Hi all this is the first of my cruise posts, I will be boring you all with a few over the next week or so, we had a bloody great time, although Tim at one point said he didn’t think we would take any more cruises but me I think we will if I can talk him into it and I am going to give it my best shot.

Although one thing I didn’t like was there was no internet in the cabin so I has to take the laptop to the casino or common area down stairs to connect from there and send emails and check Facebook, what did we do before Facebook.

On our second day at see we had breakfast, lunch and tea in the Waterfront restaurant which was ok but tomorrow we will only be having tea in the restaurant and we will have breakfast and lunch in the Pantry yeah a strange name it is a few different types of foods such as Indian, Chinese, something called the Fat cow which has beef pork and chicken dishes with half cooked roast veggies and there is a fish and chips place and some place that has soup and sandwiches and another that has deserts like cakes and such but you have to go and line up get the meal and take it to a table and the two times we ate there we had to walk a mile (well it felt like it ) to get the food as it was very hard to find a table for all of us.

I also didn’t like much of the food which is why we tried the restaurant and yes there are more then two restaurants but some you have to pay extra and we are not doing that. We paid enough money for the cruise and I am not paying extra for food. Although I said to mum tonight that I wouldn’t mind paying the extra to get a hot chocolate in my cabin at night but tonight I got one before coming back to the cabin for the night.

Both mum/nan and I feel that by tea time we are too worn out to walk about finding food we would rather be seated and have the food brought to us.

I had a nap the second day of the cruise but that was all, Tim was having a nap or lay down he said he didn’t sleep though but he was unwell for a few days with a bad toothache, I will post more about that in later posts. Dad also has had a nap a few times as he had been unwell a bit as well.

Every mother who has more than 1 child has most likely felt she enjoyed the whole pregnancy followed by the birth and the holding of her brand new baby.  Of course there are mothers out ther…

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Over the years I have found myself reading numerous articles about being a parent and what each person has learnt in their time of raising their children.  For the majority of the articles I read I…

Source: What I’ve discovered about being a parent and aunty

So I am home and I haven’t stopped and I am in a mood, I asked Natasha Tinkabell Meadows to do two things while we were gone she didn’t do either, she said she was going to clean the walls and replace the photos she didn’t. I cannot find the green tub I use in the bedroom for dirty washing or the little rubbish basket that sits at the end of my bed.

She didn’t think to have some soft drink here for me to drink when I got home.

Also she allowed someone I have never met to stay here in her father’s office when he said before we left if anyone comes over please lock my door.

What does one do when one has no internet, watch tv and write letters to pen pals that is what. I have been without internet since Thursday night, Tim signed us up for the NBN for those who have no idea what that is it’s the National Broadband Network, it is suppose to be faster and better internet but so far no internet it was suppose to be working by Friday morning. However, Friday saw many hundreds of thousands of Telstra customers without the internet and it still isn’t working well as I write this it isn’t working and I am writing this on Sunday evening while I am waiting for the news to start and mum to ring me.

Tim rang Telstra again today he was on hold for 2hrs before someone answered then the guy checked this and that and ended up saying it should be working tomorrow (Monday) so we will see.

My walls are looking pretty bare at the moment because I have taken down all the photos, as Natasha wants to clean the walls and rearrange the photos, she said wants to arrange them in a better order. Leo took one look at the walls when they got here for lunch and said he didn’t like the look of them and had to reassured that the photos would go back up while Nanna & Papa are away.

Just talking to Kathy-Lee about stuff and she mentioned that Summer has a habit of opening her mothers eyes of a morning saying wakey wakey time to wake up, this took me back to when I was a girl and my baby sister Sandy would come into my bed she usually came in and got into bed with me during the night or first thing of a morning, anyway she would open my eyes and say Jo are you in there, and of course I would wake up although at times I would pretend to still be asleep and she would do it again and kiss me on my nose.

Anyway back to my walls, they are looking pretty bare and I am a little worried as Natasha thinks I have too many photos and she said she that she would be only be putting up the important ones back up. I told Kathy-Lee that if I am not happy with what she does I will be adding more photos as it is my house and I like to have photos on the wall, even Tim said that the hallway looks bare and not right without the photos on the walls.

Ok it is now after 4pm on Monday afternoon and Tim has rang Telstra again twice, the first time after being on the phone to them for 45 minutes they hung up on him and didn’t bother to ring him back so we are on the phone to then again and yet again they are checking things that is all they seem to do check things and say it will be up and running the following day. Tim is so bloody pissed off with them and have to say so am I, I spend most of the day every day online doing this and that and no internet for 4 days has been frustrating. Although Kathy-Lee has been without internet for 10 days now.

