I think our things which have been left at the old apartment are multiplying while we’re not there. I swear it looked as though there wasn’t that much stuff. My husband even told me there wasn’t that much stuff…yet despite being there a few hours yesterday we only got the munchkin’s room and the main bathroom emptied. We got most of the spare bedroom cleaned out too but my husband’s weight lifting equipment had to stay because it was too heavy for my Mum and I to wrangle.

Last night I went and got some more things. I’m planning on doing a champagne breakfast this morning for hubbie and I but I had forgotten until last night when I was over at a friend’s house doing holiday get together with them that as of yet none of the cooking utensils had made it to our new house, so I had to swing by and get them and figured I may as well load up the car with other things while I was there.

We now have a tree up and a bit more holiday decorations. I wrapped some tinsel (garland) around the stair rail and hung up a couple of ornaments which are too heavy for the “chibi-tree” on the curtain rods in the front of the house. We look a bit more festive and it feels nice to have these things up, like this is really going to be our home.

Today I have to make a trip to Home Depot. I figure I will see if I can’t grab some more things from the old place while I’m in that neck of the woods. We should have the phone being connected and we’re going over to my FILs to do Christmas things there given my SIL has to fly back to NY tomorrow morning because she has work on the 26th.

Okay, my last post before we disconnect everything!

I’m going to be gone for Yule, Solstice, which is tomorrow, and I doubt I’ll be back on the blog until after the more traditional secular holiday which my husband, his family and my Mum celebrate, Christmas on the 25th. So, I hope that everyone has a safe and happy holiday!

So, here’s a little banner I made to spread my greetings! Stay safe! Keep warm! Be loved and blessed!

We’re almost done with the packing…we’re getting to the point where we’re going to have to recycle boxes to get everything, but we’re going to do it. My car is loaded up with things to take to the new place after we sign the papers tomorrow. I’m taking a break to make sure that everything is done that I have to do for my various employers before I disconnect.

My article is sent. I’m almost done with my assignments. We’re getting there. I’m fairly certain we have everything that we need to have ordered and on it’s way. I got a lot of wrapping done yesterday when we were at my FILs, but there’s still some more of that to do. I went down and picked up some gifts for a friend’s children while I was out today. It’s hard to sort out gifts for older children some times. I’m out of sync with their tastes given the munchkin is so small. I find it funny that it was easier for me to pick out something for a little girl than get gifts for boys. But then I was a little girl once. I wish my husband had been with me, but he didn’t get any sleep yesterday between various appointments so I went without him.

I got some carpet ordered for the loft at the new house. I did good on that. I was initially told $130 and that it would be $150 for them to install it. But I’ve been able to get the carpet for $88, and we’re going to install it ourselves, because the loft it so small we won’t have to worry about seams, one 15 foot length should do the whole area, with a good 4×6 piece left that we can do the two top stairs with.

My father-in-law is notoriously hard for us to buy gifts for. He’s not the sort to use Cleveland golf clubs. He does bowl but he has all the equipment needs. The main thing is for us to try and find movies or DVDs of TV shows that he likes to give to him, but this year we’re competing against my brother-in-law for that.

I would be making suggestions for things to order and my husband would be going, “Nope my brother already got that one. He already got that one too.” In the end I just emailed his brother for a list of what he’d got for his Dad and went from there. Hopefully we can find something else.

My husband and I aren’t buying each other anything for Yule, because we’re getting the house. That’s present enough given the escrow and taxes is three times what we normally spend on presents for each other and the house. We’ve got things for the munchkin though, clothes a lot of bath toys, and things so we can start potty training next year after he’s adjusted to the move.

The rest of the family have given us lists, that makes it easier.

Thanksgiving had the marks that it might be somewhat disastrous but actually turned out pretty well.

Initially the plan had been that we would cook veggies but that the turkey itself and some other parts of the meal would be catered elsewhere. However it took long enough for the go ahead to be given to order the turkey that the place which had been picked out to cater couldn’t get a bird in on such short a notice as their supplies were already well booked up by other peoples orders.

So, I volunteered to cook the meal. However I was wondering where we would find a turkey/if we would be able to find a turkey and so on. Mum to the rescue on that one. We were planning on having Thanksgiving at my FILs place, and he had invited Mum to come too so that she wouldn’t be by herself for any major portion of the day and everyone could be together without splitting time between two houses. She had previously bought a 15lb pre-cooked turkey several months ago when it looked as though my Gran might be here for Thanksgiving. So, she brought the turkey and I looked up recipes for sausage stuffing, green bean casserole and got all the ingredients and we set to work.

We got things going by around 1 p.m. and were able to eat right around 5 p.m. not bad, even if I do say so myself. We’d thought the turkey might not cook in time as seemed like it was still pretty frozen but it was actually done just before everything else was. Then all we had to do was warm up the stuffing and carrots and finish up the roasted potatoes and we were set.

A friend of my FILs brought French Silk Pie, Mince Pie, Apple Pie and ice cream, and we sat down to eat.

