Home of Slightly Cracked Dreams

I was very grateful yesterday that the people the exchange students stayed with for their last few days were unable to take the girls to the airport, which allowed me to. I was concerned the girls were not getting the whole concept that they were going home, and that home was a different country, so to take them to the airport and see them get on a plane was a good opportunity.

I didn’t count on the fact I would be the one fighting back tears and sooking all the way home as I listened to the kids radio station. Far out I’m the biggest sook under the sun.

It’s amazing to think that in such a short time people do become part of your family. It also reminds me of one of my favourite quotes: “Friends are the family you make for yourself”*. We don’t get to choose our family (although I think I got lucky, personally), but our “family of friends” we do.

Right now they’re on (or getting on) their plane home in Sydney. My girls waved goodbye at the airport understanding they were going home, which was a long way away. And I watched Little Women last night - the perfect excuse for a little cry.

And today there’s still washing to do, food to cook, children to feed and clothe.

* Despite searching the web I couldn’t find the author of this quote, so I’m assuming it was anonymous - but I’m willing to be corrected if anyone knows….

As you may have read, we’ve had two exchange students visiting over the last few weeks. They’ve stayed here for just over a week and a half, and tomorrow we’re taking them to the airport to fly home. There are so many benefits to hosting students I’ve had to struggle to narrow it down to five, but here they are:

1. Make Friends - there’s nothing like living with people to quickly bond and become firm friends. I’m sure I had the two most delightful students possible (they have the address of my blog so I have to be nice ), but sharing meals, bathrooms and those late nights and early mornings are when friendships are formed, not out in the world as people go about their daily tasks.
2. Learn about different cultures - this is so obvious it kind of goes without saying, but I’ve included it because it’s kind of the fundamental point. For them to learn about you, and you to learn about them. We were pretty lucky to have the Olympics on while the girls were here, so another cultural activity to bond over. We learnt about festivals in Germany, and the girls learned about exploding Tim Tams (personally I was shocked they got here after 4 weeks in the country and no one had showed them Tim Tams).
3. Entertaining the children - ok, if you don’t have children this won’t help you much, but my kids were fascinated and thoroughly entertained by two new friends who hadn’t seen their toys, dances, songs thousands of times before.
4. Extra Income - Our exchange students came through the Lions club, but if you take on students from a local English college they quite often pay board, which, if you have a spare room can be a great way to bring in a little extra cash.
5. Cleaning out the spare room - If you’re like me, you have a spare room that could be usable, but for the piles of crap stuff that you can’t get rid of and don’t have time to sort through. Having guests is motivation to clean up that spare room and get some use out of it.

Today I’m over at Aussie Bloggers whining about my family again. It seems I’m not alone with the weird family tea drinking habits.

But just to show I haven’t abandoned you, you’ll notice over in the sidebar you now have the option to subscribe via email. That means whenever I publish a rant thoughtful, well written article, you’ll have it delivered straight to your inbox. When you enter your email address you’ll get a new window confirming the address and asking you to enter a captcha. It will send you an email with a link to click on, and you’re away. But still totally in touch with me. And I don’t every see your email, so don’t worry about what I’m going to do with it, k?

Or if you’d prefer to use a reader, you can click on the shiny orange button to ensure you don’t miss any of my scintillating posts.

Just another way I’m taking care of y’all.

There are some things that bug me you know? Not bug me as in oh my god that totally bugs me to the point I’m going to lose my mind and go on a shooting rampage, but more like

gee that’s annoying and I really wish everyone would do it my way cause clearly my way is superior and gee that feels better to get it out of my system like that. What’s for dinner?

Like our cutlery drawer. For years the knives, forks and spoons have gone in just that order from left to right: knives, forks, spoons. Easy, simple. For some reason when I was away Hubby decided that it should go: forks, spoons, knives. Because that’s how you set the table. Ok, fair point, but it’s now 6 weeks later and I’m STILL not used to it. Because it should go: knives, forks, spoons. It’s gone that way ever since we’ve been living together. I’m fairly certain my parents do it the same way.

