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The Family Bandwagon

Our family is spread out across the country and across the world, and what better way to keep in touch than a collaborative digital journal?

Tuesday 30 September 2008

Hap to bizle



Happy Birthday DAMIEN!!!  MOAR EXLCAMATION MARKZ AZ REQWESTUD!!

Ducky?

Sunday 28 September 2008

BellyWatch: Week 22

A little something special for this BellyWatch.. check it out over at my site (you'll need the flash player)

Thursday 25 September 2008

An evening at the theatre

Indulged our thespian hearts with a trip to Shakespeare's New Globe Theatre last night.

First: dinner at Harry's Bar in the city. Named after a famous cocktail (coquetier! eggcup!) bar in Venezia, Italia (Venice, Italy ;-)), Harry's of London shares, well, nothing with it's Italian namesake: it's a wine bar and restaurant, and the wine is Chilean, Australian and French rather than Italian. Nevertheless, the food was good: I had gnocchi (maybe Italiano!) with prawns; Dee tried the risotto (ooh, maybe it's more Italian than I gave it credit for). We ate with a friend of Dee's, her partner and two of her friends, and although we were both tired and didn't really like the idea of meeting new people just then, the night turned out okay.

Apparently Harry's in Venezia is really expensive; in London the bill was cut down to a more manageable size by a mid-week special: half price on the total bill if you have 2 courses. It was cheaper to have a main and dessert than to just have a main! Now that's a savings plan I could get into. Guess there is some good in the credit-crunch -- with all the bankers out of work, swanky places like Harry's has to let rabble like me in!

After dinner we wandered down towards the Thames and across one of the many bridges, the city beginning to sparkle as dusk mellowed to dark. Behind us, Wren's St. Paul's loomed ominously, whilst ahead the whitewashed walls and thatched roof of The Globe warmly invited us; it could've been the late 1600's, with both Globe and the great church rebuilt after the Great Fire of London. Or so I imagined.

We handed over our little cardboard tokens and shuffled up the wooden stairs to the top gallery, whereby we were afforded a near-birds-eye view down upon the stage the the players. We sat upon hard wooden benches, eschewing the hired cushions that those of less-hardy temperament (and posterior fortitude) felt necessary. Shortly the strains of a light tune played on lutes and horns signalled for quiet; a hush fell upon the crowd.

The play's the thing, you see, and the thing in this case was a jolly little tale, "The Merry Wives Of Windsor". A comedy, although I could not say whether t'were the skill of the Bard or that of the players that made it so; t'was a genuine laugh-out-loud, raucous comedy. Ooh, look thee upon these words! T'is like the particular, peculiar method of Shakespeare's own art hath soaked my brain; stewing in olde English forms of yore, it cannot help but express itself as I pen this journal!

So: perched upon hard benches (of birch or cedar) we watched a tale of clever wives, jealous husbands, bellicose doctors and rotund knights and laughed. Sooth: I could not decide whether Shakespeare so influenced English humour, or whether the comedic endeavours of Fawlty Towers and it's ilk were the influence for the players of this tale; in either case, you've not seen impotent fury until you've seen a skinny English gent in a badly-fitted wig first tempting a knight to make advances upon his wife, then cursing that she, in appearances at least, entertains such carnal ideas with said knight.

"CUCKOLD!!"

(Comments in thy best rendition of olde English please.)

Sunday 14 September 2008

Our sunny Saturday



Damien and I decided to make the most of the nice weather on Saturday
and headed to the beach for lunch. We went to a Japanese restaurant where we had yummy food and a nice view. We then went for a little walk on the rocks. Damien went out further than me (I was afraid I'd lose my balance) and he found a seal! We finished our outing with some icecream and a bit of shopping, hehe! It was a really nice day :)



Oh yeah, and here are the ultrasound photos. The first is the baby's skull (spooky! I think it looks a bit like uncle Glenn ;) and in the second the baby is giving us a bit of a wave. The baby is doing well. I feel it moving more often and instead of quick little jabs I can feel it moving around and 'rolling' more. Sometimes it feels like it's doing little somersaults! :) And I have feeling good. I've been enjoying some long sleeps and afternoon naps, and Damien has been looking after me very well. (I have to admit though, my afternoon nap today wasn't because I was particularly tired, there was just nothing good on TV! :)

Thursday 11 September 2008

Excursions

Yesterday and today we had an excursion to the Discovery Centre. Today was an easier group but I'm worn out after trying to keep watch on 25 children. We did have eight adults for each group, but it is still tiring and no coffee! this year we had a sound show (not impressed with the presenter who knew he had kinder children and demonstrated but didn't let them join in) and the Planetarium.
Next week we'll have party and dress up days on Wednesday and Thursday so that will be two more tiring/trying days. Then it's holidays for two weeks. we may go to Coffs but not until the second week as Cheryl and Warwick will be in Brisbane until then their house was almost sold but the deal fell through so we still have a base in Coffs. Cheryl said lows of 12 and highs in the 20's at the moment. Sounds good.
All well here. I'm going to Echuca with Lisa and Carolynn on Saturday for another comp.

