Darwin - Brisbane - Darwin

Our weekly blog has turned into a fortnightly blog.  We have pretty much finished work and are preparing to set off for the west.  Garry worked his last day at the Hardware and the work at the races has all but dried up.  We have one last day at the Tab tomorrow (Sat 1/9/12). 

As we will be on the road and away from major airports for a while we took the opportunity to fly back to Brisbane for Doctors and Accountants visits.  Everything is good and we are right to set off.

It was good for Carol to be able to spend her birthday with others and we both enjoyed participating in Madelaine’s  4^th birthday celebrations.  She started the day arriving in our bed around daylight to await the rising of the rest of the household.  She had a good brekky with her Dad and opened all her presents before Ben had to go to work.  She was very excited with her new bike from Mum and Dad, the new Budgies (Sparkles for Mads and Ossie for Isobel's early birthday next month); and her new soft hair brush from Grandad, and of course, everything else.  Mum made her some lovely cup cakes to have with her classmates at Kindy and she had a few friends over for a party in the afternoon.  She is so proud of all the things she can do now that she is four.

Isobel continues to do really well at Prep enjoying learning her words and loves it when her Mum and Dad help out at school.  Kirsty is doing the school P&F Facebook page and Ben helps out on working bees.  We all managed to sit in front of the TV counting Coles grocery tickets for hours on end but finally got through them.  Kirsty just has to count the hundreds of little bundles we made to find the school total.

Carol collected all her sewing and had a stall at the annual baby & toddlers market at Eagle Farm on the weekend.  She put a lot of effort and hours into the sewing and Kirsty helped her a lot with the Facebook page and organising for the market.  They had a good day selling quite well and getting her name out among the young mothers of Brisbane.   We have seen a lot of new activity on the website and orders are coming in. For those who haven’t seen it yet it is on Facebook at TheVintageCaravanStall. 

We were also lucky enough to catch up with Nerilyn, Dennis, Breanna, and Carols brother David for lunch on Carols birthday.  Nez and Den are planning to be back on the road with their van early in the new year and we hope we can cross paths somewhere.  Garry managed to get to the races in Brisbane to see David and Shaneen's two horses run.  It was good to catch up with them for a few minutes.  They are still going well and I managed to leave the track unscathed after the Tab lady printed the wrong ticket and I kept it and accidently held a winner.

We have started packing the van up today as we leave for Singapore and Kuala Lumpur on Monday and will head for Kakadu and Western Australia when we return.  The weather here has warmed up since we went to Brisbane and is starting into the buildup with high humidity and early fogs.  The aircon is going flat out on cool this evening which is very different from Brisbane.

N.B.   Photo’s will be added in the next day or so and the next blog in two weeks.