Greg's Room - 90% complete!

I was starting to doubt the day that I would be able to make this post... Greg's room is now painted... AND he's got curtains!!!!

I've had the curtains for a little while now, but it was pointless putting them up before the room was completed....

Greg gets to move back into his room today, which means I can start tidying up the Guest Room again so that we could consider having people come to visit again!!! Yay!!!

View from outside.. Still need to move the gym back a little, we had to move it so that Terry could paint that wall...

The room looks a little dark with the curtains closed, but that's the idea, we got blockout curtains so that people can sleep in past 6am!

a bit lighter with the curtains open....

Yes, there is floor space, and maybe once we've managed to tile the floor it'll look even bigger... :)

This is the view from the bed to the front of the room, or the back of the room, I'm not sure how you'd define it..... (ergh... I still can't believe that the owners before us painted the floors orange... ERGH ERGH.... (although - there was orange shag pile in all the rooms upstairs.... so I shouldn't sound so shocked!)

Grrrrrrrrrr!!!!!

That pretty much sums up my response to Jade when I got the "come, look, see..... pretty!!!"

I got cranky, she got upset.... poor thing, she really didn't know what she was doing was wrong... as far as she was concerned, the fill that Terry had put into the wall to cover up the hole was just play-doh... and keys were a perfect item to play with it with.....

I went to take photos, and she had to stand next to it... like it was a piece of artwork..... lets just hope that Terry can fix it tomorrow.....

Speaking of which, he's painted the ceiling, and has finished the undercoat paint in Greg's room... so Greg will be able to move back into the room by the weekend, and we can get back to rearranging the guest room the way it used to be... rather than the mess that it currently is with a teenager!

Although, to be fair, most of the mess is just clutter waiting for us to put a shed into the yard....

Do you think she's got the Greg pose nearly sorted???

Town Pool swimming.....

Well, I can honestly say that I think we're managing to get the kids to the point where they're absolutely buggered.... with everything else we've done this weekend... by the time we left the local pool at midday, both kids eyes were hanging out their heads.... (and not just because there's so much chlorine in the water....)

But, they both seem keen to be swimming again this afternoon... but it will be in Mom and Dad's pool (Poolfresh is so nice... not chlorine and not salt... just fresh.....)

A bit hard to see, but Xander's shirt says "Junior Lifeguard, off duty"... so cute!!!



Xander was getting a little worn out by the end of the morning.... hehe

Both Xander and Jade had bright red eyes by the time we left from the concentration of chlorine in the baby pool.. but it was their pool of choice.. Even though they can both swim... it's more fun to run around and splash in a pool where they can touch the bottom I guess... :)

What *they* think the words are.....

Yesterday, Jade and I were singing "One, two, three four five... once I caught a fish alive"

and when we got up to the:

Which finger did he bite???

Jade's next line was:

Dis finger wid de medgie-bite (vegemite)

I guess it's a bit hard to explain "right" and "left" at 2yrs .... :)

Monster sometimes entertains... :)

It's funny how some old movies really always stick with you... Caravan of Courage - an Ewok Adventure was a movie that I went to see at the cinemas with my cousins (Narelle, Chris & Rachael) when I was all of about 6 (well it was 1984 - so I *might* have been 7...)

This morning, Jade came into our bedroom - with her hairband positioned the way "SHE" wears it..... It just reminded me so much of Cindel (pictured left)

Now that I've gone and found a photo of Cindel - it's fairly obvious that Jade's hair was wrong... but I couldn't help picturing her running around going "Starcruiser... CRASH!"

Ok, I guess you can all tell I'm sleep deprived can't you? :)

Paddling Pool Fun.....

This is how, Rob "thought" he was going to spend his afternoon, WRONG!!! hehe

(photo taken by Jaime when we were already playing in the yard with the kids...)

Jaime trying to show the kids how to use the slide into the pool... unfortunately it wasn't as good as the old pool....

