The Chambers

the year has started off with a real bang…. Lots going on in the Chambers household!

A few of the things which have been happening;

* Jackson started pre-prep. Pre-prep is like kindy. He’s going to a community kindy which is close to Kylie’s mum and dad’s house and near to the school we will book him into. He’s loving it – he’s really enjoying getting to play with kids all his own age and interacting with kids again, after not going to child care for about 10 weeks while we had our holiday and pre-prep was closed. He has a new mate, Jack, they play in the home corner and “fix” things.

* We’ve decided to go on another trip back to the USA. We’ve been bitten by the bug and have planned out our trip, which will be at the end of the year. We’re going to San Francisco, New York, Orlando, cruising the Caribbean, Telluride for skiing and Christmas and Hawaii to thaw out. We’re looking forward to it already…. (only 273 days to go!)

* We bought a cross trainer, which is in the living room. It’s to help us get fit, but also to get ready for skiing! We’re getting into the swing of using it and I don’t hate it as much as I did after the first couple of days…. It’s definitely helping.

* I “mc’d” the recent TQ Awards for Excellence, at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Ctr. I shared the duties with Dallas Free, which was fun. The awards were held at a breakfast ceremony and it was a good morning. Some of my great mates won awards, including Sarah from my team for Most Outstanding Staff Member (the award I won last year) – way to go Sarah!!, Steve McRoberts (my boss) for Excellence in Leadership, Al Bendall won the award which receives nominations from industry, Megan Thompson for excellence in International and Monica Groenert for Excellence in Management. All very worthy winners! Obviously professionally the last year has not been all that crash hot for me – I went from most outstanding staff member to not even getting a nomination .

* We bought ourselves a new David Bromley, which hangs nicely in the “compound”. I’ll get some pictures and post them. It’s a great pic and I’m sure we’ll be collecting a few more along the way.

* We only got one number in each of our systems eights we put in for last nights mega lotto…. back to work Monday & the art business has to wait – again….

That’s the big things…. of course, it’s 645am Sunday morning and I haven’t had my cuppa coffee yet. I’ll post more as it comes to me!

over and out.

Chris

hello and happy new year. Hopefully your new years resolutions are still intact and you’re invigorated for a fantastic 2008. It’s been pretty quite on the blog’s western front, life goes on and things happen… like Christmas and work.

I hope you had a great Christmas. We did. We had family come visit at our house, we had Nicole and Harrison come stay with us and about a dozen or so people here on Christmas day. We had a nice “buffet” lunch of roast turkey, “big al’s” ham and roast pork and salads and we spent the day relaxing, playing with new toys and swimming some too. After telling the people we met in the USA how hot it was going to be here in Brisbane at Christmas…. it was very nice to have to “endure” temperatures in the mid 20’s! Harrison and Jackson cleaned up on the present front, with Jackson also sharing a Nintendo Wii with me as a present. Jackson likes the Wii nearly as much as I do and we play tennis and guitar hero mostly. Kylie and I didnt do present for each other, we were well and truly spoilt on our holiday, we figured we didnt need presents…. though I did buy Kylie a nice pair of (wait for it) powerboards, with individual on / off switches which should help reduce our electricity bill…

As a birthday present for me…. I got spoilt. We bought ourselves a new painting – which hangs in the “compound” room at the front of the house. The artist is David Bromley and it is in his female portrait style. It’s pretty big, taking up most of one wall. We bought it from a gallery at Highfields, just outside of Toowoomba. David and Fay run the gallery and were nice enough to deliver the painting and help hang it! It looks beautiful and it should also turn into a nice investment piece, with his works doing well. Have a look at it: in our picture gallery

We got all our pictures from our holiday sorted. FINALLY! There was a lot and it took much longer than I thought it would. We also put “some” in to get printed. 650 odd photos… heavens only knows what we’ll do with them – but! they’re printed….

Jackson is doing great in his swimming. He doesnt mind, in fact he loves, putting his head under the water now and looks forward to Friday’s for swimming with Nannie and he loves swimming with us on the weekend. He’s off to his new child card centre on the 29th of January, which he is looking forward to and he talks about the “new kids” quite a bit.

All’s well here and we’re looking forward to 2008 and the adventures it brings us.

Please drop us a line and make sure to catch up. I plan on posting her regularly and send out an email towards the end / start of the month to say hi and with some links to the postings we make here, or bookmark the site / subscribe to the RSS feed and drop in regularly.

stay safe!

Chris, Kylie and Jackson