GOODBYE.......... FOR NOW

On Friday 9th October 2009, at 8am, my brother and I lost our beloved Dad to Cancer.

He had fought a long battle over 2 1/2 years with this horrific disease and did extremely well with it all. It was only in the last 2 weeks that it finally caught up with him when he began to deteriorate rapidly.

I contacted Scott in FNQ at lunch time on Wednesday and suggested that he should come to spend some time with Dad. Scott arrived early on Thursday morning and spent the day with him. By mid-afternoon, when I arrived after school, he was in a large amount of pain and the Dr had prescribed a Syringe Driver of morphine to be administered. The Dr had just advised Shirley, my brother and my uncle that his life expectancy was only "a matter of days".

The Blue Nurse had just arrived to administer and attach the Morphine Syringe Driver. This was a nurse who I work with and he told me that "he'd look after my Dad for me". To that, I replied: "You'd bloody better". Shirley told Scott and I to go and have some time together and she told us that shortly after we left, he was asleep and snoring.

He slept right through the night, and passed away peacefully at 8am on Friday morning.

I was at work when Shirley rang me and I arrived at the house at about 9am, where I stayed with Scott, Shirley, Uncle Dick, Sallyann and David for the rest of the day.

As heart-wrenching as it is to see him go, it is a blessing that he is not suffering anymore.

We woke up to rain this morning, so we can only hope that he has organised that so that is citrus trees can have some water.

Rest In Peace Dad, and we'll see you on Thursday morning.

RIVERFIRE 2009 FEATURING F111 DUMP & BURN

Tonight marks the start of Brisbane's Annual River Festival with "RiverFire". It's a monster fireworks display all the way up and down the reaches of the Brisbane River from the western end of the city to the mouth of the river. It has always been highlighted by and "Dump & Burn" display of 2 F111's as they fly at low level down the river. This was all simulcast on one of our local FM radio stations too.

The planes are based here in Brisbane at the Amberly AirForce Base. Unfortunately, because of the age of these planes, this is marked the final Dump & Burn by these planes, so it was a very special night here.

Because of this, we decided to take the kids half way into town to see it IRL instead of just on TV, like we've done every other year. Being nearly 10, DS was very keen to see the planes perform IRL anyway.

We didn't go all the way into the city or river bank because all roads leading into the city were blocked off anyway, and all the public parks close to the city and river were packed with 1000's of people. Best to stay away from those numbers of people, with young kids, after dark anyway, we thought.

The city also put on a FREE Chris Isaak Concert in the Botanical Gardens in town tonight as well. It is right in the centre of where all the entertainment etc was. Would've been a great gig, if you could get there early enough this afternoon. Great music, great light show, great overhead entertainment - and all at an even greater price : FREE.

Oh well, tomorrow it's back to normal again - washing, cleaning and relaxing a bit. Talk to you again soon.

"NARNIA" FILMING HAS STARTED

Earlier this week, I read in the local paper that the filming of the latest "Narnia" film has begun here at Cleveland. On Tuesday, I picked the kids up from school and took them up to the site to have a look.

All of the filming was taking place in the deck of the ship so we couldn't really see very much, but the Director was connected to a PA system so that all visitors to the parkland could listen to all the directions of the movie. What we couldn't see, we could get a mental picture of by listening to these directions.

I was able to take some random photos with my little camera which surprised me somewhat when I uploaded them to the computer. One of the stars of the movie appeared in nearly all of my photos. It was rumoured in the local paper that Aussie TV star Garry Sweet was starring as the ship's captain. Anyway, the proof is in these photos. There, on the Quarter Deck, overlooking the 'sword fight' scene is Garry Sweet himself. Clearly given away by his bald head in the photos. Sorry the quality of the photos isn't brilliant, but that is the best I could do with my little camera.

FATHER'S DAY 2009

Father's Day was a beautiful sunny and hot day here.

We had my Dad & Shirley and Aat come over for a special morning tea because Rick had to go to work after lunch. That ruled out any plans for going out to lunch.

Of course, swimming was the order of the day for the kids and they were in and out of the pool several times during the day.

HAPPY 7TH BIRTHDAY

WOW! Is it THAT long since I posted anything here?

Last week was Tyler's birthday which happened to fall on a Monday, so we had her birthday party on the following Saturday.

On her actual birthday, we drove down to the Gold Coast to pick up Opa from the plane, because he was flying home from a weekend in Melbourne. We deliberately got there a bit early and we had a walk on the beach at Tugun for about an hour. The weather was just perfect. Not too cold and windy, but not too hot either. The clothes that Tyler is wearing in the photo was just the right beach attire that day. Of course, the kids just HAD to run down to the water's edge and get their feet wet, and the water was REALLY COLD!!!! which was the reason for lots of screams and squeals when the waves got to them. The water was soooooo clean and blue and the new sand on the beach was so white and clean.

I love the early morning sun on the ocean.

The birthday girl dressed for the beach on a Winter day.

Testing the water................

What a glorious day.

Here are some photos from the birthday party. She had a lovely group of little girls come around and we had home-made marshmallows, coconut ice, sausage rolls and 'little cups of coffee' ( made from biscuits, marshmallows, lifesavers and freckles). The cake was a Princess' tiara made from lots of cupcakes.

We did some craft, played musical statues, limbo and had a treasure hunt.

She got some beautiful presents - and all 'crafty' ones. I wonder where that comes from??????

Tyler with 2 of her friends

All the girls and,

with 1 of the cupcakes that made up the cake

DARLING DOWNS ZOO

During the recent school holidays, Rick was fortunate enough to be having the weekends off, so we decided to make the most of those weekends to go out for lots of drives in the country. We felt that we owed it to the kids because we were both working during the week and they had to stay at home for most of the time with whichever parent wasn't working.

On the first weekend, we decided to take them out to see the Darling Downs Zoo which is slightly south of Toowoomba.

It is only a small zoo, and due to the miserable and unpredictable weather, we had been right around it in less than an hour. It was a really cold day, so it was nice to get back inside the car to have some lunch (breadrolls I had made before leaving home) and a nice warm cup of coffee.

After that, we kept on driving, and just another 40km up the road, we found ourselves in Warwick, so we stopped there for about an hour or so and had a wander through the local shopping centre (the only place still open after midday on a Saturday) and Rick and I even bought ourselves a new pair of shoes each at the local Williams shoe shop.

We stopped at the Big Orange in Gatton on the way home and stocked up on fresh fruit and veges for the week. It was still mid-afternoon so we stopped in Laidley for a look at some new housing estates that we had heard about. What a beautiful little country town. We also saw some friends (Tyler's school friend from last year) who moved out there late last year, so we stopped and had a cup of coffee with them and the kids could catch up and play too.

WHAT A GREAT DAY OUT!!!!

A TRIBUTE TO MY GRANDPARENTS

It's taken me the best part of the last week, but I finally finished this today for a Linda's Shabby Chic Challenge over at Scrap Pile.

The challenge was to just make a card, but Linda had sent this beautiful Basic Grey Kit for a Matchbook Album, so I thought I'd use that - just a tad more than a card.

I am really happy with the finished result. I showed it to my Dad when he came over this afternoon and he was very impressed with the way I had preserved some of these memories.