Gummy Bear

♫ ♪ ♫ All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth ♫ ♪ ♫

Well, Christmas has come and gone and we're still waiting for Cheyenne's second front tooth to come through at the top. Her two top front teeth (the ones which were wearing away at an alarming angle) fell out within a couple of weeks of each other, during the last term of school last year. Her left-hand side adult tooth has cut through and grown nicely, but there's still no sign of its mate. To make matters worse, the baby tooth on the other side of the gap has recently fallen out as well, so Cheyenne has a rather gummy (although cute) smile. This of course, has given rise to her new nickname, "Gummy Bear".

She's told me that even though she likes the nickname, I am only allowed to call her that until her new teeth grow in. Fair enough, since she won't be gummy anymore.

Christmas was a fairly quiet, family affair once again. Lunch with my mum and brother, dinner with Steve's parents and two of his three brothers and their families. On Boxing Day we went up to visit some friends who live the other side of Gympie, and stayed the night at their place.

Steve found out about his work closing down between Christmas and New Year a little too late for us to book anything, so we didn't go away anywhere for a holiday. We spent New Year's Eve with some friends and Steve actually managed to see in the New Year for a change, lol.

This past weekend we spent Friday and Saturday nights in the annexe of Steve's parents' caravan down at the Broadwater Tourist Park. Cheyenne spent the entire weekend, playing with some of her cousins, either in the pool or at the beach, and has really gone quite brown. She already had a cute little oval shaped tan mark on her back from her bathing costume after spending so much time in our pool over the holidays.

Now there's only one week to go until the holidays are over and Cheyenne starts Grade 1. Time to buy new school shoes and start going to bed early to practice for next week. The earlier start time is going to be a shock to her system (not to mention mine as well). Guess I'd better start covering schoolbooks and labelling everything so that I'm not doing it all the night before.

Cheyenne has just had her hair cut nice and short so she doesn't start the new year looking scruffy.

School's Out For Summer...

Well, the school year is over. Prep is done and dusted, and we're into the first week of Hell... er..., sorry... the Christmas Holidays!

Six weeks of "I'm hungry, Mummy! Mum, can I have an iceblock? Can I have some fairy bread? Can I have a Nutella? An apple, a sandwich..?" It's only Tuesday, and already she's devoured almost an entire box of Tiny Teddy biscuits (which were bought as a treat), is about a third of the way through a 12 pack of individual Nutella snacks and has consumed more Zooper Dooper ice blocks than should be deemed necessary, considering the overcast (and therefore cooler) weather. Clearly I will need to buy another truckload of apples, and reintroduce her to stone fruits, now that they're in season.

This, from a child who has spent the better part of her life eating like a bird. I also know for a fact that she survived quite well every day at school on the two standard breaks, morning tea and lunch. So where has this sudden need to continuously graze come from? Maybe it's a growth spurt, but I hope it doesn't last. She's eating us out of house and home... and she isn't even a teenager!

Maybe I'll just have to sidetrack her with holiday activities. There's plenty of things she wants to do. The problem is getting her to understand that she has 6 weeks to do them in. We do not have to do every activity TODAY. We can swim in our pool any time we like. The park and duckpond is only 5 minutes away - she can even ride her bike there on the nice wide bike path. (Maybe we'll even get those training wheels off if she practices hard enough!) We can visit friends, have sleepovers at Grandma's and Nanny and Poppy's, do crafts, go to the movies... we just don't need to do it all right now, this instant.

Perhaps she's right though. All too soon it will be the end of the holidays and we'll be covering books, ready for Grade 1. Maybe we should be trying to cram in as much as we can.

Cheyenne's "Prep Graduation" photo.

(They didn't actually have a Graduation ceremony, this was just a posed shot included on the Powerpoint slideshow that each child received on a CD at the end of Prep. Kind of like a report card with photos. Excuse the grainy quality of the image - we didn't get access to the originals. I just copied it "as is" from the slideshow.)

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas...

I can't believe that it's December already! This year has really flown past. Cheyenne only has one more week left of Prep and then she's on Christmas holidays for six weeks! Six weeks! OMG!

You can tell it's that time of year. All around, friends and family are off to watch their kids in Christmas concerts and sports carnivals. Two weeks ago it was our turn. Norris Road SS had their Music Gala concert, and as Cheyenne has been a part of the Junior Choir, we went along to watch them perform two songs.

Let me put this into perspective for you. For most of the year I had no idea Cheyenne was even going to choir practise. Sure, it was mentioned in the school newsletter early in the first term, and Cheyenne told me that she had gone at lunchtime one day with some of the girls in her class, but that's about all I heard of it until the end of term 3. Her teacher let me know that the Junior Choir were going to be singing on Parade that week. This was news to me, since Cheyenne hadn't said a word about it. Occasionally we'd heard her singing the same line or two over and over, but when we'd questioned her about it she'd just said it was a song they sang at school.

We found out she was a part of the Music Gala in much the same way. About a week and a half before the Gala I found a book of Music Gala raffle tickets with her name on in her "information pocket", and, according to the newsletter, only students performing in the Gala would be given them to sell. So I asked her, "Cheyenne, are you singing in the music concert?" She just rolled her eyes at me and replied "Ye-es!" Did it occur to her that maybe she should let us know in time to buy our tickets? Clearly not. Never thought I'd be thankful to get raffle tickets to sell !

I asked her what songs they were singing, so that I could look up the lyrics and maybe help her practise before the concert. Turns out they were singing Colour My World (the old Petula Clark classic) and Louise - a children's song about an elephant. Cheyenne didn't seem to be very sure of the words to this and it isn't one I'd ever heard of before, but even I knew that "Down in deep blue Africa, by the shade of the boo-bah trees" couldn't be right. Africa isn't blue and I don't think there's any such thing as boo-bah trees... except maybe on Telly Tubbies or In The Night Garden, lol.

Now, the internet is a wonderful place... just about anything you're searching for is only a click or two away... except if you are trying to find the complete lyrics to songs out of the ABC Sing books! Clearly the copyright is closely guarded. I did manage to find an index, which told me that Louise features in the 2005 edition... and, miracle of miracles, it also listed the first line!
Turns out the lyrics are as follows: "Down in deepest Africa, by the shade of the bongo trees, lived an elephant, her name it was Louise. Louise was very fond of an elephant named Joe, and every night by the pale moonlight, he'd serenade her so - Louise, Louise, come out from under those trees! Don't give me none of that bunky bunky, I wanna hold your trunky trunky. I love you so much, I wanna hold you so much, my Lou, Lou, Louise!"

OK, it's a lot cuter when sung by a choir full of Prep - Grade 2 kids, all doing the actions. I really wish I could upload the video clip here, but as it is of the whole choir, not just Cheyenne, that just wouldn't be right.

Steve and I were such proud parents though. :-D

Christmas is definitely sneaking up on us. We haven't put our Christmas tree up yet, but Cheyenne has been madly running around wrapping tinsel around the railings. There probably won't be any left to actually go on the tree, lol.

Cruisin' Again

After hearing from Chris (the seller) that he’d finally had the road worthy done, we arranged to drive up to Toowoomba on Thursday afternoon to hand over the bank cheque and sign the transfer papers. Steve had an easy day and was home from work by 2.30pm, so we picked Cheyenne up from school half an hour early and headed off to try to avoid peak hour traffic.

Chris had loaded the boot of the Cruiser up with the rear row of seats, which he’d kept in storage, and all the spare parts he had for it. He’d found his missing second remote for the central locking (saving us $44, which is how much Toyota charges for a replacement) and mounted the roof rack. We really would have preferred not to take the roof rack, but I guess he just wanted to get rid of it to clear out some space in his shed.

Driving back at night, we discovered that both the glove box and ashtray have internal lights, which is very handy, but that the Toyota stereo is too well lit, making the dashboard distractingly bright. Fortunately, we still have our mp3 CD stereo and UHF, which we kept out of our previous vehicles, which we will be installing instead.

The colour is Dark Green Mica, but it is an unusual chameleon-like colour - depending on the angle of the light, it looks green, blue or even black!

The first job was to remove the roof rack so that the Cruiser would fit under our roll-a-door and be parked in our garage. With a little help from a mate (who is also kindly allowing us to store it at his workshop), the rack was removed Friday night. Unfortunately, this means my poor little Mazda has been banished to the driveway once again, lol.

Over the weekend, Steve attempted to mount his spotlights to the bullbar, but we have discovered that, although the plastic SmartBar may indeed be nice and bendy and “pedestrian safe”, the fact is that it is bloody useless for mounting spotties. It’s far too flexy, so that the spotties vibrate annoyingly and can’t be adjusted to the right angle. We also need to change the bracket for the aerial mount for the UHF, so rather than spending a lot of time messing about trying to get it right, Steve is looking around for a second-hand alloy or steel bullbar. He just phoned to tell me he may have tracked one down already (can't let the grass grow under your feet, lol). Next on the list is stripping and re-tinting the windows.




I now officially have too much on my keyring! (Not that I am removing any of it) Who knew that one Toyota key and a central locking remote could add so much extra weight? Maybe the plastic is heavier on the 100 Series key than on previous models?

It's good to have a Cruiser again!

Out with the New, In with the Old...

No surprise really...

I already knew from the moment that Steve bought the Navara, that it wouldn't last long. You just can't have 5 Landcruisers in a row then be happy with a 3 litre 4 cylinder. It's only half a car!

Steve had decided that as soon as we returned home from our trip up north, that he'd advertise the Navara for sale. After a bit of discussion amongst the family and seeking advice from several car yards, we decided to remove the alloy tray and canopy and refit the original style-side tub. We were assured that we'd still get the money we were hoping to get with the style-side back on and we knew we'd have no problem selling the tray and canopy.