So it is now Tuesday morning and when I got up this morning we had the internet back, I did a happy dance and spent the morning catching up on things but it will be tomorrow before I get around to reading any blogs as I had a few other things to do today that is taking me away from the computer.

Let’s talk about my hobbies, I don’t have a lot but I do love to read, in fact I like to listen to audio books in the car while I am driving and when I am waiting for the boys to get out of school I will read another book and while we wait at airports or train stations I have a book with me to read.

When I was a child I spent a lot of time in my room reading, I would stay with my grandparents while mum was in hospital she spent a bit of time in hospital when I was a child with having babies and kidney problems and then having a stroke when she was 38.

Anyway back to me and my hobbies when I was with nan & pop I would come home from school go to my room and read, back in those days there would only be one tv in the house generally although my grandparents had an old back and white set in the dining room which at times I would watch but usually I preferred to read. Nan once said to mum that they were worried about me as I spent so much time alone reading but I was happy.

Also I get interested in blogging way back when I started my first blog way back in 2005, I love blogging I love to visit different peoples blogs and read about their lives, for me there are many blog friends. When I explain having blog friends I say they are like pen pals but it is all done on line.

Speaking of pen pals that is another hobby I have a lot of pen pals, I have been writing to pen pals on and off since I was 13-14 some pals I have been writing to for over 25 years one Tracey I have been writing to for more like 30 years she was one of the first pals I got when I took it up again when Kathy was a baby.

My mum understands pen pals as she had pen pals when she was a child/teenager but then she got married and had children and found she often didn’t have time to write and just stopped writing. Also pen paling is a two way thing you need to get letters to reply to and I get a lot, often of a week wend I will have between 6 and 12 letters to answer. I have pals from around Australia and around the world usually in Germany, the UK and Canada. It is a bit expensive to have pen pals here in Australia the cost of stand postage stamp went up to $1 in January and to send and overseas letter it is $2.75 although I usually send Aerogrammes which cost $2.30 so saves me a bit of money.

Welcome to the first ever six happy things Monday, this is going to be an ongoing thing for Monday’s as I think it will be an easy to do post on Monday’s. So here are six things that I am happy for and about today.

A nice clean house

The love of my family

Warm Autumn days

Seeing my grandchildren

Having help with the ironing

Being able to lay the seat back in the car and have a nap while waiting for Blain to get out of school

Do you know the difference between a saucepan and a frypan, I asked because yesterday I asked my daughter to get the large saucepan out of the cupboard and was asked what does a saucepan look like I had a frypan in my hand and said it doesn’t look like this.

Yesterday morning I went and took the jeans Natasha bought me for Mother’s Day back and I was unable to get jeans that fit me so instead I got a nice pair of black pants with a nice light-weight long sleeve top. I am pleased with what I managed to get.

I was hoping when I got home Natasha would have had lunch cooking but no, I ended up having to cook lunch.

After lunch I went out to Jessica’s place to clean her house for her, I was there over 3 hours and still didn’t get it all done, I did most of what she wanted including sorting out al the clothes on her bedroom floor a mixture of clean and dirty clothes she said all the clean stuff was in the clothes baskets but that wasn’t the case I found both clean and dirty clothes on the bedroom floor.

I was exhausted by the time I got home, so I didn’t bother pegging out the load of washing in my machine that Tim had put on to wash, I hung it out this morning I also had to put the dishwasher on to wash when I got home yesterday afternoon.

Tasha is annoyed with her dad as she has been asking him to replace the fly screen on her window since Leo pulled it off three weeks ago and he still hasn’t done it, and yesterday he decided he want to replace the zippers in his saddle bags on his motor bike so he did that and still hasn’t done the window.

Natasha and I just had a tiff because I put Blain’s blue towel in with Natasha’s sheets which are white, she said if we put the white sheets in with the blue towel in the dryer her sheets will go black which is a load of rubbish. So she is in a right mood at the moment throwing things around and slamming doors and such but I don’t care I am right and that is that she things so often that her stuff is more important then mine and that she is always right and her way is the only way.

Isn’t it funny how the same temperature can feel different at different times of the year, like yesterday it was 26°c and it was quiet warm, in the summer months that would be a hot temperature and today it is suppose to be 26°c as well but today is much cooler then yesterday. So not just different seasons but different days can have the same temperature and feel different.

In other news, Leo had a up and down week last week at school, one day he came home and said he had a great day then on Thursday he lost it with another student who he felt was picking on him and he crapped a pair of school scissors you know the type they are rounded and only good enough to cut paper and even then at times they still suck and he jabbed at the kid with them and that got him sent home from school and we where worried he would be suspended again but no he came home on Friday afternoon saying he had a great day at school.