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)