Tamara took this photo of the house back in November and I’ve been meaning to post it for a while as it’s a great photo of the front of the house with all the painting done and the window hoods on.

I love the perspective of the house from this photo. It turned out really good and it was a nice sunny day for it, we haven’t had many sunny days since then.

We have had 40 days and 40 nights of rain in a row here and there has been a lot of flooding around the region. It’s crazy, but I’m glad that we were at least spared getting hit by Tropical Cyclone Ellie a few days ago.

There is still a risk that the cyclone could reform as the tropical low crosses back over the ocean, but it’s a low risk.

Tropical Cyclone Ellie took a sharp right turn last night, weakened to a tropical low and crossed the coast near Mission Beach around mid-night. You can see the latest cyclone tracking map below. You can also see the predicted path of it from now on, but they are notoriously inaccurate.

There is still a severe weather warning for Townsville and the area between Innisfail and Mackay, so my shade cloth will be staying down for now and I’m expecting a lot more rain.

There is speculation that this could be a bad cyclone season for North Queensland, and this is the second one that we have seen up here so far this year. I remember being called a "pansy" for not wanting a cyclone to come through next year. Well, if that’s the case then please call me a pansy again this year, as I would rather avoid the cyclones…

Enjoy these videos of us singing some Australian Christmas Carols. You’ll recognize the tune, but probably not the words from this slightly modified Aussie version …

Jingle Bells – The Australian Version

The 12-Days of Christmas – The Australian Version

I hope that you all have a fantastic Christmas. Thank you for reading this site about our home renovations.

Sunday was Fathers Day here in Australia and I was lucky enough to have two exciting days / events to celebrate being a dad.

Thursday night Caleb and I headed out to a free Fathers Day event put on by Bunnings. They had four craft tables set-up for Caleb to build stuff and make some cards. He built and painted a timber CD Rack for me for Fathers Day and did a special card for me. You can see the CD Rack in the photo below.

In addition to the four craft tables they also had face painting, as you can see above. This was actually Caleb’s first time ever getting his face painted, and they did a fantastic job on it don’t you reckon?

We got to pet a snake, a lizard and a crocodile that were brought in from the Billabong Sanctuary. Caleb was quite brave and went up to pet each of the animals.

Bunnings also put on a free sausage sizzle for everyone there. We both love our sausages, so that was a great dinner for us, maybe not the healthiest, but certainly tasty.

Today we headed out to Reef HQ here in Townsville to have a look at the aquarium. It is a very impressive display and we were lucky enough to be there during the feeding of the predator tank. And of course we got to see Nemo (the clown fist) and Dori (Paracanthurus hepatus) along with hundreds of other fish and sea animals.

After that we watched the movie Ratatouille at home as a family and finished with a family dinner.

I reckon I’ve had a pretty good Fathers Day this year …