Being a Brisbane girl, born and bred, I decided to give country life a go and moved to our rural acreage in 1989,when Doug was only 2 years old, and stayed there until our big move north in Oct 2003. Jessica was born less than a year later, in November 1990. In 1999 Kel and his son Nicholas arrived.
Kel and I had a surprise wedding in the backyard in June 2001, pretending to be a birthday celebration for me!
Much to everyone's delight baby Paige was born in December 2001.
Kel's younger son Dean has been living with us, on and off (more on than off) since then as well.
In the meantime, Nick has left home, first to stay at his Mum's with sister Gillian, and now he's off doing his own thing, and Gillian is living with us.
So you can see things get pretty busy around here at times, and we had been a bit cramped in the house, but that had eased somewhat with the completion of our room extension in January.
After decorating the new room, we started to reorganise bedrooms. Jessica chose an Indian theme for her new space,complete with pink and silver sari curtains and brass bells.
Doug decided to go for the 'Teenage Angst' look - black walls, with a black light and splashes of neon paint to liven things up.
We didn't go very far with that look...heheh
We compromised with vivid yellow walls and ceiling, and neon painted furniture. Not my cup of tea, but I wasn't sleeping in it!
Dean went with the Spiderman theme,deep purple walls with a red "spider web" covering the top bunk (actually a red stretchy luggage net, but it saved him from a couple of tumbles off the bunk)!
Paige is so over the obsession with the mosquito net, and so long as she has her friends Poohy, Baby and Annie with her she is happy just about anywhere.
The three girls are sharing the master bedroom in the house we are renting in North Queensland, Kel and I have the medium sized room that faces the ocean (gets lovely breezes), while Dean has the tiny third bedroom all to himself.
Holidaying friends and family have already made use of our open offer to use the granny flat now we have one here. Douglas has come for a visit over the school holidays, Mum and Step-dad Peter came for Christmas, as did brother Bruce, and Jess and Doug's dad came out from Mt. Isa to see them for a few weeks.
Hopefully we will have more visitors this year!

Other than those things mentioned already, I have lots of hobbies I enjoy off and on, painting, sewing and cooking to name a couple. Currently, I am into researching the family tree, both mine and Kel's. You can check out the fruits of our labour in Family Tree.

Somewhere in amongst all these activities, I also try to read a novel or two... I must admit I am a bit of a read-a-holic...hehehe. I will read just about anything, but I prefer SF and Fantasy. Favourite authors at the moment are, (list subject to change) Anne McCaffrey, Katherine Forsyth, and Matthew Reilly.

Thanks for taking the time to find out a little more about me.

Updated: 25th January, 2004
Background is a painting by Jessica.