Weekend goodness

This past weekend we went away to Balnarring Beach on the Mornington Peninsula in Victoria. We go away every year for the weekend to celebrate our Surrogate Nan's birthday. The surrogate family (Paul's brother-in-law's family!) are all there, all 13 adults and 4 kids this year! We hire a house and indulge and its fabulous.

The house was deemed to be a little spooky with lots of cupboards and doors locked and hidden away behind furniture. There was a door to under the house in one of the rooms, I presume to access wood that would have be stored under the house in times gone by. I rationalised a lot of these locked doors and cupboards as I am known to be a big scaredy cat. However there was one door at the top of the stairs I couldn't rationalise. It had no step to the door. It had no door handle. There was an angel door adjacent to the door. Spooky? Yes, very.

The house (view from the back gardens)



Anyway the little miss had a wonderful time playing with all the family, and she even slept well. All her regular naps and even managed a 5 hour stint at night - progress! We didn't do much as Abbey had her naps at inopportune times, but it didn't matter.

So here are some of the photos we took...

Sunset view from the 2nd storey deck



The beach about 100m from the house



Me and Abbey having fun outside (of course she smiles in all the other photos!).

What I covet

Ok so I have been very slack, oh yes I have so many excuses to give you as to why I haven't blogged but instead I'll share my wish list.

blog this has challenges and this time it is 'Do people think you're hard to buy for or are you constantly dropping hints? What's on your ultimate gift list? If you were to write a list of 5 things that would be on the list of perfect presents for your next birthday what would they be? Would it be a particular thing or anything from a particular store/shop? An
experience or something with pretty bows? Practical or whimsical?'

So the folllowing are the 5 things on my wish list...

A trip home, home is good, home is family, home is where I am not although we're not planning on going home for a good for a while, a trip home would be a nice gift.



A fine bottle of plonk, something I would never buy myself, something I could share with my Mum and Sisters too.



Another child. Although not quite yet please as I really want to make my sister's wedding in the Cook Islands without having to bribe my Doctor to let me on the plane in case I have the child there.



Smiles. I can't get enough of them. Especially from my wee one and her Dad.



Time. I never seem to have enough of it. God help me when I rejoin the workforce!



And lastly my most coveted item at the moment. Sleep. A solid 8 hours of it, with Abbey in her own cot doing the same although if she could have 12 hours I'd be eternally grateful.



Ok so that's 6 but if they could give me the bottle of Moet on the plane would that count as one gift?

Disclaimer - this is a current wish list only should anyone attempt to bribe me with any of the above please note I have the ability to veto one or all of the above especially if I haven't had my morning coffee.

Negativity vs. Positivity take 2

Because I've worked out how to do this, here is the link to Mummytime's post on 'Are you wearing a pair of blogger-coloured glasses?' Check her out, she's funny!

Empty pram

Well the gorgeous and funny Kerri Sackville had a blog post on Supermarket Etiquette and I made a comment so to elaborate on that I thought I'd post about the day I had an empty pram...

I took Abbey to occasional care so I could get groceries and clean the house. (Abbey is terrified of the vacuum cleaner, not sure why as I used to clean around her bassinet when she was asleep but there you have it, she sits in a corner and sobs or wakes up screaming). Anyway after I dropped her off I proceeded to get the groceries with an empty pram. Why? well I don't drive (shh I get enough grief from my family about being 35 without a licence - I have my learners, its a start) so I had to walk to the shops, luckily the daycare is in the same place. So with empty pram filled up with groceries I proceeded to the check-out, I'd only had one comment prior to the check-out and that was another Mum commenting on what a 'sensible idea'!

At the check-out I unloaded everything and smiled and did the usual pleasantries with the Lady behind the counter. I told her I didn't need bags and started putting everything back into the pram. It wasn't until I got to the 24 can pack of Coke and put that in that the Lady looked at me in sheer horror and asked if 'the baby had enough room'. I was so tempted to say 'it's ok she's used to it' or 'bubs is really really small' but instead I just informed her that the pram was empty, while she had a large sigh of relief it made me wonder bow many knuckleheads actually did put their groceries on top of their baby whilst they lay in a pram?

After that brief and amusing encounter I trotted off home to unpack & clean. A couple of hours later empty pram and I went back to pick up Abbey. On the way I was walking behind a group of school kids (who must of had lunch passes of course). One of the young men in the group did a double take at me and my empty pram before exclaiming loudly to his friends that I *shock,horror* was pushing an empty pram. Well who could resist that opening, so I gasped, ran to the front of the pram and exclaimed (a lot louder than him) 'oh fuck! I've done it again!' then with a nonchalant shrug of my shoulders 'Ahh well, I'm sure she'll be okay'. And with that kept walking past them with a big smirk, wondering if he'd realise that I was joking or whether he'd dob in that short lady with the really bright lime green pram to the DHS?

The pram in question (old photo) you can see that I'm not joking about the lime green...

Home

(image from www.wellington.govt.nz)

Isn't that just beautiful? I can't wait to go home at Christmas, home being New Zealand. Even though I have lived in Australia for over 8 years, NZ is home and probably always will be.

