The time is nigh...

As the UK trip approaches, I'm beginning to feel that perhaps I've left a few too many things until the last minute but at least we've still had time for the fun stuff like snorkeling.

I don't have too much to say but I thought I'd check-in anyway and let you all know how incredibly disorganised I am feeling regarding our upcoming UK trip.

We leave in 8 days, on my birthday. Thankfully, it's an overnight flight which is good for two reasons:

1. You don't waste a day of your holiday on an aeroplane. This is only good, of course, if you actually manage to sleep whilst on the plane, otherwise you just arrive at your destination cranky, tired and jet-lagged.
2. It means I actually get to enjoy some of my birthday instead of just spending it on an aeroplane. Of course, this only applies if I have actually managed to get entirely and confidently packed by the day we leave otherwise I will spend my entire birthday running around in a flap, unpacking to make sure I've packed everything, then packing it again when I realise I have, then wondering if I'd packed a different particular something which I didn't check during the first unpack and so unpacking it all again.

I am of course hoping to be thoroughly spoiled by the air hostesses on our Emirates flight and to be offered lots of champagne and birthday cake.

As for being thoroughly disorganised, I haven't started packing yet, nor have I even managed to construct a list so I'm not entirely sure what I need to go out and buy. All guests have been banned from our house for the next week, unless they want to sleep on the lounge room floor, as the spare bedroom is about to be thrust into a chaotic world of suitcases and backpacks of varying sizes, piles of jeans and jumpers, snorkeling gear and camera equipment, so that Toby and I can go "AAAAaaarrrrrrggggghhhhh, we don't have enough room for everything! What do we do?" and then sort things into numerous piles of varying sizes of "must-haves", "would-likes" and "who-put-that-in-heres".

Aside from all that there's the house to put in order so that people can stay in it whilst we're away. And I figure it might be a good idea to have some accommodation booked in Dubai and some idea of what we'd like to do when we get there. We really wanted to dive in a region called Musandam but most of the tours are already booked up so we're now trying to decide whether to head over to Dibba in Oman anyway and see whether anything comes up. Oman is apparently a beautiful country but I haven't heard much about Dibba itself which suggests to me there isn't much to tell. Dibba isn't too far from Dubai and has snorkelling and diving locally which is why it might be a good choice. However, they don't expect to be too busy in December and I'm wondering why....

Anyway, enough of all that. You lot really don't need to stress about these things on my behalf (but if anyone does have any advice on visiting Dibba in December I'd love to hear it). How about a quick update on what has been going on in my world.

Well, two weekends ago we had a great snorkel off the boat ramp near Kings Beach in Caloundra. About six of us went and we were really lucky with the visibility which was probably around 10-15 metres. It was a windy day but we were in a really sheltered spot. There is a lot of fish life there. We saw the usual shoals of black and yellow stripeys, a few moon wrasse and similar as-yet-unidentified (by me anyway) fish, dusky butterflies, some shoals of larger fish, a ray, hard and soft coral, and lots more unidentified critters. We also saw two cute little eels, possibly morays, playing in a rock pool on the shore. Here are some movies and photos we took:

The ray:


The eels:


Dan's compilation:


Those of you reading this over email or RSS will probably need to visit my website to view these embedded movies. By the way, I think Dan is working on a better quality version of his movie so you might want to check back in a few days to see if this has been updated. You'll be able to tell because this text won't be here anymore.

School of stripeys - can anyone tell me who the imposter is to the bottom of the picture?




Sea star.



I didn't expect to see one of these whilst snorkelling.




Dusky butterflyfish - now that's more like it.



Underwater garden.

Last weekend we had Christmas with the Aussie side of the family which was really nice. Lots of seafood and salad. We also sort of celebrated four birthdays which are happening over the next month: Zoe is 3 on Wednesday, then it's my birthday on Saturday, on 28th December Toby's dad, Jeff celebrates his 60th and the day after that little Kielana turns one.

Now we're gearing up for a month of curries, christmas pudding, roast turkey, sherry, mulled wine, cheese and port, christmas cake, mince pies and more curry. Can't wait. But first, Dubai, and so far I've read about lots of nice restaurants and bars so I'm expecting to come back a few kilos heavier than I am now.