Oscar’s “big” present from us this year was a tricycle (full credit to Kristy for this one). We didn’t take it away to the coast with us as we figured there wouldn’t be much use for it while we were there; instead, we assembled it upon our return to Brisbane while Oscar was sleeping off his drive home nap. Of course, he immediately wanted to take it for a spin once he woke up and saw it, so we headed down to the Kedron Brook bikeway for a cruise through the park.

Yep, the tricycle is a huge winner!

As far as Christmases go, 2011 will probably not be going down in our books as “The one to be beaten”. No, I think for now the Christmas ski trip of 2007 remains unchallenged at the top of the list for me!

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!

When I used to live over at Bracken Ridge, the Durhams used to come over each year just before Christmas, and we’d all walk over to Wickfield Street, where the first dozen (or so) houses on either side of the road put on a fairly impressive display of Christmas lights. Obviously, this tradition couldn’t be kept up while we were living overseas, but last year, we resumed right where we’d left off with our annual Christmas expedition to Bracken Ridge.

Boy were we disappointed when we found out that there were no lights on display!

So this year, instead of suffering disappointment at the hands of thoughtless tenants who don’t attempt to out-do Chevy Chase, we decided to do a little bit of research, and find ourselves an alternate source of lighting spectacular. As it turns out, there’s a house just around the corner from us at Bowers Road South, who won the 4KQ Christmas Lights competition for Brisbane North!

Clearly we had to go and investigate, and it wasn’t long before we discovered exactly why they were the winners. Firstly, their plot of land is huge, and they open it all up for the public to walk through. And, the place is covered in lights!

And it’s not just lights either; they have a whole “rainforest walk” to go through, a huge model train set, a model European city, a sleigh for the kids to sit in, and even a face-in-hole scene for the Julians of the world.

The only downside I can see to a display like this (apart from the obvious power bill) is that I don’t know how they can top it next year. Only one way to find out, I guess!

One of the best things about working on our little street in Newstead has been the Pipi Designs Espresso Store. Not only did it mean that delicious coffee was only a short stroll away, but the two proprietors – David and Carol – are the friendliest baristas that I’ve ever met! From 6:30 AM every weekday, they were always there to help brighten up the mornings with a coffee and a chat – and needless to say, they knew everyone by name, and their regular coffee order!

Sadly for us, they’ve decided that the time has come to move on! Their business has been sold to someone else (who I’m yet to meet/judge), but of course it will never be the same without them. And so, we all said “farewell” to them on Friday, as they made us all our last ever Pipi Designs coffee. Well, actually, I managed to convince them to let me make my own coffee – after all, I’ve always wanted to be a full-time barista!

(Thanks to Ben for the photo)

David and Carol will definitely be missed around Newstead, but hopefully they’ll find happiness in whatever ventures they take on next!

“Christmas” and “pigging out” go together like “Pearl” and “Jam”, and we’ve been doing our best to honour this sacred tradition. We kicked things up another notch last weekend, when Jason and Susan hosted an (extended) family Christmas party at their place.

Even Oscar got in on the action, throwing less food onto the ground compared to what he normally would!

Rounding off the weekend of pigging out was morning tea at Mark and Jen’s place (our back neighbours), where we did our best to consume as much coffee and sugar as possible. Kristy’s “North Pole” cupcakes were a rather impressive highlight.

Back when Oscar was only a few weeks old, Todd and Shannon sent him a lovely trainee barista apron. So cute! And yet, so practical! After all, Oscar has been in training since the day he was born! Perhaps even since before he was born, if that’s technically possible!

Admittedly, the first few months of lessons were centered around self control during periods of loud noise, and I can now happily report that Oscar no longer bursts into tears when the coffee grinder is turned on. Success!

Since then however, we’ve moved on to more hands-on exercises:

You don’t have to say it. I know he’s awesome.

(Ok, you can say it.)

It’s been a good couple of weeks in terms of new gadgets.

First up was my Galaxy Nexus phone, which by an unfortunate co-incidence, got delivered to work on the day that I fell sick. Thanks again to Piet for dropping it around to our house while I was on my deathbed!

This is Google’s latest in its series of “Nexus” phones, running the spanking new version of Android – Ice Cream Sandwich. Having now owned (at least) one of each type of smartphone (iPhone, Android, and WP7 – I don’t count Blackberry as a smartphone!), I can definitely say that of the three, Android best fits my needs. I’m a huge fan and consumer of so many of Google’s services (GMail, Google Calendar, Picasa, etc) so using a phone that was built to integrate with all of them seems like a no-brainer.

