Bag of bits

full moon rising

Not much has been going on in our household lately. So I thought I would just give a bunch of random bits and pieces.

On the last day of our summer, 28th of February, we had quite a crazy lightning storm going on.  It was north of us and lasted for a few hours.  We could see it well from our house.  The biggest reason it was unique to me was the almost constant light from it.  The flashes so numerous and close together that it looked constant.

 This picture was taken at 10 pm.  It is typically full dark and there's never very much light across the water.  I posted more pictures of it on Facebook.  It was truly incredible to see. 

  March 1st was Jay's birthday as well as the first day of Autumn.  Our weather is a bit strange at the moment, but is fairly normal for this area.  It will be hot and sunny one day followed by colder and rainy the next. 

Last Saturday, we found a 4 foot goanna outside our house.  It was huge and really neat to see one up close.  It was scared of us and headed up at tree as soon as it saw us. 

I reorganized the kids' bookshelf.  It won't stay looking like this for long, though.  I had to do it in order to find Joe's missing library book.  There it was, right on the bookshelf...just like I said it was.  Joe couldn't believe that it was on there.  At least, I found it.
While cleaning the shelf, I pulled a few books out and read them to Sam.  We seem to end up reading the same books over and over again.  Of course, typically we let the kids pick the books, and they pick the same certain books again and again. 

One of the books that I chose to read is a favorite of mine.  My brother got this book for Joe for his birthday one year.  It's called "The Lost Thing" by Shaun Tan. 

Yes, I know the picture is turned wrong.  Will try to fix it later...

Jay went kayaking with Dave this week and I served them dinner afterwards.  I made homemade salsa and it was declared as some of the best ever.  This recipe is all my own.

3 medium to large, fresh ripe tomatoes, diced
1/2 of 1 green pepper (green capsicum), diced
1/2 of a large red onion, diced
 2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/4 cup finely diced fresh cilantro leaves (coriander leaves for the Aussies)
1 jalapeno, finely diced
1/2 teaspoon cumin
1/8 cup tequila 
1/8 lime juice or lime juice cordial

Stir well and chill for at least an hour.  The tequila is optional as it is almost as good without it.

Like I said, not much going on here.  I get to go away scrapbooking for the weekend next weekend, and I am looking forward to it. 
Jay is currently looking for a motorcycle to buy.
Joe is swimming at school for sport every Friday.
Tom is busy scrapbooking right now.
Sam is managing to hurt himself in a variety of new ways.  He cut his top lip with scissors by accident yesterday and added a huge scratch to his face today.

Oh, and due to all the rain, flooding and cyclones that Australia's north has had, bananas are about $4.55 a pound!  No, we are not eating bananas right now.  Cripes, they're pricy.  Our bananas are usually more expensive here than in the states, but not by much.  We usually pay about $2 a kilo or $.90 a pound. 

Our weekend and a language lesson

We spent all day Saturday in the car, driving around looking at cars.  On Sunday, we drove down and looked at a car for me.  Well, for the family.  Everytime anyone says the car is for me, Jay corrects us and says "for the family."  It is a 2010 Kia Rondo.  It only has 2500 km on it which is not very much at all.  It is also cheaper than anything else we've looked at.  We tried to put a deposit on it, but the man said he'd trust us to come back and buy it.  Of course, we got an email from him this morning asking for a deposit afterall.  So I will have a car once we get the money from NGC, which should be this week sometime. 
The plan is to go buy Jay a car this afternoon. 
After looking at the car yesterday, we stopped at the Australian Reptile Park.  It was really cool.  I love that Australian wildlife parks and zoos are very hands on and up close to everything.  When we first arrived, we saw a schedule of events and it mentioned a venomous snake demonstration.  We walked over to the area and found some seats.  Two handlers brought 1 Australian snake (Tiger snake) and an American snake (Western Diamondback Rattlesnake).  They demonstrated how to milk a venomous snake and then walked around the ring and we got to see it up close.  After the demo, we followed those two guys over to the Saltwater crocodile pit.  We got to watch them feed Elvis who is over 5 meters long!  It was really cool and I wish we'd had our camera.  I'd accidentally left it in the car and didn't want to go back for it.  Jay ended up going to the car for jackets and the camera later.
The park is the only place that milks venomous snakes and spiders in Australia for the anti-venom program.  We watched another demo later that talked about the funnel web spider (most venomous in the world!) and how to catch them.  If you are wondering why we'd want to catch them, don't worry, so was I.  Funnel web spiders are nocturnal and want to hide when the sun starts to rise.  They can dehidrate quickly in sunshine.  They are very easy to catch if you know how, which I do now.  The guy said that the group of people most often bit by spiders and snakes are boys, aged 6-18 (playing around and showing off for their mates).  Group number two is men aged 24-46 (playing around and showing off for their mates).  He told all the kids that if they see a spider, they should get their mum.  Funnel web spiders cannot jump or climb slick surfaces so a plastic or glass jar works perfect.  Once you catch one, you turn it into the local hospital and they will give it to the Reptile park so it can be park of the anti-venom program. 
We had a great time and loved petting kangaroos.  The boys thought it was really cool.  We'll have to visit them again.   

So despite the fact that English is the lanuage spoken here, there is certainly some new stuff we have to pick up.  Here's an Aussie language lesson for you.
Any sort of delivery or larger truck: Lorrie
Pickup truck: Ute
Ketchup: Tomato Sauce (pronouced as to mot o sauce)
Sprite: Lemonade (really messed me up when I ordered a lemonade and ended up with a sprite)
Fries: Chips (most of the time, unless they are curly fries, then they are called fries)
Chips: Crisps
Raisens: Sultanas
Cookie: Biscuit
Chicken: Chook (this refers to a live chicken, cooked chicken is just chicken)
Sweater or light jacket: jumper
diaper: nappie
Bell pepper: Capisum
There are lots of other slang things that we have learned, but aren't really appropriate to share.  I'm sure that there are other everyday things that I just can't think of right now.