Happiness 15 years on

What makes you happy? What makes you smile, gives you the warm feeling inside that reflects beaming from your insides out? For me it is celebrating success either my own or that of friends, family, colleagues... Love too, young or old, the love of a friend or that of a parent for a child, the true love of soul mates just happy being with each other...

Last night I was beaming with that happiness as my beautiful, darling wife and I renewed our vows after 15 years of marriage. In a wonderful twist my gorgeous girl had an amazing vision of inviting girls to attend our celebration in their wedding dresses or bridesmaid dresses... A room full of brides in white... In an even bigger twist we had white dresses but not all of them were brides...

My eyes last night were only for one in white though whose dazzling smile lit up the room all night long, just as beautiful as the day we were wed. Fifteen years on our lives have changed somewhat but nothing will change how we feel for each other.

We have many people to thank for making last night such a special one... From my wife's sister and her husband who thought we would be good together to the local cake designer who whipped up a delicious combination of yummy mud cake and delightful cupcakes (some that tasted like Christmas) to the local Club staff who made our night such a stress free breeze... So many friends and family to thank for coming along and joining us... Finally a specially thank you to my sweet angel for all the stress, preparation and for just being my amazing and beautiful girl... I'm still smiling...

Blog number 200... Knights and VR rule on a very windy day at Mannum

What a wonderful weekend... Saturday saw a trip up to Woodside where my wife's mum and dad have settled to be closer to family. It is a beautiful new house they now have, easier to manage and is looking more and more like their home the more moving boxes are emptied... It was great to be able to help out with tuning the TV and shifting some plants round the back... Tired but happy trip back to Murray Bridge just in time to join my brother-in-law for his boardgames night... This was an opportunity to try my luck at a few unusual boardgames that I had not played in a while. Ben has a few of the classic family games (like Cludeo and Monopoly) but also has a quite expansive collection of other titles (classics as well as the unusual) so a games night at the Crook house is always loads of fun. My luck was not found in the universe this time with me hanging on to a second place while almost losing all my colonies... I did come away with a win though with a combination of dinosaurs and werewolves in a faction card game called SMASH-UP... In between the games there was time to sneak in a cuddle with my youngest niece, the extremely cute Olivia... Based on last night alone I would say Uncle Tim is either boring or very comfortable. I had the knack to put sleepy, grumpy Olivia off to the land of nod... A little rocking and a bit of humming and she was out like a light.

Today was another awesome catch up with family Crook as we spread our wings and hitched a ride with the blustery wind all the way to Mannum (approx. 30 minutes from Murray Bridge). Mannum is another township located on the River Murray, smaller than Murray Bridge, Mannum has between 2,000 and 3,000 people. This Sunday so happened to be the date of a Gaming Expo at the Mannnum Showgrounds, a display of all things medieval, computer/console/board game related and film related. The sword play tournament was amazing to witness (those guys dressed as knights fight hard and fierce) and the Virtual Reality set up was pretty cool too... I beat my son at the old NBA arcade game but lost out at Super Smash-Bros... Thanks as well to the bloke who gave me the complete and utter back story of his Warhammer 40K army displayed in all its glory. Looks like a fun two and a half to three hours of tough battling but too costly for me... With the number of new boardgames I saw today that I now want to play I don't think I'll ever get the time for Warhammer even if I ever did find the extra cash to invest... One can only dream... Thanks to my mate Benny and his introducing me to the Warhammer novels I could hold my own with this expert as he explained the game and his combination of differing factions... His fluff (army's back story) was an interesting one and helped to pass the time while I waited for Master 12 to finish his VR...

All in all a great family weekend... What a way to round off my first 200 posts...

