The Beach

Stu has bought a new place less than 2 kilometres from the beach!

A great place, and will be perfect in the Summer after work, ride a bike to the beach and head for a swim.

A bit cold for a swim in July, (but that didn't stop Cameron from having a paddle), but we took Rosie for a long walk.

A week in Sydney

and this is the only photo I took!

(this is the train track they built with Oliver's Thomas track)
It was great to get up to Sydney and catch up with friends. A perfect week to head up is during the school holidays, then we can catch up with friends during the day....the downside is that some friends go away, so we miss them!

It's amazing to see the kids growing up so quickly, and fabulous to see them get together and play and it is as though it was only last week that they saw each other. Same goes with the friends that we have made in our years in Sydney!!

We stayed with Kylie and Rob, and their little boy Oliver. It was good to see them again since they moved out from England. Rob helped me order my new laptop online, cause he is great at "building a better future".

A week in Sydney is just not long enough!

Bye old boat, Hello new boat!

Nana and Pa went to the boat show, and bought a new boat while they were there!

Pa was a bit sad to see his old boat pull out of the drive.

Then he and the kids went to pick up the new boat!

Cameron can't wait till we are back in an Australian Summer to go fishing with Pa!

Pa has the kids life jackets ready to go!

Melbourne Museum (and coffee with a friend)

Off to visit the Melbourne Museum for the Pompeii exhibition. A great exhibit, and I think we might have to make a trip to see the real thing at some stage in the near future!

The best part of the day was catching up with Laura, our friend from Berlin, the librarian at the kids school who migrated to Melbourne in Jan 2009. It was so lovely to see her again, and the kids think it is funny that she told them, they must call her Laura now, not "Mrs M".

I love the lifesize coat of arms at the Muesum. The kids love watching the Bower birds nesting. We took the blue lid off the water bottle and put in on the ground. The bower bird swooped on it in a matter of minutes. We watched lots of little mice under the bird feeders. We thought they must have been some sort of native mouse. When we asked one of the staff, she said they were not supposed to be in there, but have snuck in through the nets. The boys think at least they will be good food for the owls they have in the enclosure!
There was a Star Wars exhibition at Scienceworks...sadly we didn't get around to seeing it, but Yoda was at the Museum! You can enter a draw to win this model, Cameron really wants to win it!

As we were leaving the kids playing in the big trees in the nearby park!

Another Late Birthday Party

We arrived back to Melbourne, and Nana and Pa picked us up from the airport. Nana had organised a mini birthday party for Alexander with a couple of our friends. the kids had a great time with 10 helium balloon that Nana had picked up from the local ballon shop. They attached the balloons to their party hats and had a great time wearing them all afternoon!


It was great to catch up with my 2 oldest friends, Kelly who I have known since I was 6 months old, and Natalie, who I have known since my first day of primary school! It's fun to catch up, but never enough time!!

Off to Oz, in an A380

Our annual trip to Australia began a week earlier than usual. I decided to take them out of school a week early to have a bit more time this year....got the OK from the teachers and booked it all. Keeping the biggest secret possible this year, we booked the flight back to Oz on the Qantas A380 plane! We kept it a secret, just in case there was a problem, and the plane had to be changed to a 747-400, we didn't want to have the kids disappointed.

We arrived at Heathrow at Terminal 5 and had to catch the shuttle bus to Terminal 4. As we approached the terminal, Alexander saw the Qantas A380, and we so excited. "Is that our plane?" he asked excitedly.
"No, the 747-400 beside it, is our plane, I tried to get on the A380, but it was fully booked" I replied.

He sighed, and said, well at least we can see it.

1 1/2 hours before the flight was ready to go, he read the departure board and figured it all out.
"Mum, that A380 is at gate 5, and our gate is 5. That 747-400 is at Gate 6. WE ARE GOING ON THE A380" He was thrilled to say the least!!


When we got the call to board, Alexander could hardly contain himself...and as soon as we had stepped on the plane, he was asking the flight attendants all sorts of questions. Cameron wanted to walk through the entire plane to see how all the seats looked and was not impressed that he wasn't allowed to look into first class! ;)

The kids have Frequent Flyer Log books, and they asked the flight attendant to fill it out, and she took it up to the captain to get him to sign it. When she returned the books, she told me the captain would love to have them in the cockpit once we had landed in Singapore so they could have a look around.

Once we landed in Singapore, I looked after the carry on luggage, and the flight atttendant took the kids to the cockpit. A few minutes later the captain told me to come up with my camera to take some photos. When I got there, the kids were in the seats and the chairs were being moved from side to side, up and down, back and forwards. They were both thrilled! A huge highlight for both of them, and a memory they won't forget in a hurry!!!