BellyWatch: Week 20



I'm a bit behind on the updates but here's the photo from last weekend. We bought a gorillapod tripod, so I was able to wrap it around a post out the back and solved the low-light/shakiness issues of earlier shots.

We also had the ultrasound on Monday. This was a longer one than the last, where they check the baby's organs, skeleton, that kind of thing. They didn't see anything wrong, which is good.

We also found out the baby's gender.

I've told Mum and Dad, Nana and Lisa.. Dayna, Glenn and Dee, we're happy to tell you guys but we don't want to post it here just in case you'd rather not know. You can give us a call if you'd like, or else post here and we'll tell you :)

Apart from that things have been pretty much the same. The baby is kicking with enough force that I can feel it through Cheryl's belly, which is quite exciting.. and it's about time I thought about decorating the baby's room too. I want to paint it.. but first I have to clear it ;)

Sunday 7 September 2008

Father's day

Dad had a most enjoyable day today for Father's Day. I gave him cheese,chips and chocolate so that covered the basic food groups. His health is improving although the indigestion still occurs sometimes. His weight is going down (78kl) so he needs to get smaller size trousers and add another hole in his belt.
Nana, Lisa and the four children all came for lunch. They brought Dad some photo coasters and Lisa had put in the photos of the children. They're great. They also had a navy singlet and some ginger in his parcel. Damien and Cheryl brought muscatels and chocolate ginger when they visited, so I guess the way to Poppy's heart is through his stomach.
Dad had brought some new snooker balls that included directions so Jared, Lisa and Les all had a game or two of that. Daria eventually went to sleep and then so did Trinity so both little girls slept in the back room until five o'clock.(Daria in the cot and Trinity on the couch)
We had a great day.

Tuesday 2 September 2008

Me too!


I'm also coming back to the land of sunshine for a spell.

Hope it's a good spell, one that brings some rain to Australia (but preferrably not when I'm there) and some sunshine to England (preferrably when I'm there).

I'll be arriving in Melbourne on the 1st December and flying out again on the 7th January. I don't get any fancy 5-star hotels or anything but my flight was relatively cheap, so I'm not complaining.

Is there anything that anyone would like me to bring specially from the UK? I plan on bringing my clothes in a carry-on bag and my backpack full of fun things (to be replaced with Aussie fun things for the trip back).

I'm not sure when I'll be where just yet - I have a lot of people I need to catch up with and a limited time to do it. But I plan on being in Bendigo for about 2 of the 4 weeks! Including Christmas. So I can catch up with everyone and do some sewing and find some well-fitting clothes. *grin* Yes, it IS that difficult to find good clothes here that I will fly all the way to Australia to get some. hehehe.

I have a lot more to talk about, but long posts are silly, so that's all from me for now.
*big hugz*
p.s. the photo is from Glenn and Chris' Manchester Adventure at Easter (oops.. it's taken me a while to upload the photos)

Monday 1 September 2008

We're coming home after all

Today we bought our aeroplane tickets back to Australia for December-January, after a weekend of research and planning (for both the cheapest tickets, and how we were actually best going to pay for 'em).

In the end, we had a good deal from Austravel which Dee printed took into Flightcenter to see if they could beat. It was with Cathay Pacific, each leg was 11hrs and we had 6 hours in Hong Kong to see a few quick sites (e.g. giant Buddha statues).

When she got there, they couldn't match it -- the Austravel booking system was down. So Dee spoke to them on the phone and found out that the price we were quoted was for August only ... and we're one day into September! Bollocks!

Luckily, the Flightcenter people were nice and agreed to beat the "new" best Austravel price. They also looked around for some other options ... and so we're not going to Hong Kong anymore!

Instead, we're flying Korean Air via Seoul. Again, 11 hour legs (not too bad providing we can sleep). Better yet, because the flights don't connect on the way home, we're getting put up in a 5-star hotel in Seoul! We get in at night, stay at the hotel, and have until probably lunchtime to check out some of Korea.

Fun!

(Cross-posted on glennji.org too)