Do you recognize this flag? This is where we are all off to come 16th June for 5 1/2 weeks!!!

Rod’s brother Ivan and his Canadian fiance Jolene are getting married in July in the town of Winnipeg (right smack bang in the middle of the prairies) and we are going to be there! Actually half of us are in the bridal party so we better be there hey Rod is best man, I am a bridesmaid, and Janaya is a flower girl……exciting huh?

It has taken so much work to get all our flights planned and booked,(but even more scary paying for them….yikes!!!!), and we have a monster trip planned! First off we land in Vancouver which we will stay for a few days, then visit friends in the Fraser valley. Then we pick up a motor home which will then become our abode for the next 4.5 weeks! We hope to do the Rockies, Jasper, Banff, Calgary, and then up to Edmonton, through Saskatoon, and then onto Winnipeg.

After all the wedding festivities, we hope to high tail it to Toronto, and then visit Niagra falls, and head south to Baltimore, Maryland USA to visit Kate (my brother’s fiance) and spend some time with her and her family. Then last of all we will travel up to New York for a few days, and then fly home.

Travelling with 4 young kids is going to be quite an adventure I am sure!!! No doubt it will have it’s trying times, like on the 16 hour flight home!!! But with the hard times there is going to be so many exciting times too.

So you gorgeous Canadians out there, please let me know what you think is your top picks to visit. We are driving pretty much straight across the country so if you have any tips I would really appreciate to hear them!! Also any travelling tips for taking kids along, that doesn’t always involve drugging them with sedatives??? LOL!

I have all these stampers I want to visit, and of course the Stampingbella store in Toronto, I just have to get Rod to come to the party, as he assures me we are not on a stamping adventure holiday! It is going to be so great to meet the Canadian Design team girls, and hopefully some in the US too!

I am sure the trip will be here before we know it, so it definitely will be fun planning all our adventures, and I need to keep reminding myself that I don’t need more stamps, and have to save my $$$ for the trip Then I can buy it all over there and bring it home with me!

Anyway I am super excited to share with you our fun news, and look forward to hearing all your travelling do’s and dont’s!

Oh and I have stamping to share too, so be back in a mo with that for you too!

Have a fabulous weekend peeps,

Oh boy I am certainly pushing the bounds of friendship right now aren’t I!!!!

I have had nothing but trouble with the new computer today! On Friday my old laptop was taken into the Apple store to have all my data transferred over to my new MacBook, but they couldn’t get it done in a day as there was so much info to be transferred!!! Much to my dismay I had to wait till Monday to pick it up.

Today I have done that, only to now have lost all my emails that have been in my inbox awaiting replies, and none of my photos are ordered, and well I can’t seem to get anything sorted. I am just about ripping my hair out, no actually I am ripping my hair out!!!! I am heading right back to that store first thing tomorrow, so that I can get them to fix it, or show me the right direction! I tell ya it all looks so easy in the store when they are showing you all the swanky things it can do!

So anyway please be patient with me, and hopefully I will have this computer all sorted by tomorrow~! Seeing as I am having such difficulty I am going to extend this weeks challenge by a week, so you can take your time playing along, and then of course can link your creation as soon as I can get that post up for you all!

Right I am off to have a beer, and talk myself down off the ledge!

Talk soon, and I love ya for being patient…. *wink*

Hey everyone!

I hope you are all well! I am just sneeking out from under the barrage of boxes to quickly let you know that the new challenge post will be up first thing tomorrow morning rather than this afternoon.

Rod has very kindly bought me a brand new Apple Mac laptop (soooooo excited about that) but my current laptop is booked in for the day to have all the info on this one dumped onto the new Macbook. So whilst I would love to be posting, i won’t have my computer to work with today! Sorry about that, but on a good note I will have a hand stamped creation for you tomorrow morning. The new craft room is coming together really nicely, and I am sooooo looking forward to putting ink to paper today!!!

The DT gals will all be going ahead with their posts this afternoon, so be sure to pop on over to their sites so you can get a head start on the challenge.

Hope you have a great day, and i look forward to sharing with you all in the morning!

Hugs,

Hey everyone,

Popping in again for a quick hello! As you know I love to share little tidbits of my life and that of my family on this website.  Since we have just moved, and there is always so much news to share I have set up a new blog called ‘Capturing Cairns’ to share more of my family’s adventure, moving to the other side of the country.

So just to save you having to read all that jargon, and doing my best to keep this a stamping dedicated blog, I will in future being posting all that news on that website…..

You are all most welcome to pop in and read it, and keep up to date on all our adventures…..

The address is: www.capturingcairns.blogspot.com

Hope to see you there!

Hey everyone,

Oh it feels so good to get the chance to sit down tonight and ramble on……well I hope I actually don’t drive you all a little nuts, but I just wanted to share with you some of the going on’s we have been up to this past week.

We certainly have hit the ground running here! So much to do, and well it has been a bit of a challenge too. We have never had to rent before, and boy oh boy that is a whole new world to us!!! We found a fabulous place close to the school, and nice and big with extra room for visitors, so we spent the better half a  day getting the application in. They want so much information just cutting short of which underwear you buy!!! Anyway after all that effort and being the first and only applicants, the real estate did a shifty on us and offered it to someone else!!! Talk about frustrating! Since then every house that would be suitable seems to be rented in a space of 5 hours!!! We are a little limited having 4 kids, as we need the space, and not to mention ALL that stamping paraphernalia too! We did look at another house yesterday, which is HUGE, and would you believe it has a complete separate office / craft room full of cuboards, drawers and shelves, and guess what???? It is all PINK!!!! Perfect for me no? I think so. I have been dreaming all day about loading up those shelves with my stuff,  &iPod and getting my fingers busy with some ink and paper……..OH fingers crossed we get it, and if we do I will promise to post a photo!

Yesterday was the first day of the School year for the kids here in Queensland, and so off the kids went to their brand new school! We enrolled them into Freshwater Christian College, which is on a beautiful premises right at the base of the mountains! They were anxious and excited to go, but poor Mali was a bundle of tears and very overwhelmed by the new faces, teacher and classroom! Hopefully it will pass. We of course had to take a few snapshots of them in their new uniforms, and I thought I would share with you:

Elijah, Tiarne, and Malakai

Don’t you just love those Certainly celery shirts with the night of navy collars?!  As you can see there is beautiful rainforest right behind them, and this is just a snippet of what you see everywhere! Cairns is a place where you really get to see God’s Handiwork all around amongst the creation! I am still getting used to all the new animals and insects though…… hearing all the gekko’s clucking at night, and seeing all the butterflies and lizards around as well. Apparently the holiday cabin we are staying in has had 3 snakes in there, so we are trying (as best as you can with 4 kids) to keep the doors closed at all times, as I definitely don’t want to see a snake slithering around. Elijah on the other hand is hoping one will appear, as he loves snakes and is a real Steve Irwin wannabe! I am sure we will soon get used to all the new surroundings!

So there you have  a little bit of news of what has been happening this week. I have really been wanting to blog more, and blog surf too, but here I am paying $3 an hour, and you know how fast one hour disappears on the computer!!! So I am having to behave myself and limit my time on the computer! I very much look forward to having my craft room set up, as well as my computer and having a routine as well!

Take care and I will be back tomorrow to announce the new winner of this weeks challenge……I am LOVING what I have seen so far that is for sure!

Have a great night,