MWNews 103

Not really a lot to say, just thought I would create a new entry.

Maeghan was upset the other day.  She did not make the finals of the school talent show.  She was performing a dance she and another girl made up.  There were only two spots open and a lot of people trying out for it but she missed out.  Having only been there a month or so, she had not had a lot of time to practice with it so it was understandable, but she was upset.  She will get over it, probably by the next day.  And she can practice for the next one, whenever that is.

William is doing ok, I suppose.  Have not heard if he has improved in his classes.  When he first started, they seemed to think he should already be able to read and add and subtract.  I have no idea why they think the kids in kindergarten should already know how to do that, but the comment from the teacher was that she can send her other students to their desks to read and they all do it but William always wants to play.  Which is what William would do but I don't believe the other kids are actually reading books.

We have tried to help, we got flash cards for William and go over them every day.  He knows about half of the letters but he does not seem to be improving.  The ones he knows, he says instantly, but the ones he does not, he says I don't know and starts to play.  It is very hard to get him to concentrate, which of course, it has always been hard to get him to concentrate.  He is only five, so I do not see it as a big problem but the school has already said they want a doctor to do an evaluation and I have said absolutely not.  Too maybe kids are sent to the doctor and then labeled slow or needs medication or something else and they just hand them out like candy.  I will not allow that to happen.  If we have to pull him out of school, I will not let that happen.  But we are well away from that option at this point.  The teachers say they will work with him and see how he goes.

The strange part is he had none of these problems at the other school, or none that caused the teachers to bring it to our attention.  He has always been hyper but at the old school, they had no problem working with him.  I don't know if the problem is the new school and the teachers there or maybe the old school did not push him hard enough.  I suspect there is a problem with the new school as they seem to do things a lot differently.  For example, they combine classes.  Maeghan's class has 60 kids in it.  They have three teachers, but the class all sits in one room.  It would appear originally, they had partitions for the rooms but have long since removed the partitions to combine the classrooms into really big rooms.  I can see where it might be hard to get anything done in that environment.  Too much noise, too maybe kids competing for attention, just too much stuff going on at the same time.  I suppose we will just have to see how it goes.  It is a new school and maybe they are trying something different, some new teaching method or something.  We will see.

It has been raining for a week now.  They are starting to get flooding north of here.  They always get flooding north of here but it seems it is big news every year.  We have had a lot of rain.  William's last soccer game was cancelled and I am thinking today's practice might be cancelled as well.  Last week, I was the only male parent there so I had to run practice.  It was a very good practice as far as I am concerned.  Kids did not really pay attention, but they never do.  We did get through all the drills I designed and put them through.  And, I think they had fun, so it was a good practice.

One issue was I had to run and show them all the different things I wanted them to do.  I was exhausted.  Running for 30 or 45 minutes, trying to keep up with 5 and 6 year olds was not exactly fun.  There were only 5 of them there, there are only six on his whole team, but they always run around and never listen to what you are telling them.  William is probably the worst, but the others seem to be catching up him in mucking up.  I have always had the criticism of the others that run the practices that they spend too much time waiting in line for their turn to run the drills.  It makes it easier for the coach but the kids do not get a lot out of it. 

they had fun so it was a good practice.

Maeghan wanted to do some cooking the other day.  She wanted to cook cookies.  Not really make cookies, but get those kind that come in a roll and you just cut them up and bake them.  Naturally, when William saw what we were doing, he wanted to do it also, but we did manage to make a couple of batches that got eaten as they came out of the oven.  Maeghan could not understand why they were so soft and chewy.  I had to explain that you normally do not eat them right out of the oven and if we let them cool, they would get hard.  We tried that on a couple but that only lasted a few minutes before they could wait no longer and ate them.

She wants to do it again, but they are kind of expensive to buy and bake them that way.  Today, I might get the raw ingredients so we can make them from scratch.  She will probably like that better anyway.

