Getting back into the swing - plus Hawaii! #FYBF

Yes, I know, I've been slack again. Last post published was 9th December.  I just haven't had the urge to publish lately.  I've written a few draft posts and even got started on my book, but between Christmas up the coast, a holiday in Hawaii (I know!!!) and general lethargy realising all the things I COULD write about, I ended up posting zilch.

I've just checked through drafts of posts I've started and there is one that's so negative and down on myself about writing, that I don't think it will do anyone any good (particularly me) if I publish it.

I could start posting my first few pages of the book I'm writing that's loosely based on my mum's life that I started writing after the self attack above, but not sure anyone would want to start reading a story that may never be finished!  But then again you lot might kick me up the arse to keep on with it. That's a bit scary. I'll think about it after I've added a few more pages.

So to get me easily back into the swing of things, I'll post some pictures from our surprise Hawaiian haitus because who doesn't love to see someone else having a great holiday(?) Yeah, looking for the sarcasm font there....

Anyway!

The sun rises on our arrival at Outrigger Reef on the Beach, Waikiki.

An ethereal tour of the Arizona and its memorial to those that lost their lives at Pearl Harbour.

A massive Missouri - still functioning, just waiting for a chance to use those guns!

Some of the beautiful dancers at the Chief's Luau at Sea Life Park, great show.

A view from the top of Diamond Head - a heart testing climb to the top.

You can see almost all of Oahu from up here.

One of many just perfect sunsets at Waikiki.

Surf god Duke Kahanamoku

More on that trip another day.

*Linking up with #FYBF With Some Grace*

Visual summary of 2014 so far

We are fourteen days into 2014 and Birdy Num Num has been noticably silent (well maybe someone noticed the silence).  My last post was way back on 6th December and much has happened since then but I won't bore you with details except to say 2014 is set to be a fresh gust of wind to clear out some cobwebs and for the Birdy Num Num household to be a much happier and peaceful home.

I've been taking part in Fat Mum Slim's Photo a Day.  Of course I haven't kept to posting a daily photo to Instagram but I've gathered a few for the last week or so in a collage to share.  And of course you find a lot more to photograph when you're on holiday :)

Day 14 - 3 Things
Day 13 - Makes me smile

If you want to see more, just check out my Instagram feed and join along if you like (you can find the details and the list at Fat Mum Slim's Photo a Day).

How is your holiday going? Are you relaxed as I am?

**Joining up with Essentially Jess for #IBOT**

Win a Holiday to Berlin with Adina Apartment Hotels

*This is not strictly a sponsored post but it does have the possibility of giving me 
OR YOU a free European holiday!*

Adina Apartment Hotels are celebrating their recent evolution by giving away a trip for 2 to Germany. The prize includes return economy flights and 7 nights accommodation in Berlin and Frankfurt.  There's also 10 runner up prizes of 2 nights accommodation at any Toga Hotel in Australia or New Zealand.  To enter visit the Adina Apartment Hotels competition page.

While reading through all of the accommodation Adina Apartments had available around Australia and Europe, I think I would be happy to have a swish holiday anywhere in Australia (I would love to revisit Darwin after 25 years!) but the location that excited me the most and made me go "Wow! I would love to visit that place" was Adina's Apartment Hotel Berlin Checkpoint Charlie.  Its a significant location in Europe's modern history and most commonly known for the controversial 'Berlin Wall'.

Until reading about Checkpoint Charlie's history on Wikipedia (doesn't that make up for falling asleep in History class?), I wasn't aware of all the facts.  The wall was at first a barbed wire fence separating East and West Germany put up in 1961 and its purpose was to try and stop East Germans defecting during the Cold War.  Until Checkpoint Charlie, around 3.5 million or 20% of the entire East German population escaped to the West.

I remember watching the Wall come down on TV in 1989 (I was 23) and thinking that this was the beginning of a new age of freedom.  I was a little naive back then.