So chime in dear readers, what is the order of cutlery drawer?

Here we are for another week. My freezer is bulging with meat, so we need to eat our way through it.

Monday - Corned Beef in the slow cooker with cauliflower, steamed veg and white sauce

Tuesday -  Meatballs and pasta

Wednesday -  Crumbed chicken, rice and veggies

Thursday - Sweet & Sour Veal Stir Fry

Friday - Sausages, Mash & Veggies

Saturday - Roast Chicken & Roast Veggies

Sunday - Fried Rice using leftover roast chicken

To see what everyone else is eating this week, head over to Organizing Junkie

I think the universe is taking pity smiling on me today, I have 3 wonderful things to report tonight.

1. Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has placed a 20 year moratorium on Shale Oil Mining in the state, effectively ending the “investigation” in the Whitsundays I discussed in what is now my most popular post ever: Bye Bye Nemo??? This is a wonderful boost for our town, and while it’s hard to believe the government would seriously have considered it, it was far too important to be ignored. I thank everyone who signed a petition or stumbled/dugg my post to help raise awareness.
2. My puppy should be well enough to come home tomorrow. We had a couple of days there we didn’t think he’d make it. I’m pleased to report today he turned up his nose at dog food, ate BBQ chicken and growled at the vet’s father . He must be feeling better.
3. Tonight Meg from Dipping into the Blogpond contacted me to let me know that I had finally made it into the Top 100 Australian Blog Index she painstakingly puts together every month. Ok, so at number 96 I’m not going to take over the internet just yet, but it’s something I’ve been secretly coveting for just over a year, ever since I found Meg’s blog through Miscmum.

So there you have it, a lovely end to the week, which, despite it’s many many downs, still brought me a lot of joy.

1. Turns out Miss Moo does have chicken pox.  I haven’t left the house since Wednesday morning.
2. My dog isn’t doing so great. He got a tick Wednesday afternoon, and has been at the vet every since. Despite the damn thing only being in there for a couple of hours, he’s not improving as quickly as the vet would like.
3. My phone is still touch and go. I haven’t been advised that it’s been fixed, but the diversion was taken off so I assume they did something. Loving the communication too.
4. The Olympics are over this weekend. Don’t get me wrong, I totally love watching the Olympics, but14 days is definitely long enough
5. Shopping. I have lined up DH to watch Miss Moo for an hour tomorrow morning so I can go for some retail therapy at my favourite shop. She’s having 50% off shoes and bags as well. Umm…. where did I put that credit card?

I did start writing this on Monday, but as you will see by my previous post, Monday was not a great day, and it has taken this long to get around to finishing the menu plan. 

Here we are again, this week with a vegetarian edition as we have two exchange students with us, one of whom is a vegetarian.

Monday - Vegetarain Lasagne with salad and bread roll After the day I had on Monday we had Pizza.

Tuesday - Vegetable stew with mashed potato The exchange students were out so we had meatloaf. Yummy!

Wednesday - Pasta bake with salad and bread roll Mother-in-law to the rescue after another disastrous day with her spinach pie, salad and bread rolls.

Thursday - Try again for the Lasagne and salad and bread rolls.

Friday - Pumpkin and spinach pasta bake

Saturday - Out to the local pub for dinner

Sunday - Hamburgers/Veggieburgers

Head over to Laura’s I’m an Organizing Junkie for more Menu’s, even if the week is half over

Or why there was no Menu Plan Monday post yesterday.

5:30am - get up, make tea. Sit quietly and enjoy the peace.

6:30am - howls of protest from the bathroom. No hot water. Hubby plays with gas etc etc. no hot water

7:30am - call gas company, automated system for which you need a customer number. I don’t have one. I can call another number and talk to a real person. I call the other number, wait on hold for 10 minutes to be told they can’t help me without a customer number. Then my phone cuts out. Another fault.

7:45am - try and wake up two teenagers. Wave them off for showers at the in-law’s and the day.

8:30am - call gas company again, organsie replacement bottles for Wednesday. Suggests hooking up bbq gas bottle til then.

9:00am - call RE agent and advise one empty gas bottle was installed in the new house.

