family – Page 7 – helenthura.com

March 22, 2009

Sunday

Well, Mum should now be firmly on the ground in South Africa, she flew out on Friday for about month away in Southern Africa (i.e. not just South Africa). She is going to have a wonderful time but it will be strange not been able to pick up the phone and call her when I feel like it. Things are starting to settle down at work which is nice. Last week I switched from looking after the medical side of the applications for all the Navy and Air Force full time general entry candidates to now looking after the Army full time general entry candidates. It means that I am looking after a larger number of candidates and am now faced with enlistments every Monday as opposed to three times a month like I used to have.

I went to see Two Fists, One Heart yesterday and thoroughly enjoyed, especially the strong WA music presence in the soundtrack. With a broad brush it had some similarities to Two Hands, in terms of fighting, cars, bouncers and the not the girl ordinarily expected girl as the romantic interest. I would definitely recommend checking it out. Parts made me laugh and parts made me sigh.

This morning I gave the kitchen an autumn clean, top to bottom, I scrubbed, wiped and shined. This photo was taken two weeks or so ago but it gives you a fair idea of what the kitchen looks like.

I also did the seemingly weekly clean of my room; vacuuming, dusting and tidying. I don’t believe I have shared a picture of what my current room looks like. It is small but I do quite like having everything at an arm’s reach.

Talking of my room, that reminds me, I must share the incident that happened earlier this week. I was getting ready for bed, I had closed the deck door, turned off the lights, started the dishwasher and gone to clean my teeth. As I was brushing my teeth, I heard a tumble. I thought something had dislodged in the dishwasher and thought nothing much of it. I finished cleaning my teeth, looked at the dishwasher and it was fine. Then as I stepped into my room, I saw that some of the things from my bookcase had fallen onto the floor, as I looked up I came face to face with a Possum sitting on top of my bookcase. I was slightly shocked to say the least. Possums on the roof, possums on the power lines or possums in the back yard are fine. A possum on my bookcase is another matter. As you can see from the above picture, my room is narrow and there is only one way in and one way out. As I entered the room further the possum jumped and I ducked, it landed on my bed and scattered up to the desk. I started yelling at it to get out of the my room. Johnno hearing my yelling came to investigate and we managed to get the possum out of my room and into the kitchen, then with some fancy footwork the deck door was opened and the possum was let free. As the light was turned on in the kitchen and I walked back into my room, I discovered something the possum had urinated all over my room; the carpet, my bed, the wall, my desk, my laptop etc. Cleaning up possum urine is not pleasant. It is a tick slightly gelatinous liquid and cleaning it off the laptop is not at all fun. Normally I close my laptop when I switch it off at night. That night though for some strange reason I had left it open… if only I had closed it. Now that that story is off my chest…

Something that would surprise most people would be that I actually scapbooked today! I know! It has been a good handful of months since I last did something but the other week, I packed up a fair amount of stuff from my old room and brought it over here. In the picture below you can see the little chest of Ikea drawers that I have covered. They hold my computer cables in one little drawer and then in the others scrapbookig goodies.

It is now just gone 10pm and means it is time to retire to bed with a book and prepare for tomorrow been Monday.

February 20, 2009

Christmas Day 08

Oh what a day that was.
There was rain, sword fighting, food, laughs, food, turf adventures, swimming, french cricket, food, water fights, lots of photo taking and generally just a fun day.

Matthew and the girls came in my car for the trip to The Farm and oh what at trip that was. Seven odd weeks later, I still think of that trip with a smile on my face.

As has always been done, you take a selection of your Christmas presents to The Farm. Matthew took his gas mask and the girls took their SuperSoakers. The journey was spent with the gas mask rotating between the three of them and scaring/getting a laugh out of other cars as we drove past. It was classic.

The Christmas Table.
Even before I started suggesting “Christmas at The Farm 08” I had wanted to have a meal on a long table with a white table cloth out on the turf or under the pecan nut trees. This Christmas I had that long table with white tablecloths.