I've always wanted to visit Germany and its on the drafted itinerary of that long-wished for European holiday (hopefully happening before I'm too old to travel!).

Example of one of their rooms plus a feast and a cosy Berlinesque bar

My love of staying in superior hotels is an expensive annoyance to The Moneymaker but I know he would jump to stay here (not only to satisfy his interest in WWII history).  It was also the winner of Trip Advisor's Certificate of Excellence in 2012!  Some of the features of the Adina Apartment Hotel are room service, grocery delivery service, gymnasium, restaurant and bar (of course!). There are 124 one and two bedroom apartments each with a fully equipped kitchen, laundry, minibar, cable TV and in-room movies and wireless broadband.

The hotel also has a swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna.  How could I not want to try this out....

more photos here

If you would like to win the Adina Apartment Hotel holiday in Berlin and Frankfurt, just enter your details on their website here.

Which of Adina's locations would you like to visit and why?

Passport Panic

I have a really busy week coming up but in a very enjoyable way.  That's if I haven't totally stuffed up by forgetting the most obvious item when travelling - passports.

Yes, even though I have known we were travelling to Fiji for my sister-in-law's wedding for many months now (since last year even!), I left it till the last minute to check our family's passports.  The Moneymaker's was fine of course, he travels for work throughout the year, but upon checking the kids' I realised they only had about two months left till they expired and Fiji requires you to have six months at least.

This was not the worst of it.  My Kiwi passport expired last month.  I discovered this on Tuesday night. We fly next Tuesday.  I had exactly four working days to get three passports.  And go to work. And The Moneymaker was up in Queensland working till late tonight.  The online option wasn't possible as I couldn't print on the two inoperable printers in our house.  So I had to print out my application and fill it out AND process it the next day.  Plus pay the huuuuuge Urgent Fee to get it done in time.

Why I didn't wash my hair on Wednesday morning when I had to get a photo done at the Post Office, I don't know.  Maybe I wanted to look like a zombie drug smuggler when they looked at my passport at customs. Who knows, I've given up trying to work out how my brain works. The other problem was I could not think of another Kiwi who knows me who is not related to me. My Kiwi mate had moved to Melbourne and I could think of every non-Australian friend but no Kiwis.  Luckily The Moneymaker rang back and had remembered a work colleague was a New Zealander and he could vouch for me.  I must admit I was surprised at how reasonable The Moneymaker sounded when I told him of my slackness.  He must have heard the panic in my voice when I told him and (wisely) decided telling me off would not achieve anything from another state away.

So yesterday I dashed out at lunchtime to the local Post Office for the photo (horror movie shot) then caught the train to the city to process an Urgent and Expensive application at the New Zealand Embassy.  I don't often go into the city even though I only live about ten minutes away, but it hadn't really changed since I worked there 14 years ago.  Wynard Station looked (and smelled) the same, the beggars were in the usual spots and I was able to dash across the road against the lights just like I used to as a younger woman.

After a 5 minute process (and the pleasure of hearing broad Kiwi accents), my application was lodged and the estimated completion and pickup date was Friday (tomorrow). I rang and checked this afternoon and it is ready to collect! Yay! Now for the little Aussie munchkins.

Yesterday I finished work at 4pm, picked the Chicken up on the way home and collected the Nugget from after school care.  Then it was a dash to another local post office to get the photos and forms before they closed at 5pm. No parking available outside of course so up the street to the supermarket parking and a run down the road.  We were the last customers and the very helpful lady behind the counter advised that rather than processing it there it would be a whole lot quicker taking it the office near Central Station.

Fortunately I do have tomorrow off work, unfortunately it is because I am flying at 11.55am to meet my sisters and cousin at the Broadbeach Blues Festival for the weekend, now an annual getaway tradition.  I know, I know, how many holidays can one Mum have?  Well, I figure you only live once and you have to squeeze every little drip out of it.