Then we convinced Rob to come down and play.... so it turned from playing in the pool - to full on water fights......

Jade at least was helping other people to join in the water fight fun by filling their buckets... ehehe.....

Greg detached from Guitar Hero too and came to join in the fun.... (sporting his first sporting injury for the season too... - he got it at training.... (under his right eye))

I'm sure Greg thought he'd spent enough time being wet for the day, he'd just come home from his school's swimming carnival... he's in Parnka - they're green - you can see that his scalp is still green from the hairspray we bought him... apparently he sprayed his arms and legs and then went around spraying his friends in other houses hair... so everyone was supporting Parnka for the day..... He got 2nd in one race, and competed in a few others... He seemed to have a good day...

Jade filling Xander's bucket again...

(They always find the big heavy ones to play with... I need some 1ltr buckets for them to play with...)

Damian came over straight from work, and got drenched, complete with shoes and socks....

(we did take his mobile off him first!)

Family Shot... so cute!

Rub-a-dub-dub... three men and a Jade in the tub....

Jade and her Daddy..... (I think we'd nearly managed to wear her out by this point)

I was completely drenched too, and I'd post pics of me playing with the kids.... but really... they're NOT good..... a lot of weight as well as trying to grow my hair out - doesn't make for good blog photos.....

After the water sports fun, we went inside to get into dry clothes and bathed the kids... then had dinner... Then Jaime and I went around to Mom and Dad's place with Jade and Xander to say good bye to Gran who's heading to Brisbane today, spending a week down there, then off to Africa in a week (for a month) (confused?!?!)...

Then we came home, got the kids settled and managed to get Jade to sleep while people were upstairs playing Wii... I have no idea how I managed that so easily (only took going back into the room once because she was calling out)... We've always had to have a quiet upstairs so that we can get Jade to sleep - she was probably just too tired to fight it with us....

Jade knew that Xander was sleeping in our room, so when she got up this morning - she came running into our room going "Where's Xander?????".... and apparently when Xander woke this morning... he went to Damian and said "why did you take me home?!?!??"... kids are just too cute!!

Yay!!

Ok, for one night in a million... well -it may happen once a week... but tonight - I put Jade into her room... lay there for a minute or two... five at most - and then said in a whisper...

"Mommy needs to go to bed now because she didn't get her daytime sleep"

and Jade said "ok, night mommy"

then I just got up and walked out......

*sigh* Yay!

I don't think she was overly well today - she seems to have picked up a slight tummy bug, so here's hoping she's better tomorrow....

I'm sorry that there hasn't really been much to report lately... a lot has been happening... just nothing Blog Worthy.... and other stuff that just isn't blog material (as much as the gossip people may have enjoyed the entertainment value of it...) --- I guess if you want all the deep down gossip - you have to contact me privately! :)

The Cutest Knickers....

I was shopping with Jaime and Xander at BigW yesterday and I went in search of PJ's for Jade.. and that was a lost cause... because she wears a size 4 t'shirt and only size 1-2 pants - it's hard to get a decent pair of pj's... so basically I think most of her pj's are going to be with midriff tops...

Anyway, back to the real reason for the post... I found these RIO undies "Monkey Bar Knickers"... the idea is that they wear them under dresses... so that they aren't exposing all when they're playing tom-boys in the girly clothes... eheh

Greg's first training for Rugby League....

Greg decided to start playing Rugby League - all of his friends at school play...

We signed him up with a local club on Saturday and he headed off for training this afternoon... he should be finishing right about now - so I'm half expecting an extremely muddy grot to come home in a few minutes.... (yes - it's still raining here!!!)

Unfortunately with the Rugby it appears that they will be playing in all different towns - so there's probably going to be a fair bit of travelling - although - he'll be able to travel with friends some weeks and some weeks we'll be playing Taxi...

Lets just hope he enjoys it as much as he's hoping to :)

First day in "BIG ROOM"!

