Sausages for dinner

I don't like sausages, even the pure, home raised pork sausages, that we have.  They just don't inspire me, don't make my mouth water, I just don't like 'em and never have.

TJL wanted sausages so that is what he had defrosted, and what I got to cook.  And I still don't like them.  All I did was fry them, and I have to admit that I was super impressed with the fact that NO fat came out of them, the pan basically stayed dry.  TJL liked them, he said dinner was De.Lici.Ous.  It wasn't, but I will go with it.

The Cauliflower on the other hand was YUM!  The broccoli not so much, but the cauli was sweet and perfect.  Again, I don't like broccoli.  I blame my ex as, when his mother was diagnosed with cancer (which she fought and won - HOORAY!) he read that broccoli was a cancer fighter so, we had it EVERY NIGHT  for  MONTHS, and now, ack, I just don't like it.  I eat it because it is good for me, but I don't like it.

Other veges tonight was mashed potato and kumera (sweet potato).  And since I had a delicious serving of that last week up in Aucks, my version was not anywhere near as good.  I seriously wonder what the chef put in theirs.   Ahhhhhhhh, droooooooling just thinking about it.

Best thing tonight will be Raspberry Pie from TJL's boss' wife.  We had half the other night, and it was Fab.U.Lous!  Basically like raspberry jam in a pie, with ice-cream.  Super sweet though!

I  CAN'T  WAIT  TO  BE  A  HOUSEWIFE  TO  BE  ABLE   TO  MAKE  DELICIOUS  AND  NUTRITIOUS  DINNERS  EVERY  NIGHT  FOR  MY  MAN!!

Not pregnant this month either

So good ol' Aunty Flo has just arrived, late this afternoon.  Thanks.  Thanks for making us have to try for yet ANOTHER month to get pregnant.  *sigh*   Oh well, onward we go, maybe THIS month (well next month) we will be successful.  Yada, yada, yada.

Lucky I rang the doc's office yesterday to get my prescription faxed through to the chemist!  I knew the ol' bat was coming.  DOH!  Just remembered I should have rung the doc back today to book my mid-cycle scan.  Never mind, will just have to do it tomorrow.

Work is spectacularly slow at the moment.  Well it IS winter, so the factory is not taking in any milk at the moment, so the only product we have to test is CHEESE.  MMmmmmmmmm, cheese.  So, anyway, today I read a magazine (not allowed, but it was a Dairy Exporter so kinda work related) and took notes for how we can progress in the Dairy Industry to attain farm ownership.  So it was actually kind of productive.  Just so you don't think that I entirely wasted the companies time, I also cleaned one of the fume cupboards, and did all the dishes (there are quite a few, certainly not as many as in Spring and Summer, but still a few).

I got a heap of photos printed off today, so I am all set to get started on a scrapbook of our holiday.   Hopefully it doesn't end up in my 'what I want to achieve when I get time' pile, it's already way out of control!

Back to life, back to reality

So this is where we were last week.  *sigh*  Funny how it now seems so long ago, and we have only been home 1 day!  What a great, sunfilled, fairly relaxing trip.  Such a shame it is all over.

This is part of the Cairns Botanic Gardens.  The gardens were HUGE, with fantastic walking trails.  I didn't see a crocodile in this water but I think that the odd one has been seen.  I figured that crocs would be everywhere, so was super cautious ... hahaha

The scenic railway to Kuranda was a must do.  Especially if you love trains, as I do!  We came back on the Sky Rail, which was not so great as I don't like heights very much at all.  Well worth doing, but I won't do it again, much rather come back on the train.  Of course, if we go back to Cairns on holiday, chances are I will have forgotten how scared I was on the Sky Rail, and travel on it again, only to be reminded why I didn't like it the first time - very similar to my Dr Pepper experiences.

Scary, grip the seat kinda stuff - well for me anyway.  TJL had to take gondola photos, I was hanging onto the seat and breathing.

We did a wee boat trip on a lake, that contained this wonderful, chubby, eel.  I quite like eels.  There also were terapins (turtles that swim dog paddle rather than breaststroke, I think thats what the guide said).  I love turtles.

