Be honest now; does my hair always look that bad? What’s with the double sticky-up bit at the front? I mean, I can’t even blame hat-hair, or Oscar-on-top-of-shoulders hair; that was all me. What was I thinking?

Anyway; it was super hot in the sun! That didn’t stop the craving for hot food though, and between us, Kristy and I enjoyed some dim sum, coffee, and a German frankfurter before leaving. We also walked away with french bread and cheese, all of which was devoured back at Ian’s house.

An awesome way to start a Sunday morning.

My only memory of being at Settlement Cove is from many, many moons ago, and I don’t think I’ve ever swum there before. It’s a very impressive installation, and it’s all completely free (well, run at the taxpayer’s expense at least!). The BBQs aren’t the world’s most flash to cook on, but did you see the price? Free! No-one’s can complain (much) about that!

Sadly, I didn’t get even one photo of the lagoon; in fact, the only photo I took all day was this one, of Oscar and Kristy playing in the playground next to where we were camped.

We’ve booked a follow-up visit with the same gang for March, so with any luck I’ll remember my camera and take some photos then, instead!

I know that by this point, you’re probably thinking one of two things; either, “Hey, awesome idea! You’re awesome!”, or, “Why? You’re a dork!”. Likely it’s the first one, but for the haters in camp two, let me answer your question with another question: “Why not?”. Kristy also agreed that at least one of us should know how to juggle, just in case such a skill should one day be needed to save our lives, and to this effect, she bought me a set of juggling balls for Christmas.

You may think that a handsome young father of a toddler (such as myself) would be somewhat short on time for juggling practice, but as it turns out, it’s completely the opposite! You see, said toddler has never been motivated by food – something we really should have seen coming – and as such, we’d do pretty much anything to get him to eat. And now, with juggling practice on the books, we have one extra distraction to use while the other person quietly encourages food into his mouth in the background.

Actually, his comprehension is getting amazingly good, to the point where eating has now become a negotiation. “Oscar, if you eat that quarter of ravioli, Daddy will juggle for you”. Yes, we realise that negotiating a child to eat probably isn’t something you’ll see on Supernanny, but since Oscar would be pretty happy to skip solid foods entirely, we don’t feel like we have much of a choice. Worse, I fear that we could be setting him up for long term disaster in his adult life, whereby every time he sees someone juggling, he feels a sudden urge to eat pasta.

Worse still, it’s not even the juggling that entertains him; it’s the failure at juggling that really makes him laugh. The whole time I’m delicately managing three balls in the air, he’s staring at me, just willing one of them to go astray. Thankfully though, he’s such a lovely, helpful little boy, that when he’s not strapped into his high-chair, he’s only too happy to go and fetch the fallen ball on my behalf.

Ahh, service with a smile!

In support of this transferability, the Red Cross blood van was inconveniently parked right along our path from work to Nandos, and try as we might, we just couldn’t not notice it. It’s huge!

If I were the type of guy who was into pimping out caravans, I’d definitely be stealing some ideas from these guys; their air-conditioning is the hammer!

Anyway – they didn’t appear too busy, so after filling up on chicken and chips, Ben and I signed up to bleed. I’ve tried to donate blood in the past – once, and it was way back when I was working for Compaq down the Goldie. They turned me down! There was too much iron in my blood, so they were worried that I might have haemochromatosis – a disease which causes you to have too much iron in your blood.

Now however, many years later and haemochromatosis free, the Red Cross was only too happy to harvest my goods. Of course, donating blood isn’t a competitive sport, and yet somehow they managed to turn it in to one by equipping the van with a leaderboard for fast bleeders! Apparently anything under six minutes is fast, and I managed to bleed out in 5:52. Yeah! My name and time is now written onto that board for the rest of eternity, or at least until someone wipes it off at the end of the day. If only there was a trophy that I could have unlocked.

Now, I’m certainly not going to be one to complain about a free park – in fact, quite the opposite; I think it’s remarkable how many awesome parks the council provides/maintains around Brisbane. We love the little park at the bottom of our street, and we can get to at least two others that are equally awesome in under 10 minutes walk!

However, Teralba Park did not live up to my expectations (though perhaps my expectations were a little unfair). As I said, from the road, the play equipment for the kids looked huge, so I was expecting a closer-to-home version of Arthur Davis park at Sandgate. But actually, there isn’t all that much there, especially given that the park is always so busy – there was easily a hundred other kids around while we were there. The slides with the steps next to them were a bit hit with Oscar, but overall, there wasn’t too much for a little boy of his age!

Of course, we still made our own fun, mostly just chasing after kids who decided to run in every direction they could. Poor Oscar didn’t have much luck running through the various lengths of grass over uneven ground, though his frequent falls didn’t seem to dampen his spirit at all. We had one very dirty little boy by the time we got home!

I’m very lucky to have a workplace that is very flexible with hours, so we’re going to try and start making regular mid-week trips, probably on a Wednesday morning. We figure that if we leave home by 6 AM, we’re at the beach just after 7 AM, which means even with a good hour-and-a-half of beach time, I can be at work a little after 10 AM.

So far in January, we’ve managed two trips in 15 days (one weekend and one midweek), which I think is a decent enough ratio. If we could hit three to five trips a month I think we’d be doing well!

Since digging up and replanting everything on the left-hand side of the garden, the plants there have been growing amazingly well. The basil grows faster than we can consume it (clearly we need more uses for basil!), and our cherry tomatoes have just started fruiting.

