Day Two of Chicklet Holiday

Poppy Blueberry (a recently acquired name) and Chicklet started the day together by eating breakfast before I even woke up.

We all slept soundly last night, so it was nice to wake refreshed and feeling like the world was on my side.

The Bay was our first and only destination for the day, where we stocked up on crafty goodies from Spotlight and Heaps Discounts. We had a brief stop in Coles before heading home because Chicklet was OVER the shopping experience.

She did get to ride in an Octonauts Gup while we were at Stocklands and stated quite clearly that she was "only doing it because it's been a LONG time since she sat in a ride". A lady watching nearby told her that it was ok to enjoy herself.

Chicklet was disappointed that we had to stop and eat lunch before we could unpack all the goodies that we'd bought.

The goal tomorrow is to finish creating the best dragon cave in the history of the universe. This is what we've done so far...

... we have lots of ideas, so the day should be busy! Watch this space for the final product!

Poppy and Chicklet had a water fight with their new water pistols. It lasted about 2 minutes before Poppy was exhausted and had to sit down. Running is not as much fun at 60yrs of age as it was at 59.

I've just looked at the clock and realise why I'm feeling so tired! It's rapidly approaching midnight and there'll be no energy tomorrow if I don't get into bed and sleep the remainder of the night away.

I'm done for the day.

Nite all.

Day One of Chicklet Holiday

It was more difficult than expected.

Despite (or perhaps because) it was such an exhausting day to get here, Chicklet did not sleep soundly in her new surroundings and came into our room four times during the night.

Because the psychotic dogs didn't get fed until late in the evening, their digestion requirements had me up twice during the night.

Then I was awake at 6am.

Needless to say I was not completely present today.

We had a healthful breakfast, made our bed, did some sticker art, did some washing, created two dry clay dragons, ate a healthful lunch, found some jewels to fill our treasure chests, went for a drive with Poppy to inspect the SES shed, played with 'Goo', gave Poppy some lessons in Minecraft, set the outside table beautifully for dinner, selected food from the menu, ate a healthful dinner (including a small smoothie), had a bath, had cuddle time then fell asleep in an instant.

Chicklet said that she would try not to wake me up tonight. That's all I can ask.

It's 10pm and I will be falling asleep in an instant too!

Tomorrow, we go for a trip to The Bay.

Nite all.

Huge Day

There is a lot to say about today, but it's late and we are all exhausted!

Chicklet was the first to fall asleep ... which is surprising because I expected Adoring Husband would be the first to break! He wasn't far behind.

We left home at 8am ...

Our run was pretty good and we even stopped at Forest Glen to have brunch at Kunara Marketplace and buy some organic goodness to kickstart our healthful visit with Chicklet. I even bought some sweets to bring home for later. All GF and DF fairy cake, chocolate brownie, snickers slice and lemon meringue tart. Two of them sugar free too!

We arrived at the airport with about 15 minutes to spare, but it took us almost that long to find where we needed to be. We wanted to greet them as they disembarked from the plane, but the rigmarole required to get there was going to take too long, so we just waited at the exit doors near the luggage pick up.

Her joyful smile as she ran into my arms melted my heart and it was a wonderful way to begin our time together.

We spent an hour sitting in a cafe drinking coffee/juice/water with Vegan Chickie before saying our goodbyes and climbing in the car for the long journey home.

The traffic was dreadful coming out of Brisbane and was quite stressful for AH, so we took our first break after about an hour.  Chicklet enjoyed the fairy cake from Kunara and she and AH played games with a plastic spoon for about 30 minutes.

Back on the road and it was slow going with a minor traffic mishap up ahead which slowed the traffic to a crawl.

Chicklet was literally counting the minutes home, and I gave her landmarks to look out for to make the trip go a bit faster, but it took 4.5 hours with all the traffic build up and then two stops for breaks, so we were absolutely exhausted by the time we arrived home.

I heated up the beef casserole for AH to eat for dinner. Chicklet requested fresh lemon and some apple with peanut butter.

We had a short play in her bedroom before changing into pyjamas, cuddle and talk time, junior meditation to fall asleep to and it took her about ten minutes to drop off (if that).

AH headed off to bed almost immediately after that and here I am blogging before I collapse into bed myself!

Done like a dinner.

Nite all.

It's Time!

One more sleep and we'll be on our way to Brisvegas to pick up the precious cargo AKA Chicklet!

I've just spent the afternoon and evening doing a couple of large loads of washing, clearing the bedroom where she will be sleeping, scrubbing the main bathroom and toilet, folding the gazillion towels that were covering the family room lounge and packaging/freezing the curried beef casserole that I prepared for tomorrow night.

I'm done for the day.

The Happy Abode was quite busy and there was a steady flow of people through the doors in the morning. It slowed down in the afternoon which was a good thing because we had a sales rep showing us her wares for about two hours. We made a couple of small orders with her.

In the afternoon, we took delivery of the new Ivy's order, so we now have a lot of new wallets, change purses, small handbags and a good range of umbrellas.

