The kids are on holidays, spring break. I am taking next week off so I can spend some time with them. Not sure what we are going to do. Juanita wants to go camping but although I am on vacation, I still have to work on the both weekends, so we could not go far no matter what we did.
I don't really want to go camping. It is supposed to be cold and raining and I do not want to put up a tent in the rain and then spend the time sitting around on wet things. If we are only going an hour away, then I don't see why we just don't stay in the warmth of the house, with running water and everything we already have. But I may not have a choice.
The kids, of course, want to go. They don't have to do anything. Kind of hard to say no to them and since it is me saying no, I am the bad guy. Again, we will see.
In the meantime, I have to think of other things we are going to do. Going to parks in the area is on the top of the list, but the cold and raining thing comes into play with that also. Maybe we will take a drive somewhere but that is not a lot of fun for the kids. DVD players and handheld games don't seem to keep their attention for very long anymore. Plus, we have the baby, who usually sleeps in the car but not always.
Yes, Juanita still has the baby. She might be getting a permanent foster child soon and the one she has might be going back to the mother sometime soon. We have no specifics of when or even if this will happen, but it is headed that way from what she has been told. Not going to spend a lot of time on that but it is something she wants to do and has been doing for about six months now so we are getting used to it.
William got his trophy for soccer last weekend. They had a big get together for all the teams and played some games. It was raining and cold at the time but as they had already put off the awards day for a month, they went ahead with this one in the rain.
William had fun and he actually tried to play in the games. I guess our always telling him to try harder instead of just running back and forth seemed to have helped. He actually got to kick the ball towards the goal. Missed by about ten feet, but he tried and actually got a shot off. He also made everyone talk about him for a minute when he was kicking the ball in from the sidelines. They don't throw it in, they kick it in and he put the ball down and then backed up about 50 yards to get a good run on the ball. Several of the parents on the sidelines said watch out, here comes a big kick. Of course, William being William, he ran up to the ball then stopped and kicked it in so the running up all that way did nothing for the kick, but for a while, everyone was looking at him.
After the games, he got a trophy and a cap and a sausage sandwich. Not sure which one he liked the most. His trophy is on the fridge, not sure why, but we will move it to his room soon. Maeghan wanted a sausage also but they were only for the players. I walked her up there and told them she was a player also and they gave her one. She also got a cap from Juanita because Juanita got one for being one of the managers.
We went for a walk around the Entrance the other day. We are trying to get Maeghan walking more as that is what the doctors are telling us. To get her moving more and not relying on the chair so much. She got tired and we had a long rest at the midway point but she did really well. She has been on several long walks lately so I think she is doing good. The doctors want to go to a dietitian so they can regulate her food. She is big and they say since she is so small, she cannot be overweight also as it will cause her back to get worse. I think she goes this week to the dietitian but I am not sure.
We have all been walking more lately, when it is not raining. It rained for four days last weekend and it is about to start raining again. At one point it rained really hard, with thunder and lighting, for about 12 hours straight. The back yard, which holds water anyway, was pretty much a river the whole time. We did not go out of the house that day.
I was going to mention that after the soccer party, we went to Mingara to let the kids play in the playground. They had gone there the previous day but they went to the swimming pool and not the playground. They had fun at the pool but they really wanted to go inside and play so we took them the next day.
While we were there, I was playing KENO. Juanita likes to play the slot machines but I always think it is just a way to waste a lot of money very quickly. It is ok when you win, but that doesn't happen a lot. Just enough to keep you playing which is what they want.
We had just had lunch, they do very nice lunches there although this brings up another topic that I have not addressed, or maybe I did and just forgot about it. Why is it no restaurants over here have a soup and salad option. They have soup, and they have salad, but they do not have an option to order a soup and salad. Most restaurants in America have that option and I have seen it once or twice over here, mostly in American owned chains like Outback Steakhouse, but I never see it anywhere else. When I mention this to anyone, they say that is a weird combination, one hot thing and one cold thing. I am not sure I understand the logic behind that but it just seems strange. And, of course, they charge full price when you do order a soup and a salad and when they bring it, they usually give one to Juanita and one to me. I have to tell them they are both for me and then I get that strange look again. It just seems to be something that would be a natural combination to me and most Americans but is a foreign concept to this culture, maybe most cultures, but these are the only two I am that familiar with.
