Cruising the South Pacific Part 2

Welcome to the second instalment on our recent South Pacific holiday. This instalment aims to answer all the questions that you may have in relation to the cruise and also includes some photos.

Here is the traditional family portrait in the style of yesteryear

 

How was the food? The food was great. For breakfast and lunch we went to the buffet, where there was a wide selection of food. For lunch they had salads, sandwiches, pasta, Asian food, sushi, and assorted hot meals. Ella mainly had hot chips. Ben had hot chips, cucumber and watermelon. Simon normally had some salad and other food. For dinner we went to the main dining room, which was either smart casual or formal. There was a selection of entrees and mains each night. They also had a kids menu. Ben and Ella had chicken nuggets and chips each night. Simon had Caesar salad and chicken nuggets each night. Sarah and I enjoyed a bit more variety. It was quite exhausting keeping the children well behaved at dinner each night. We didn’t have anyone else sitting with us to provide distractions. Ben had a mirror next to him and spent most of each dinner talking to himself in the mirror.

How were the cabins? The cabins were great. They were bigger than on the last ship and this time we had interconnecting outside cabins. The only issues were that:

1.  The kids had more time together (translates to more disagreements between the boys and Ella).

2. When Ella woke early in the morning or at night, she wasn’t just with Sarah in another cabin.

The service was great and every night the stewards made some sort of towel animal.

How were the kids? For the most part they were fine. The kids club on this cruise did not have the excitement factor on the previous cruise. While we had no complaints it was just missing a bit of spark compared to the other ship. This meant it sometimes took a bit of convincing to get the younger two to go. However once they were there they had a great time. Simon was quite keen since they had Wii and Xbox room where he could play games.

How was the cruise overall? We all had a great time, it was good to see some new countries. We had some time to ourselves. No cooking and cleaning for two weeks, very nice. Going in school holidays meant there were a lot more children on the cruise and some of them were pretty annoying.

Click on the album below to check out the photos.

 

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Cruising the South Pacific Part 1.

After the success of the last cruise we decided to take another cruise with the kids. This time we needed to take the holiday in the school holidays otherwise we were in danger of running out of holidays. We spent the last two weeks of the school holidays cruising the South Pacific on the MS Volendam.

This time we booked two interconnecting outside cabins – one for the parents and the other for the children. We left Sydney on warm Sunday afternoon. Once again we enjoyed the quick trip down to the passenger terminal. In less than an hour we were on our holiday. The lead up had been quite hectic. While we were going to be away the floor boards in the front rooms of the house were being sanded. This meant all of the furniture in the boys room and play room had to be moved into the garage and all of the toys packed up – we are talking about crates of Lego.

After two days of sailing we arrived at Noumea, New Caledonia. Sarah was excited to be visiting a new country. It was hot and humid and we went off to the Aquarium after a snack of “pomme frites”. Len would have been proud of us, doing our own thing and not booking through the ship and using public transport.

The next day we we stopped at a little island surrounded by a coral reef called Lifou. The beach was covered in washed up coral so you had wear your shoes/thongs all the time – otherwise you would get nasty cuts. It was hot and humid.

After that we headed off to Port Vila, Vanuatu. We had planned to go snorkelling there but the tour was already booked out. So instead we went on a walk up to a waterfall where you could stand under the waterfall and swim in some pools. Once it again it was quite hot and sticky. It turned out to be quite an adventure and all three children dozed off on the bus back to the ship. The following day we had another stop at Luganville, Vanuatu, it was a 10 minute walk into town. We only made it about 1/2 way before the kids had enough and we had to stop for a snack, drinks and an ice cream. It was hot and humid They were not keen to keep going and to keep down the whinging we headed back to the ship and went for a swim.

We then had a days sailing before we stopped at Lutoka in Fiji. In the morning we took the kids to the Garden of the Sleeping Giant, which is an orchid garden setup by the actor Raymond Burr. It was hot and humid. In the afternoon we did a bit of shopping (sans kids).

We stopped next at Dravuni Island. This was the highlight of the trip (for me anyway). The Island is one of those picture perfect tropical islands: white sand, palm trees, crystal clear water. Only 125 people live on the Island. Ella got her hair braided, Sarah had a massage and the boys went swimming.

