Queen of her castle

Alison loves playing on the equipment we borrowed from the Play Group Association. She loves going down the slide and playing Peek-a-boo on the side holes. Alison has also worked out how to crawl under things and gets great joy by crawling through the holes on the bottom level. What a clever 9 month old.

Alison's first camping trip

We thought camping would be a great fun event for the family. We packed up the car, Sara and Jeff hooked up their camper trailer, chucked the dogs in the back and we all headed south. We drove about 2 hours to Levuka Station. It is a working cattle property that has been opened up for camping and 4WDing. The trip was uneventful. One quick toilet stop for the dogs and a photo op for Alison.

So here we are setting up camp in the middle of a paddock full of cows and cow dung. The dogs thought it was marvelous with all the room to run and took great interest in any cow that happened to stray a little to close to our camp. Alison also thought it was fun, she enjoyed watching the dogs, playing with her parents and Aunt and Uncle and generally trying to get anything she could get her hands on into her mouth…..including the cow dung!We spent Saturday traveling and setting up our camp. We had a bon fire, however it was still freezing. Alison’s baby monitor showed 5 degrees inside the tent at night….brrrrrrr. Needless to say she spent most of the nights sleeping snug and warm between her Mum and Dad. Mum and Dad spent most of the nights falling out of the tiny double camp bed and barley sleeping hoping not to roll onto the baby.

Here is Alison having a little cozy nap with Mum.

And all rugged up ready for bed with Dad.
The days were just beautiful and the scenery was spectacular. Everything was so lush with all the recent rains. Unfortunately the rain had the 4WDing tracks closed. We did go out on Sunday for a bit of an explore. We drove around looking for something interesting in the national parks. We also stopping at a town called Urbanville for lunch at the park.

We packed up on Monday and headed home. My conclusion is any future camping with a baby will be done in Summer! It was just toooo cold for Ali.

Of course Ali has spent this week fighting a small cold with runny nose etc. Bad parents!

Back to work

I have started back to work 3 days a week. I can't say I was looking forward to it or that I am happy to be getting up at the crack of dawn to drive out to Canungra. So far it has not been too bad. We are not actually teaching any class for the next few weeks so I have been able to ease back into it slowly. I am back into the fitness training doing push ups, sit ups and 3km runs. It is very cold at 7am in the morning at Canungra at the moment, I will freeze my ass off!
Alison is enjoying her days with Helen at Daycare. We were so lucky to find such a lovely woman to leave her with.

Queenslander!

Wednesday night was the first game in the State of Origin battle between NSW and QLD. As a Sassy (South Australian born person) I have not been brought up with Rugby in my blood. Leon on the other hand has been shouting QUEENSLANDER all his life. Inter-state clashes between the QLD Maroons and NSW Blues have been happening since 1908 so there is a lot of history and pride that goes with these games. People really get into it and throw parties or have drink-a-thons at pubs etc.

Well for Alison’s first State of Origin we were invited to Jane and Dave’s house for hotdogs, home brew beer and cheering. I have been going along to State of Origin parties since I have known Leon, I have noticed they have changed somewhat in recent years. I think there may have been more children running around screaming and laughing then men shouting at the T.V. this year.

This is a photo of Alison and Leon before we headed out for the night. Notice her T-shirt says 100% Queenslander…I was tempted to cross it out and add 50% Sassy!

The weekend

It has been a uneventful weekend. Leon worked on the front yard on Saturday while us girls went and did a bit of food shopping. We did manage to fit in a quick coffee at the shops with Aunty Sara.
On Sunday we went down to the Gold Coast and had a nice lunch with Leon's Family. The coconut prawns were YUMMY! The boys did a bit of maintenance on the boat and us girls a spot of shopping. I bought a cute knit dress for winter.
Not much else to report. Alison is having her 4:30 psycho time right now. She tends to go nuts at this time of the day...turns into a really aggressive, loud nut bag. Sometimes it is really funny...other times it is just tiring. I am having some alone time in the spare room while daddy deals with it.

Cuddles with her Cousin

Alison is having cuddles with her Aunty Sara and soon to be born cousin.

Evil Toothy Princess

Evil Toothy Princess
I said to Alison "Give Mummy a cute smile for the photo".....you be the judge!
However it is a nice photo showing off some of her 6 teeth!