One of the many wonderful waterfalls we were taken to.  If we had known we would have taken our togs for a swim, even though our guide said it was FREEZING cold.  Freezing cold in North Australia is not THAT cold, definitely swum in cooler waters in snow fed New Zealand rivers.

Our final visit was to a Spanish Castle.  Such a tragic story, and a lot of it has 'fallen' down due to cyclones and floods.  A Spanish man moved to Australia to make his fortune, 11 years later he made his fortune and returned to Spain to marry the woman he promised he would.  He hadn't written so she had married another 3 years earlier, so he married her sister.  Moved back to Australia and built her this castle, which was just amazing considering he did most of it himself in a very short time span.  And there is more, but you can read that here - Paronella Park.

Then today it was back to work.  Yeah.  I do believe that TJL is 'happy' for me to resign in three months time and I can become the housewife extrordinaire that I have always wanted to be.  I  CAN'T  WAIT!

Cairns day 4

We had a 'rest' day today.  Got up at 6amish, mucked around until about 8.30am, when we headed off to the Botanic Gardens.  They were pretty cool, and HUGE.  Took a ton of photos, but can't download/upload as I forgot the cable for that camera ... doh.  Part of the walk was SUPPOSED to be around the Gondwana Garden.  Unfortunately half way round I decided that the way to go was to follow 'everyone else'.  Big mistake, BIG.  Following everyone else meant we were on the 'Red Track', which thankfully only went for 1.2km, 600M of which was UP!  UP I tell you.  Now Im a bit of a porker, but had been feeling pretty good about myself having walked the 45 minutes into town and back over the previous 3 days.  That was NOTHING!  Nothing I tell you!  But I am glad we did it, hopefully it will knock a bit of fat off of me.

We then walked into a small village and finally managed to find the 'Flying Doctor Service', where I had to take a photo, solely because of the 1980's programme.  TJL had moaned up a storm getting there, and it wasn't that far, seriously!

We then had lunch at the Botanic Gardens Cafe.  Chicken, mushroom, spinach filo.  DELICIOUS!!  Best food we have had so far.

And that was it.  Spent the rest of the day at the resort.  Walked to the shops for an icecream, and then back again to get Pizza for tea (nice Pizza too).

Cairns Day 3

Got up at about 5.45am this morning, just the time I woke up naturally.  We were all ready to head off on our tour by 6.40am, so we decided to walk rather than Taxi into town to get to the Marina, which we had to be at by 8.00am.  We got there by 7.30am, which was excellent, and we now know how long it takes to get to town!

To begin with we thought it was going to be a fairly 'light' trip as far as people were concerned.  We were wrong.  A bus load, or four, of American Students rocked on up and boarded, and proceeded to talk, and talk, and talk ... lol.  Actually they were all pretty great.  All seemed to get along fine, and were excited, and friendly, and the majority were fine looking females so TJL had plenty of bikini clad attractive girls to look at.   We departed the Marina at around 9am, and got out to Great Barrier Reef at about 11am, to Michaelmas Cay.

We got on the second boat to Michaelmas Cay and snorkeled straight out to the reef.  It was AWESOME.  Hopefully we got some photos on the disposable camera, as it was just a point and hope you got the shot situation.  Will find out when we get back home and get it developed as to whether we have anything or not.  Fingers crossed!!  I snorkeled for a long time, quite a bit longer than TJL, but even though I wanted to keep going I thought I should go and see if he wanted to go back to the boat for lunch, he did, so we did, and since I was now dry I couldn't be bothered heading back out to Michaelmas Cay for more snorkeling, which I kinda regret, but too late now!  Considering it was something I wasn't fussed about doing, MAN it was FUN!

Cairns Day 2

Can't remember where I got up to yesterday, how typical is that??!!  Anyhow we walked into the city yesterday.  Took us about an hour or so and we walked along an 'internal' road, so found an IGA Supermarket, and a cool looking bike shop, amongst other things.  And it was jolly hot!  So we stopped for a bottle of water, and TJL got a sorbet.  We found the 'beach', which was tidal mudflat with sand dumped in certain places.  Tide was out, way, way, way out.  And we also discovered an AWESOME walkway right along the waterfront, which essentially took us right back to within a block of our resort.

