Hi there everyone who reads our wonderful Blog.
Karen does such a great job with keeping everyone up to date n Kylin and her activities and the photos are just brilliant. I thought it was probably timely that I gave you all a bit of an update on what I’ve been doing over the last six or so months. As you may know I started work as a train driver with Pacific National Qld in Townsville in February last year. I was driving freight trains between Cairns and Mackay. The Townsville to Cairns jobs were great as I got to see Karen and Kylin (Kylin really loved visiting me in the hotel in Cairns where we had our rest period before driving back to Townsville). I really enjoyed the Mackay jobs as well as I was the only driver on the freighter and we were allowed to do 100kph on that route!

I moved back to Cairns in November and started back as a Lieutenant Commander with the Hydrographic Group at HMAS CAIRNS doing Navy Reserve days. There is tons of work to do (mainly writing Service papers) and helping get the survey fleet fully operational with their new survey systems. I’ve been advised that the Navy has given me work until the end of the financial year and I’m pretty certain that there will be more to come in the next FY.

I decided to move back to Cairns because even though I was getting home regularly from Townsville on my days off and when I brought the train up, I was still missing Karen and Kylin so very much. They both needed me here in Cairns and I needed to be with them also. It s been so wonderful being back home and being able to see my beautiful family everyday. Kylin has been into work at the Navy base quite a few times and he absolutely loves it. He says "he is part of the Navy crew and everyone knows him now". He always does some colourful drawings for each of the staff in the office and everyone thinks he is great.

I haven’t completely lost touch with the train driving. As well as the Navy work (which is Mon to Friday) I also am employed as a casual employee of Cairns Kuranda Steam. Cairns Kuranda used to run a steam train up to Kuranda but they predominantly operate a railmotor (The Savannahlander) out to Forsyth. They also are subcontracted by Pacific National to operate freight trains to and from Townsville when they are running short of crews or their drivers are fatigued. I have had quite a few runs up and back to Townsville which keeps my qualifications and route knowledge up to speed. The main thing is that I don’t spend anymore than a night or two away from Cairns and I still get to "play trains".

I’m also enjoying being back because there are always so many things to do around the house and in the yard. And of course the dogs love the fact they get a couple of walks a day in now.

I've attached some photos of a trip I did between Townsville and Cairns. Hope you like them.

Melbourne visit Jan 11th to 19th.

Hello everyone. I have just returned from my trip to Melbourne. Here are some of the photos. This is the view from the road overlooking my friends house where I stayed while I was there. Beautiful, peaceful, and very relaxing.

Some amazingly detailed graffiti.
Sightseeing on my way to the museum.
Exhibition building.

A whale skeleton. The shadows were amazing.

Jacinta, Micheal, Liam and Emma ran amok with me at the museum, we didn't stop laughing the whole time. Gorgeous people. xoxoxoxo

Liam and Emma in the roller coaster.

For very small babies

Naaawwww she's sooo cute

Went to visit Trixie, Keir, Blake, and Ashleigh and had a great catch up, the day flew. This is little Ashleigh with her dad. Thanks for having us guys. xoxoxoxo

Then it was off to see luscious Cameron. We couldn't get a good photo of us both at once so I used a good one of him. Thank you for a magic afternoon Cam. xoxoxoxo

We went to the cricket to see England and Australia play.

Had fantastic seats on the fence, the weather was great, we had an awesome day.

Later on we moved up into the higher stands, the view from up there was magnificent.

Wayne's birthday we gathered at Tony and Tookta's for a BBQ

Little Wayne :)

Pete n Deb came and brought loads and loads of wood for us to play with. Thanks for coming to see us guys. xoxoxoxo

The birthday boy looking coy.

Safety issues? what safety issues? He is the firestarter!

HAHAHAHAHA

The ashes!

Stu turns the fire into a submarine.

I had a fantastic time, saw some incredible bands, ate loads of delicious food, caught up with my other mum who is just such a beautiful lady. Saw Greg, Sharon, Ali, Mark, Simon and Emily. Discovered the mighty Boosh to which I am now addicted. Saw the sun come up quite a few times. Got introduced to loads of new music. Brought some magic sparkly converse shoes (life is too short NOT to have magic sparkly converse shoes) and did some advanced relaxing. My dear friend Wayne drove me everywhere, thank goodness he's used to driving a lot cause we covered some miles, he picked me up and dropped me off at the airport, put me up, and partied with me till he couldn't. Namaste my friend -Thank you. xo

The next post wont be about me at all - I promise :)

Hope you are all happy and well and everything is great in your world.

Love from (cyclone) Kaz. xoxoxo

Last post for 2010

Hello everybody.