Anyway, I was talking about playing KENO. After we had lunch, and before Juanita went off to play slots, I picked my usual numbers for five games. As Juanita was leaving, I saw that I had two of my numbers with four left to pick. I said if I get another number, I win $2 and I got the third number. The next number was not mine but then I got my forth number on the next to last pick and I told her I had four numbers and then the fifth number came up. I checked it and checked it and then told Juanita I had won. She said how much and I said I was not sure. I looked it up in the book. I nearly fell off my chair. She kept asking how much, how much. I told her it would be displayed on the big board because when a big winner comes up, it shows up there.
That's when she realized it was a big number. Not the really big numbers you sometimes see, but big enough for a five dollar bet that it made our week. $640. It came up on the board that they had a winner right here. It is always saying they have a winner somewhere else but they put big stars around it and flash it on the screen in big letters when it is local. Juanita saw that and said, was that you. I told her it was so we sat there for a while before I was going to get up and claim it. I was guarding the ticket the whole time. I had to wait because I still had two more games on my ticket and I could not claim it until all the games were finished. It turned out that I had four numbers on the next game, which is only $14 but all up, I had won over $650. A big win in any one's book.
Juanita went off the play the pokies, I gave her what had been my last five dollars to go play. I then went up to make my claim and then had to wait about half an hour for them to call the manager and verify the win. They told me to have a seat and they would bring it out to me. Sure enough, they came out thirty minutes later and gave me $650. It was so cool. Felt like one of those big spenders at the casinos or something.
Anyway, turned out to be a good day. Naturally, by the end of the day, after we had left the club, I only had about $200 left but I got some things I had been putting off buying.
One of the things I decided to get was some hot sauce. I had to order that online when I got home. I seems that someone in Australia, near where I live by the way, has invented or grown the new hottest chili in the world. It used to be the Jolokia pepper from India, I think, but he has been working on creating the new hottest chili here in Australia. They are all based on the Habanero chili from Jamaica or something but they keep breeding them hotter and hotter and come up with a new variety to make them the hottest. Not that you can tell the difference once it gets that hot but by measurement, scoville units, the surpass the previous records.
Anyway, I bring up this ordering of the new sauce because they have just delivered it to my door. It is a BBQ sauce based on the chili, which I think is called the Trinidad Scorpion Chili. It is not an extract, which is what I want but cannot get over here. I used to get Dave's Insanity sauce in America and I smuggled two bottles in the last time I went home but they are long gone now. I can get a Habanero paste that is pretty good but I seem to have become immune to its effects and there is another past based on the Jolokia chili that is supposed to be hotter but I did not like the taste of it. I am hoping that this new sauce is hotter and since it is a BBQ sauce it is tastier. We will see. You have to order it online as they have not made enough to stock it in stores, but hopefully, it will be there soon as the shipping is $15 no matter how much you order.
I ordered two bottles and should have done it when I first heard about the sauce. It was $15 for a five ounce bottle a couple of weeks ago, but when I ordered this on Monday, it was $18 a bottle. So all up, for two five ounce bottles was over $50. Not sure it was worth the price and since the factory or farm or whatever it is that produces it is within an hour of where I live, shipping seems to be excessive. I might just take a drive over there to see if they sell direct to the public in their offices. Don't know exactly where it is, but it is in the Hunter valley, which is just across the freeway from where I am. If you want to look up the company and read more about it, and I don't know why everyone is not fascinated by this topic, the company name is The Chili Factory. Just google that and see the website. I'd put a link in here, but that would be way too fancy. Then again, lets give it a try.
The Chilli Factory
Hope that worked. Now that I have spent most of this entry talking about food again and not about the kids, I am going to try my new sauce. So I will be signing off now.
I have considered making these entries shorter and doing more of them but you know how I am. Lots of nothing and then a few entries, then lots more of nothing, so I am never sure when I will get around to it. There is an app on my iPhone that I have considered using but will have to test that out when I am thinking about it. Maybe in a few minutes, just to test it, but for now, I am ending this entry.
So, until next time
Talk to you later
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