Our next stop in New Caledonia had to be cancelled so that we could maintain our distance with cyclone Wilma. So we had three days of sailing after which we docked in Sydney. By 10AM we were back home admiring the new floorboards in the front rooms.

Well that ends part 1. Stay tuned for part 2 which has the photos.

Ella Starts School

Last Friday was a big day. All three children were at school. Grandpa has phoned up requesting a blog entry with some pictures. It has been quite hectic over the last few days so the blog has been delayed. Ella loves school – she has the coolest teacher in the world – her words and also “School is better than day care because you don’t have to have a rest in the afternoon”. Needless to say she has been pretty tired in the afternoon. True to form though Ella still manages to wake up at around 6AM most mornings.

Here is the traditional first day of school photo in the backyard.

Her brothers were quite happy to have her at school as well.

2010 the year that was

• Ella started and finished a very successful year at Sue's Childcare. There were lots of activities to do, lovely staff and she made lots of friends. In particular, there were no Steiner administration problems.
• Ben started school and secretly loved it "a little bit". Oops its not a secret anymore.
• Simon joined the chess club at school and really enjoyed it. Anything to avoid handball!
• Ella finally gave up her "pull-ups". She still pulls us up at every opportunity how ever.
• Simon received an Italian award for his class despite knowing very few Italian words. I think they teach a lot of culture.
• Sarah survived without Michael on two separate occasions for 10 days and 1 week respectively. The promise of a present on his return seemed to help!
• Ben and Simon were both very happy to receive iPod Touches for Christmas and we are now saving up for Electronic Addiction Counselling in a few years time.....
• We got Solar Heating in our pool and now all our friends that prefer the pool to be more like a bath are tipping their toes in.

second break

Simon recently fell off the monkey bars at school and had a sore arm. It was still sore the next day so we thought we better take it seriously. Sure enough he had a green stick fracture and initially received a half cast. Later we splurged an extra $20 so he could get a waterproof cast. He chose black because it was cool.

Camping at stinky dead bird beach

We recently went on our first camping trip of the summer. We went with friends Deb and John and their two boys Sam and Tom. Sarah’s friend Louise and her daughter Zoe joined us on the Saturday.

All of our previous camping experience with the children has been at caravan parks with pools and other forms of entertainment. Deb wanted a more pure camping experience this time without all the other attractions and had chosen a camp site at Putty Beach in Bouddi National Park. The camp site did have flush toilets and cold showers, so it wasn’t too ”pure”.  I have to admit I was a bit sceptical but in the end everyone had a great time.

We got there on Friday afternoon after the usual stress of the trying to remember everything and working out how to fit it into the car. On Saturday morning I went with the boys down to the beach and there was a bit of a stench. Looking around you could see there were a lot of dead birds washed up at the high water mark – hence the name of the beach. Apparently this is a natural event. Luckily once you were down at the water and with the wind in the right direction the smell was not present.

John and I took Ella to the shops on Saturday morning to get some spare parts for Johns fridge and other supplies. It was great being in the air conditioned car during the heat of the day.

We had a great time down at the beach on Saturday afternoon and also on Sunday morning. We all packed up at lunchtime on Sunday when it was very hot. All the parents were exhausted on Sunday night.

Here are some photos.

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Its getting closer

Last week Ella went for an induction day and Sarah splashed out on a new uniform for her and a headband and a scrunchie. Kids are so spoilt these days.

Who thought reading could be so dangerous

Well it has happened, the first trip to the Hospital Emergency Department, not bad after eight 1/2 years of being a parent. Simon has a green stick fracture in his left forearm – the things a child will do to get out of swimming lessons. He fell in the school playground and was complaining his arm was sore. He did have full movement, there was just a tender spot. Sarah agreed to take him to the doctor, since one of the nieces had once complained for a week before her parents took her to the doctor and she had a similar type of injury. When I took Simon back the next day to the GP to follow up on the X-Ray we were sent off to the emergency to get  a plaster cast. He was looked after well and we went back today when the cast was replaced with a black water proof one. Apparently black is his favourite colour – A goth in the making.

