Finally.......

First off: Happy New Year everyone!!

Well, where do I start? I hope that you all had a fantastic Christmas, and a wonderful New Year. Ours was very nice, not too much hassle at all, as it can sometimes get....

Christmas Eve was spent at my sisters. They have just bought a new house, and she was very eager to hold our yearly family Christmas Eve night there. Julieanne was very excited to be going, as they have also just got 2 new puppies... talk about biting off more than you can chew! lol. It was a good night though.. .although the drive home was a little scary... the weather turned VERY ugly there for a while, but we do need the rain :)

Christmas day started with Julieanne getting up around 7.30, not too bad really. Then she realised that no-one else was up and went back to bed. I felt sorry for her then and had to get up so she could at least open up something. She scored well, getting 2 Bratz dolls, a Cabbage Patch kid and a mp4 player (the best purchase ever! lol)

It was then off to Wayne's brothers for lunch. They seem to do it every year and Lisa's (SIL) parents are there too... it's always pretty good, with lots of photos being taken, although this year I might not be the only one snapping away. Waynes' mum got a new digital sony cybercam, and she seems to be enjoying it wonderfully... shame there might actually be some photos of me taken!

Stewart ended up getting a new skim board from them, but more on that later ;).

We didn't end up staying for the usual lunch-turn-into-dinner thing, and were home by 7, which was nice as Stewart still had to open the presents here for him. He also ended up with an mp4 (love it lol) also a Simpsons Chess board, Rubik (sp?) cube and dvds.

Boxing day (the 26th), we travelled up to Healeville to Waynes Aunts house. I must say that she did a FANTABULOUS job of decorating. She is the most creative person I know, and I sooooo want her to get into digiscrapping.... I'm sure that everything she touches turns out stunning!

They own this restaurant in Healesville, and have asked me to take some photos for the website, and do a new flyer for them.. .I'm very honoured, but still feel like my stuff is way not good enough, but I'll give it a go I suppose.. I really should get onto it really...

New Years Eve we went to some friends house for a bbq. Her parents were there as well, and some people had a little too much to drink, making for some awkward moments, but all in all it was ok. I guess I should start drinking just to fit in more ;). Julieanne did get a little upset later because she didn't see any good fireworks, so we had to explain that the don't have really good ones in the suburbs, just some small backyard stuff.

Wednesday was a really hot one (we've had a few of those lately), and the kids were desperate to cool down... We've got a spare tank that catches the rain of our garage for the garden, so we decided to use that to set up a waterslide for them.. .I know we are in water restrictions, but this is water that can't be used for anything else anyway.. .It's had bore water mixed with it... The kids had a ball. I remember when I was little, and when we had the black plastic slide, it was so much fun, I'm glad that they got to experience it for a little while at least.

The next day, was another hot one. So we decided to go to the beach. We packed our stuff (and boy does that take awhile lol) and headed off to Dromana. It was packed! And the beach that we ended up at got deep very quickly... not my ideal spot. We lasted there a couple of hours and decided to go home. Good thing we took the long way and went through Flinders, as we found a lovely beach there, with hardly any people, long shallows and some rock pools! The beach wasn't the cleanest (seaweed was everywhere), but we all agreed that it was better than the Dromana one. Julieanne even found a starfish near the rock pools.

Friday came round and, yep once again, the temperature was going over the mid thirties. We rang my BIL and asked him if he wanted to go to the beach (this is the most we have EVER been in the nearly 12 years me and Wayne have been together! lOL), he said yep, so we headed up to Mordialloc where he lives. The beach there was fantastic, lots of shallows and lots of areas for Stewart to use his new skimboard! I got a HEAP of photos of crashes, but missed most of the really good ones lol. Wayne had a go, and fell off, and even Julieanne had a turn sitting on it, and getting pulled around while hanging onto a noodle ;). She also got some new swimmers and loved posing in them. I really wanted to get her a one piece, but this two piece was so cute I couldn't help myself.

On Sunday we were asked if we'd like to go to Matthew (SIL's nephew) birthday party at the funpark in Whittlesea. The weather was shocking, but it turned out to be a good day, I think that if it had of been a better day weather wise, the park would have been packed. I went on the bumper boat things and got totally saturated! I really didn't think I was going to get that wet, but everyone seemed to be picking on me and squirting us. Julieanne loved the go karts and the toboggan, I'm sure that she is going to be a daredevil.. funny girl that she is. Bugs frighten her silly, but she loves fast moving things lol. I got some great photos of them in the go karts too. Julieanne does her peace signs back-to-front, so it looks like she is giving the fingers.. .at least I hope it's not intentional...... lol

Well not a lot happening on the layout front, but I did manage to do these. The first one is of Julieanne's Christmas concert, done in fotofusion and a scraplift of this one by Anna Aspnes. Did not do it justice by half! fonts: helvetica, 2peas billboard, paper by Denise Docherty from blended Autumn, and paper and elements by Shabby Princess, holiday magic. Frame brush by Jason Gaylor.

I also finally manged to get some of our holiday photos done. These were from Wet and Wild, and I'd have to say that it was one of the best days we had.

Again, another fotofusion layout ;). fonts: itc avant garde book, 2peas rubberducky. Overlay by Nancie Rowe Janitz.

Phew... that was a post and a half!! I really should keep on top of it shouldn't I? lol, don't see it happening anytime soon though. Thanks for getting this far (even if you did skim it lol)

TTFN