It was a really great experience. The first time I cooked a major meal, and I didn’t feel stressed at all, perhaps this had to do with the fact I think my MIL was watching over things and also that my FIL had white wine for us cooks to partake in, or that my step-father wasn’t there causing huge amounts of aggravation. Maybe all three? Who knows? Who cares?

There were some moments that were a bit strange, because it was the first big holiday we’ve had without my MIL being there. She’s definitely missed, but as I say I feel she was there in spirit, kicking the turkey into submission and making mushroom soup appear in the cabinet given I’d forgotten to buy a can.

Here’s hoping our other get togethers go well in the future.

I think I did good shopping today, what do you think?

Age 2-4 Ninja costume $6.24
2 x 12 foot bat tinsel garland $1.48
Pumpkin trick-or-treat pail $0.74
Pumpkin lantern $1.25

Total $9.71

What it would have been altogether before the after-Halloween sale: $38.95

Now hopefully I remember that I have it all when next year rolls around.

Here we are almost at my favorite celebration of the year. What’s everyone else doing today?

Our day consists of, getting some food in myself and the munchkin, doing a tarot trade with a friend, helping another friend flat-iron her hair before a party tonight, taking the munchkin up to a party (still not sure if it’s going to be the grocery store, the mall, or the apartment complex), doing a re-dedication and blessing ritual for the New Year.

Somewhere in there is hopefully time to get up to the store and actually get some candy for trick or treaters from the complex who may come by…but I’m not sure if I’ll get chance. I didn’t want to get candy too soon because I would have eaten it all myself, but then I forgot, and I was at the store yesterday getting soda for our friends who came by for a DOA tournament. Travesty, I tell you.

There are seven and a half hours left to enter the free tarot reading contest. Deadline has been extended until 5 p.m. EST to try and compensate for the site being down last week.

We got to St. Augustine around lunch time on the Wednesday, after our trip to Daytona. We parked in the multi-story garage which is there. This parking garage is a new development that I was very excited to see. Parking had been one of the major issues when I was in school up in St. Augustine, that and the lack of a/c in the girl’s dormitories (which was remedied my senior year).

We decided the first thing we were going to do was hit up Backstreets for some coffee, and so we walked down Cordova towards the “old downtown” area of St. Augustine. On the way we passed the Tolomato Cemetery.

The cemetery is fairly small but very pretty. They’ve replaced/refurbished some of the grave markers since the last time I was there, but overall the place still looks the same. We didn’t get to go in to the cemetery because it is kept locked. I took the picture by squeezing my camera hand through the bars in the gate so that I could get a shot without bars/barbed wire. Most of the cemeteries in St. Augustine are kept closed unless there’s some kind of special dispensation given, or a special festival going on. The only cemetery I was able to visit in my four years living there was Hugonaut during my Freshmen year.

When we got down Cordova we found that Backstreets was closed and now was a masonic lodge of some kind. So we walked up a little ways to decide what to do.

We opted to go to Kilwin’s and get some hand-churned ice cream instead of coffee given I wasn’t sure where any other coffee shops were that might hold a candle to the wondrous creations Backstreets used to come up with. They were a fairly small shop but they had great combinations of coffee flavors and used to do poetry nights and have bands and things like that. I used to read tarot for them every Wednesday.

The munchkin liked the ice cream too. I got mint chocolate chip and cappucino chip, and “sis” got cappucino and cookies and cream, I believe. Then we had a wander up and down St. George Street for a little while taking in all the stereotypically tourist type sites and snapping up pictures.

For example here is “sis” and munchkin at the water wheel.

We decided after that we would take in the Castillo de San Marco or “the fort” as it’s more often known in town. I had been surprised to see, as we drove in down A1A that the Bridge of Lions had changed. At first I thought they’d remodeled it but then I realized they’d built a completely new bridge and traffic was going over that and all that was left of the old bridge were the central supports.

That’s looking across the bay towards the new Bridge of Lions, which has a cage that raises up as opposed to gates which open.

And the Castillo entryway itself. The Castillo has undergone a lot of renovations since I’ve last been inside. When I was in college in St. Augustine you actually couldn’t go in half of the fort and they wouldn’t charge you for entry because there really wasn’t much to see. They’ve restored a lot of the walkways and the outside to make the fort actually safe to walk around, and also ben working on preserving a lot of the carvings and adornments which are etched into the walls themselves.

Initially we had the munchkin in his stroller, but after we’d been in the old slave quarters and he’d had a conversation with us about a “war-rah” who he seemed to be seeing we went and changed him and decided to put him on his harness so he could walk around for a bit.

This proved both good and bad, because he had a bit of a freak out about one of the rooms and tried to run away and we were able to keep him from straying too far, but he would also stop every once in a while and try to pick up the cannon balls which were stacked in displays around and about.

He got rather upset that we couldn’t take the cannon balls with us.

After that we stopped for a bit and rested and “sis” took some pictures of the view from the sea wall, and then we opted to go for supper at a place I used to work at called “Pizzalley’s on St. George”.