 

Toothless

yes today Ben lost his first tooth!

Professional Photoshoot

Recently, my friend Karen's husband Andrew who is a professional photographer visited from Hong Kong and took some family snaps. Check them out.

http://www.fotop.net/lunaworks/sara

A day we are all looking forward to.

The fairy princess

Watch out she will cast a spell on you. She walks around the house turning everyone into exhausted frogs

Thanks to Mia for supplying the outfit. It will be returned shortly.

Another builder in the house

Over the years Ella has been accumulating a collection of Dora megablocks and this year she got her own Lego box. Well just like her brothers she loves building things. Also just like her brothers she has to have the floor covered in blocks. Simon and Ben keep most of the mess on the floor of their bedroom. On most days you can only see the carpet just around their beds -- the middle of the room is not visible. However Ella has already covered the floor of her room with junk so she needs to play in the living room.

Blogging Resumes.

Hi All,

Despite promises to the contrary at the beginning of the year, there has been a large gap in the blogging activities of this blog. Apologies to our regular readers or maybe it is just a single reader (grandpa). We actually had a whole lot of draft articles waiting to go, they just never got finished. Hopefully they will make it onto the internet in the next few weeks.

We have just returned from a week in Kangaroo Valley.

It was meant to be a farm stay. However it turned out to be more of a stay in cabins on a farm with six goats and 12 cows. So we were a bit disappointed at the lack of activities for the kids. The only “farm” activity was the twice daily feeding of the goats, which took all of two minutes as the children exclaimed each time - “don’t they eat fast”. The kids had a great time anyway because their parents took them out to see different things. There were some bikes available for riding but these were dismissed by Simon as pretty hopeless. The other attraction was the table soccer – this was more in line with Simon's soccer preferences. He had a great time as long as he was winning. (Might need to work on this attitude)

Lisa and Immi stayed with us for a couple of nights and the boys were happy because Immi brought some Lego. On the Tuesday we went to see Fitzroy Falls in the nearby National Park. It was a bit misty.

The next day was pretty nice and we headed down to the Nowra Wildlife park where the kids got to feed more goats.

On Thursday, we went to a local old village museum and then in the afternoon, I took the boys to the Fleet Air Arm Museum in Nowra. The museum had a good collection of planes and helicopters. Simon was enthralled with the helicopter simulator that they had. Ben was happy playing in the helicopter cockpit, hanging from the levers. Sarah took Ella for a haircut.

We drove home today and stopped in at Berry to visit some friends who have a house there. The kids enjoyed having other children to play with after being stuck with their parents for the last few days.

As we drove into the driveway we we were greeted with the usual chorus – “what are we doing tomorrow”. Nothing like living in the moment.

Meant to be an update on 2009 goals

According to all the self help books the first step to achieving your goals is to write them down. This post was meant to be a backward looking one to see if we as a family achieved our 2009 goals. Looking back through the blog posts it seems we didn’t have any! The best you can say is that we didn’t fail to achieve any of our goals. From my memory I can imagine what our goals may have been. Here goes:

1. getting more sleep
2. becoming nappy free ( I think this was a 2007 goal!)
3. having more time for exercise
4. having a good year at preschool
5. having a good year at school
6. a new job for Michael

Retrospectively, we definitely got more sleep than the year before and while Ella still uses pull-ups at night we are very close to losing them. Unfortunately, we didn’t really get more time for exercise and while we had a good year at school and most of the year was good at preschool the end of the year pretty much sucked at preschool as their favourite teacher left abruptly. And Michael got a new job which is going very well even if the company does make missile systems.

Moving on to 2010 goals, we’ll get right back on that horse and go for more of the same:

1. getting more sleep
2. becoming nappy free
3. having more time for exercise
4. having a good year at preschool
5. having a good year at school (now that Ben is being unleashed on the public education system)

What we did this year – Volume 3 – Paid holidays and Value for money

Our first much anticipated holiday of 2009 was a week on the beach at Nelson Bay in a luxury beach house with separate living areas for kids and adults;i.e., one TV each. The place looked fantastic and was right on the rocks at Anna Bay with a short walk to the main beach. Unfortunately it was wet all week and we had to look away from the beach for our amusements or rather the kids entertainment. See the March blog entry for what we ended up doing. Value for money verdict – Not great as we spent so much money amusing them in the wet weather.