Another thing I had been thinking about for a long time was having my glass hurricane vase, filled with glass baubles filled with beads. Christmas Day, saw the girls and I sitting on the floor of the garage filling the baubles and trying not to spill too many beads on the floor! Once they were filled though they looked gorgeous!

One of my other ideas was a large stack of pinecones on Mum’s 21st platter. Al and Ash collected the pine cones for me a couple of days before Christmas but come Christmas Day, I left the platter at Mum’s. Instead the girls had fun wrapping the pinecones with ribbons etc

After morning tea, it was time for the Christmas Tree. There were a few silly gifts given between families as well as the regular gifts intra-family. One of those silly gifts was from Karl and I. When we were in K-Mart getting presents for the girls we saw these foam swords and went “sweet” We bought the four that Chermside had in stock and then when I went to Toowong, I emptied their shelves and got another eight – one for all the grandkids and two extras in case of damages or if partners/wives/the girls wanted swords as well. The foam swords ruled the day.

Once the sword fights waned. It was time for French Cricket. For Christmas, Matthew and I gave the girls a Kanga Cricket bat and ball as they had loved playing French Cricket with us. We only gave them the ball on Christmas Eve and had planned on putting the bat with their stockings for Christmas morning, however I forgot to put the bat out so I wrapped it and took it to The Farm. But! I left the ball at home, so we used a tennis ball. We used to play a LOT of French Cricket at The Farm when we were younger. I don’t remember Grandad playing it when we were younger but Grandmum always did.

French Cricket with eighteen odd players is one hell of a game. When one of the boys got in, they would field out so they could slog it and then get in nice and close when it was one of the girls. It was all fine till James slugged the ball into the sweet potatoes… We only had one ball. That was a good sign though that it was time to start getting lunch organised.

The table was re-set, the BBQ was lit and the snags were been turned and then it started to rain. Luckily, it comes in pretty handy to have a large shed round the corner and with plenty of people it is easy to just move the entire set-up.

Aunty Susan and her girls (and Ian) had made the bon-bons for Christmas Lunch. Inside each of them was a gorgeous beaded Christmas ornament, a scratchie and the other usual goodies

After lunch we had a Turf Tour with Max

The girls were total posers and had a great time posing for photos of each other sword fighting on the turf.

When the Turf Tour was over, we retired to the front lawn to prepare ourselves for dessert. For some this meant more sword fighting

comparing hair length

or just having their photo taken

Dessert was a treasure trove of yummy food.
Trifle from Erica! Plum Pudding from me! Pavlova from Lisa! mmm so much dessert.

With our stomachs filled with sweet treats, a realisation came upon that the light was not going to last much longer and we had not yet taken the family photos!

All the family minus James who had gone visting

We know how to fight

With the fall of darkness, Iceland, Mum and Pabbi returned to Brisbane. The Howie kids, Karl, Matthew and I moved onto The Block where the Williams were staying to chill out in the pool. We had a lot of fun making whirlpools (walking in single file round the edge of the pool as fast as you can) and hypothesising why it is that some people get more pruney than others in the water.

Christmas Day was the highlight of what was an incredible Christmas season and I am looking forward to the next big family Christmas when or wherever that might be.

You can see Mum’s photos from the day here – Mum’s Christmas Photos and the rest of my photos here – My Christmas Day photos

February 15, 2009February 15, 2009

Coomera Falls

Friday night, after a day and a half of rain, I received a call from Mum inviting me to go waterfall hunting the next day. Most people who reads this most likely a) know Mum or are Mum or b) know enough about Mum to know that she has a thing for waterfalls. It was lightly raining when Mum picked me up from my house yesterday morning and it continued to rain all the way to Binna Burra/Lamington National Park. As we drove up the range we hit a large bank of low flying clouds which made the place look so mystical. There is not many things as beautiful as watching the sun try to shine through a cloud filled eucalypt forest. The straight, tall trunks of the eucalypt standing tall.