I am also going to try cooking from one of my new cookbooks.  I was reading through it the other day and thought that most of the recipes I could make easily, so I will buy one meal at a time and work my way through the book.  Bad part is, it starts with soups and while I like soups, there are about 50 pages worth and if I go through it in order I will get tired of soup very quickly.  So I might have to skip around a bit.  It should be fun.  The title of the book is Hot Food and has a lot of different recipes from different counties in it so I think it should be fun.  Maybe Maeghan will want to help me with that, although I am sure she will not eat many of the dishes.

Well, it is about time I had to go.  Juanita is here to go shopping and I am not dressed yet.  She is still in the car so I am sure she is getting tired of waiting.  I need to sign off and get dressed.

So, until next time

Talk to you later

MWNews 102

Maeghan has teeth.  William says his teeth are loose.

OK, don't know how much I have mentioned it, but Maeghan has been missing her two front teeth for about 18 months.  We took her to the doctor a few months ago and they said wait six months and we will see how it goes then.  I am sure I have mentioned this in previous posts but if not, well, make up your own stories 'cause I am not going back to look.

The gist of the story is her two front teeth are finally coming in.  One is about halfway and you can see the other one.  It has been so long, it is kind of strange to see teeth where there used to be none.  They do look kind of big but I guess we will see when they are fully there.  She is really happy about it, as are the rest of us.  One less thing to worry about, I guess.

William, thinking he is not getting enough attention on his teeth, says his are loose.  When you ask which ones, he says the ones in his mouth.  He cannot exactly say which one it is, but he says he can move it with his tongue.  I offered to pull it out for him but that just scared him.  I am sure he will be surprised when the time comes for them to actually start falling out.

Maeghan and William have started their new school.  They live across the street from it and it did not make sense to keep driving them to the old school.  William was ready to go from the beginning but we were worried about Maeghan in that she has always gone to the same school and she is shy about making new friends.  William will go up to anyone and then say they are his friend.  His new thing to introduce himself is to say his name is William and this is his family.  I am not sure if that is cute or disturbing but he seems to think it is the way you introduce yourself.  He also things it is ok to go sit at other people's tables if he things they are more interesting than we are, which in most cases, he probably has a point.

Apparently, blogger is doing maintenance on the site as weird things keep happening.  I saw a message when I signed on that said they were doing something but it would be back up soon.  This means something because the cursor keeps jumping around and the spell checked keeps highlighting almost everything I type.  Also, the arrow keys are not working, so I can't go back to move around in the entry very well.

Bottom line is I think I am going to end this post very quickly as it has become annoying and we all know how much I dislike annoying.  Maybe I will try again later, probably not, but you can always hope.  Light a candle or something, that might help.

Ok, until next time

Talk to you later

MWNews 101

 Let's see, I think we left off last time while we were desperately hunting wild boar.  We needed bacon to make some carbonarra sauce.

Or maybe we just left the ride area and were looking for a place sit quietly for an hour or so.

In any case, the ride area is right next to the show bag area.  As a side note, I had never heard of show bags or entire buildings devoted to them before I came to Australia.  Basically, what it means is there are sponsors or companies that make of different goodies branded with their

 product and they put them all in a bag and sell them for exorbitant prices.  Mostly cheap stuff that you wouldn't never pay for if you saw it in a shop but somehow it takes on a huge desirability at the show where everyone will pay whatever it takes to have one.

Now, it is always a good idea to save the show bag pavilion until the end of the day as we all know what is going to happen in that you buy these bags and then have to cart them around, along with everything else you pick up, the rest of the day.  I even suggested by-passing this building but we

can all imagine how that went down.

The building itself is an actual building where they used to have some kind of sport during the Olympics.  I mean, it is not a small building.  And it is completely packed with giant booths each one with a different sponsor selling their own brand of crap, I mean valuable merchandise.  Companies like Coke, which has probably the biggest booth, and Cadbury and TV shows, or channels, along with Barbie and Ben 10 and Hot Wheels and just about everything you could ever find in a TV commercial or advertised anywhere they can cram in an add.  All together, I would say about 600 different booths.  It is not a quick trip to walk through there.

