So where did that time go? Christmas seems just five minutes away and we are already heading rapidly towards Easter.
We had a good Housesit at Carrara, a lovely house and a beautiful dog called Jazz, such a character and a pleasure to be with. He loved being in the pool with us and really enjoyed the chicken flavoured ice blocks we made him for treats.
My brother Simon and his family came down from Noosa to see mum before Christmas and we were lucky enough to have them stay with us at the Housesit. Eve had already mentioned "when we have guests" as she first showed us around her home so we confirmed she was still ok with that and she was more than happy to let them stay. We even managed to get Harry and Yasmin to stay longer while their mum and dad went home. We had a great week with them and surprised granny (my mum) who thought that they had left to go home already. Jazz also loved their company and I'm sure he missed them when they left.
We had a quiet but good Christmas, spending the day with mum. We took her up to Point Danger in the morning, enjoying the beautiful weather and then back to the house for lunch where we all tucked into lunch of prawns, smoked salmon and ham with salads, cheeses and fruit, Yum!
After mum had a snooze and we enjoyed a swim, we went over to my brother Roger and Jacquie's house for the rest of the day where we enjoyed their company and also that of our niece, Suzanne and her friends who were all over from Hong Kong.
New Year's Eve for us this year was a quiet one as we decided to spend it at home, probably a good choice as a big thunder storm came through about 11.00pm Qld time that would have dampened a lot of the firework displays.
After Eve and Reece arrived home, very tired from their wonderful holiday, we had a quick catch up with them before we again headed back to Boyd's Bay caravan park where we were to spend another week before heading off.
We waited for Jo, Phil and Olivia to get back to the Tweed area for the next part of their Christmas holiday and had 3 lovely days with them. Lots of play time and cuddles with Olivia!!!
After that we high tailed it quickly down to Kiama, South of Sydney to catch up with Emma, Graham, Josh and Ellie and spent 6 wonderful days with them, a real "seaside" holiday.
As Emma and Graham made their way home to Gunnedah, we headed further down the coast to catch up with friends, Terry and Christine. We stayed at Milton show ground and enjoyed each other's company for a week before they headed back to Sydney for car and medical appointments.
We then spent another week at Milton, relaxing and doing nothing much before we too, headed off.
After Milton, we headed up and over the blue mountains, stopping at Eagle's nest rest area for one night and then on to Lake Wallace. A beautiful free camp but unfortunately very cold and windy so we only stopped the one night. Then on to Gulgong show ground, about 80 kms away from Coolah, where we stayed 3 nights.
We had been toying with the idea of going to Thailand and have now booked to go in April from Brisbane airport. All last year we thought we would be going to Tasmania about now. How quickly our plans can change! Now it's 2 weeks in Phuket instead. So with only a few weeks to fill in before we go, we are yet again doing the loop of Tweed, Coolah, Gunnedah and back to Tweed.
We got in touch with Kathleen, our Housesit lady in Gunnedah and told her we were heading back if she wanted to take the opportunity to get away and she jumped at the chance so we will, once again, housesit for her. We will have spent a week here at Coolah with Jo, Phil and Olivia first though.
Olivia has changed so much in only the few weeks since we have seen her. She is now walking around the furniture and communicating so much more, with a few very amusing party tricks, hands on head/eyes etc. How does the elephant/dog go? that sort of thing. We are all mesmerised by her and she is still the most happiest, contented child I have ever known.
We are so lucky to be doing what we are doing, travelling around, seeing different places, meeting great people and spending time with family, we really do appreciate how good we've got it!