10.22.09
I’m so excited!
There’s a piece of news that is 95%-99% certain – but I’m not actually going to share that with you just yet as that is highly likely to jinx it completely!
But because of this news, Hubby agreed that I could get a little something:
It’s not a full-on SLR but I decided, having admired my friend Liz’ for months and months now, that I’m not really a photographer-photographer. I want a camera that has a lot of features I get to play with, great zoom, will do some things for itself and basically give me crisper pictures than the tough camera I’ve been using. The Mju was always meant to be Hubby’s – to go kayaking and cycling with. But because it had a lot of neat scene settings on it, I had fun using it. I’ve become less and less impressed with some of the photos once printed though as it seemed very susceptible to producing noise. I played with a whole bunch of settings but nothing really seemed to improve it.
Then another friend, Del, lent me her S5 to take some pics. It felt like an SLR, but was smaller. And it took great pics! Great – I couldn’t believe how clever I was – er, the camera was. Well, the s5 has been replaced by the SX10 which in turn is already replaced by the SX20 very recently. Having done a bunch of homework, there are some hiccups in the SX20 which meant a lot of people were preferring the model it replaced. And seeing as there is a significant price differential, I opted for the SX10.
And I did a bunch of homework on that too – Hubby is currently here:
Has been for almost two weeks in fact. We were hoping that he might find the model I wanted a bit cheaper as electronics are often cheaper in Asia. But alas, not really the case in this case. And after hunting out as much info as I could online to pass on to him, I find I can get quite good deals here. Until finally this morning I clinched the best deal of all! Almost $150 off the RRP. Yay – go me!! Hubs gets to collect it on his way to customs as he makes his way home 
Anyway, that is why I am so excited – I’ll be getting my hands on my very sought after new toy on Saturday. Wooo-hoooo!!
Anyway, all that nonsense and mayhem aside, the last two weeks around the place have been *interesting*.
First two weeks of terms pretty much done. Those two weeks come hand in hand with Term 4 school swimming. Two very, very tired school boys reside in this house at present. It wasn’t helped too much with me getting a touch of tummy bug overnight on Friday/Saturday. It definitely isn’t pleasant, and I had to call in reinforcements to help with the Mr’s. Thank you Donna and Bevan and C and M!!!!
But my tour of solo-duty is pretty much up – Mr 5 has a countdown calendar going so he knows how many sleeps until Daddy is home. Mr 8 has tried very hard to limit the tantrums.
The second car is now warrented again, and I have even started on a couple of large-ish projects I’ve been meaning to get done for a long time now. The Angus-a-fied back lawn has seen some repair work, and hopefully in a couple of weeks I’ll be rewarded with green, grass-like shoots showing. Likewise, my wardrobe no longer has an excess of very old clothes that were never going to see the light of day on me again. Having Hubs absent for a little while has proved beneficial.
But we are definitely looking forward to Saturday and having him home again.
And it’s NOT just because of the package he’ll have picked up on the way through. Although I am looking forward to that as well. 
10.05.09
School Holiday time
I’ve been almost thankful for the rain at the beginning of these holidays. That’s a super rare thing for me to admit. But it gave me and the Mr’s great excuses to not do too much and just hang around the house. Sure it’s been interesting keeping the Mr’s amused, but as life keeps up moving at great pace, it’s been good to just chill out and do very little.
The Mr’s have discovered Moshi Monsters and have had a great time earning Rox, making friend, capturing Moshlings and figuring out puzzles. Strict time limits were put in place for each turn as we all know that giving a centimetre means much more than a kilometre is then expected! And so far the cooped up cabin fever has not shown up in any great way. Yay!
Last Thursday the weather fined up enough to meet with some friends and take part in the annual Spring Festival buggy walk through the Botanic Gardens. Not only are the gardens a great place to go generally, but there is a fantastic playground for kids of all ages. We took a picnic along with us and planned to eat at the playground. Interestingly, we ended up going around the gardens twice. And my legs for sure paid for it the next day – as did my shoulders as the picnic in my backpack got heavier and heavier. The incidental extra distance was due to me not knowing where the best place to park was going to be and ignoring my usual *let’s just see how parking is around the entrance* mantra. I planned this time to try at a car park that would meet up with the cable car – meaning this time we started at the top, to go down to meet the official walk and our friends, only to head up to the top and back down again for the giveaways and then back to the top for the picnic…. whew!
Little legs and voices did start to protest but we made it and considering how much fun we had and how much not-doing-very-much the previous few days, I think it was a good thing for the extra effort in the end. I didn’t take my camera as my bag was already jammed full of picnic stuff, but luckily for me, my friend Del took hers and in all honesty, she’ll have great pics. I’ll be downloading some later this week so will add some then. Seeing as I missed the Tulip Sunday last week for the first time in years (too busy with other stuff!!) I was pleased to see that there were still tonnes of tulips around. They certainly were a little worse for wear thanks to the rough weather in the previous week, but considering that, I was still impressed by the remaining display.
*****
On Saturday I had some time with fellow Stampin Up team members as we had a team day. This turned out to be lots of fun – there was a shoe box swap. Every prepares their swaps and puts everything required into a container. We all take a box to work on, create the project from the box and end up going home with 9 projects that we’ve made ourselves! Great concept.
*****
Donna and I agreed to run a couple of craft sessions for kids at the community centre. Last week it was buttons and all manner of broches, necklaces, rings, flowers and bracelets were created by a group of kids. This week we’re doing puppets on Wednesday – sock puppets, finger puppets, and paper plate puppets. This session is aimed to include slightly younger kids as well so I’m curious as to how many will show up.
*****
Hubby has just got confirmation that he will be going to Malaysia for a couple of weeks worth of work soon. I’m doing my best to not be all green-jelly. I would love to pack up and head over as well!! I think if he’d been going over longer, I’d definitely arranged for me and the Mr’s to be included!!
And just because I haven’t got any pictures in here yet, here’s one just to pretty things up a bit:
