Hello 2012

Hello friends,,,,,I'm baaack! Yes I know that January is already half over, but I've been busy just relaxing and enjoying my holidays with my 3 boys (and one cheeky dog!)

Our Christmas was HUGE but fun. We had both sides of the family here for Christmas this year which was a big undertaking, but I had plenty of helpers so it all ran smoothly. After the insane thunderstorms and hail that hit us on Christmas afternoon, it was a miracle that everyone got here and home safe and sound. It will be a Christmas to remember.

As I noted in my last post of 2011, I finished up my Cert. III studies and I'm happy to have a lovely job as a kindergarten assistant. I'm working 2 and a half days per week, which I think will be just perfect.

Over the summer I have contemplated whether or not to continue blogging this year. I would really love to be scrapbooking my families memories (or capturing them in some written form) - I haven't done this for such a long, long time. All my time and energy in the past couple of years has been focused on trying to regain my health, and quite frankly, the motivation to scrapbook has not been there. I'm intrigued by the idea of digital scrapbooking - the concept of keeping memories on the computer in simple, digital layouts. No clutter, no bells and whistles, everything at your fingertips....there are a lot of pros. The only reason I haven't really dived into to digi scrapping is, well, to put it bluntly.....our computer is crap! There. I said it. I hope it doesn't take offense and have a meltdown right now! Sometime this year I'm hoping to upgrade and when that happens I'll be seeking lots of advice on how to get into digi scrapping.

Any-hoooo.....since I'm unlikely to find my way through the clutter in my craft room and have myself set up for traditional scrapping any time soon, I've decided to continue on with my blog as a type of online scrapbook to keep a record of our lives. Then all the details will be here if and when I ever get back to real scrapping (paper or digi). Or perhaps, my blog will just become my scrapbook from now on............we shall see :)

So if you want to pop in and see what we're up to, please do. I may waffle on a bit, seeing as I'm just getting down memories for my family, so please feel free to skip the wordy bits.  Make sure you say hi. I've missed all my bloggy friends. I shall reciprocate by floating around in blogland regularly, visiting all of you.

Seeing as we're already halfway through January, I think perhaps I should do a recap of 2012 so far........

New Years Day - we went down to Anglesea and spent a couple of nights staying in a cabin at the Big 4 caravan park. We had a fabulous time and it was great to be down the beach during and incredibly hot couple of days. On the way down we stopped in at Barwon Heads to visit my friend B and her family. They moved down there about a year ago and are definitely loving the lifestyle.

B and I have been friends for about 18 years - since we started Uni together.

The kids having some bouncy fun.

C, G and J.

G was so cute taking photos of us with her little camera before we left.

Family photo minus T who had to go to bed! It was so nice to visit.

After a nice little visit we continued on to Anglesea - stopping at Torquay for lunch (Maccas which we took down to the surf beach) and enjoyed seeing all the people and hearing about My Mr's childhood memories of visiting his Nan every summer when she lived in Torquay. The traffic heading into Anglesea was pretty busy, but we were happy to reach our lovely cabin about 2pm, and the boys couldn't wait to get down to the beach, so off we went.

After a few hours at the beach we dragged the kids away and went back to our cabin where we freshened up. We then went out to the Anglesea Golf Club for dinner. The setting, overlooking the golf course was beautiful. Dozens of kangaroos make the golf course their home and I can see why! The grass on a golf course must be a lot tastier than boring old bush grass!

The temperature reached almost 42 degrees on the Monday 2nd of January. We were really thankful to be in a cabin with air conditioning!  We hit the beach in the morning and the boys enjoyed the waves on their $5 boogey boards, which we bought from Anaconda the day before we headed off. (This trip was VERY last minute - totally unplanned. We were really lucky to even get accomodation of any sort). Then we headed back to our cabin around lunchtime to escape the heat, and I took the boys to the indoor pool at the caravan park. After an early dinner, when the worst of the heat was over, we headed back to the beach. The waves in the evening were fantastic and the boys stayed in the water for two hours straight. C just kept saying "I want to live here!"

But sadly, the next day it was time to say goodbye to lovely Anglesea and our brief, but wonderful beach holiday. 

Well, I've only covered the first 3 days of 2012 in this post, and there is still so much to tell. I will spread a few posts out over the next week and hopefully catch up. See you soon. xx