Now don't get me wrong, I love Australia, hell I wouldn't be here if I didn't, but there is something about the beautiful greenery, lakes and the people that tugs at the heartstrings everytime something about NZ comes on the TV. I am a certified sook, I cry during our national anthem and get goosebumps everytime the All Blacks perform the haka!

So here are some of my pictures of home....






This is a favourite, who would've thought you could get a picture of a shag?

Negativity vs Positivity

Hi again, aren't I good, another post!

I've been thinking about this a lot over the past few weeks after the gorgeous @Mummytime wondered if our virtual selves were better than the real ones. I'm thinking mine is probably worse. Why? I'm a list girl so here goes...
1. I feel I whine on Twitter and my Blog (see previous post about being sick!).
2. If something gives me the shits, I'm more likely to post about it than if something makes me happy.

Ok so my list only extends to 2 things, but they are BIG things in my books!

Why am I posting this dribble I hear you ask yourself as you sip your nice hot cuppa (ha ha I hear you say if you're a parent)? Well because in the 'real world' I don't think I'm super negative, sure I moan and whine when things don't tend to go my way or are inherently unfair but I'm pretty sure we all do that (any 'Saints' out there?).

I love to see the positive side of things, cup half full type of thing. If the positive is funny then that's even better.

For example Abbey's sleep, I think at the moment it could possibly be the worse its ever been. She goes down at 6.30pm and wakes 2 hourly until we go to bed at which time we inevitably give up and take her with us. This alone would cause by MCH Nurse to have an absolute fit but it works. But quite frankly if it works then that's what we will do.

Yes we will go back to getting her in her own bed but we are going away in a weeks time, so we don't want to force the issue only to have our weekend turn to crap due to no sleep! The positive side of the endless waking? Cuddles and kisses. She rolls into me in the middle of the night and spoons me, ok so technically it might not be spooning as she isn't that tall but its close and her back is pressed into my chest. When she wakes at 5am she turns her head to me and gives me a big wet kiss (collective 'awww' is appropriate here), she then rolls back and repeats the kiss several times. I end up with a sodden face, dribble in my eyes and down my chin (hers not mine) but I wouldn't have it any other way.

So I apologise if you are on the receiving end of a whine, moan 'get it of my chest' post or tweet, its not really what I'm like but you know the online world is an extremely forgiving and understanding one, which is probably why I'm addicted.

Tina Turner in the making

Ok so I'm a crap blogger, but I have so many excuses...
1. We had photos taken of the house to go up on the real estate website, so I had to clean, clean, clean.
2. Due to the house going up for auction I spend all my time on websites looking for somewhere to live.
3. I've been sick
4. Abbey's been sick
5. Did I mention I've been sick
6. The computers is upstairs, I spend my life downstairs
7. I've been sick

And on that note I'm still sick, so please send me some virtual chicken soup and sympathy please. In the meantime, whilst cleaning out our crap we discovered a wig amongst the Christmas decorations (don't ask me why) so meet out little Tina Turner...



And just for good measure (she's a poser that's for sure);



(please excuse poor quality of photos but "someone" has been playing with my camera and I didn't have time to adjust all the settings before she pulled the wig off!).

My name is not 2 syllables long...

This is a pet hate, okay, maybe not so much the 'pet' but I HATE IT. Got it? My name is Vanessa. Thats Va-ness-a, not Van-ness-a, not Ve-ness-a or Ven-ness-a or god forbid Vi-nee-sa (yes I have been called that, and even had it spelt that way too).

Now don't get me wrong, I don't mind my name being shortened but please if you are going to abbreviate my name can you at least use the abbreviation I do?
I had someone tell me that their abridged version of my name was a nickname, how can something be a 'nickname' if only one person calls you that? It's their 'pet name' for you not a nickname. My nicknames have background to them. A story to tell, usually funny, more often than not involving some degree of gutter humour. I have a friend called Stork, that's right Stork, just like that lovely bird that delivers babies. He's not a Doctor or a Nurse, in fact he's not even in the medical profession, and last time I knew he didn't have any children either. His nickname stems from a funny incident in his school years and the name stuck. You can call his work and ask for Stork and they will put you through. In the sport I met him through not a lot of people know his real name. I love that!

Another peeve is when people call me Vaness. Just the first 6 letters of my name. People if you are going to go to the trouble of saying almost all of my name, can you do a kiwi impression and add an 'ay' on the end but leave out the 'y'.

But the ultimate loathing of all the things I get called is saved for one. One word, two syllables that makes me cringe. There are only a few people that can get away with calling me this and one was my Pop, sadly he passed away back in 97. Other people who have (or still do) called me this do it to goad me. They know I don't like it, they know that it irritates the hell out of me. But they call me it anyway. Some have called me it for so long now that it no longer bothers me. I don't really hear it, selective hearing you see.

That is why I call Abbey, Abbey. No shortening of her name. My poor little sister had her name shortened by us as a child and she hated it. I will let Abbey decide when she is older if she'd like her name shortened, and if so what she'd like me to call her. Til then she's Abbey, angel, bubba girl, beautiful girl.

Oh yeah that name I hate, its Nessie. What did you picture with Nessie? I picture a lake with two bumps sticking out or an 85 year old Nana.