Happy Birthday Big Girl!

Returning the favour, here’s my shout-out to Karina.  Happy 36th Birthday!  As she’s commented several times recently, it feels like the wrong side of the 30’s.She remains the single most wonderful person I know, and someone who is always full of life and surprises. Everything she touches, she approaches with dedication and always does an outstanding job.  The school committee at Fircroft are planning ways to sabotage our departure so that she has to stay, she reads for other classes at the school beyond our kids, Darebin Parklands want her back, and Shine (her employer in Australia) wrote to her the other day just checking she was returning and could she hurry up because they need her.She’s a great mother, loves our kids (mostly, I mean you’d have to be a saint not to occasionally get pissed off with them) and always makes time to sit down with them and spend time making robots, art work, picture frames and so forth — it’s even more impressive because I know how tedious this can get at times, but she never skimps on the time she spends with them.  I’m planning to invest this kind of serious time later — when they are old enough to play networked games and we can have a seriously competitive frag-fest, I’ll be there!She (almost) never complains about the amount of travel I do and coming home to some decent home cooking is the highlight of any trip.On the surprise front, her kooky sense of humour never fails to make me laugh, her un-expectedly crude mind surprises me (she’s a master of the double-entendre) as well as her closet addiction to computer games (Age of Empires III and Zuma).  So Happy 36th Birthday Karina, and I’ll try remember next year that if I don’t remind the kids and take them shopping, that at 6 and 7 they are unlikely to get money, go up the shops and buy you a present by themselves (get money, go up the shops and buy themselves a present I can believe).