Maybe it partially my fault, but I believe you have to walk through most of it before you start buying things because if you buy from the first or second booth you come to, you end up seeing something better at the booth just down the isle.  I think you should go through them all, write down or remember what you like and once you have seen most of the building, then go back and buy the things you like.

Again, we can imagine how that went down.  First booth, we buy a bag.  Ten booths later, kids see something better and we buy that bag.  Goes on and on from there until we have probably 10 or so different show bags and we have not even bought the ones we really want as what we will call our 'big bag' for the day.  So lets say it took us about two hours to go though the building.  By the time we got out, it was dark and everyone was starving for some food.  Once again, they put the really cheap carnival food next to the show bag pavilion so you come out and immediately started buying overpriced food you would not normally buy anywhere you would see it outside a fair.

I insisted we walk a bit further and get something from an area that had specialty foods and such along with the cold pre-made hamburgers and fries.  So we had a fairly decent dinner.  I had Mexican food.  Bad Mexican food but that is really all you can get here so I was satisfied.  The others had other things.  Now that my mind has wandered, I forget what it was.  Turns out, where I picked for us to eat was right in front of a stage where a band began playing about the middle of our dinner.  Fortunately, it was a decent band and did not play too loud, or it was too loud for me but not for everyone else, so we stayed for a bit to listen.

After that, we were at my favorite part of the show, the food fair.  This is a building that is sponsored by one of the grocery store chains, Woolworths Food Pavilion to be exact.  It has rows and rows of different companies giving out free samples of their products.  And lots of different things you cannot get anywhere else.  Like specialty ice creams and wines and sweets and treats and all kinds of things I could just spend hours wandering through.

If you have been keeping up, you might have noticed the time is around 7 pm at this point.  The show closes at 9.  We still have about 80 ride tickets.  And the inlaws want to go to the art pavilion.  So, can we guess what we decided to cut out so we could do some other things before we left.  You got it, the food pavilion.  I did insist we at least walk though it and I did manage to pick a big bag of different hot sauces but I could see there were hundreds of other things I would have liked to have seen and eaten but we were in and out in about ten minutes.

From there, we decided to split up so the in-laws could go to the art pavilion and we would take the kids back to the kids ride area.  What this also meant was that we would miss about a third of the show.  The big stadium and lots of booths and demonstrations that surround that, plus a couple of other buildings and areas we were just not going to have time to get to.  There is a lot to see at the show and you really have to get there when it opens at 9 to have a chance to see everything.  Plus, you probably need to skip most of the animal pavilions and only see them as they are walking around instead of going in and seeing them in cages, but I think we got a lot in, even if we did miss the best part in my opinion and we did not see the big show in the stadium but it is usually boring and really is only a place to have a seat for a while so it is no big loss.

One thing that is new, or new to us, was this big giant Farris wheel.  It is fairly dominant in the park, you can see it from anywhere and it is very high.  Now most people may not know this about me, but I am really afraid of heights.  Not just a little afraid but bone crushing, unable to move my head or anything else if I am over a few feet off the ground kind of scared.  I do not like heights.  Or, to be more precise, I can take a high roller coaster or an airplane or something where it only lasts for a moment and there are other things to worry about besides the height but a slow moving, get stuck at the top for ten minutes kind of height is just terrifying to me.

They talked me into getting on this ride.  I was complaining right up until the time we got into the door of our cabin.  And yes, I said cabin because this is how big this thing is, they have actual cabins you could have lunch in to carry the people.  Once inside, I grabbed the seat with one hand and a bar with another and for the next 20 minutes did not move my head or my hands or anything else.  It was awful, and to make it worse, the cabin swung freely while it was moving so even the slightest movement by anyone with us caused it to rock back and forth causing me to whimper in pain.

