Comparison

Images Courtesy Robert Paul

Ok, so the penthouse, here in this apartment complex that we are living in at present, has finally been finished. Yay, hopefully no more broken glass, nails and other life threatening paraphernalia making its way into our ground floor courtyard... from 6 floors up! (we have a little collection of things, we have 'surgically' removed from feet, in our 'dangerous items box'). Rumour has it that the penthouse price tag will be between around 6 million dollars..... I know! ... and they have to use the same feral building entrance (currently in a state of ruin due to muddy booted workmen) as us 'renters'! ... and share our pool... and gym... and herb garden! For 6 million dollars, I'd want my own entrance... pool.... gym.... herb garden.

Same place - close up

... and so I was 'realestalking' last night (as spouses do during the European Soccer Highlights on Foxtel... yawn..... #thethingsyoudoforlove).......look what you get for 6-7 million in Cape Cod!

...and our dollar is sooo good at the moment! ... sigh... any good boy's schools in Cape Cod?

More Boy Heaven

We spent yesterday at the museum. They had a live stick insect display which had my youngest in raptures..... as his favourite living thing on this earth is the stick insect. He even got a whole book on the subject for his birthday. Riveting stuff.

We met a really interesting museum guide who is doing his PhD in Paleontology... small mammals.. so he spends his days digging in caves.... looking for fossilized rodents. My boys were fascinated. They had a very in depth discussion, on the evolution of dinosaurs, bearded dragons, blue tongue lizards and birds, with Mr PhD man. I wandered off and found out the real name for the 'Blue Crayfish' we found in the rainforest... 'The Lamington Spiny Crayfish'... riveting.

We always make a special school holiday trip to our favourite sushi place. Something to look forward to at the end of each term. Tobiko ship ... and make that a double! Just as well it is once a term. Those boys can put it away.

What are you up to these school holidays.... got any great suggestions?  .... they're discussing school holidays over at the Decorating Forum too.

How Cool Is This

...looks easy... this modular stuff. No waiting for a roof for 3 months in the torrential summer rains, while your uncontactable building company celebrates their end of year holidays in Tahiti. It all comes in pre-made 'roofed' modules. Instant character!

Love it. 

Pretty as a picture.

Hmmm, modular homes and hubby with a building product import business
...surely they're making these things in China these days?

More HERE :)

Seriously...

Image Courtesy G.P. Schafer Architect Via Desire To Inspire

... is there a better Mud Room out there than this??... seriously.
Happy Monday!

Yep...

Image Courtesy One World Collection

...besides the food, clothing, shelter thing... this comes a close second.

Have a great weekend!

Rainforest

Well, we're back from our rainforest jaunt. We had a wonderful time.

Some serious frog hunting was done.

We found a very rare Fleay's Barred Frog... almost extinct these days... the 'Under 8 Girl Eco Rangers Group' was suitably impressed as they passed by. There were lots of 'eewws' when proudly shown the mornings find. 

We came across a Satin Bower Birds Nest. He was in there tidying up! He collects only bright blue items to decorate his nest and gets very upset if you try to remove anything. Apparently there is an order to his chaos. 

When it rained, as it does in the rainforest, we donned our wet weather gear....

... and climbed trees...

...swung on vines...

.. came across creeks...

....scuttled along creek banks...

.......balanced on rocks...

... in search of this... the rare Blue Crayfish'. 

We put him straight back after we examined him!

When not in the forest, we fed the Crimson Rosellas and King Parrots....

.... played a bit of pool..

.... Uno...

... and watched the sun set.

A glass of red wine and my e-reader (Bill Bryson - "The History Of Nearly Everything"... unputdownable).... the end of a perfect day.

Even on the way home, we had to stop for every Bearded Dragon we spotted.

No we can't keep him, we have 2 already.

Now to work off all the food we ate. Oh the food! It was sensational! :)

So in summary: gained 2 kilos, lost one sock, removed one tick (yep, on me.. it hurt!) and many leeches, totally destroyed one pair of boy's shoes (they were too small anyway), did 3 loads of very dirty washing.... and learnt how to tell from a whip bird's call if "he has a girlfriend".

One more week of school holidays.... so we're going to go to the movies, eat sushi and play in the park.

See you next week!

