Water, Bridge and the Gold Coast

I found my camera! It had been missing for a week, so you missed out on dramatic shots of us angst and nit ridden; a near 2 meter carpet snake in our driveway and various school holiday antics.

We still have nits (we think), its paranoia central here, this is the first time the kids have had them - they always love my long, clean, healthy hair - but its also the first time they've been resistant to oil and essential oil treatments.
So after some internet and soul searching I decided to do the insecticide treatment :( and that was sad.. after all the organic food and chemical avoidance's and we go ahead and spray it on the skin sigh. Well we've got another treatment to go next week, lets hope that's the end of it!

My head hair is now long past the small of my back and I was very close to shaving it instead of treating it, kids weren't very amenable to shaving theirs off though :D!

Bits of news include enrolling the kids in the last 2 months of soccer and I've started cooking nearly every night in an attempt at being a 'real' wife :P. Oh and I started a new diet which is 'insulin reducing', so sugar, wheat, potatoe, banana, grape, rice (except basmati), dried fruit, fruit juice free. I haven't cemented the fine details of the diet yet, but its to be used in conjunction with a progesterone cream (of which I am severely deficient) and exercise!
So it looks like all my prayers are coming true in a scary and hard work necessitating way doh!!

So far I've made spelt spaghetti with sugar snap peas, zucchini, green onions, sausages and brollini; sweet potatoe mash and ah.. a middle cut of beef boiled in garlic thyme and wine which was actually reeeally yummy; and tonight we had sausages sweet potatoe hash brown and homemade tomatoe sauce baked beans :). Introducing even slightly alternative cooking to my picky family is, well, intimidating but, I'm hopeful :).

o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o

I thought I'd show you those Gold Coast shots that I actually blogged about months ago but never posted. So briefly (unlike my original draft ;)), Blythe had a reward chart which she completed over 6 months and her request was White Water World so I paired it up with a Bridge Congress (which is a huge annual Australian event) and we drove down Friday, went to WWW, stayed in a nice hotel; then the kids went home with Phill, Dad arrived and we played in the congress Saturday, Sunday, Monday.

The 'green room' was a single loop that shot you out into the huge funnel and so fast up the side that you think you're going to loop which is freaky as you're only sitting on a tube! And then gravity swings you up the other side and back and forth you go as you get funneled out the end! Although the green room had the biggest thrill, the orange one was much more fun because it had a shorter queue, heh, and went for four times as thrilling long.

It had been rainy and cold on the drive down and the kids prayed earnestly on the way and we decided to go and see (I'd packed other clothes and raincoats in case we went elsewhere!). As we arrived we could see the horizon shrouded in grey with a blue patch just above the park.. and.. it was even warmer.

Blythe and Daddy headed straight for the big stuff, while Dev and I went in search of 'squirting things'.

We found some squirting things.. apparently they weren't 'the ones' but nothing a bit of exploring, sun baking and general monkeying around couldn't fix.

I went on three big rides with Blythe which was pretty hilarious, I don't know why but I couldn't stop laughing, my mouth filling with water! We went on the Octopus first, I got stuck on the lip at the top, I felt like a flopping fish out of water! lying on my mat, trying to get unstuck!


Dev was scared stiff of 'The Bucket'; now this was one serious bucket!

Teh Bucket, nuff said.

There was a wave pool which was good fun, Dev and I spent most of the time there and playing with the camera. We left the big rides to Blythe and Daddy (and the queues!). Blythe and I floated in huge inflatable rings and when the waves started I got the giggles and when you're hanging nearly upside down its very hard to stop the giggles!


When we got cold we headed for the hotel and found Mantra on the Park on the forth time looping round the block and had some yummy Italian food.

The kids played 'Bang' and let us sleep in :). That's our room's view and there's some funky cafe decor.

We had 5 sessions of bridge that were about 4 hours long each; there were four sections: novice for under 100 points, restricted for under 300, open, and senior for those over 75 years I think (given that the average age of bridge players is about 70 that's not such a restrictive section ;p). Although I'd only been playing 2 and a bit years and had less then 50 points! Dad had nearly 200 so we were pegged in restricted. This was very intimidating! These players were either very good and had been playing for at least 4-5 years or were still good and had been playing for 10-20++ years!


How the points work: every time you play at a club it takes about 4 hours and you get a percentage, 50% meaning you got average on everything which is actually a decent score, anything more then 50 means you did better then most, so the top third at the session scores points. Depending on how many people are there it could be anything from 0.20 to 0.60 of a green point. In club competitions you get red points which are about 0.40 to 1 point ans then there's state and national competitions which are gold points which can get you twice as much as green or even more.

Over 2000 people played in the pairs event.
Sushi is Good.
Hordes of bridge players (ie: -mostly- retired, resort attired older folk) descend upon Broadbeach; we played 'pick the bridge player' :).

The first two sessions was to grade us, out of 126 pairs and we did pretty well and got into the "A" grade, got into the top 20 in fact. There was only one other pair from our club in Buderim so a little friendly encouragement (read: rivalry ;)) started, they came about third in the grading!

The first two sessions after that were a bit disheartening, mistakes happened, so did bad luck, and some arguing, we got 49% and 49%. This didn't do us any good on the competitive front or the relationship front.

I had some prayer and realised that we came to have fun and that my outlook was all wrong. This cheered me up :) and the next day I prayed that we have fun! oh and please God, I don't care about winning but please, please no more bad luck ;), we've had our share!

Well it was an odd day, the cards were extreme (they're always randomly dealt before hand) but we had decided to just have fun and the cards favoured us and so did luck. You could watch your progress being projected on the big screen throughout the day and we kept going up and up. Our poor compatriots kept going down and down although they'd been having a very good time coming in the top 5 and 10 previously. Suffice to say we came first by a large margin with a smashing 67.81% (actually 66.67% but there were two errors against us)! Our fellow Buderimites came 8th and what gracious fellows they are.
This big finish brought our poultry 16th place to 4th place overall! We got a shiny pen and $100 prize heh :). But I tell you what, we had fun ;) :p.

Our weekend netted us over 11 gold points.

We had some really yum food there, I highly recommend Valentino's for pizza, Oberoi's Taj Indian before 7pm - $10 dinner! Alto for breaky/brunch, pricier but good and best of all Sushi4U (lol) - sushi and yum cha - cheap and authentic!

Then we drove home in a deluge; that storm ended up flooding low areas and causing huge traffic and detours, fortunately we got home safe and sound. I took some really cool shots though.. something about driving at night in the rain with the glowing fuzzy reflecting lights is entrancing.

We went for a drive one morning and found this huge Asian super store... these looked like frogs eyes but turned out to be some lotus or sesame or otherwise innocent drink.
There were crowds on the beach waiting for the tsunami to arrive doh!!
Yum Cha is Good!
Rainy drive lights.