It's Christmas Eve

Things continue to have been very busy but are beginning to quieten down quite a lot now.

We finished up the family weekend away at St Andrew's Beach and made our way back to Kate and Arj's for the Monday night.  We had Kate's children with us as well and got them home safely where they badly needed a couple of good night's sleep.  They have had that now.

Meanwhile on Tuesday we made our way to Indented Head and spent two great nights with my brother Geoff and his wife Jeanette.  We don't see a lot of each other so the time we spent together was both alcoholic and extremely pleasant.

Geoff and Jeanette have become involved with Probus, a social get together group of ex professionals and business people and Trish and I accompanied Geoff and Jeanette to their Probus Xmas Meeting.  It seemed fun so Trish and I may chase up a Probus group on the Sunshine Coast.  Fund raising is not involved with Probus which makes it an even more attractive proposition.

Following the meeting Geoff took us on a brief sight seeing tour of the local area.  The photo above was taken at a local Apple Cider producing establishment.  The outlook is delightful as you can see.

We finally arrived back at Kate's again (after a quick side trip to the Vietnamese Restaurants in Springvale) around mid Thursday afternoon.  Then it was out with "The Group" to another restaurant for the Xmas get together.  This time the meal was Thai!

We enjoyed nibbles and some drinks at someone's house, then went to the restaurant for the Main Course, before returning to house for sweets and Kris kringle.  It was all great fun and really good to catch up with old friends.

Since then things have been very very quiet.  I have slept for well over 8 hours the last two nights which is much more than I usually need.  I guess the last 6 weeks or so previously were beginning to catch up with us.

Xmas Eve will be quiet with a smallish Xmas lunch with Kate and family on Xmas Day.  Then that Xmas night we head to Arj's family's Xmas Dinner.  Being Sri Lankan, curries will be the order of the day. 

Boxing Day will see us at Drouin for a BBQ with Barry Rainy et al, while I am hopeful of getting to the Melbourne Third Cricket Test for days 2 and 3. Day 3 could be wet so we will wait and see on that one. 

Friday will be a quiet (watching Day 4 on the telly) and getting sorted day ready for the 1800km drive back home to Caloundra.  We are aiming at a one night stop over trip this time and have our sights set on Gilgandra which means a little under 950k's in the day.  It will be a long day but we did around 1100 k's when we drove from Newcastle NSW to Berwick on the way down.

With this plan we hope to be back home New Year's Eve.

But we will see!

Family Christmas Coming To A Close.

Heaps has happened since my last post.  We have safely completed the long drive from home on the Sunshine Coast to our daughter's home in Melbourne.  We spent several great days in perfect weather in Newcastle where we joined with around 30 others to celebrate Mick's 60th birthday.  It was a great few days.  Mick enjoys his technology too so needless to say much file and information swapping occurred.

Then it was a terribly long drive from Newcastle NSW to Melbourne's south east suburbs all in one day, around 1100 kilometres actually.  A spot or two of some Christmas shopping then down to St Andrew's Beach on the Mornington Peninsula with the whole family, partners and grandchildren, altogether to enjoy an early family Christmas.  We had rented a huge house with enough bedrooms to house us all, plenty of bedrooms and enough toilet and shower facilities for everyone.

It was pretty good being all together.  A swimming pool would have topped it all off nicely but this place didn't have a pool.  The Home Theatre Room was popular as was the pool table and the outdoor spa.  Wendy, Chris' wife did all the catering and cooking and did a sensational job.

There was ham, chicken, turkey, and all the trimmings.  We ate and ate and ate.  There was some drinking going on as well.  We swapped presents, tried on new clothes and had heaps of laughs.  Needless to say the grandkids had a ball.

It was extremely enjoyable for all and everyone seemed to enjoy themselves.

I am typing this on the last evening of our St Andrew's Beach stay.  We head back to Kate's tomorrow (Monday) before heading to my brother's place at Indented head down near Geelong for a couple of nights.  Then it is back to Kate's for a 'Group Night Out' and that should just about see us out until Christmas Day. Then it is Drouin for the 'traditional' Boxing Day revelry, a couple of days at the Boxing day test before setting sights for home and our own bed again!