Holidays

Still fixated on things of stone and wood. 
Image Courtesy New York Times

It is amazing what a week of antibiotics does when you are actually treating a bacterium. It had to be mycoplasma (I'm not giving it a capital letter - it does not deserve it) again as I am feeling soooo much better. My cough usually hangs around for months until I physically drop. I have let the Doctors convince me in the past that it's all been like a 'reactive asthma' (despite the fact that I don't have asthma). I have sucked on every inhaler known to mankind with no result .......except for every inhaler side effect known to mankind. My hospital trip in June confirmed no asthma.... just pneumonia. So this time around, feeling that familiar pneumonia feeling creeping up on me again, I got straight on to it. One more ab. course and hopefully it will be gone .. for at least this year. Nice to have a few months of good health!.. especially coming into Christmas and the long school holidays.

Yay, it's the term 3 school holidays ....so at the last minute (like yesterday as I said I was feeling better!) we have decided to take a few days off to have some family time together sans phones and computers. We are heading up to the rainforest this morning. It's raining here in Brisbane so it will be raining up there for sure. The boys are rubbing their hands together ... as rain means frogs... and lots of them. The boys have signed up for the Eco Rangers Discovery Program so hubby and I will have 1pm - 4pm daily to ourselves! The rainforest program sounds so exciting .... creek adventures, snake bite lessons, bush tent making, 'eco detective' activities....boy heaven.

I am hoping that the cool rainforest air will steal away my cough for good and give me fresh lungs. So.. I will be offline and away from my inbox until the end of the week. Have a great week and for those of you on school holidays...... enjoy... every..... minute.

Hubby handed me my coffee the other morning and said to me" you know we are living the best years of our lives. I have everything I ever dreamed of". He's a thinker, and a bit of a romantic. It's good to stop in your tracks, assess your life and be grateful. Food, clothing, shelter, health, family...... tick... yep.... grateful.

Have a great week.

Stone And Wood

Image Via Tumblr

How much do you love this!... the floors, those beams, the windows, lighting, cute little stools, all the stone, the rustic wooden get up under the windows... even the food looks good!

PS. Taking a few days off from the bloggy. Real life has taken over. My pneumonia cough is back again so I plan to lie low for a bit.... (only got 2 months of good health this time around). I swear it permanently lives in my lungs. Any resp. physician readers out there? a virtual consult?....dry, non productive, harsh, violent, relentless cough (we're talking.."test the pelvic floor" intensity)/clear CT/relatively clear chest/non responsive to oral, inhaled steroids, asthma medication/normal spirometry/permanent low grade fever/never smoked/past Hx of mycoplasma pneumoniae and pertussis (I tend to attract the lower resp. atypicals) but only raised mycoplasma titre showing up at present. Current Tx - macrolide in the hope that we're Tx an atypical... but that's only bacteriostatic not bacteriocidal?... longer course than usual required perhaps? Sorry, any advice most welcome... I'm sort of desperate :) Back soon. 
Miss you already.

Meanwhile, over the Northside...

....Jillian, a Brisbane reader, sent me in these photos of a pretty house she passes often.... on her side of town (the North). We wonder if it is a renovated 'post war' house or if it was purposely built in this style. Jillian apologised for her 'dinky' camera and the quality of the photos. She says her photos don't do the little place justice and says it is so charming in real life. Hey, I only do dinky... does me fine (actually someone admired my 'dinky camera' on the weekend... its size, not the photo quality!).

You'll never guess what the real colour of the house is... the photos do not capture it.... or maybe they do... and I just can't see it! Have a guess!

Reptile Party

We waited for what seemed an eternity for our guests........

.... and Ranger Fiona, who gave us a wonderful wildlife talk.

This is 'Gripper', Fiona's Bearded Dragon. He's much bigger than our Nigel and Brian. Fiona told us that ours will be that big very soon. Can't wait for that.

Everyone had a pat and a cuddle.

He was very tame and even smiled for the camera.

We listened very intently to what Ranger Fiona had to say....

....and we were very gentle with our touch.

We used our manners.....

.... and got up real close....

... really close.... shudder...

Even our little cousin was super brave.

Everyone was brave....

... with some coaxing and reassurance.

There is an animal under all those hands ..... a bandicoot!

We even got to see a Tawny Frogmouth up real close!

.... and in the mottled shadows, we blew out our candles on our snake cake... lovingly made by 'Tarboon' (Carmen, our old nanny, who has made every one of our birthday cakes over the past 7 years!)

Our cousins were the last to leave...

.. so we had lots of cuddles.

Say Cheese!