Ice Cream Sandwich is a huge step up for Android! It’s so fresh! So clean! I love the new font that they use, and the usability tweaks are brilliant (e.g. swipe left/right to dismiss nearly anything). And it shines on the phone’s huge, gorgeous screen – 4.65″! I also love the fact that there are no hardware buttons on the front – everything is rendered on the screen instead.

Of course, like all smartphones on the market, it’s not without its faults. Firstly – battery life is terrible. If I unplug the phone at 6 AM, it’s begging to be put back on the charger by 9 PM, and that’s after a day of fairly light usage. The screen is consistently the biggest offender, always topping the “Battery Usage” chart by a fairly sizeable margin. Secondly – I’ll be shocked if anyone can snap an award winning phone on the camera. Why on earth Samsung decided to equip the Nexus with a very average 5 MP shooter is beyond me, especially when the older Galaxy S II has a far superior 8 MP camera on board.

Still – overall, I can live with these two drawbacks, because everything else is awesome. I’ve never enjoyed a phone so much as this one!

Gadget number two – and proof that I’m not the hater of Apple that people seem to think I am – came in the form of a new 15″ Macbook Pro. This is actually the third Macbook Pro that we’ve had, and it replaces our last one which is now about five years old. And boy, haven’t they come a long way! I love the bigger (i.e. higher resolution) screen, and I’m amazed by how many gestures are baked in to the operating system. It’s taken a bit of time to get used to the “natural scrolling” though!

The main reason for the upgrade was that our old machine struggled to edit high-definition video, and I’m yet to find a more user-friendly “home movie” maker than iMovie. So, next time I’ve got a bit of time up my sleeve (and some source video to play with, of course!) I’m going to see how the new machine fares!

No more gadgets on the horizon for now, but I’m always on the looking for new ways to waste invest some money!

Christmas season is in full swing in Australia, and we already have two-and-a-half parties under our belts!

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!

After a week of doing as little as possible – save for recovering from uber-gastro, of course – we were pretty keen to get out of the house, just to check that the world outside was still trolleying along without us. Conveniently, Matthew and Emily were in town on a holiday from the UK, and we managed to convince them to join us on a journey to Natural Arch.

Sadly for them, my skills at programming DougDoug on the fly aren’t too crash hot, and before we knew it, we’d driven most of the way to Murwillumbah! Oscar by this point was politely asking for a temporary reprieve from his carseat, at around the same time we saw signs towards Tumbulgum – which Mom and Dad had recommended in the past – so we pulled over for some lunch.

Actually, it’s a lovely little spot – quiet, off the beaten track, and right on the Tweed River. We sat on the deck at the Tavern and enjoyed a hearty lunch, but by far the highlight (for Oscar at least) was all the fans on the ceiling! He spotted about 15 and was going absolutely mental pointing them all out to us. Kristy and I were a little surprised that he was completely nonplussed at the dig-dig-digger out the front!

Between Kristy and Matthew, we worked out where Natural Arch actually was and managed to get DougDoug to give us some revised directions, so we made our way back via the very scenic route through the mountains. Eventually we arrived at Natural Bridge national park, and made the short walk down to Natural Arch. It’s beautiful!

If you visit in the evenings, the cave fills with glow-worms, and walking into it brought back a faint memory from childhood of doing exactly that – though I’m hard pressed to remember exactly when that may have been. Anyway – definitely sounds like an activity to put onto the “to do” list for when Oscar is a bit older!

Although our day was a bit haphazard in the end, it was lovely to spend so much time just catching up with Matthew and Emily! And also to see so much beautiful scenery, just a short drive out of Brisbane – I think some more day/weekend trips through that area are in order for this summer.

We may have been a bit under the weather lately, but it’s reminded me of just how blessed we are. Sickly, but blessed.

When I first caught the bug (ok, ok, Gordon), I had a husband to stumble into the bathroom in the middle of the night offering me a glass of water or anything else I might need. I had a co-parent (same guy!) to entertain Oscar and try to keep him away from Mummy’s germs. I’ve no idea how single parents manage sometimes. Hats off to them.

When germ-lockdown failed, Oscar had his Daddy to cuddle him and reassure him that he’d be ok.

When it looked like he wasn’t ok, we had his devoted grandparents, willing to drop everything and help take him to the hospital and fetch medicine for me.

When Gerrod fell victim, we had access to an ambulance and medical care, and the means to afford it.

When we were effectively quarantined, since nobody else wanted to meet Gordon, we had each other to share quarantine with.

Things could definitely be a lot worse.