William decided he was scared too and clung to my side the whole time, except when he forgot he was supposed to be acting scared and moved around the cabin looking out at what the other people were looking at.  It was terrifying.  Each time I would start to relax a bit, someone would move, mostly William, and start us swinging and I would re-tighten my death grip on the poles.  I think the whole thing lasted about six hours.  I know I was looking for water when I got off, having sweated most of my body weight out while we waved at the passing planes that were below us.  I will say we had a good view of the stars after we passed though the clouds on our way up.

I guess that is about it at the show.  We got off the Ferris wheel and went on to the kids rides.  Spent out last tickets and met back up with Bev and Karen.  Took another 30 minutes to get to the train station, had to traverse all those end of day booths that we had already visited on the way in.  Bought a dozen or more show bags, picked up some more water to take on the trip home, we might have even picked up another bear or two, I couldn't tell because I was under a mountain of things we had already bought and another few kilos or so didn't make that much difference.

We did leave a bit early and managed to beat some of the crowds so the train was not crowded.  I am guessing we got home sometime around midnight.  It had been a long day.  The kids fell asleep, so we did not have to go through all the show bags again once we got home.  It waited until morning.

I can say we had fun.  Didn't get to everything, but we got to a lot.  At least, you got to read about it all, which was a good time for you.  Probably took as long to read it as it did for us to actually be there.  Sorry about that, but I get carried away.  Then again, if you are reading this blog, you know that already.

I am going to take the kids for a walk now.  They are running through the house causing all kinds of trouble.  William keeps waiting for the ice cream I bought them yesterday and he has not had a chance to have any yet.  He wanted it for breakfast.  Have to take them outside so maybe he will stop asking for it every five minutes.  It would appear he has never had ice cream before,  a very bad job of parenting on our part.  Maeghan wants to go outside but William will not go with her, obviously thinking that as soon as he goes out, we are going to sneak into the ice cream and eat it all.  A good bet on his part.  And before you really begin to think he has never had ice cream before, the difference here is this is ice cream he picked out yesterday.  We usually buy whatever is on sale and he always says he does not like whatever flavor we buy.  So, yesterday, I told him he could pick out the flavor he wanted and that is why he has been hanging out for it ever since.  Some kind of tutti fruity ice cream bars I am sure he is not going to like, but he can't wait to eat it all.

So I am going to be going now.  Try to get back soon, blah, blah, blah, all my usually promises to get back to this soon.

I guess it is until next time

Talk to you later

MWNews 100

 How did this happen.  I am back to writing on the same day.  Must mean I will not make another entry for months.  I am also trying something new.  Typing next to the pictures when I have multiple pictures.  I wonder how it is going to format it.  Might be interesting.  If it works, maybe I will put multiple pictures in all my entries.  That would be a fun way to do things and I think I would not be typing as much in each entry.  Plus, it gives you something to look at during the boring parts.  It is just about to come to the end of this picture, so I wonder where the cursor it going to go next.

If I keep on typing, we will find out soon.  Not
what I expected.  It moved the pictures down, but
then jumped over to here.  That might work.
Uh oh, it is still moving the pictures down.  I have had to manually move things around.  I hope this works.  Probably have to do the same thing when I get to the bottom of the next picture.  Have to wait and see if it is worth the effort.

Ok, now we are ready to get back to the Easter Show report.  I know you can't wait much longer, so I am happy to do it.

 I think I left off with William riding the big slide.  Or maybe it was when we fell into the water fountain.  Probably when William was riding the big slide as no one actually fell in the water fountain, I made that up.

One thing I left out, in that first picture here, you see William and Maeghan riding a roller coaster.  It was just a kids roller coaster, went in a figure eight.  Maeghan loved it.  William, not so much.  He said he never wanted to ride it again.  He said he was scared the whole time.  He didn't really look scared, but we took his word for it.