I have a few more pictures that I need to resize and watermark before I can finish the tale of our visit to St. Augustine, but it’s been far too long so I figured half of our trip was better than naught at this point.

In the evening we went on our own ghost hunt around the area rather than going on one of the actual ghost tours, because we could govern our own time and get on the road in plenty of time to get back home once we were ready, especially as the munchkin would be getting tired and I wasn’t sure he would sleep in the stroller any more.

It was a fun day, if not exhausting, and I was very sore from sunburn for a few days afterwards, because I was more worried about getting it on the munchkin and forgot myself! Silly me!

On Wednesday we went to St. Augustine via Daytona. We drove out to the beach and then took the coastal road, A1A, up to the ancient city, it was a very scenic route. It took us about an hour to get there from where I live, which wasn’t that bad really time wise.

We spent about an hour at the beach itself. It was the munchkin’s first visit to the ocean, and “sis” and I hadn’t been to the beach in a while either. She’d had a brief visit to Daytona with my relatives when she was over for our wedding, and hubbie and I had spent some time near the beach on our honeymoon, but that’s been two and half years.

When we got in to town “sis” had to take a picture of the sign going into the beach itself, and then we stopped by a Wendy’s to refuel before trying to find a ramp to get on to the beach. For a while we thought we were going to have to wait until we got to St. Augustine to go as we couldn’t find a ramp that was open, but after going about three miles up A1A we found a ramp that was open just past a construction site.

It was a really nice clear day, and given it was an off-season week day there weren’t many people on the beach either, although it did look a bit choppy out in the water.

We took the munchkin’s clothes off to slather him in heavy duty sunscreen, and put him in the waterproof diaper. He’s a wriggly worm, especially when covered in SPF 45 and he kept running away from us up and down the beach.

We got a lot of exercise in chasing him around because even though he really liked the sand. He wasn’t too keen on the water. We tried a couple of times to get him into the sea, but he cried and kicked up a huge fuss. I’d had a feeling he would be a little wary of the ocean because it’s such a new experience for him. When I first tried to take him into a swimming pool he cried and clung to me. So, it was no surprise that he was unsure of this huge natural expanse that moved and shifted all around him.

“Sis” and I took it in turns to walk with him and try to get him over his fear. We held his hands from either side and did “one, two, three, wheeeeee!” and lifted him off the ground, which he thought was great fun, but still for about twenty minutes he was very wary of the sea, and continued to have fun running up and down the sand while we played with him and took turns snapping pictures of the gorgeous view.

And the construction site, which we think is perhaps a hotel that was so badly damaged after the hurricanes a couple of years ago that it had to be pulled down.

I say this because right next door to the construction site was this hotel which looks as though it’s not being used any more…

To see video of the munchkin trying out the sea…(given I can never get Photobucket to embed, and this post is pretty long as it is…) go to these links: Munchkin vs. beach one, Munchkin vs. beach one ctd, both of those are only about 11 seconds each, and then Munchkin conquers ocean!, that third one is about two minutes.

After that he thought the water was excellent fun and wanted to dive right into the deep water…one extreme to the other with children as I’m learning. We managed to content him with just paddling and splashing around though.

After that we decided to drive up the coast so that we would get to St. Augustine by around lunch time and have the afternoon to spend up there seeing the sites. Now comes the confessional. When we parked I had put the hand brake on the car because I was paranoid about it rolling back down the slight incline and into the ocean. When we tried to leave I started the car and began to reverse and we weren’t going anywhere!

I turned to “Sis” and I go, “OMG!!! We’re stuck!” and am mentally hoping that we did renew AAA so that we can call them to pull us off the beach, and she looks at me and goes, “Did you take the brake off?”

Woops! Needless to say I felt like a complete fool, but we were able to get off the beach without the help of a tow truck.

…but we did leave a temporary reminder of the stupidity.

Given this post is long enough I will write about our trip to St. Augustine some time later on, probably tomorrow, and will leave you with this nice shot of the coast that “sis” took when we stopped in a lay-bay partway up A1A near Ormond Beach.

Onwards to the Castillo and the best Tiramisu either of us ever tasted!

I keep wondering if “Girl from Tomorrow” really is filmed in Australia or if they did it in New Zealand. I’m going to wind up sitting with the credits on pause to find out what’s going on with it. I’ve been watching “The Tribe” too which is also filmed in the Australian area. There are beautiful shots in the opening credits of people going along the beach and sailing

I’ve said before that I feel that Australia is an interesting area. I had a penfriend who lives near Sydney, and we know several people who have or who tried to move to Australia, but thanks to “Lord of the Rings” I tend towards being more interested in New Zealand than in Australia itself.
Although going on vacation anywhere is a bit out of the question for us at the moment until my husband builds up more vacation time.

I was surprised by the prices of Auckland Accommodation when I was looking at certain websites. It’s always funny to me when you can get hotels cheaper in other countries than you can over here. Of course, in other countries you have to pay to get there…