We then proceeded to fall asleep, and failed to wake up until after 9pm, when the restaurant was closed, luckily I wasn't hungry so just went back to sleep.  Not too sure about TJL, he didn't go and get himself anything so I figure he wasn't that hungry either.

Woke up this morning pretty early, and went over to the restaurant for breakfast.  It was ok, not really worth the $9, so we bought our own breakfast stuff today to save us a bit of money.

We walked back into town today (via the coast as it was far nicer than the street walk), and booked activities for the rest of the week.  Tomorrow is Great Barrier Reef, Thursday we are going out to Kuranda to do the railway and skyrail thingee, and Friday we are heading out to the tablelands, to see waterfalls and some giant castle thing.  We also did a wee bit of shopping, involving Jandals, Beach Towels, a hat, underwater disposable camera, and then some foodstuffs from the IGA.  Spent far too much money, but hey, thats what holidays are for.

Had a really nice pizza lunch at a waterfront restaurant, and went to the local art gallery - loved Alex Platt's work.  Tonight we had dinner at the resort restaurant.  Was pretty disappointed really.  Certainly wasn't brilliant.  Wasn't bad, just plain.

So it will be an early night tonight as we have a bit of an early start in the morning (not too early though).

Hello Sunny Cairns

We finally made it to Cairns for our 7 night get-away.  Now, that makes it sound like an arduous trip, and it wasn't, but it was still a bit of a haul.

We left lil' ol' Eltham yesterday at 10am, and headed to Wazza's so he could drop us off at New Plymouth Airport, for our flight to Auck's.  At this stage I just kept on sniffling with the odd sneeze, and I started to worry that I was getting 'sick'.  The flight to Auck's was pretty good, just over half an hour, but we could NOT find a 'free' phone to ring the hotel, so I just used my cell-phone, and we were picked up pretty promptly and taken to Jet Park for the night.  At Jet Park my nose really went to town, and I was not feeling to sh*t hot!  I ended up falling asleep and then TJL had to wake me up at 6.25pm as our dinner reservation was for 6.30pm.  Dinner was not great in the sense my nose continued to run and I continued to sneeze.  I really could not enjoy myself, which was disappointing as the food was DIVINE!  I had pork with kumara mash, I have no idea what they did to those Kumara's but YUMMY!

We had to have an early night as we had to back at the airport at 4.50am, which involved a 4am getup!  I am so glad we are dairy farmers and used to being up at that time (the 4.50am at least).  Best news was that my nose was much better today, although I felt pretty sick first thing, by the time we boarded our flight at 6.15am I was feeling right as rain.  The flight (just under 6 hours) was totally uneventful.  Watched a couple of movies, played a bit of 'Who wants to be a Millionaire' and 'Black Jack', and then we landed in Sunny Cairns!

The airport terminal was quite a bit smaller than Aucklands, which surprised me a bit.  We found the shuttle guy easily, and are now ensconced in our unit.  Which is pretty nice.  Did have potato chips, a chocolate bar, and lemonade for lunch though ... whoops.  But the resort restaurant doesn't open for lunch so we were kind of limited in our choices.

And now we are blobbing until tea time, and then tomorrow, when we will head off on an explore.

To much junk food, not enough fresh air

The last two days I have sat inside and eaten FAR TOO MUCH junk food.  Chocolate, candies, soft drink, chips, the list goes on!

And I haven't managed to finish sorting out my BMX photos.  It is REALLY time consuming.  But I only have 800 or so to go, so hopefully by the end of this week ... lol

And other than that, absolutely NOTHING is happening in my life.  We had our third, and final? seminar last Thursday.  It was good.  I quite enjoyed it.  TJL on the other hand, would have rather been anywhere else.  They sure do make it sound SO hard.  And I know that it will be/would be, but still, a few good points in regards to fostering and adoption would have been nice to hear.

Back to work tomorrow.  Hopefully TJL will stick to his word and I only have 3 months and 3 weeks to go before I become a housewife.  Please, oh please, oh please.  And I am more than happy to take a part time job, provided it does not interfere with my weekends, so I can get stuck into my photography.

Not asking for much am I?  LOL!