I had bought The Art of War in very recent history (can't remember precisely when but I feel like it's been at least a year by now) as 14yo had expressed a desire to read it. He didn't get around to actually reading it until recently, when he suddenly went on a health kick (both physical and mental) and on advice of J and 18yo, started trying to get in at least a little bit of exercise, eat a healthy breakfast (the kids and I don't really eat breakfast as we never feel particualrly hungry for a while after waking up) and read a book every day.

One of the good things about The Big Reset (although the kids don't really feel it at the time) is the slow and very limited internet (my parents actually have a quota as they don't use nearly as much internet as we do or more specifically as the kids do), which means they tend to spend slightly less time on their devices.  The boys actually spent a few nights playing chess against each other and JJ, and Sprat taught them how to play a game with a Chinese name somewhat similar to Poker (the similarity that I could pick up being that you had similar collections of cards you could use).

I usually don't do December and January unless interesting things happen as December is usually write-off month (too many end of year things happening for anything to be effectively planned and even if it could be planned we'd be exhausted as normally around the end of year things we just want to chill) and January is planning month (because my organisational skills are that atrocious that I need an entire month to plan).

Minimal text, many photos, some videos.  Mishmash of scenic, happysnaps and homeschooling stuff coz that's how we roll.  Grab a drink and a snack before commencing.

First couple of weeks...

The airport wait wasn't terribly exciting but at least there were planes to watch being loaded, taking off and landing.

Big asam tree across the road as seen from my bed.  It's always good to be home.

Back in Perth now and this post is going to be a long one.

The holiday has been great because I was home and crap because in the second week, I got a swollen gland or lymph node that pressed onto the nerve of one of my back teeth and caused a LOT of pain and made eating difficult, and the kids got sick.  In the third week the kids recovered and I got sick (two days completely out of action and just general misery, persistent headache and neverending mucous production for the rest of the week and continuing as I type).  I am feeling slightly bitter about it and thinking it's brutally unfair but at least I stayed there the entire time unlike a certain Christmas where I got medevac'd.

Fail summary

It was slightly overcast and we almost didn't go thanks to a (relatively) minor allergic reaction I had to lunch, but we got there and it was good.

Epic shot! Or at least one that I was really glad turned out good

Threw this one in just because it's cute

Recently, in a mad jumble of chaos and confusion well coordinated and executed attack, my sister and I surprised our parents for their 60th.

I took a bunch of photos but didn't put them on my laptop due to the constant dramas I've been having downloading photos from the camera (keep losing connection, and the closer I get to finishing the import the more it breaks) and also the internet connection on Christmas Island is so agonisingly slow that photos would have taken aeons to upload anyway.  So now having gotten back to Perth and back onto my desktop, after struggling with importing 227 photos for the last two hours, I'm going to do one of those big long photo posts that is going to exasperate my sister.

Don't worry, I'm not posting all of them.

My plans rarely go according to plan.  They do usually result in a desirable (and sometimes even the desired) outcome though.

The latest one worked a charm, considering how many factors, unknowns and randoms got involved.

My parents are 60 this year.  When we were up for Christmas in December, I made some noises about attempting to come back for the big birthday bash they had planned in the middle of the year if I could scrape the money together.

As the party date drew closer, I realised I wasn't going to be able to scrape the money together.  When my mum asked about it during one of our phone conversations, I mentioned this.

Everything that happened after the dangers of parking your ship next to a cliff, which I would have posted if my sites hadn't been playing silly buggers.  Everything is okay now, which means I'll be posting about as much as I was inclined to post before.

Weird looking spider

Have I scared off the arachnophobes yet? It's okay, this is the only spider photo this post.  I have no idea what kind of spider it is; I don't recall seeing it when I was growing up.  Sprat seems to think it's fairly recently common.

These are all more or less straight off the camera (aside from any incidental modifications that happen because I resized them down to 500px on the long side from over 4000) because I'm lazy and currently trying to make presentable some lion dance photos I took under bizarro lighting that a complete non-photographer like me has no idea how to deal with.

If a storm rolls in unexpectedly (or just unexpectedly fast), it could get battered quite severely.

This was taken a bit earlier today by Josh who raced down with his camera as soon as my parents came back from church and informed us that the waves at the Cove were knocking the cargo ship that was in about the place.  Rumour has it the storm rolled in quicker than they could move the ship or possibly one of the moorings snapped.  Either way there is/was concern for the cantilever (if it breaks, we can't load phosphate anymore til it's fixed, and that thing would take ages to rebuild plus has been there forever).