We love when new stock arrives!

There will be more beautiful Intrinsic stock arriving this week too *happy dance*.

Now it's way past midnight and I should head off to bed.

Nite all.

Full Park

Our caravan parks are almost full at the moment.

We have a regular turnover of people who come to our town every year at the same time.

The Happy Abode has been in existence for just over eight months now, so there are still holiday makers coming into town who are excited to see a new shop and expressing relief that we weren't here a year ago and they hadn't missed us back then!

The best thing about caravan parks, is that everybody talks to everybody, so they share all the information they have about the town and that includes US.

Today was one of those days where there was always somebody in the shop and everybody was in a chatty mood. By the end of the day, I had heard a LOT of stories about children and mothers and husbands and other towns and crafty/sporty interests.

It was a happy day in The Happy Abode.

Coffee morning was also a pretty happy affair with Maid Marian who had returned from her big caravanning holiday and The Miracle Woman making a rare appearance. Tweedle Dee (new name yet to be announced) and The Whinging Pom completed our intimate group.

Everyone had left by around 10.30pm and I locked our doors and put a 'back in 5 minutes' post-it on the front door so that I could check the mail and buy a coffee (which went cold on my desk because I was busy with customers for the next two hours).

A few new handbags arrived today and another delivery should arrive tomorrow, which we are excited about.

I locked the doors a little after 3pm, made a quick visit to the butcher and then pedalled home quickly hoping to avoid the rain. There was a fine mist falling as I pulled into the driveway.

Adoring Husband had been out most of the day on SES duties. He'd returned home for a short while and then went out again, so I had a couple of hours to myself.

Two more sleeps and my little Chicklet will be here for her holiday with us!

Three and a half weeks of joy and fun will be had and we have a couple of exciting things planned, like holding a crocodile, visiting the bird sanctuary, creating and burying a time capsule, collecting shells from the beach and being crafty with them, cooking in the kitchen together, going to reef world and picnics at the park.

She will also spend a little time at the shop with me!

I hope to make it totally memorable in the best way possible.

Right now, it's time for bed.

Nite all.

No Mondayitis

Even though our numbers were low due to the public holiday, it was another good meditation this morning.

We forgot to let people know that we would still be holding the class and only a couple phoned to check.

But that's ok. I would love it if it was only me in the room!

Not counting the meditation class, nobody else stepped foot in the shop before 11.30am which meant that The Gypsy and I could catch up with all our news and get totally lost in our deep discussions of self discovery.

The Motivator was off work today, but came in for a treatment this afternoon. She was feeling very zoned out by the time she left.

The afternoon saw a steady flow of customers and kept me pretty busy so the time flew by and before I knew it, it was time to head home.

I had to shelter for twenty minutes while some wild rains pelted down. The weather was unpredictable all day. One minute there were blue skies and sunshine. The next minute, the skies darkened and horizontal rain was hitting our front windows. Ten minutes later, the skies were blue again.

I did a quick shop in the supermarket and thankfully, the rain held off for me to ride home.

My stomach was very empty because I didn't eat lunch so as soon as I walked in the door, I made a bee line for the kitchen. My current favourite San Choy Bow - quick, easy and full of flavour - was on my menu for an early dinner. Leftover apple crumble with fruit whip ice cream for dessert.

Completely sated by 5pm!

My alarm is just about to tell me to go to bed, so it's time to sign off.

Nite all.

Mid Long W/End

I had to edit some photos today and I wanted to use the iMac for it's bigger screen to do this work.

The iMac is at the shop, so while I was there, I opened the doors for customers.

The weather was cool enough that I didn't need to run the air conditioner and I left the front door open for the light breeze.

As I edited photos, approximately 15 people came through the doors, but none of them wanted to purchase and I think the majority of them were simply filling in time while they waited for their takeaway food to be prepared.

The advantage is that now fifteen more people know of our existence and hopefully they will all follow my request to spread the word.

The weather was very erratic today and I began bringing in the flags before midday when the clouds became dark and the wind picked up. I was worried that if I waited another ten minutes, I'd have been drenched and trying to dry off the flags and signs before storing them inside. Better to be safe than sorry.

Adoring Husband arrived to drive me home and we were sitting in the comfort of our lounge room when the rains came.

It was a great afternoon for watching silly movies and then catching the football.

Thankfully, it was an easy dinner for Adoring Husband, because I had my trusty store of spaghetti bolognese sauce in the freezer and some fresh zucchini to turn into zoodles. This was followed by a big bowl of fresh raspberries and fruit whip ice cream for dessert.

Yum.

It's only 8pm and I'm feeling a touch weary - my brain doesn't enjoy focussing so hard on photo editing these days - especially because the new camera is not photo-shop compatible, so my challenge is figuring out a new editing process using other programs.

Tomorrow, being a public holiday, will give me another opportunity to finish off the editing, but hopefully will also bring in lots of people enjoying their day off and wanting to share their happiness in The Happy Abode.

Gotta watch The Voice and then I'm off to bed.

Nite all.