We hope you all survived the madness of christmas and it was as you wished it would be. As you would have heard on the news, we have had monsoonal rain here on and off for a couple of weeks now, so we start the pics with one of Kylin when he realised he could make a shower from the rain off the tarp - the pool was warm so the rain water felt very cold!

At least when it rains here, it is still warm, it doesn't interrupt our pool time, we get a waterfall on the mountain and the creek gives us that lovely running water sound. Win Win. :)
Ok some xmas cooking. These are orange cream filled dates, dipped in dark chocolate and drizzled with milk chocolate. Very fiddly to make but they were more than a little bit yum!

Merry christmas little boo. xoxo
He opened presents from us and family on xmas eve morning.
Remote control tarantula. Thank you Uncle Peter and Auntie Debbie. xoxo

Lots of board games, chosen to help his fine motor skills, and concentration.

My xmas is on xmas eve so we are able to space things out over two days which is great for Kylin not having everything all at once. I have to tell you, those hats are way too hot for up here.

Ahhh more food. This was a watermelon, lime and mint drink I made which may or may not have had just a splash of vodka in it. Very refreshing in this humidity.

Chicken wings that had marinaded for 24hrs and were very slooooow cooked.

So sticky, so yummy. 3kgs didn't last very long at all. :)

Santa brought us all a Wii.

The kids loved the dance star game and are very quick to pick up the moves.

We had a cyclone form overnight and hit at 4.30am xmas morning. Before that we took down the tarp and pulled in all our furniture just in case. Poor Kylin woke up so early from the noise and once he unwrapped the Wii was so very patient cause he couldn't start playing with it until after 7 when the storm had passed.

Boxing day was spent with Dan, Bindi and kids. We had a wonderful day, sharing our leftovers and just doing loads of nothing after the xmas hoo har. This is Brodie, Baylie and Kylin eating their dinner together....Oh and Bindi doing a "look at me I'm schpechial"

Bindi n Dan set the boys up in their loungeroom so they'd crash out and we could just keep doing nothing, but it wasn't to be. Kylin and Brodie were just far too tired and excited and were still awake very late so we bundled Kylin up and brought him home to his own bed. It was dark, I took this photo with the flash so it looks like daylight. :)

Hope you have survived the holiday season unstressed so far and as we lead up to the new year, find lots of good things about the past year to be grateful for, rather than concentrating on the bad things.

Hope you relax and enjoy the last few days and you all have a safe and happy new years eve.

xoxo

Happy birthday to our 17 January babies:

Mick, Gunny, Ishie, Linc, Vicky, Cameron, Niki, Kim, Froggy, Peter C, Trrroggy, Bernard,

Chris V, Deanna, Teddy bear, Vegie and Luke.

Our heartfelt wishes for a wonderful day and year. xoxo

Twas the days before christmas

Hello everyone, I was just going to do a post christmas catch up but we have been really really busy so here goes...since the last post......Rhys came for a sleepover and the boys had an extreme bubble bath.We also took them to the Cairns Autism Support group xmas party at Gekkos, they ran and played and were just blurry the whole night.
Kylin was home sick from school on the 28th Nov so we put the xmas tree up to cheer him up. He and the cat had a wonderful time in the tinsel.
Kylin and I at his prep break up day.

Kylin on the waterslide

and doing awesome poses during the "statues" game

feeding frenzy after all the fun

Kylin's amazing teacher Leigh, with the painting the kids made her.

I'm not driving at the moment so Kylin and I got a taxi home from school. He was soooo excited.

Cheyenne and Hayley came over for a swim and a play.

Kylin picked out a "uniform" and went to work with daddy for a few hours. He packed his own snacks and had "paperwork" in his bag.

I made a mountain of gingerbread bickies, the boys had a great time decorating them.

Ryan turned one and I made him a chicken, beef and cream cheese cake, he was a little pudding when he'd scoffed it all.

Ryan showing his markings (in normal light he looks black)

we made santa and reindeer faces with paper plates (on the wall in the background)

At the Woree pool for Jaelyns 3rd birthday party. This is Bindi and Baylie blowing bubbles.

In other news, my stepdad Ernie had an operation yesterday to have a brain tumor removed, he was recovering well, and I did speak to him via my brother's speaker phone, but soon after he had a big seizure this afternoon and has been moved back to intensive care. Hopefully he will improve over the next few days and go back to the ward.

Hope you are all enjoying the lead up to christmas, we have our menus done and Kylin is really excited about santa coming. He lost another tooth two nights ago so the tooth fairy paid us a visit again. We love the school holidays and are spending loads of time in the pool, doing lots of crafty stuff, having movie nights and camp outs in the lounge and spare rooms.

Hope all is well in your worlds. Love and hugs and loads of tinsel. xoxoxoxo