The photo shows several of the grand kids enjoying St Andrew's beach.

Now To Get Packed .... again!

It is just on exactly 1 week since our return from Malaysia and Sri Lanka, and for the second time in a month, we are in 'getting packed' mode, this time for our Christmas trip to Melbourne.

Already the medications have been sorted, the computer stuff is all in hand along with the hard drives to share.

The Waeco ( a portable fridge) has been tidied prior to being loaded up this evening in preparation for a 9am Friday set off towards our first port of call Newcastle.  Our ETA in Newcastle is around 1pm Saturday afternoon!

Having some clothes already at my daughter's place in Melbourne makes packing a little easier.  I will need to pack socks though.  At this time of the year Melbourne is pretty well the only place I would wear socks!

I must pack my MCC membership card as well.

Since being home from overseas it has been resting and recovering from the Asia trip, a couple of small things for the Community Association, and tasks such as mowing lawns and just getting the place ready for another 3 weeks away.

Home will be a pretty good place in around 3 week's time I reckon!

Drinks at our place for Saturday didn't happen, washed out with some very heavy rain.  But we did eventually catch up with most people on Wednesday night even though it didn't go fully to plan.  The 5pm pick up by the Club's Bus didn't arrive until well after 6pm.  By that stage we had cancelled and headed off to the local Bellvista Tavern with friends.

It was a good night and was a glorious walk home around 9pm in the warm sub tropical evening.

As the photo above shows, getting back to our own home and backyard is something we will look forward to by the New Year.  But with all that I must say it will be great to catch up with family and friends 'down south'.

Loooong Day Thursday

Our earlier Air-Asia flight was due to leave Penang Airport around 1:40 pm on Wednesday.  It was a little too early, but then, when you are looking for the least expensive flight, you can always manage a fairly early departure and it was all OK by us.

Overall travelling with the budget Airline Air-Asia was pretty good.  Our plane was 30 minutes late leaving for Sri Lanka from KL and we had that one hour delay from KL to Penang.  We had been reasonably lucky so we felt ensuring we were in KL with plenty of time to spare for our Australia connection home was a good move.

As it turned out our new 1:40pm flight to KL was an hour late taking off while the flight we had originally booked, left at around 4:55pm, 10 minutes late but got into KL 10 minutes early.  So we would have been OK.

The Air-Asia airline was fine.  Trish did the booking for the Penang/KL leg on her tablet using the hotel's WiFi.  When we arrived at Penang Airport and its sh*t WiFi, of course she couldn't load the boarding documentation to show for check-in.  But thankfully she had written down the Booking Number.  The young Air-Asia guy told us not to worry and he walked over to the check-in kiosk and got all our information, boarding passes and baggage labels for us.

Then we had the one hour delay to wait out.

But it all worked out perfectly.  We had oodles of time in KL, managed to check in for the Australia flight early and then found a comfortable spot to await our departure.  The final meal of Char Koay Teow and Ipoh Seafood Hor Fun at KL International Airport were great ways for us to say farewell to Malaysia.

We endured the 8 hour 30 minute flight home before arriving at Coolangatta International Airport.  The only thing with an International quality at the airport was the name.  What a tin-pot dive that airport is!

We got through all the steps, immigration, baggage collection and customs not without the odd drama but we got there.  The 20 minute wait for our 'Transfer" transportation from the Airport to the Car Storage place didn't excite us but eventually we were on our way home in the little blue Honda.

We were home well before lunch and had unpacked and got ourselves sorted before catching up on internet, mail, paperwork and the like.

I slept for well over 8 hours while Trish was nearer to 10 hours all up.  Today was a clothes washing and catch-up sort of a day.  The computer wanted to do huge updates, I put a home brew on and did some general unlocking and tidying up.

I did collect my new Hearing Aid for my 'good' left ear this afternoon and boy what a difference that makes.

I suspect another good night's sleep is in order for tonight before my last Computer Club day for 2017.  The second Cricket Test vs England gets underway tomorrow afternoon.  Next week we head south to Melbourne for Christmas.