Jade had her first day in the "Big Room" today... she chucked her usual tanty as I left her at school - but - all of the kids in her section were in her old room - so she got all confused because she'd been told she was in the big room...

When I picked her up in the afternoon, we got into the car and drove out the driveway and she said "we go back to school now???" and I said "no - we've got to go home...." "WE GO BACK TO SCHOOL!!!" hehe - I think she enjoyed being in the big room! :)

(probably helps that she's back with kids that she was with last year that all got moved up to that room when they got too old for the room she was in...)

Yes, I DID steal the camera.

I admit total responsibility for that. I didn't really get any decent photos (so far, anyway) - Rocky hasn't really flooded, and all I managed to get was a photo of an overflowing weir that I drive past, that's usually empty, and a double rainbow that I haven't uploaded. Unfortunately, it's nowhere near as GOOD as the GIS for 'double rainbow', so I'm not so sure I should be boasting about it.

Jade's been a right bitch for Tharyn. This will be the last time I go away for a month or so, so I'll be home for a bit. Hopefully that'll help. I've got to start contacting the remains of the CardXpress customers around Australia and getting them upgraded to a new PC. That'll have me away from home for about a month (seriously), so I'll probably do that over a couple of trips. Everything seems to go pear shaped when I go away... Not that it's terribly wonderful NOW. Jade's really trying to push her boundaries, and discover where the lines are drawn, and it's not much fun for Tharyn. Me being away so much doesn't help either.

I spent an enjoyable evening talking geek with one of the top geeks from Radiant, aka Breeze. These guys wrote the POS (that's POINT OF SALE, not the other usual meaning of POS 8) software that most Mobil servo's use. We talked much, and drank much beer. I am a bit inebriated at the moment, but please try not to hold that against me 8)

I'm going to have a quick rant, if I may. It's geek, so feel free to ignore it. Greg's doing an IT class at school. They're teaching him Access. Microsoft Access. OK. Yes. I understand that knowing Databases is a good thing, but wouldn't it be better teaching him IMPORTANT stuff? Like 'Filesystems' and 'Locking' and 'CPU Utilization' and, gosh, performance tuning?

The teacher is asking them do to basic Access stuff, but not (it seems to me) explaining WHY they're doing it, or HOW. Yes, I understand that understanding WHY SQL works the way it does is complex, and you need to have a basic idea of SQL to start breaking down the queries into sections, but wouldn't it be better to build from the ground up, rather than from the top down?

How did 'set this field to be an index' become better than 'this is the "most common" field in the table. You're going to want to query this the most. So this needs to be an index. It's called an index because that's what it is. If you're looking for the word "heffalump" in a book, isn't it easier to go to the index and find that "heffalump" is mentioned on pages 38, 299 and 10,293, rather than reading every page in the book to find it'? It's annoying. If you're learning IT stuff, which is basically all maths (and maths is one of the few things that is 'provably true') there shouldn't be any 'I don't know why we do this'.

Another thing that annoyed me is that Greg didn't understand square roots. He's in Year 10. He should by know understand what a square root is. I'm mildly annoyed that his old school let him get this far without knowing what a square root is. I sat down with him and said that it's 'basically the opposite of a "squared"' and drew some diagrams and I hope he grasped it. His homework was doing stuff like (3⁹ x 4³)⁶. That results in an insanely large number. So large that his calculator went into scientific notation, which he didn't understand either (3.996019499 x 10⁴⁸ - I did it quickly here 8).. so I had to explain how that works too. That I DON'T think he understood. Sigh.

When I come back I'm going to spend some time doing some basic maths with him to get him up to speed. There's nothing actually hard here. We're not doing trigonometry or calculus (yet 8) so it's all pretty basic stuff. He's probably not going to enjoy it, but once he gets the basics, all the stuff that he thinks is hard now will become easy.

I'm going to finish this beer and go to bed. G'night.

--Rog

Smart Cookie!!!

