenient.
On the other hand, Maeghan will still go to the school she has always gone to. It is well liked in the community and she has a good relationship there, so we have tried to stay close to it so she can continue to go as long at possible. She did miss about a month of school at the end of last term, but I will speak more about that later.
Where we are now, it is a little farther to drive and we don't really know how long it will take to get her there and then pick her up, but we will make the effort so she will stay comfortable in school and not have to make new friends and new teachers. I think I might have spoken about this before as I seem to recall writing something about her new class and new teachers but I don't really want to check and will just assume her latest endeavors are known. If not, I am sure I will repeat myself many times if I get back into this blogging thing, so for now, we will leave it at that.
The new house has an inground pool and huge backyard. You might ask why we need an inground pool when the ocean is only a short walk away, but I prefer not to ask those kinds of questions as the answer tends to confuse me. Something that happens a lot lately so I stay in a constant state of bewilderment.
The house itself is a bit smaller but has a large room out back that is bigger than any in the house. I think it is designed more as a holiday house as that is what is all the other houses have around it. Meaning a big granny flat or in some cases, multiple granny flats in the back yards of the houses. Next door, it looks like there is a series of about three rooms that the owners in the big house can rent out during the summer and behind our house, there are a set of four small apartments that look to be holiday houses for someone. On the other side, there is a two story apartment building, fairly new and the same across the street, so during the summer, I am sure there will be a lot of temporary people living in the area, but we will have to wait and see what effect that has on the neighborhood.
I said the back yard was huge as it is at least half an acre in size, with the pool, the granny flat, and a large shed in back and still plenty of room left over for our swing set and trampoline. It looks like several large trees where pulled up in the back at one time, not sure why, but they did not do a very good job since lots of roots and wholes still exist where they have failed to take the trees out correctly. Even with all that stuff in the back, you could play a good game of cricket (had to say that since I am in Australia) or soccer or even a small game of baseball or football if you were so inclined. The kids have already had fun kicking the balls in the back yard as far as they can kick them and running to kick them back. The do tend to kick them over the fence in the pool area but I think they do that on purpose on the off chance that we will let them in the gate near the pool so they can get closer to it. It is much too cold to go swimming and probably not warm up enough for several months before they can swim in the pool, but I am sure they still want to give it a try. Hence the need to kick the ball over the fence on the off chance that we will let them in to go swimming.
We have mostly moved everything in at this point, just finished this past weekend. There are still a few odds and ends to move, like my desk and some other minor things, but for the most part, we have everything. It was debatable whether we could fit everything in the new house. Taking measurements, it appeared that the front living area was too small to fit our lounge into it, so we decided to make that the dining area and move the main lounge area to the back room. Even then, it was close as to whether the lounge would fit there, but it turns out, it does fit nicely in that back room. The front room now has the dining table, which is very large and square, in it plus the bookshelves, plus Juanita's desk, and the wine rack. It is a fairly busy room with all that in it, but it might work out.
The kitchen is large, but that is only because there is nothing in it. No bench space to speak of, no cabinets and a very small stove/oven. There is a small standalone pantry and plenty of room for the fridge, but the middle of the room is fairly empty. We put the glass hutch on one wall and are using it to store all our everyday dishes and plastic containers, plus the all the plastic cups, bowls and plates. Not sure if all the glass cups and things will fit in the hutch as well, but with no other place to put them, we will have to make it fit. All the other decorative stuff that used to be in the hutch has been moved to the dining room on the former book shelves and wine rack and anything else that will hold decorative stuff but in the end, we might just have to get rid of some things to make room for what we actually need.
We did have a garage sale over two weekends and sold a lot of things, but none of the decorative stuff. We did sell some of the kids toys that had been stashed in the garage not being played with. I am not sure the kids understand that these things are now gone but they have so much other stuff to play with, I am not really sure they will ever notice. We needed to sell a lot more of their things as we have rooms full of toys and things they have collected in their short number of years. I cannot believe we have gotten so much stuff but since everyone is always giving them presents and buying them things, it is no wonder they have things they have not seen in years that only get discovered each time we move.
William, for example, has at least three large buckets of small cars he has collected. Lots and lots of cars and each one was his favorite at one time of another. He still sticks with his Speed cars (from the movie Cars) most of the time, but he has so many, usually anyone will do. He still carries a car around with him anywhere he goes. Sometimes, he trys to carry cars that are much too big to be carried around, but you will almost never find William without a car in his hand, no matter what else he might be doing.
Since we have not been in the new house for more than a couple of days, Maeghan has not really had a chance to play in it yet. She spent the weekend at one of her friends house, so she did not get to see everything come out of hiding when we moved it. She has gone to school today and the rest of the week, so it will still be several days before she fully gets to take advantage of the new backyard and all the room to play with her bike and other toys. She was up until about 7:30 last night playing on the swings and riding her bike with William, but since it gets dark around 5:30 this time of year, I am sure she was not really aware of what all the possibilities are. We will begin to see as they become more used to the new environment.
Well, there is a lot of other things I wanted to get to and lots and lots of things to catch up on but this entry is getting a bit long and if I start anything new, like Maeghan and William and Juanita spending almost two months in Tasmania, then it will go on and on forever. Since I am doing this at work, where I have no new photos to add and should really be working, I am going to go ahead and close this out. I say it nearly every time, but as soon as I can get my new internet connection at the new house, I hope to do more updates. But, I say that every time.
Anyway, bye for now. Maybe do a new post tomorrow. Someone needs to remind me.
Talk to you later