Hello everyone well yesterday Tim drove our car to work and the mechanic said it might have been a one of and not to worry. Well when he was driving home last night he had no headlights at all not good so this morning he has been ringing around to find out if the repair would be covered by warranty and it may be but we don’t know for sure till the car is looked at. We have to take it to Klosters tomorrow for them to look at it, we hope it is as we don’t want a huge bill. I did manage to piss Tim off when he asked if I would drop the car off and I said I didn’t really want to, but I will.

At the moment he is at the doctors not sure why he has been having a trouble sleeping it is like has restlessness in his upper body and arm along with some pain around the ribs and chest area, he Googled the symptoms and came up with hernia or heart attack which I guess is why he has gone to the doctor.

Only a week to go before Tim and I will be going to Tassie for a holiday and we have been looking at different cruises for next year dad wants to find a cruise and start paying it off, my brother and sister in-law are going on a cruise next June and they asked Dawson if he would like to go but he said no he wasn’t interested in going and they have decided to not take Landon as they would have to put him into day care on the ship and it cost extra and they don’t think he would enjoy it and wouldn’t remember much of it at all. This I understand as I have been on a couple of cruises and no there isn’t a lot for young children so he will be staying with my parents while they are gone. My sister in-laws parents said they were excluding him and it was wrong with a capital W but I get why they have decided to leave him at home with mum and dad as does Tim but of course my daughters don’t get it they say they think he should go but really they have no idea what a cruise is like.

Kathy was just here she said I don’t interact with my grandchildren enough and that is why Summer is distant from me when she is here, maybe she is right I don’t know I am not a big one for interacting with children also I think the fact that I don’t have Summer here many days a week like I did Blain when he was a baby and toddler and now that he lives here I see him 5 or 6 days a week and Leo has always spent a lot of time with me and papa. Kathy has always looked after her own children and has never needed my help like her sisters do.

Ok that is all my news for today, I will end this here and post it.

Now let us move onto Mystery Island, this is a tiny uninhabited islet in Vanautu’s Tafea Province, officially charted under the indigenous name Inyeug.

Other than an airstrip built by the United States Military personnel to serve the nearby island of Aneityum, Mystery Island only has a few huts for overnighters and modern amenities for cruise passengers and some trails that bisect the island.

Tim and I went over to Mystery Island there were markets set up for those of the cruise ship and this is were we took the glass bottom boat tour which was awesome.

The population is zero, no one lives on the island as is considered taboo to do so, the locals from Aneityum when the cruise ships stop at the island, the population of Aneityum is only about 1,200 and when we were on the glass bottom boat tour we were told that some locals live on a near by island that has no running water, electricity or anything modern.

People speak English, French, Bislama and Anejom which is the local language of Aneityum, the government is a Parliamentary republic and the currency is the Vatu.

The only cruise ships that stop at Mystery Island are those from P & O

Hello world, I had planned to post something yesterday but with one thing or another didn’t get around to it, this morning I am writing this as I wait for the NRMA to arrive to look at my car. Last night Natasha borrowed the car and when she was out she started to have trouble with it some light came on, on the dash no idea what light but when she got home the brake lights would turn off and they are still on this morning. Tim went out and looked at it, he has no idea so he rang the NRMA to come and look at it and hopefully tell us what is wrong so we can have it repaired.

I still have to go and finish my shopping I may have to walk to the shops and get someone to pick me up when I am finished, yesterday Natasha drove me to Charlie to have Friday breakfasts and get a few things but didn’t do the main part of the shopping at Coles. I had hoped to do it yesterday afternoon, as I thought Tim was coming home for a couple of hours, he had a spilt shift but he didn’t come home and thus I wasn’t able to do the shopping.

Ok NRMA has been and he couldn’t fix it thought it was the brake light switch or some other switch he tried and tried but couldn’t get the lights to go out in the end he disconnected the battery as it was flat and he had to jump start it. It will need to be towed to Ford I think to be repaired but for now I am unable to drive it. Tim hopes it will be covered by warranty but we will see, on Monday when he makes some phone calls about the bloody car.

Ok it is now midday, I started writing this 4 hours ago, went and did my shopping Kathy drove me down and came back to get me when I was finished, while I was gone Tim rang the mob we bought the car from and got in touch with the mob who handle the warranty and someone came out to check the car out and guess what the brake lights are off now, he said it might be because the battery was disconnected for a while and it reset its self but we need to take it in for someone to check it our by putting it on the computer to check it out.

Also we have now had lunch I did a beef casserole last night in the slow cooker and it was nice the meat so bloody tender and I bought a apple and custard scroll thing for dessert which Jessica said was too something no idea what that something is

Now I am looking forward to the girls and their children to leave so I can sit back and do nothing in nice and quiet. I love seeing them but I also love it when they leave.

So at this moment Natasha is straightening Kathy’s hair, Kathy came over to colour Natasha’s hair which Kathy does every few weeks. I no longer bother colouring my hair I have salt and pepper hair now which is fine with me.