The tray and canopy sold within a few days of the ad being listed, as we thought it would. The particular canopy we had is hard to find second-hand, and much sought after.

Then we sent the Navara off to a spray painter mate to have a dent fixed and a few scratches touched up. We had originally told the guy we bought the Navara from that we'd get the dent fixed ourselves so he didn't need to, and he'd knocked a bit off the price to compensate us. So what if we only actually got it fixed so that we could sell it, lol.

Then it was off to the DOT to take our personalised plates off and replace them with a standard set, off to get the road worthy and safety certificate done (no prizes for guessing who ran these errands) then we took some photos and I uploaded the ad to the Trading Post.

After a slight drama with the Trading Post having two categories for Navaras - "Nissan Navara" and "Nissan Navara Ute" (despite the fact that they only ever came out as utes) - and our ad being in the Navara Ute category which didn't show up with a keyword search for "Nissan Navara", two phone calls and a whole lot of waiting on hold later, we had this changed and the phone calls from potential buyers started.

A man came round during the week and took it for a test drive. He loved it, and came back on Saturday with a bank cheque. He paid us $20500 for it. Not bad at all, considering we only paid $18500 when we bought it!

Naturally, Steve had already been scouring various car sales websites looking for potential replacements, and he'd picked out a nice dark green standard diesel GXL 100 Series Cruiser at Toowoomba. He'd phoned the seller a few times before we'd sold our Navara, and chatted about the vehicle. It was exactly what he wanted. The plan is to buy a standard diesel and save up the $5000 to get a turbo fitted to it. Two reasons for this - 1. factory turbo diesels in the 1998-2003 models are still selling for upwards of $35 thousand, which is well out of our price range, and 2. factory turbos come standard with independent front end suspension, and Steve would prefer a diff front end.

Sunday morning, we rolled out of bed (rolled being the appropriate word, after a night of eating huge steaks at Outback Jack's Restaurant... for those of you interested -no, Steve did NOT complete the challenge [see below pic], although he made a very good attempt, and my eye fillet was more than enough for me) and Steve phoned the guy selling the Cruiser in Toowoomba. He still had it, so we arranged to drive up and inspect it.

1 KG of rump, plus wedges and steamed veg! (If you eat it in half an hour, you get it for half price and get a t-shirt and your photo on their wall.)

After a bit of looking over the vehicle, taking it for a test drive and a whole lot more chin-wagging, we decided to buy it for the $22000 asking price. It's a little more than we wanted to spend, and for the first time ever Steve wasn't able to haggle for a cheaper price, but it is well worth the money.

They still need to get the road worthy, and we're still waiting on the bank cheque to clear from the people who bought our Navara, so it probably won't officially be "ours" until the end of the week, when we sign the transfer papers.

We're more than happy to be trading our 2005 model Navara for a 1998 Cruiser.

I promise to post pics once we get it.

Another year older...

It's nearly the end of October.

Both Steve and I have had our birthdays without much fanfare.

I turned 36 a week and a half ago, and Steve turned 38 five days later. We bought ourselves a GPS unit for the car for our trip to Cardwell, and decided that it would be our birthday present to each other.

Steve then got me a couple of scratchies (one from Cheyenne and one from him) to go in the cards, and I did the same for him. I won $15 on one of mine. Steve hasn't scratched either of his yet. Maybe he thinks if he keeps them long enough they might change into big winners, lol.

I also received a decorative handbag dangle thingy from Kaylene, $50 from my brother to go towards buying some new summer clothes, and my mum gave me some money to start me off with fixing up my teeth at the dentist. I'm not altogether sure just how far the money will get me, as I'm positive I'm going to need a mouthful of fillings at the very least, but I have an appointment at the end of the week, so I'll find out soon enough :(

White Water Rafting

Friday was an early start for Steve, but thankfully Cheyenne and I got to sleep in for a change! Steve, Helena, Jason, Robert and Brooks headed off to Tully to go white water rafting in Tully Gorge. It was another hazy day, but the sun was shining and there was a slight breeze.

Steve phoned later to let me know that the tour guide said they’d be having lunch at a particular vantage point, then after that, there’d be another good photo opportunity further down river.

Due to several back packers in hired camper vans, doing 80 km/h flat out on the single lane highway (God Bless the QLD Govt. – they’ve increased all our regos, why can’t they spend the money widening our main highway north?), Cheyenne and I arrived at the lunch area a little too late to see all but the last two groups of rafters. We did find the second vantage point further down river however, and waited for them all to flash past.

It was a really picturesque place to wait, and would have made a nice shady picnic spot, had we not been rushing out of the car to scramble down the track in case we missed the rafts again!

I did manage to get a couple of photos of them as they went past, and several scenic shots of the Tully Gorge as well. Just as well, since it would have really made my day (NOT) if I’d driven an hour each way along a narrow winding road and completely missed them…

Here they come!

There they go!

Steve bought himself a souvenir photo as well, so despite the difficulty of being at the right place at the right time, we did still end up with a few shots of the day's fun.