Our next paid holiday – the farmstay – was  much more successful as described in the previous blog entry. Although expensive, value for money was excellent.

For our final paid holiday of the year, we wanted to try something different and for this one we took guidance from my parents. I convinced Michael that a cruise would be a good idea – one leaving from Sydney and returning to Sydney. That way there would be no extended travel with Ella as sitting still for any length of time is not one of Ella’s talents. I made sure I chose a ship with a really good kid’s club as I was hoping the kids would be spending a lot of time there. We ended up going on an American ship called Rhapsody of the Seas for a 10 night trip up to Queensland and back. It was fantastic. The kids really enjoyed kids’ club and we really enjoyed dropping them off there! Seriously, it was in management parlance a ‘win-win’ situation. We got plenty of time to ourselves to go to the gym and lounge around the pool reading our books while they were constantly entertained and stimulated. I even managed to catch 2 movies and a show. We are already planning our next year’s cruise……

The ship was quite big with approximately 2500 passengers. We had two cabins an inside and outside one across the hall from each other. The boys slept in the outside cabin with the window and the inside cabin was the girls cabin. In the boys cabin, the third bed was one of the those beds that drops down from the ceiling like on a train. Ben and Simon took turns in sleeping the top bunk.

 

Each night the room attendant set up the bed and also created an animal out of towels. This was a big thrill for the kids each night. Ella was most annoyed when one night we went back to the room early before the beds has been turned down and the towel creature had not been created.

We had good weather for the holiday this time and were able to make good use of the pool and the other out door activities including the climbing wall at the back of the ship although we only tried it once as it got a bit windy and exposed. 4 laps of the top deck was 1 mile. A bit of exercise was needed each day because the food was excellent and there was always more!

 

There was a large buffet at the front of the ship where we had breakfast and lunch. We had sit down dinner in the main dining room on most nights. The plan was for the kids to have dinner at kids club. This only happened once. The kids loved the waiters in the dining room and wanted to have dinner with them (and their parents) on most nights. There was a lot of napkin folding at the table and Simon mastered the “opera house”. A good party trick to impress grandma. We weren’t too hung up on what the kids were eating and Simon got into a bit of a routine. Two servings of fruit loops for breakfast, Caesar salad for lunch and pizza for dinner. He claimed the salad was better than at home.

The ship stopped at Airlie Beach, Cairns, Port Douglas and Brisbane. We used the Cairns and Brisbane stops to catch up with friends. We met up   with our friends Grace and  Carl in Brisbane and their girls Kyra and Sierra. (Thanks for picking us up from the port guys!) .

In Cairns we met our engineering friend Michelle

What we did this year Volume 2 – The farm stay

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One of the highlights of 2009 was our farmstay long weekend with  our friends Deb and John at a hobby farm near Foster on the north coast. I organised the holiday with stringent requirements from my friend Deb. For some strange reason she didn’t want to share a house with us so we had to have separate cabins. And she also didn’t want any other visitors at the same time as us. So I dutifully found somewhere that fulfilled these requirements even though this made it slightly more expensive. It was worth every cent. We stayed in two lovely cottages on the property each with a warm open fire. there were plenty of things for the kids to do – animal feeding, tractor rides, horse and pony rides and paddle boats. The ‘farmer’ also took the kids out a few times to give us a break and they really looked after us. Check out the pictures.

What we did this year – Volume 1 – The sub continent visits.

This posting and the next few are a lame attempt to to catch up with blogging. I gave Sarah a list of topics a few months ago but she has not had the time or energy to post about them. Running a household with three active children and a demanding husband plus juggling a job seems to tire her out a bit.[ed. yes it was a bit of a tiring year especially since we did it without a nanny!]

In July we hosted the tour of the Indians with their latest team member Claudia “Bluey”. The kids just loved seeing their cousins and they really miss them when they go. They enjoyed playing video games with them and doing science experiments.

Once again Auntie Mazzie tormented me with gifts of Indian Cricket Team t-shirts to the boys. Her excuse this time was to improve relations with the sub continent. I am still working on a revenge gift for her next visit.