Given how well the left-hand side of the garden is now doing, we figured that the right-hand side should be treated to a little bit of replanting love as well. And so, we went through and dug up all of the dodgy old soil, and replaced it with about 150 litres of fresh new potting mix. The stuff that ended up on top was pretty loose, so we all had a go at stomping around to try and compact it a bit.

We’ve put in some new parsley and chives, and replanted the sage, oregano, plus the original basil plant. Only a few days on, the chives are already looking bigger and stronger – hopefully the same will be true for all the other plants soon too!

Because we’ve been a bit more organised about the position that the herbs are planted, we’ve got a decent chunk of space left over – I think we could easily fit another two plants in there. Any suggestions? We’d love to grow some coriander, but every time we try to, it dies! And we already have mint (growing very well in a pot), some lemongrass, and two chili plants (one which is doing exceptionally well this year). What are we missing?

New Year’s Eve 2011 was once again spent at BaM’s house, and we had Micah and Sarah, Ian, and Mel and Ben join us for the journey. And a good thing too, as everyone played a vital role in preventing the house from burning down! We’re still not entirely sure why the BBQ’s gas bottle suddenly erupted with flames, but thankfully we managed to get the situation under control – admittedly with a little bit of help from two fire trucks, an ambulance, and an army of emergency workers.

More photos and write up of the story on the newly redesigned stickfly.com.

Anyway – everyone was on a bit of an adrenaline high after the fire crew left, so staying up until midnight suddenly became a whole lot easier. In fact, it was after 1 AM by the time we actually got to bed – easily the latest night we’ve had since I can’t even remember when! What troopers we are!

Many thanks to Nonni and Poppi who hosted a slumber party for Oscar, which allowed us a sleep-in in the morning!

Happy 2012, everyone!

On paper, Christmas 2011 sounded like it was going to be a corker – four nights at Mom and Dad’s unit at Grand Florida, and no Christmas Day running around required. But sadly, things didn’t turn out quite so well; instead, a large part of my celebrations were spent resting in bed, trying to sleep off various sicknesses. It started out with back pain and stomach cramps on Christmas eve, which moved to fairly severe indigestion on Christmas day. Kristy shot up to reception to ask if they knew where she could buy some antacid, to which the 10 year-old boy manning the desk responded with, “Have you been bitten by an ant?”. As it turns out, the convenience store across the road had plenty in stock.

Boxing day wasn’t much better; my vision started going blurry early in the afternoon, which I’ve since learnt is an early warning sign for an incoming migraine. Unfortunately, this lesson was learnt the hard way, so most of Boxing Day afternoon was once again spent resting in bed. Oh, how the sunlight hurts the eyes!

In between my sickness and general feeling sorry for myself, the other troops did their best to enjoy their holiday – which is understandably difficult without me operating at full capacity. The opening of presents yielded quite a nice bounty – especially for Oscar, whose presents were so many (or more accurately – his opening technique was so slow) that he still hasn’t opened everything he was given.

All of the beaches were closed for most of our stay, due to the cyclone sitting off the coast. The swells were huge, and by Dad’s estimate, waves were breaking continuously for a few hundred metres back from the shore. By Tuesday afternoon, things had started to calm down. The lifesavers re-opened the beaches, and a few people ventured cautiously into the water.

Since we had to stay off the beach, we played mainly back at the resort. Oscar really loves the water, so he especially enjoyed swimming in the heated pool. We even had the pleasure of swimming with Al and Suz, and their cohort of kids on Tuesday morning!

As luck would have it, by Wednesday I was feeling right as rain, but sadly, our accommodation had expired. Worse still, the beaches were fully open again, and the waves looked amazing! Talk about a terrible time to leave!

Despite the sickness, it’s always nice to “get away” for a few days, and I’m very thankful for all my family members that were there to care for me. Hopefully I’l be a bit more sprightly on our next trip!

The first – and the half party – was at the Dahl residence last week. I’m only calling this “half” a party because it was actually a birthday party for Chellsie; however, given that its the last time we’ll be seeing the Dahls for a month (due to an amazing long overseas holiday on their part!), there was a bit of Christmas action going on there as well. The kids were all the big winners with lots of presents to start their holidays off right!

Party number two was my work Christmas party, with the venue this year being The Doomben Races. Although it was nice to spend some time with the workmates outside of the office, I don’t think I’ll become a regular race-goer. It didn’t help that half-way through the meal my stomach started feeling a bit dodgy, so that was the end of both food and drink for me!

I completely forgot to take any photos from the day, and all I’ve ended up with for memorabilia is this “awesome” shot that Rob took on his phone.

Classy, eh?

Finally, party number three came in the form of the Harvey family Christmas celebration, which was held on Sunday. I had to hit up the gastro stop in preparation, and thankfully, things were feeling a bit more solid down south come party time. Good thing too, as there was plenty of delicious food to be eaten!

Once again, the kids were the big winners with lots of new toys for them all. The light up super-bouncy balls were especially a winner with the Harvey circus! We did our best to try and get a photo featuring all four kids with Mia and Pa, but suffice to say, it is not an easy task. Believe it or not, this was the best one:

And, this is probably a close second. Not exactly a great example of Oscar’s best work, though.

Besides our lingering sicknesses, it’s been a great start to Christmas 2011, and there’s still plenty more food and presents (not to mention time off work!) to come!