Christmas over already?

Christmas has came and gone, all too quickly for the kids. Now before we know it, it will be Easter! Cheap flights abound too with airline carriers discounting fares to encourage some post Christmas and mid year travel - most excellent timing for our Victorian and NSW friends planning a visit. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink!

We had a fantastic Chrissy, we spent the last weekend before we left Ballarat with my extended clan and had a wonderful time eating and drinking too much along with the obligatory exchange of gifts. The kids never really get enough of that.

After being in QLD for just over a week we made another road trip to Sydney for Christmas with Karren's extended family, the food was plentiful and amazing, it was great to catch up with everyone and the girls love the time they spend with their Grandma and cousins. It is amazing how similar the girls are and how well they get along despite of that! I had a spot of luck with my Kris Kringle gift and managed to score myself a DVD copy of Kungfu Hustle. Kudos to Andrew for a brilliant and well thought out gift!

The crew enjoying Christmas lunch.

We decided to drive the New England highway to and from Sydney in preference to the all too busy Pacific highway, both are a lot more challenging than the Hume. The Mondeo performed perfectly and was miserly with the fuel, consuming around 120 litres for the 1960km round trip. Much better than the Hilux did from Ballarat to Brisbane, where it used 190 odd litres for 1750km trip. There were the usual morons on the road, you know the ones, some who pass you while you have the cruise set on 107 then slow down in front of you to 100, and the others that drive along at 90 then speed up to 110 on the overtaking sections. A couple of highway heroes even did the overtake on double white lines trick, in spite of all that we made the trip without real incident and got home safely. As usual the truck drivers we saw were very well behaved.

The dog was his pitiful self again on the Sydney trip, refusing to use the provided relief stops for anything other than a sniff around and a drink. Unfortunately when he does get to the final destination you have to spend 15 minutes waiting for him while he empties his long range bladder, the burnt patches on the grass are a real bugger too!

This is typical of my view in the rear vision mirror. Pathetic!

Now that we are back home (strangely it still feels like we are just visiting QLD on holidays) it is time to settle in and do a few of the more tedious jobs associated with the move, get QLD drivers licences, QLD rego, changing address details with inumerable organisations  and corporations. It is not a task I am looking forward to, however we have had a small victory, not that it started that way; I rang to cancel our family membership with Ambulance Victoria and was told because we were cancelling within six months of renewal we wouldn't receive a refund, that's annoying I quietly thought to myself, fortunately the feeling of being ripped was short-lived, I found out that membership with the Queensland Ambulance Service was FREE, cost nothing, nada, nix, zip, zero - I could not believe my luck. Another bonus is our Medibank Private membership is cheaper in QLD as well. Winning!

I ventured out into the back yard this evening to account for any Cane Toads dumb enough to make their way into our yard and found three more to dispatch, the tally is now over 35. I did find a rather large Huntsman (I think) and took a couple of shots of him, an impressive size and easily the biggest I have seen.

Huntsman spider (I think)

The opisthosoma was about the size of a 10 cent piece

The girls had a wonderful Christmas this year, however Emily is too clever for her own good and has discovered all too soon how it all works, Karren was understandably very upset, Milly is now a member of the secrecy pact and has sworn the Sergeant Schultz oath

Peace and quiet now whilst watching DVDs in the car