Thursday, January 27, 2011

Little Gems short story competition

After a month or so of writing, editing and, lets be honest, a fair bit of procrastination, I finally submitted my entry into the RWA's Little Gems short story competition.

It was very nerve-wracking to hit send and put my writing out there, but I'm looking forward to getting some feedback on my story.  The story gets read & marked by 3 judges - the comments should be quite invaluable, I hope.

And I can but dream that's its good enough to get chosen to go in the anthology :)

Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Daily walk


One of my goals for the year was to incorporate more exercise into my life.  I had a bit of an epiphany the other night realising that there was absolutely nothing stopping me from going for a walk each morning first thing (other than my own laziness).  Billy's now old enough to either come with me or stay home, even if Pete is still asleep!  I guess I'm still getting used to Pete working from home - even though it has been almost 12 months!!

So day 5 of exercising every morning.  I've walked 4 mornings for 20 minutes and did 20 mins of Yoga one day to give my shins a rest. 

Billy has opted to come with me for 3 of those 4 walks which has been good.  I can't walk quite as fast with him in tow, but its good accountability :)  And we get to see & hear lots of cool stuff - like the spider webs we noticed everywhere this morning because of the fog.

Tuesday, January 25, 2011

In 7 days time..

we'll be in the air between Australia and America! The excitement level in our household is fairly high, as you would expect! Luckily we have lots of social things on this week to distract from the big event.

Preparation is in hand (I hope), with hopefully not too many last minute things to do.

Saturday, January 22, 2011

Geography fun

I picked up a bargain while shopping a couple of days ago - a SmartGlobe. Its a globe with a wand attached that lets you find out lots of information about the various countries. You select the information you want to hear, then the country and you can listen to anything from the national anthem, the weather, leader, population, language etc etc etc. You can also compare distances and currencies between countries.

It also comes with quizzes - eg find the capital cities of the countries that it states within a certain time period.

And best of all, its updateable for free via the internet for one year. Billy has already plugged it in and downloaded the updates because it was annoying him that it had our old prime minister as the leader :) He's really enjoying playing with it and keeps coming out telling us amazing facts.

Meet up with Libby

Yesterday we went for a drive to meet up with fellow blogger Libby. Libby and I have known each other online for years - this is the 2nd time we've met up and we had lots to chat about.

We went 10 pin bowling first - it was right across the road from where they were staying, so very handy! Well actually, first we went back across to the cafe at their resort for morning tea while we were waiting for a free lane. Then we went back across to the bowling alley.




It took a little longer than expected (especially since we had to wait a while longer for the lane to be free), so we called it quits after one game and had some lunch at the bowling alley. The toasted sandwiches were surprisingly nice!

After lunch we headed back across the road for a swim in the amazing pool at the resort (it wound its way right through the resort). I hadn't brought my swimmers, so Libby & I sat & chatted while the kids swam.




Thanks for taking the photo Amy!

It was a fun day - I hope we can meet up again next year :)

Sunday, January 16, 2011

Miscellaneous photos from 2nd week

We're back from holidays. Unfortunately it looks like we brought an unexpected visitor back with us - a tummy bug :(

The 2nd week was mainly overcast and rainy so we didn't do much. Billy did get to go skiing another time, and did some fishing; we played monopoly Jnr, and games on the computer and DS.

We went one day to the Coffs Harbour Races. I've never been to a race meeting before so it was quite an interesting experience. It was far more than just horse races - fashion competitions, reptile show, jumping castle etc.






On the last night we were away, there was a free concert by Richie Gudgeon. He played last year too, and is a very talented performer. Nice to sit back in the open air and mellow out to everything from CCR to Kenny Rogers, Paul Kelly to Rolf Harris!


Friday, January 07, 2011

To Wii or not to Wii..

So opinions needed..

Is a Wii anything more than another games console? Does it really help hand-eye co-ordination? Does it translate to the real world ie if you played Wii tennis (assuming there is such a thing), would that help when you stepped onto a tennis court? Would you get the same amount of exercise as if you really played?

If you've had yours for a while, do you still use it?
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Thursday, January 06, 2011

So much to do, so little time...










And as for me, well, I've been doing the three R's - reading, writing and relaxing :)

Wednesday, January 05, 2011

Short story

I've managed to break into my relaxing to get the final few edits done on a short story I'm entering into the RWA's Little Gems competition.  Its gone through 4 complete iterations, with lots of tweaks in between, and I think I'm finally pretty happy with it.  Its now in the hands of my wonderful proof-readers :)