Bruce has started his holidays now, this is the holiday that he is having while everyone else is at work, not the holiday that he just had while everyone else was on holiday. Many people are conspiring to disrupt his poorly laid plans for his year off. It started with Grandma Darby having to go in for an eye operation on the weekend before they were supposed to come down and go to the Leeuwin Concert, after which they were supposed to stay on and look after the house while we went down south and then across to Kalgoorlie.

This was only going to delay us for a short while, but then Daen decided to put a spanner in the works and fell off his bike, while trying to be Evil Knieval, and broke his arm so severely that we had to take him to Perth and have screws and plates put in. He will now need therapy over the next couple of months so this will also delay our plans.

Poor old Daen got home last Monday, after more than a week in Perth and only lasted 6 hours. By 6pm he had a raging fever and was in a lot of pain and had to be admitted into Margaret River Hospital with a severe infection in his arm, after the surgery. He had to stay their for 3 days and has just come home again today. The up side for Daen is that he has missed the first week of school but I think he was quite looking forward to this.

Throughout all Daen's woes, Liam has got to spend plenty of quality time with his dad. Bruce has looked after him most of the time while Rosie has stayed with Daen or visited Daen. He finds it very tiring, but has got Liam into a routine of having a midday sleep which gives him 2 hours to himself. Liam is very good at going to bed both during the day and at night for Bruce. Rosie though struggles with his midday sleep, as she found out on Thursday when dad went off to scroungers golf.

Dave and Olwyn joined us to see in the new millennium and during the evening Merv and the girls dropped in (they look so old, when they get dressed up).

The new Studio (check out the new page, I have just put in some pictures) has proven very successful so far with only 2 nights free in all of January. Our February bookings are picking up and we have also picked up a few people coming in off the street. If this continues we will far exceed our expectations in the first year. The cottage, as usual, goes along happily and hopefully the combined effect of the two rooms will cause a flow on of return bookings. We will be dramatically increasing our advertising this year to try to pick up as much business as possible in this first year. In subsequent years we will pick and choose more since we should have an established client base.

Bruce has hardly played golf this summer with all the problems and also with the cleaning and babysitting that has to be done with the increased business. We both managed to get to Joondallup in the middle of January for a couple of nights. Bruce was pleased with his golf game and nearly played to his handicap on one of the nines. When everything quietens down, Bruce will hopefully get out and play a bit more and get back to enjoying a quiet game in the afternoon. Rosie may also be able to come out and play when Liam gets a bit older and can amuse himself for longer.

Liam is just a bundle of energy. He has this misguided opinion that he can run away from us faster than we can chase him. He walks away slowly, watching you all the time and then when you move to stop him he runs as fast as he can, which is pretty quick now. If we don't watch him like a hawk, he disappears and we then have to go all round the house looking for him.

Another favourite game is to play hide and seek behind the bushes. He knows that we can't follow him so he runs backwards and forwards between the trees and the fence. We are in the process of building a fence around the house so that we can keep him in. We got started three weeks ago but unfortunately haven't got to finish the job with all our trips to the hospital. This job has #1 priority and will be completed in the next week.

Well this will do for now and hopefully another effort will follow in the next couple of months.