So tomorrow morning at 9.10am I will be begging the Passport Application office to please please please process my children's passports urgently, otherwise, as they have already planned, they will be staying home alone making pizzas for a week.  After all,  I'm not missing out on a trip to Fiji!

Don't forget you've got till Sunday 27th May to get a chance to win the Elastoplast $150 Bunnings Voucher Competition, so get your Oops! moments in quick!

It's February Already!

So how did it become February already?  How did it happen that I've been back at work just three days and I feel as exhausted as if it was 12 days straight?  Why do the powers-that-be believe that's it's a great idea to start a whole new way of doing things at the beginning of term when we are three quarters the way through a renovation?  Why does my computer at work decide to have several,near fatal strokes right at the time I need to produce the quickest reports at the drop of a hat?  And why does the IT department in head office STILL have no idea what we do here?  We've only been operating 30 odd years.

Well that was my week and that's all I'm going to say about it.  I would much rather review what January brought:

• My big sister and her husband visited us from the North Coast for almost two weeks which was lovely and an excuse to have the odd wine or two and a nightly Bailey's (oh and someone to go dancing with all night at The Unity!).
• Watching the best fireworks in the world (not just my opinion) on New Year's Eve from a local park with the family and a bottle of champagne.
• Spending way too much money and way too much time organising my husband's 40th birthday party which was the biggest gathering of Darth Vaders, Obe One whatevers, Rocky Horror Picture Show characters, Disco Diva's, Taxi Drivers and Blues Brothers in the Southern Hemisphere (yes, there was a theme, 70's movies!).  There was a week preparing the house, two days cleaning up vomit mess afterwards and three weeks waiting for the recycling bin to finally be free of booze bottles.  But it was worth it all to see all of my three sisters and their partners partying on with all of my husband's family (even though we could have done without one of my sisters dressed as The Exorcist doing her backward possessed -by-the-devil crawl in front of my MIL), from all accounts (and some embarassing photos which I have not got permission to show you ... yet), it was a raging success.  The Moneymaker was suitably impressed by my presentation/trip down memory lane photos, hopefully enough that when my birthday comes around (don't forget MM, it's in March!) he will feel guilty enough to surprise me with something wonderful.
• A couple of lovely trips into the city (I think I may have fallen in love with Westfield - shock/horror!). One with Mr Moneymaker and Nugget and one shopping trip with my Chicken, which turned out quite fun. Surprisingly as we were looking for the elusive pair of aqua Vans (not found anywhere in this wide brown land so some weeks later she was quite happy with pink ones).
• My baby girl turned 13!  A teenager.  OMG (as she would say)!  Though really she's been a teenager since she was 6.  I expect that more of the puberty drama is to come over the next seven years and I'm not sure I'm prepared. Any advice would be very welcome if you've gone through it all and survived.
• Back to school shopping.  Not as painful as I anticipated after doing exactly the same thing as last year - walked into the shoe shop advertising the biggest discount and realising that of course it did not apply to shoes in my childrens' sizes then just remembered the other bargain outlet where they had exactly what we needed and walked out with change from $100!
• Saw The Descendants - great film with believable characters and interesting storyline. See it if you can.
• Thanks to Twitter found out that Celebrity Apprentice had a challenge in Sydney Park where they needed everyone to bring their dogs for a bit of pampering.  Of course I had to take Sydney the Schnoodle to see if I could get a photo and succeeded beyond the cost of the $25 donation to The Starlight Foundation (you can read about it here).
• Saw my head on TV yesterday - probably should have not done this as every time that Domino's Chicken Ribs ad is on (Channel 10 or Youtube if you're interested, I will not post it here) I hide in the kitchen.  I realise if there is ever a camera around I need to point my chin UP.  I do not remember when I lost my neck, I think it was some time in the early 90's.

