Merry Christmas

We managed to make it down the coast for Christmas. It's about a 2 hour drive and the traffic was surprisingly light on Christmas Eve. Our kids were well behaved at night and we all got up around 6am to see if Santa had paid us a visit. Thankfully, he had and no one had any coal in their stockings. My wife's parents put on a great lunch with plenty of food and my wife's sister joined us too. My wife's brother didn't join us this year, he's become more and more of a recluse in recent years and pulling away from the family a little. Neither my sister-in-law or brother-in-law have partners or kids of their own, which is a little odd and means that our kids don't have any cousins on my wife's side of the family, it makes Christmas a lot smaller than it could be, which is probably nice in some ways but sad in others.

What was  nice to get away from town, even if only for a couple of nights, it was a break from the everyday routine and it was nice to not have to worry about cooking dinner for a couple of nights at the very least. 

I rediscovered my love of reading last night which is great too. For the last year or two I've been watching an episode of some show or another in bed each night before going to sleep. I've enjoyed the shows but at times they have kept me up later than I would have liked. I'd packed my Kindle for the trip down the coast as I thought I might have to tuck myself away with a book at some stage to get some peace, but I didn't end up having to do that. However, last night, as we had no TV in our room, I decided to read a couple of chapters from a new book and I really enjoyed it. I read another couple of chapters this morning and again this afternoon.

Bomber
More to share, but not for a Christmas post.

 

We Have Choices

In the last few days or so, my wife and I went and paid a visit to the kitchen manufacturer for our new house. I thought that my wife had some idea of what she wanted and that it could be fairly quick. Boy was I wrong. We ended being there for at least an hour and we only really had three decisions to make. We knew the style of cupboards we wanted, we'd already been given the proposed design and we were happy with it, all we had to do was.
1. Pick the colour of cabinets
2. Pick the colour of the bench top
3. Choose the handles for the cupboards

My wife had spoken to me lots about what she thought she wanted so I was surprised when she couldn't decide what colour the cupboards should be and if she wanted the the island bench cupboards to be the same as everything else or a different colour. We're going for a sort of Hampton's look which I thought was pretty straight forward. White, white, more white and maybe a little grey. Well the kitchen place had several whites and a whole wall of greys. I probably would have made my mind up in a minute or two, but most of the time was spent just on the colour of the cupboards. 

We then looked at the different styles of benchtops, unfortunately, the ones we wanted weren't in our budget so we've had to compromise a little, the one I think we have chosen is a slightly more expensive then the standard range but it shouldn't be too much more and it does look quite nice. I think it will probably look the nicest in the laundry and bathrooms as we're using the same bench top throughout the house, but it will still look nice in the kitchen.

Finally it was the handles turn, that was relatively painless, but what we've chosen may not go with the tapware so we may need to make more changes later on.

At the end of all of that, my wife still couldn't pull the trigger so we came away with a large number of samples that we have been pouring over.

Next stop was the tile shop, we need to select tiles for the wet areas of the house. We pulled into the parking lot of the tile place, but didn't manage to get out of the car, we drove off again as we couldn't face selecting tiles, especially since we hadn't chosen the cupboard and bench top colours.

We did manage to make it to the flooring shop. We walked in and managed to talk to the right people who actually knew about our build and had started working on the plans. I pulled out a copy of the build contract as it had the ranges that we were meant to be selecting from listed in it. The salesperson said that it was only a guide as there was plenty of other flooring that would be in the same price bracket but we decided to start looking within the range that was listed and managed to pretty quickly decide on the type of floorboards that we were going to have. Next there was the carpet, again just sticking within the listed range there was only two or three that worked with the floorboards and we made a decision in around a minute. Finally, the flooring place is also supplying the blinds as well so we had to choose them. The contract states blockout roller blinds and that's what we would have wanted anyway so too easy. From the listed range there was only two that worked with flooring choices and one of them worked really well with the carpet so that's what we chose.

The sales person then tried to up-sell us on better underlay for the carpet and I read out what was in the contract and we were already meant to be getting the premium underlay and then he asked if we wanted acoustic underlay for the floorboards and I told him that was already in the contract and showed him that. At least the builder wasn't trying to make the contract cheaper by using the cheapest options. None of the flooring was the top of the range options but it was far from the bottom. 

We still have to go back and choose the tiles at some stage as well as make all the interior paint colour decisions, but they should be relatively easy.

 

Bomber
Have I told you that I'm colour-blind? I truly am.

Bettering? More like failing.

I started this blog for a number of reasons, go back and read the first post for a detailed breakdown if you'd like, but the photo to the right is from the night I decided to try and do something; And really, what's changed? Sadly not very much at all. 

This last week or two has been a tough one. I've basically given up on dieting and I'm fighting with my son a lot. I also feel pretty exhausted, so it could all be tied together.

I do struggle with my kids at times, I'm sure most if not all parents do struggle from time to time, but I just worry that I'm screwing them up or will end up with them not wanting to be around me as they get older.

My son is really just like me, so we bump heads all the time, it drives my wife crazy and my daughter ends up going to her room to get away from the noise. I do try and keep my cal, but my son just somehow manages to push all my buttons and unleashes a part of me that I'm not proud of. 

I'm going to have to try harder with controlling myself and not letting my son get under my skin so much. I do love both my children very much.

Diet wise, I've had the shake a couple of times during the week but if I'm honest, breakfast was never really the problem. It's the snacking before and after dinner and throughout the weekend that really does me in. I was really good for a couple of weeks, but it has all basically fallen over again. I need to focus on doing better with that too.

I was about to say that I'd done better with my alcohol intake, but now that I think about it, I haven't done that great there either. I had that bottle of bourbon which I ended up having two or three bourbon and cokes most evenings. Then last weekend I bought a six pack of beer. The only reason I've not had anything to drink this weekend is because I'm on call for work, I would have bought another six pack on Friday just gone if I wasn't on call.

This yoyo that I've got going up and down for years is getting tiring, a long time ago I heard someone way something like "I'm sick and tired of being sick and tired" and that's just how I feel.

Bomber
possibly burnt out.