9:30am - call Telstra and advise of phone issue. Fault on the phone line. Again. Two days to fix, divert to mobile, bla, bla, bla. The usual. This would be the 9th such fault in 5 months.

10:00am - Internet? gone. I almost start crying. To keep myself busy I make baby food for Meg.

11:00am - I hear msn log in - Internet! Hooray!

12:00pm - Hubby gets home and fiddles with Hot water. After an hour he gets it working. In the meantime I’ve got the baby out of bed (first time she’s woken up since going back to sleep at 5:30am) changed her nappy and noticed a blister on her lower tummy. Noticed another one on her chest. While feeding I see loads of red spots on her head. After feeding I check her back and there’s more. Then she throws up a fair bit of her feed. In between phoning gas company and changing the order for 1 gas bottle, calling the RE agent telling her what the problem is, making lunch for kids, I spoke with a friend on msn and was worried about chicken pox with the exchange students here and the ABA meeting I was at on Thursday with 3 babies and 3 pregnant women. Called 13 HEALTH and it wasn’t conclusive, so I jumped in the shower (finally!!!) and then called the dr’s for an appt. At this stage it’s nearly 2pm.

2:00pm - dump the girls at the in-law’s and race to the Dr’s with Meg (could only see me at 2:20pm) almost certainly NOT chicken pox and either a reaction to injections or low grade viral infection. Should clear now, definitely within a week - if they don’t start going down tomorrow we’re to go back.

3:00pm - get to the in-law’s and collapse into a chair and my wonderful father-in-law made me a cup of tea. The german girls got dropped off there. Another cup of tea to calm my nerves before coming home at 5:00pm.

5:00pm - order pizza for tea. Collapse in a heap.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago about how I had been really slack and not been swimming for ages. I still haven’t done any training, but I have last week done a course that will definitely encourage me to be at the pool more.

I did the Austswim Teacher of Swimming and Water Safety course, as well as the Teaching Infant and Toddler Aquatics. Both pools in the area have offered me training time at their pools, and offers of work are there as well.

I really really enjoyed the course. I have a fair bit of work to do to get my qualification though. This is my long term project I mentioned yesterday. I have about 8 things to do for it.

1. Get a blue card. These are for working with children in Queensland. I have had one for 3 years, but it is due to expire soon so I need to reapply for that.
2. Find someone to supervise my exams. I have a couple of options here, I just need to sound them out and arrange the times, have the exams sent to them and sit them. Of course study will be required.
3. Sit the exams. There is a 2hr exam for each course
4. Do a first aid course. I only need my CPR to complete the course, but it’s been 10 years since I did a Senior First Aid course (not counting the basic first aid I did at a previous job, even that is 2 years ago now), and I firmly believe it’s something everyone should do. So I’m going to get that done and tick it off my long term list as well.
5. Organise 10 hours of training at one pool.
6. Organise 10 hours of training at another pool. It was suggested we get experience at different environments to experience different ways of doing things. I met people from the other pool at the course who are keen for me to do some work with them. This pool is at one of the schools I’m thinking of sending M&M to.
7. 3 Lesson plans. I need to do 3 lesson plans for each course. I have already done one as part of the training on Wednesday, but there are 6 more to do.
8. Get a photo and complete the application form. This is probably the easiest part, so I’ll probably leave it til last.

I set myself a deadline to get all this done by the 19th of October. The “season” officially starts here at the beginning of October, so that will give me a couple of weeks to get my training done, and by then I’ll know some kids, and the pools and hopefully some work will be there for me as well for the season.

I don’t want too much work out of this - more an excuse to get myself to the pool and maybe a few hours work on Saturdays, or during school when M&M starts next year. The great thing is it’s very flexible and I can take the kids with me when I need to.

I really enjoyed the course too. I could see myself maybe doing my coaching courses one day. It’s been great watching the swimming at the Olympics as well, just to see the effects of what we’re teaching, and the reasons behind it. I can’t believe how much I learnt about the mechanics of swimming.

So, would you trust me to teach your kids to swim?