There was one other ride we went on that he was scared of, but that is later in the evening and it is not the time to talk about it yet.  So, you have something to look forward to.

Once we left the big slide (I am back to the trip report), we went to see the horses.  I know, previously, I might have said we did that first, but it was after the slide.  And, even though I have changed the chronology from what was previously reported, it did not help as the the horses were still boring.  So we went to see the cats.

We wanted to see the dogs, but the cats were first, so we ended up there.  Lots of people waiting in line to see the cats, not sure why.  Who wants to see a cat sleeping, or a whole bunch of cats sleeping.  Maybe it was petting time as what you did was, stand in line, enter the building and walk by a whole bunch of tables that had cats sitting on them.  Everyone that could push, prod, or poke their way through the crowd could pet the cats.  Juanita and Bev and William went through first and apparently, they did not get to pet any cats.  Maeghan and Karen and I went through behind them and Maeghan got to pet every cat in there.  Maybe it was her in the wheelchair that got us through or maybe it was just Karen being more pushy than the others, but what it meant was, it took us almost an hour to go through and the others about ten minutes.  They ended up waiting for us outside.  It wasn't that bad as I think Bev snuck in a little nap while they were waiting.

After that, we went into the dog pavilion.  I have never seen so many huge dogs in one place in my life.  Lots of Great Danes, Huskies, Russian Wolfhounds, and some things I have never seen in my life.  And most of these dogs were really ugly.  I am not sure if it was the way they were being presented, or they were just bred that way, but they all looked weird.  Can't really put my finger on what made them look weird, but there was something about them that just did not seem right.  Maybe they were drugged or something.  I have no idea.

Naturally, you were not allowed to pet any of them, which drove William crazy.  He loves dogs and will go up to anything on four legs and try to pet it.  These dogs were not allowed to interact with the crowds.  There were some pretty dogs, but they were few and far between and I do not recall seeing any small dogs, which is what we were looking for in the first place.  Maybe they kept them in a different building but we never found them.

After that, we were right near the carnival games and the adult rides.  Let me say, before I get any deeper into it, that some of these rides are not meant to be ridden.  It is one thing to ride a roller coaster that goes very fast and upside down and spins around, but these rides were just ridiculous.  No roller coaster, except the typical runaway mouse ride (if you do not know what that ride is you have never been to a carnival, or they call it something different where you are from).  But they had rides that spun you way, way, way, way, up in the air.  To the point where I believe that emergencies procedures if you ever got stuck at the top were to parachute back down to the ground.  And not only did these rides go very high, they spun around in circles the whole time and in some cases, spun in at least six different directions all at once.  I really believe that some people would start in one car and then end up in another with all the spinning and rolling and flying around they did.

Maybe it was just not my cup of tea.  (Another saying that is not really Australian but as Australians claim anything that has any remote connection to them as their own, lets just say it is an Australian saying)  We did walk all the way around the adult rides, just to see the kind of people who actually ride these things.  Maybe it was just the day we were there, but I did not see all that many lines to get on them.  There is one, called the slingshot (and to be honest, Karen and I considered riding it but the cost was more than the ticket to get into the fair) that is a ball you are strapped into and then fired up into the air via what must be bungy cords.  About a hundred of them.  I am sure these rides are all over fairs everywhere in the world.  I only mention it because we did consider riding it and to mention the outrageous cost to do so, and the fact that while we were in that area, only two people actually rode it.  No lines at all, just walk up and get on if you wanted to.

As we walked through, the kids wanted to play every game there was.  We let them play quite a few, probably $50 or $60 worth.  As you can tell, going to the Show is not a cheap outing.  They were given little consolation prizes at every game, so they were extremely happy.  Juanita kept telling me to when her a prize but I think these games are so hard to win, I was not sure what I could win.  I did find the game I had won on the last time we were there.  Rolling balls up into slots and the best score wins from everybody that is playing.  I tried that again, and oddly enough, I won.  I actually tied with some other guy who was there, who had apparently won several times before this as they banned him from the game immediately after we played.  We had a roll off between the two of us and he missed with his ball, so I won by default.