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The end of an era - the last Retriever Poker Night

Yes Michael has left his job at Retriever for new horizons. Here is a picture of the last Retriever Poker Night he hosted.

Dress up clothes from Clare

My sister-in-law Clare kindly passed on a whole bunch of dress up clothes she had for her boys. And Ben has made the most use of these. He just loves dressing up! Here is one strange outfit he designed. And he has never seen Michael Jackson!

85 and still going strong

Recently we celebrated Joss's 85th birthday with a wild afternoon tea at our place. There was no alcohol but quite a bit of chocolate and nougat... The photographer was a bit slack so sorry there aren't so many photos. But pretty much the same people came as to Gwenda's 70th party earlier in the year so you can refer back to that blog post. The skies were celebrating too with a double rainbow outside the party.

Joss was looking very well and this article suggests why.

Why I don't need to shop for Ella's clothes

I rarely have to shop to buy Ella's clothes. That's because my friend Lisa passes on all of her little girl Imogen's hand me downs. And they are top quality stuff. Here is a picture of the latest batch. Ella enjoyed 'sorting' them out.

It used to be a treat for me to shop for Ella's clothes until I took her recently to Kmart. I swear I was shopping with a teenager! Everything I chose was automatically rejected and there were tears... I bought the things I wanted and they were popular in retrospect.

Dress ups with Imogen

You know how they warn teenagers these days to watch what they post on the internet because when they grow up and apply for jobs prospective employers will find incriminating photos of them doing regrettable things. These are such photos of Imogen Spence and Simon and Ella %% Harris. (just to trick the search engines Lisa)

late bloomer

yes Simon finally lost his first tooth.

record sleep ins

This year is the year for record sleep-ins in the Harris family. One morning recently all 3 children slept till 7:30! And when Ben went for a sleepover with Granny he didn't stir till 7:45!

All I can say is after 7 years of waking up before 6am its about bloody time.

Question: what month is ripe for bad gorilla jokes?

Answer: 'Ape'ril (courtesy of Simon's latest joke book)

This post is just about what happened in April.

There were two big birthdays -- Ben turned 5 and Simon turned 7. We had a combined birthday this year which was pretty successful. We had the sports guys come and entertain the 20 or so under 7 year olds attending.

Other developments:
Ben and Ella started a weekly dance/drama class called MovenGroove. This was instigated after getting sick of dragging Ben into the swimming pool for lessons and deciding I needed a break from swimming lessons. 'Unfortunately' Mums aren't even allowed in the room for MovenGroove. I thought 'Humpty Squad' was good where I could sit and have a cup of tea while watching on the sidelines but this is even better. They do open the class occasionally for the parents so tomorrow I will get to watch them moving and grooving. Theyalways seem to have enjoyed the class but aren't that enthusiastic about it. Its not cool for Ben to be enthusiastic about that sort of thing but it was very hard to find a class they could both do together. Maybe next term we'll do Tae Kwon do for preschoolers.

They have also decided the gym creche is fun so I am trying to take them there once a week for a bit of Sarah time. Are you sensing a theme here? This is just the sort of win-win situation we like. Happy mother. Happy child. Happy family.

Simon's big discovery this month is "virtual lego". Lego has produced a virtual designer which you download and you can build lego in software. There is a huge collection of bricks and then when you've build it you upload your creation to a website and have the opportunity to "buy" all the bricks in your creation. They will even customise the packaging for you. Simon is desperate to buy some until I explain the shipping costs. You can also upload pictures of your real creations as seen here.

The weekend business report.

On Saturday, we discovered we had a budding young entrepreneur in the family. Last year Sarah bought Simon a book about making paper planes. He has been busily making planes for the last few months and has a big box of them. Despite the global financial crisis Simon decided that he would share his creations with the world (for a fee of course)

In other news we went to the school disco (aka fund raiser). Ella won a prize for "crazy dancing". There was not a lot of uptake of the paper plane offer but Simon is determined. When we returned from the disco he arranged for Emma from next door to come over and view the exhibition. She left 40c poorer but much happier as the proud owner of two Simon Harris originals.