Much to Miss Melissa's dislike, Jade has been moved out of her room at school and up into pre-kindy 2.

I had to sign a form to say that I am ok with her being put up into the room as she's not old enough to be in that room yet... she'd have to be 2.5yrs old (the room is kids aged 2.5 to 3.5)... but I think they're planning on moving her out of that room once she's 2yrs9months up into the Kindy room which is 3-4yrs...

I don't understand the reasoning - as I think she's still got a fair amount of growing up - but her intelligence is apparently up there... here's hoping the maturity catches up soon! :)

(The little monster is currently running around in her Dorothy the Dinosaur hooded towel - I'd take a photo - but Rob stole the camera to take photos of the flood waters up north!!)

The fun of children.....

I now remember why it was so easy to get Jade down last Wednesday.... because she started her day at just after 5am when she came into our room requesting Dora.... she didn't get it and was told to just go back to sleep... she didn't go back to sleep - rather lay there looking like a doped up monster.....

Anyway, we went around to Damian and Jaime's yesterday for an indoors picnic, we had planned on going to the beach with the kids - but - it rained... (how unusual... it's pretty much been raining since Christmas... at least Gladstone isn't going to flood....)


Anyway, I decided in the morning that I'd try again to get Jade's hair into a head band rather than putting in the piggy tails - because it would be less painful removing the headband.... she managed to keep it on for most of the car ride....but it didn't last.....

and it was just so cute!!!

When we got to Jaime's - I told her of my efforts and she went and got out some head bands taht didn't fit her - and we tried again... it took getting one to stay on Xander's head for Jade to keep it on - again - it didn't last long..... It's amazing how different Jade looks depending on if her hair is back in a head band, back in piggy tails - or just down and flopping all over her face.... It'll be good once it's long enough that it can just be left down without anything keeping it out of her eyes... but that's probably still a little while away now.....

Looking pretty.....

Looking Cool!! (we got in trouble for saying "pretty" to Xander!)

Oh, would you just go away with that Camera, the headband is in - now leave me!

The posing pair! :)

A week at home....

Well, five days anyway...

After our trip to Sydney I knew that we were going to have a few problems with Jade due to lack of sleep....

Luckily there were no swimming lessons this week, we managed to get her down for her lunch sleep around 1pm - so that was looking good... she slept til nearly 4pm - so back to the 3hr sleeps... unfortunately that night she didn't really want to go to sleep... so we had the arguments back and forth to her room until she finally gave up....

Tuesday morning, I managed to get Jade dressed and off to school... as we were driving there Jade said "Yay.. Swimming...." and I said "no, you're going to school" "NO! Swimming!!!" - she was determined to go swimming.. that's how her week starts... swimming - then school... hard to explain to a two year old that she didn't have swimming because of a public holiday....

That night we had another battle trying to get her to sleep...

Rob left for Toowoomba on Wednesday.... I managed to get Jade to sleep after about 5mins of trying - so I was happy with that effort...

So I started thinking that maybe the key is to not have Rob around... (eheh - poor Rob) - but no... I had another battle Thursday night - although only took about 10mins...

Last night I had a problem getting Jade down... plus the phone kept ringing everytime I was trying to get Jade down.. (and don't say that I should turn my phone off - because if I did that every time - I'd always forget to turn it back on - and people would be annoyed because they couldn't contact me..)

She finally went down about 8:30 - an hour after we'd usually like to have her to sleep by (unfortunately - she's pretty much been going to bed around 8pm lately...) - Anyway, Rob arrived home at 10:30pm - and at 1:30am Jade was awake screaming.... (very unusual for her to be up in the middle of the night...) - apparently there was a "Lizard or maybe Gecko in my bed Mommy!!!!" - we attempted to get her to sleep in our room - then attempted in her room - then Rob tried getting her to sleep on the floor if the bed was the problem.... at around 4am she finally crashed our in our bed....

She must be really buggered now - Rob's snoring away and it's not waking her!