I got a really big, cheap bear that is holding a heart that says I love you.  I got it for Juanita, but Maeghan was there and she immediately claimed it for her own.  So it sits in her room now, or I think it does.  Haven't really seen it since then.

Now those of you who have won these big prizes probably know the big downfall of winning them.  It means you have to carry them with you the rest of the day.  So, not only do I have to push Maeghan around in her wheel chair, I have to do it while carrying this big bear.  We had also brought along a big backpack with us that we had been carrying water and things around with us all day, so I was wearing that and carrying the bear and pushing Maeghan for the rest of the night.

I say night because it was starting to get a little late at the fair.  Not dark yet, maybe around 4 or 5, but we had only been through about half of the fair by this time and most of the really big areas we wanted to see were still ahead of us.

And just for the fun of it, I am going to leave that for another post, probably tomorrow but more likely on Sunday.  The show ends at 9 in the evening, so there is not a lot left to say.  But, then again, it has only been about 5 hours since we have been there, so there is probably about 5 more hours to go.

I'll bet you are really looking forward to that.  The really sad part of this whole thing is I have been typing away for about two hours, altogether, and I still have other news that does not relate to the Easter Show.  That post will have to wait until I complete these Show reports, but what else do you have to do except wait on my every thought.  It's fun, live with it.

Ok, have to go.  Be back as soon as I can.

Until next time

Talk to you later

MWNews 99

Some catchup work, or maybe just a long winded entry about the Easter Show.  You might notice it is well after Easter but I am going to pretend I typed this in a long time ago and you are just now getting around to reading it.

We went to the Easter Show.  That's it.  So long.  See you later.

Not sure how much I have already typed about this and I have sent emails with some information in email, so if I repeat myself, I guess it is just your problem for remembering too much.

To get the Easter Show, which, by the way, is held in the old Olympic Park location, (where they had the Olympics in 2000 for those that only know about things they have in the USA) we have to take the train.  They make it easy as the entry tickets allow you to travel anywhere on the trains on the day you use it, so there is no extra cost for the train ride.  Unless you count the two hours it takes to get from where we are to the Olympic park location.  Not that I am complaining as when we have always made this trip in the past, it is usually crowded and there are no places to sit so you have to stand the entire time.  Thrilling at first, annoying after about an hour, totally painful after two hours.  But, since we went in the middle of the week, I took the day off, it was not as crowded as it normally is for the show.  That being said, I still have to ride standing up the entire time as we have always taken either the pram or a wheelchair or something that requires me to stand watch over it in the area between the train cars so no one removes it from the train when we stop at all the stops.

In this case, we had two wheelchairs.  Have I mentioned we took Beverly and Karen (mother in law and sister in law, respectively).  They were here, and I know I have mentioned that in the past, for the Easter holidays.  Fortunately, since Beverly's wheelchair is a full size one, unlike Maeghan's and the pram we usually take, I had a seat in the wheelchair so it was not that bad.  There was one incident on the way back where I was sitting in the chair and had apparently not put the break on fully and was woken up by my legs slamming into the wall when we went around one turn.  But other than that, it was not that bad a trip.

We always plan on getting there early but I didn't hold out much hope of that happening since we would have had to get everyone up by 6 am to get to the train station by 8 to get to the show by 10.  We did actually end up getting there by about 10:30 as we caught an express train that only had one stop before we had to switch trains and we caught the next train immediately and then made the next train right on time also.  In case you were counting, that was three trains we have to catch to get to the showgrounds.  In some cases, you can make it in two trains, but they are not express trains, so it would have actually taken longer to get there on those.

The issue with getting there at 10:30 complicated by the fact that we had to stop for the toilet before we could go in and that was a long wait from all the people getting off the train at the same time.  Also, although we had purchased tickets ahead of time, the in laws had not.  So we had to wait another 30 minutes for that.  In the end, we did not make it onto the grounds until about 11:30, right at lunch time.  Since Bev and Juanita have low blood sugar issues, finding something to eat as soon as possible was imperative.   Of course, the most expensive and most generic food is right at the front of the show, or sort of at the front.  You have to walk about 200 yards to get to the actual start of the show.  Lots of last minute shops along the way for people leaving the show to spend the last bit of their money on cheap souvenirs, but mostly nothing of real interest.  We had to stop anyway.

The people in charge of the show are very clever.  The first real part of the show you come to is the kids ride area, right next to the not so cheap eats mentioned before.  So you cannot really get into the show area until you traverse the kids rides and spend some money on fairly obnoxious food.  We did both.  Ate the expensive food, $9 for a hamburger, and rode some rides.  We already had tickets we had purchased online for the rides, but what you did was print out a coupon to turn in at the ticket booths for the actual tickets.  Only a 15 minute wait, but then we had 120 tickets to keep track of the rest of the day.  Not a big problem, unless you consider the tickets are worth $1 each, so making sure I did not drop any or lose any was something I had to keep track of all day.

At this point in this entry, I have begun to notice that if I give every detail of the trip, this entry will be about 80 pages long.  So I am deciding on how to best split it into two or three entries or shorten the details.  As it will probably be days before I get back to this, shortening the details seems to be the better option.

I, of course, being the responsible parent and remembering how awful it was to be forced to see all the animals before you could go on any rides, immediately made everyone go see all the animals.  Not only did the kids complain, but the adults did as well.  So we had a ride first, then some animals, then a rest, then some lunch, then some more animals.

Most of the animals were not very interesting.  The pigs and goats smelled, the chickens were just birds in cages, and the cows were nonexistent.  There was one area, the petting area, that had hundreds of goats of all sizes running around.  The kids were allowed to get handfuls of hay and feed it to the animals.  Speaking of which, why have I not used some of the pictures from the show.  I have lots but for some reason, I failed to put one at the beginning.  I will see if I can go back and put one in.  Of course, you will never know what happened as the picture will be there at the beginning before you started reading.  Turns out, I put three pictures there, although I had to make them smaller than normal to allow them to fit and then I went back and made them normal so I am not sure what they will look like in the end.

The kids loved feeding the animals.  They had it set up in a really big area and I assumed they expected or had more people on the weekends as there were gates and waiting lines setup to not allow too many people in at once.  We went right through and it was crowded while we were there, so I cannot imagine what it would be like if it was full.

After that, we went to see the horses and have some ice cream and coffee.  Again, expensive but what can you expect from these types of shows.  The horses turned out to be boring so we went to see the cats and dogs.  On the way, we found a huge slide that William wanted to go down.  There was no way Maeghan was going to be able to climb to the top and I would have had to pay to take her up there, so I William went by himself.  He didn't mind but was unsure of what to do once he was at the top.  Some man helped him get on the slide and he came down really fast.  Faster than he expected, I think, so he did not want to go again.  At $4 a slide, I thought this was a good idea.  I did time it.  $4 for four seconds, but William said he enjoyed it.

This is going to have to be a two part entry.  I told the kids we would go to the shop as soon as mommy got home and she is home now, so they are bugging me to go.  Not a lot more to tell, but I am sure I can make it interesting.  Or as interesting as this has been so far.  I am sure most of you dropped out a long time ago, but for those who made it to the end and are strangely attracted to seeing the next entry, I say good on ya.  (That's and Australian expression).  I will probably get back to it today, but then again, do I ever get back to it when I say I am going to.  Probably not.  It means I will actually have to re-read this entry to find out what I have and have not already said, but maybe there is some chance I will actually do that so I don't repeat my self endlessly.

So, until next time

Talk to you later