I have no other news so I will now post this at 12.30pm

Today I will tell you a little about Port Vila, which is the trading centre and capital of Vanuatu, all of us went ashore when there and what we saw didn’t impress us much but then we didn’t really see much of the area maybe if we had gone into town it would have been different but we didn’t so it is what it is.

Anyway from what I have learnt Port Vila has seen more history and change than many towns much bigger, when it comes to culture, tradition and history, how I don’t know I just read that on the info sheet the ship gives you. I can also tell you that you can find a mix of cultures in Port Vila such as Melanesian, French, English and Chinese to name a few.

It is a pretty large place with a population around 45,000, they speak English, French and Bislama and the government is a republic. The currency is Vatu but we found that all the stalls at the port took Australian dollars and the same at the shop we went to when we took a taxi ride into the nearest town which turned out not to be the nearest town at all if we wanted to walk a bit we would have seen more but neither my parents can walk a great distance.

Now some of you may have heard about Port Vila in the news when there was an accident over there involving passengers off one of P & O’s ships, I can tell you we saw no buses when we were there at the port there were many small taxi vans which are old Targo type vans and when I say old I mean old and as far as seat belt we rode in two different ones, one of them had a couple of seat belts but not enough for all in the van and the other had none that we could see.

Ok our second port of call was Dravuni Island, this is a very small island at the northern end of the Kadavu Group, that means nothing to me, just saying.

Anyway the island has less then 200 local people living there, they speak Fijian and English, it is virtually surrounded by the Great Astrolabe Reef and is suppose to be a diver’s paradise. The reef was named after French explorer Dumont d’Urville’s ship “Astrolabe”, which struck the reef in the 1820’s.

Tim went over to the island which you reach via tender but there is nothing really on the island, no cars or vehicles of any type, no large stores only a few market stalls set up by the locals for the tourist dollar. In fact Tim said there was nothing to indicate that one was living in the 21^st century.

I guess some would say it is one of the Pacific’s most unspoilt destinations, the government is a republic and they use Fijian dollars.

Hi all welcome to a Monday update also known as what has been happening in Jo-Anne’s little world since Thursday when she last posted. Well Friday saw Blain have the day off school as he was sick on Thursday with a gastro that has been going around and had to be without any symptoms for 24 hours before returning to school. It was only the previous Monday that the school made the news when 120 students were off sick with the gastro.

Friday was also the last day of the school term the boys are off for two weeks now and Jessica has taken Leo away to around the Casino area to visit a friend they left yesterday afternoon and will be home some time on Wednesday and when they are gone I have to bunny sit for her.

Back to Friday I had to get Leo from school but after doing the shopping I didn’t feel like going out and getting him so Kathy went and got him out an hour early before she went home. I appreciated that so much. Anyway Friday night Leo was sick with the same bug Blain had but was sicker then Blain who only had a bit of diarrhoea, Leo had diarrhoea and vomiting and felt pretty sick all night but was much better on Saturday.

However, at 2am on Saturday morning I woke up feeling like shit and ended up spending the whole day pretty much in bed sleeping except when I dragged myself out of bed to walk down to vote. Now I must have looked terrible and my balance was awful and both Blain and Leo were fighting I asked if Leo would like to walk down with me and he looked at me and said yes nanna you look like you will need help. He was worried I would fall over or throw up or something, thankfully we hadn’t gone far when his mum pulled up and drove me down to the school to vote, I said I would go in but Leo said no I am coming too I want to make sure you are ok and don’t fall over. Then when I was waiting in line to get my named marked off I was finding it difficult to stand still and not fall over so Leo was holding my hand and staying close to me.

When I got home from voting I went back to bed, yesterday Sunday was pretty much the same, I felt better but not 100% and still spent most of the day in bed. Last night at 9pm it hit Tim he was up vomiting and with diarrhoea for a bit and has called in sick to work this morning as he still doesn’t feel great but he is now where near as sick as I was.

Natasha was also sick last night vomiting and with diarrhoea but is feeling better today not great but well enough to be outside washing her car there was no way I would have been up do doing that over the weekend.

In other news yesterday morning at around 9am I get a phone call from my mum to inform me that my Uncle Ronnie had passed away, Uncle Ronnie is/was mums younger brother he was 74 two years younger then mum. Now when my Aunt Eileen rang mum’s Dawson answered the phone and didn’t know who it was and all she said was for him to tell nan that Ronnie died, which he did but this naturally shocked mum when he said that some aunt rang to say that Uncle Ronnie died mum said “what Ronnie died” he could tell mum was upset and asked who Uncle Ronnie was and mum said he is my brother. Dawson said if he realised it was her brother he would had gone in and woke her up, I fell Eileen should had told Dawson to go and get his nan so she could speak to her and not relay the news via mum’s 17 year old grandson but that is just me.

Now I know many of you are wondering what he died off well we don’t really know mum rang Eileen and spoke to her and she thinks his heart just gave out on him he has had a bad heart for many years and has had a couple of heart attacks and has had bypass surgery many years ago and may have had cancer of some kind. This is the second death in the extended family this year, some may say two down one to go and yeah often these things do seem to come in threes.

Now today I am 95% better still have a bit to go before I am fully recovered, I wonder why it has taken me longer to get over the damn gastro bug then the rest of the family.