Now that I've listed it all down, I suppose I did do a few things in January, even though I feel I've spent 80% of the time on the laptop reading everybody else's blog and suddenly realising it's 11pm and I haven't written a thing myself.  Oh shit!  It's 10.54pm already!  So there you are, I've made it!  

Hope your January was fun and action packed or at least a time to rest up.  I think I need another January....

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What I did in the Holidays (written from the view of 12 year old daughter, hopefully)

We did not go away on holidays this Easter because Mum said our new house is so lovely it is like a holiday house and we have to keep sending money to the bank so we can stay here forever. So these are the things we did to keep us amused and to stop Mum having wine before 6pm:

• Shopped in the best shopping centre ever where they have Diva, Smiggles, EB Games and the biggest Target in the universe.

• Shopped in the discount centre for sports shoes for my little brother where the shoes were exactly the same price as the expensive best shopping centre ever but took another day to find out and convince him that these were much better because they have red stripes on them.

• Shopped in the local shopping centre (a lot) where they have disgustingly coloured hotdogs which my brother loves and my mother really hates paying $3.95 for but does anyway because it means she can sit down and have a latte.

• Went to Ikea for A WHOLE DAY but wasn’t so bad because we only had to line up for 40 minutes so my little brother could play in the kids centre for an hour. This gave us just enough time to do 2 laps of Ikea, one in the direction of the arrows and one against (just for fun). Plus we bought lots of lovely coloured plastic stuff for the kitchen and a quilt cover for Mums bed which she has been wanting for years and she says its finally only $20 where it was a huge $29 three years ago. Plus we ate Swedish meatballs and jelly (before the kids centre – good planning Mum!) … and a $1 hotdog after. He has to eat a hotdog EVERYWHERE!!

• Went and visited Mum’s friend from school at the beach. I can’t believe she can even remember her friends as it was AGES ago, like 30 years!!!! Anyway, she was lovely and was almost exactly like my Aunty’s wife but younger and lives on a farm. She also has a great laugh which she does a lot when she talks about her sick Mum and about her partner who died. It was a really nice day, not only because of Mum’s friend and the beach and that she bought us icecreams, but because my little brother got his foot stuck in the playground tube and didn’t want to take his shoe off to get free because he was wearing the sandshoes I just gave him and they had pink on the inside. LOL!! (oops, Mum hates me saying that, just because I actually say it all the time instead of laughing at something).

• Wasn’t all good that day because when we arrived Mum’s contact played up and she couldn’t see out of one eye all day and I got scared on the 40 minute drive home. Apparently it turned up broken at the back of her eyeball the next day (eewww).

• Watched my brother learn to ride a bike (he’s 8!! OK, I secretly think its pretty good because I can’t). He then preceded to nag Mum constantly to take him out to ride around the bay which she did half the time because she wanted the exercise, she said. She is looking a little thinner, I think.

• We also went to the cheaper Easter Show, the Family Show at Moore Park. It poured so we went and watched Arthur at the movies first with Aunty Moo and Uncle Nate and my little cute cousin Chloe.

• We picked the coldest, wettest, foggyiest day to visit another Aunty in the Blue Mountains. We had a yummy picnic inside – my Aunty says that’s how they have picnics up there. We almost didn’t make it because we drove into a bottomless hole in the road which burst our tyre and Dad was very quiet while he changed it on the side of the road in the freezing rain – Mum kept asking nicely if he wanted to put his jacket on but he wouldn’t answer her.

• On Easter Sunday and Nanny and Poppy helped Mum hide 1000 chocolate eggs which my brother started frothing at the mouth at because his little cousin found more than he did. They didn’t even notice the icing sugar bunny prints I put in the hallway this morning! We had a big roast pork lunch for all 10 of us and then everybody fell asleep on the couch while Mum walked my little brother round the bay on his bike for and hour and a half. They came back in the dark and Mum was a little tired and cranky so everyone went home.

And that’s what we did on the school holidays! I don’t want to go back to school but Mum says she is looking forward to going back to work tomorrow?!!??!!