Happy birthday tooooooooooooooooooo Miss 11

Our middle child has now turned 11!! In typical Law style we have already had a massive sleepover pamper party, intimate family celebration (including day out with Mum... chick flick... lunch out...) and finally we have a small gathering coming up (home made pizzas... yum!) to finish off marking this occasion. It has been fun watching this beautiful young lady grow up, getting so tall and yet still so innocent... Looking forward to seeing where the next 11 years takes this sweet daughter of ours.

The other thing that is on our minds at the moment is a happy gathering we are planning to celebrate our 15th Wedding Anniversary. If we pull our crazy idea off my darling wife and I will be throwing the funnest bash that the Bridge has ever seen. It doesn't bother us that our actual anniversary was in June. It is taking us a few extra months to throw it all together. I for one cannot wait for August to roll around...

Musical surprisingly entertaining - aka That Man Can Sing!!

Last night we finally sat down and popped on The World's Greatest Showman. My gorgeous angel and I attempted to watch this on our wedding anniversary weekend away but with no TV and no DVD player it was not to be. Our busy lives have given us few opportunities to watch it on our own so we decided that this was going to be our family movie night with our trio and two friends. Three out of the five kids seemed to suggest they would happily sit through this film again with the two Miss 8s retiring to another area of the house to chat and play games instead. All in all I think P. T. Barnum would be happy with that result and so too Hugh the amazing Aussie actor who can sing and dance to boot.

I kind of knew the Barnum story from when a local theatre group performed it years ago. It was still interesting though to see how it all unfolded. More risks than I remembered and this movie had a lot of wonderful morals which the three kids that sat and watched with us all seemed to get. All in all a great family film and a very enjoyable night.

Now on to something more light hearted and... Incredible too...

Amazon I love and loath you

Great news!! I have stopped looking for a traditional publisher and have bitten the bullet... My first novel, The Eleventh Tome is now available on Amazon as a Kindle e-book or a hard copy can be ordered as print on demand (POD). The only problem with this exciting news is that Amazon no longer ships to Australia so I can't tell all my local friends about the POD... I can't work out how to upload the POD to amazon.com.au, something I wrongly assumed would load automatically to all sites over a period of time...

Amazon you have been my launch pad but you have only flung me so far... If anyone knows how to activate POD for Amazon's Australian site I would love a comment at the bottom of this post...

And of course if you are after a fantasy novel written in a unique way please give my novel a go... If you like perhaps purchase a copy... Check out https://www.amazon.com/Eleventh-Prophecies-Andrapaal-Book-ebook/dp/B07F62VWKM/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1531550161&sr=8-1&keywords=Eleventh+Tome if you are interested...

Just another Saturday morning

So much fun was had by all who attended the Murray Bridge Library this morning. As part of our July holiday program we hosted a cards and Cosplay event which a few kids from the community attended. The fun though came from the professional Cosplayers I was able to arrange to attend on the day... We had Star Wars storm troupers, a combative Red Riding Hood (with real chain mail along with a basket of axes), a Ranger, a pretty Princess and a couple of Orcs and Goblins as well as a vampire from Elizabethan England and so many others... All these amazing costumes put my Batman outfit to shame.

I wish that every Saturday could be filled with costumed chaos and craziness. The best bit?! Although we did not get a hoard of kids come along with cards (we did get a few creative costumes from the kids too though) all of the Cosplayers were talking about the next time they came back again... Orc was suggesting he bring a treasure chest along and have the kids search the dungeon, vanquish the Orcs and Goblins, save the Princesses and find the treasure... Sounds like epic fun!!

A Jurassic review

We have been lucky enough to get free tickets to see the latest dinosaur phenomenon, Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom... An awesome movie with enough thrills and excitement to get the heart pumping... Since watching this film I heard they went back to using the original style of robotic dinos rather than CGI... If you have not seen it yet it is well worth a watch...

Since seeing Fallen Kingdom we caught Jurassic Park III and Jurassic World... Funny to see these two films after the latest edition... Puts things into perspective...

Jurassic World Fallen Kingdom - 4 big dino teeth out of 5!!!!