As we drove further up the range to Lamington we came out above the clouds. In the car park whilst we were kitting up, we met a lovely couple from Boulder, Colorado. Louisa and David came up to us in the car park and said to us, you look like experienced bush walkers, how do you remove leeches? After Mum demonstrating how to get leeches off and a little bit of a talk, we invited them along on our waterfall hunt. They were great walking partners as they are both scientists and liked stopping to look at all these strange and wonderful Australian rainforest curiosities.

The curiosities included jelly fungi, what we believe were bio-luminescent fungi (they glow in the dark), walking stick palms, little finch like birds, a Christmas Orchid in full bloom, a cluster of earth stars, a massive puff ball, trees with foam coming out the bark, a perfect land snail shell, lots and lots of strangling fig fruits on the rainforest floor and of course one of the highlights a Lamington Blue Spiny Crayfish.

Christmas Orchid

Lichen

Fern

Fungi

The falls were incredible, there was soo much water gushing over the lip. Yarrabilgong Falls were just as spectacular, the water was actually spurting over the lip and going out a metre or two before falling. From the Coomera Falls lookout we actually continued up the track to the next creek crossing where we saw a few more waterfalls coming into the creek and the Coomera Creek was just gushing with water.

Mum had a great time exploring more with her camera (she got a Canon G10 about two weeks ago and is loving it :)) and I am looking forward to seeing some of the photos she took. We ended the day with drinks and cake in the tea house before parting and heading back to Brisbane. Louisa and David, fly home today to a very different climate from what they have had the last few weeks.

Leeches of all sizes were out in force yesterday, I lost count of how many I picked off before they started sucking my blood but I did end up with eight of the suckers going undiscovered. I now have an itchy leg that I am doing my best not to rub as I haven’t gone to the chemist yet to pick up some Telfast.

The rest of the photos are here – Coomera Falls Photos

January 27, 2009February 21, 2012

a tree, a tree, a glorious tree

â€œChristmas, children, is not a date. It is a state of mind.â€ Mary Ellen Chase (1988-1973)

This year/last year (Christmas 08 is what we are talking about here), instead of getting a Radiata Pine from the farm, we got a farmed Radiata from Real Christmas Trees. Oh my lordy what a tree it was. It was just packed full of branches and it was shaped like a real Christmas Tree! In saying that in hindsight, we would have done some selective pruning as since the tree was so bushy, the ornaments were to a degree buried in the pine needles.

Karl, the girls and I decorated on the afternoon of the 23rd. Well perhaps it is more true to say Karl and I decorated the tree whilst the girls had fun with the tinsel and taking photos. What follows are photos, lots of photos. IF the photo has Silja in it, it was taken by Birta, if it has Birta in it, it was taken by Silja, that applies for most photos, but pretty much the first half were taken by Birta, the next half were taken by Silja and then the last handful and the first few were taken by myself and then a handful near the end were taken by Karl. Does that make any sense? probably not.

Eventually the tree was covered with ornaments and then out came the magic texters and the girls gave tattooed our legs. I went to the doctors that afternoon to see about my leech bite with one leg covered in doodles 🙂

Karl

Wrapping the tree in tinsel

Birta and I doing silly faces

Due to the sheer number of photos to share from this day, here is a slide show again 🙂

January 24, 2009January 24, 2009

Christmas Truffles

I’m moving house in a week today and one of the things I hope to have done by then is to have finished blogging about Christmas 2008. So here is another post to bring me a little step closer to the end of the 2008 Christmas Extravaganza.

I have wanted to make chocolate truffles for quite a while now and on more than one occasion I have brought cream with the intention of making truffles but ended up using it for something else.

