6 weeks to go!

So it’s 6 weeks until we leave on our dream holiday, our trip around Australia!! Even though we have been planning this trip for about 5 years, I simply cannot believe how unorganised we are at this point! I am making list after lists and checking it twice, but not ticking off many jobs. Work has been excruciating for the last couple of weeks, and I was away last week also so I am way behind there as well. Talk about stress!!

My list of jobs includes, arranging insurance for our caravan while we are travelling. I had assumed our van was covered by our contents insurance, but apparently not. So we need to upgrade. Also, need to claim my daughter’s iPod that has been missing since Christmas. Goodness knows where it is, but Tulley sure is missing it!

And talking about insurance. We are also going to increase our roadside assistance to the next level; this will give us better tow distances and hotel accommodation if anything goes wrong with our vehicle.

I have started the process of enrolling Tulley in distance education. I am finding it quite exciting to be organising to commit to 4 or 5 hours teaching a day. Thank goodness Tulley loves school and learning, I didn’t realize distance ed would be that intensive. But I also think she will thrive with the challenges and we will make it fit into our holiday schedule, travelling in the car she can do some reading for example! Also love that we get to utilise voice recordings on the iPhones and iPads, videos on iPads, DVD movies, laptop assignments! What did they do before this this technology became so common?

We still need tyres for the triton and a quick service on the ute and the turbo. After that we are pretty much organised in the van and car. Luke has been researching solar and generators but we’ve decided to stick with simple and if we decide during our trip that solar panels would be useful, we will add them later, rather than outlay now and not use them. We will not buy a generator for this trip. For lots of reasons, it’s just not us.

House sitter. We have a lovely family moving into our house while we are away, and they are not only looking after our house for 7 months, but also the cat, dog, and rabbit! To be honest, the reality of this situation has just hit me and I’m scared and nervous about this situation!! I’ve met my Housesitter and of course there are references and recommendations galore, but it’s still our house, and strangers, for 7 months …. Gulp!

My house. Oh the house. I have a secret 🙂 most of my house looks lovely, all neat and tidy!! But the rest is not all that perfect. For some reason, our bedroom has become a junk dumping ground, and the spare bed is currently covered in ‘stuff’. This stuff needs to be cleared and tidied, ASAP. I have been working on our room for 2 weekends now. Got totally distracted with my bedside drawers and their contents today! The girls have ended up with a lot of awful junk jewellery for the dress up box, and I threw out all sorts of things like an unused ovulation predictor test kit??? I love a good sorting out. My pantry has been overhauled, i did that yesterday. I just need to finish the top and bottom shelf and then I will be totally bragging and sharing a picture. I need some new storage from Kmart tomorrow, them it won’t take long to finish, yay. I love looking at the tidiness and organisation in there.

And I have to share the most exciting news lately!! My thermomix has joined our family. I first went to a thermomix demo about 4 years ago. Like everyone who has seen this machine in action, I was totally sold but the price tag put both hubby and me right off.

Lately I have become more and more convinced that I would really utilise a TMI but again, our budget and aims really didn’t allow for such a purchase. However, during our recent holiday at Exmouth, several other campers had them and were using them often. This was when I realised how amazing a thermomix would be on our trip! I could make a quick tuna and pasta, risotto, cakes, bread, sorbet, ice cream, muffins, fried rice the list goes on. I put this to Luke along with all the payment plans available and he agreed how awesome it would be on our holiday. So I ordered thermie, had a lovely delivery and demonstration with my lovely consultant Jody and began my thermomix journey – my demo is this week and I totally can’t wait to learn more about this amazing machine!! I must admit I am still a bit in disbelief that I own one of these great appliances!! Thank you Luke xxx

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There are many more bits and pieces to get through in the next month and a half, but that’s another post!! While away in Exmouth a few weeks ago I took some photos of our caravan to share, our home for the second half of the year! Wow, our start date is coming up fast!! Ill be back soon, Danya 🙂

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These are our beds.  The girls sleep on the double, and have a basket each at the end of the bed for their toys, books, pens and colouring books.  This is all they get to take with them for the trip, whatever fits in that basket!!  And ours is a queen at the other end, plenty of room for all of us 🙂