For Christmas I made two types, the first where Peppermint Dark Chocolate and the second where White Rum, White Chocolate. They were rolled in a mixture of toppings, crushed Candy Canes (any idea how hard that is?), coconut, cocoa and sprinkles. I was not 100% happy with how they turned out so I won’t be sharing a recipe but here is a link to a search on FoodBlogSearch where I got my basic recipe from. My main problem was getting the consistency right and looking back now, I can also tell you that the Brisbane weather might have a little bit to do with it as well.

The truffles were rolled over two sessions. The night that I made the mixtures Karl and Matthew came over for a little gathering. We tasted one of Karl’s beers that he brought with him. By far the best tasting beer I have ever had, if I could get a case of it I would. We sampled different liqueurs and port with ice-cream and then we rolled truffles and we rolled till the mixture warmed up too much and the table warmed up as well.

When it comes to crushing candy canes, let me tell you the following things do not work; using the end of a rolling pin and a soufflÃ© dish as a make do mortar and pestle, placing them in a plastic bag and whacking them with a rolling pin or placing the bag between chopping boards and whacking the top board, trying to grate them. I ended up chop, chop, chopping the candy canes till I had the pieces reasonably small enough to coat the truffles in. My “fun” crushing the candy canes resulted in Matthew buying me a nice beastly mortar and pestle for Christmas 🙂 What lovely brothers I have.

The next truffle rolling session was the day that we picked Erica and Ash up from the airport. Having learnt our lessons we knew how to roll them now and Mum’s house has air-con which made it a bit easier to roll them 😀

The following photos were taken by Mum.

and this is how we roll

They were a lot of hard work but oh my they were pretty tasty and they do look pretty!

FYI for the future though. Crushed candy canes absorb moisture from anything and turn into liquid candy canes. Eat them shortly after making them.

I’m thinking that this year truffles will be made for winter celebrations not Christmas!

Also you can read Karl’s account of the truffle adventure here – Food, truffles, sausages and possums

And speaking of Candy Canes, here are photos of the girls with candy canes they were given by the Station Master at Albion train station. Anna, the girls and I went into the city before Christmas to do some shopping and check out my office – the idea was to look at the view but I think they had more fun having their height and weight measured by one of the nurses who is my work mum #1 (I have two work mums at work :D) and listening to everyone gush at how cute they were. 😀

January 13, 2009January 18, 2009

Climbing with family

December 22, 2008.
Dear Diary,
Today I did something I haven’t done in years. I went Rock Climbing! I know you say, you haven’t done that in years. I think it has probably been almost ten years! Still I remembered that a) the general idea is to do your best to move up the rock face and b) take lots of photos. Karl used to do a fair bit of climbing when he lived in Aus and Al, one of my cousins from Tasmania is a bit of a climbing freak – he is more monkey/rock wallaby than human, KWIM? Erica and Ash, well they are just a poster couple for outdoor pursuits. I, I just take photos. Back to the climbing though. We all piled into my car and headed to that Gorilla looking mountain in the Glasshouses called Tibrogargan to a place called the Slider Wall for climbing, photos, mozzie bites, talking, more climbing and even more photos.

The first climb we did was Such A Nice Monster, Al walked up it first and put in the top rope anchor before Karl, Erica and Ash all followed suit. I had no intention of even trying it but I was there, I had a harness with me. I gave it a go in joggers and an infected foot, I didn’t get to the top but still I gave it a go and to some point enjoyed it. They then moved up a little and did The Most Monstrous Monster. It was really cool to see Al just walked/scamper up the face. After a little bit more climbing and more photos we moved up the Upper Slider Wall for great views and more climbing for the boys.

We managed to get to the car a few minutes before dark which was very handy, then it was a trip to the drive-throu for some beers and back to The Block for dinner with the Tasmanian crew. Sometime later when it was late, Karl and I made the drive home to Kedron tired and happy. I don’t know when I will go climbing again but I did have fun.

Helen
PS, I guess I should share some photos shouldn’t I?