Happy Birthday, Damien!

Hope you enjoyed your day yesterday! Presents, food and family! :D And hope you enjoy the rest of your birthday week :)
Looking forward to a game of Creationary later!
Love you lots and lots
<3 Chez Os Lil

Happy birthday Trinity

Dear Trinity,

Hope you had a SCARY birthday.
Your party looked like it was terrifyingly fun!

*big hugz*
aunty dayna & unkie bruce

Happy Birthday Daria

Happy birthday to you..

Happy birthday to you...

Happy birthday, dear Daria

Happy birthday to you!

And through the magic of the internets, this isn't even late. ;-)

Looks like you had a fantastic party!

*hugz*

aunty dayna & unkie bruce

Happy Birthday Lisa!

Dear little-big sister,


Hope you have a wonderful day full of wonderful things!
Did you get breakfast in bed?


Happy Birthday!!!


*big hugz*
-d&b-

Happy birthday in memory, Dad

Happy birthday Dad - love you, miss you.

I didn't have my Tullamore Dew with fish and chips today (had to work instead)..

Anyone want to join me to raise a glass in remembrance when I'm visiting?

Happy Birthday Chez!

Happy birthday Chez! I know there wont be any drinking and/or carousing but I hope you enjoy your day (and we'll eat plenty of cakes at lunch :D)

Happy Birthday Adam

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to yooouu

Haaapppyy biiiirthday toooo Adammmmm

Haaapppy birrrthdaay tooo yooooouuuu

Woohoooo!

Old man. ;-)

*hugz* from the wintery UK.

Happy Birthday Jared

By the magic of internet, I can make it look like we were online for your birthday. ;-)

Happy Birthday!!!

Hope you had a fabulous day and that you enjoyed playing Laser Force with Uncle Glenn.
Let us know when your pressie arrives!
*big hugz*
aunty dayna and uncle bruce
:-)

Happy Birthday Bruce

Or: My belly-dancing debut


Once again it's been a long spell between posts. Since Mum's New Year wishes we've been keeping busy.

We've had a holiday in Germany (Frankfurt and Darmstadt to be precise) including setting off some fireworks for Silvester (New Year). Ooh eer (it's not illegal in Germany but I was scared by some of the antics we saw in the street!). Technically, we were on holiday before Mum's post but I didn't think anyone would be too picky. :)


I've travelled the country for a multitude of job interviews. I am extremely happy that one of them came through for me - even if finishing and moving is kinda stressful right now.

And then last weekend we celebrated Bruce's birthday (3rd February - just for the record). He'd booked a table at Zorbas Dance - a local restaurant that sounded a bit strange. Every Friday and Saturday  they have Party Night with a 3-course meal, belly-dancing, plate smashing and more.

Bruce and his dad picked me up from the train station. Happily this meant that I didn't have to take my backpack to the restaurant and I  didn't have to walk far in my party shoes. ;) Our waiter for the evening was fab - he started the night with "The soup is minestrone, the cheesecake is strawberry and the service is appalling." (It wasn't - although the MC was a big scary man!)

Food was tasty; I had halloumi, vege moussaka and cheesecake while Bruce had pork and mushrooms, lamb and mushrooms, and cheesecake and mushrooms (without the mushrooms).  After food the crazy began - or as the MC put it: "Action time!"

Although it was Bruce's birthday, I'm sure I spent more time doing silly things! Highlights - dancing on the table, dancing out one door and in the other, the in-house belly-dancer making Bruce join her for a wiggle (I have video!) and, of course, being a Zorba Girl.


As far as I can tell, the only requirements for being a Zorba Girl is that you're a girl and you're at the restaurant. :)  After a few 'moves' on the dance floor we were shepherded into a side room and allocated costumes. It was up to us whether we put it over our clothes or not, so Georgie and I decided to follow Bruce's philosophy: if you're going to do it, do it properly! We shimmied, we wobbled, we had a good laugh. It made me think it could be fun to find a class. And maybe next time there'll be less belly to wobble. :-)


T'was a good evening and definitely strange. I spent more time on my feet than I expected but the party shoes were surpisingly comfortable - at least until midnight. ;)

Bruce enjoyed himself, that was the main thing.


What's everyone else been up to?

*hugz* from us

Happy birthday Carolynn!

Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you,
Happy birthday dear Carolynn,
Happy birthday to you!!!

I'm a little late with this post but not as late as your pressie will be - I bought it more than a month ago and it's still sitting on my floor - oops. Sorry! It will be in the post this week, so keep an eye out for it.

I hope you had a wonderful birthday with lots of sunshine. The snow has come back over here again - in fact, it's snowing even as I write this.

*big hugz* from the cold side of the world.

Update from us

As usual, it's been a while since we posted anything on the bandwagon, so I thought I'd give a bit of an update. This week has could have best been described as Hellishly busy. After a few weeks of not much going on at work, suddenly a client came to us with a massive job and a really tight deadline.. today being said deadline, and I'm writing this over my lunchbreak while awaiting any more feedback from them. Unfortunately, this was also the week in which I've got two Iaido demos.. one on Sunday, and the other yesterday afternoon. This basically meant that the last few days I've been starting around 6 or 7am so I can get the work done and also so I could leave early Wednesday for the demo. I'm not sure if that makes sense, but the sum result is I'm pretty tired :)

So the demos. Yesterday afternoon Takeo and I were at a big park in Adelaide for a half hour or so. We did some kata together, then faced off against each other with Takeo attacking and me defending.. then we did five each alone (we were clapped at the end!) and finished with some bamboo cutting. The crowd actually built up to be pretty large. Cheryl has posted photos, and I'll chuck a couple in here.. you can see it's fairly sparse in the first one, but by the end there's people behind us watching as well. The demo Sunday should be a bit less stress.. it's just for my Dojo in Reynella, so myself and a couple of students will do about 3 kata each and that will be all.

If you want to see all the photos you can see them here.

We hung around at the Moon Lantern Festival after the demo to eat some delicious Korean food and watch a few of the shows on the main stage. Oscar also tasted his first ice-cream.. which was Cheryl's ice-cream, but he didn't want to share ;) We got it off him when we offered him a banana instead.. he loves his fruit!

Oscar is growing up so quickly and learning a lot. He's gradually adding more words, some from us (like "nan" and "up") and some from childcare (like "ta" and "more") and some he just seems to pick up himself. He started saying "nose", "mouth" and his favourite "eye" suddenly one day. He really likes to mimic us too.. sometimes you wont realise you're doing something (like scratching the top of your head) until you see Os doing it too.

He's becoming much better at feeding himself.. some foods are easier than others of course, but he loves using a spoon, fork and knife when he can. He also loves reading books.. I think that's his favourite quiet time activity. Sometimes he'll even sit down and look through the books himself. We play a lot, he loves chasing and hiding games, and really likes exploring outside. He can get a bit quiet and shy with new people, but I reckon it takes about 20 minutes for him to get used to them (and it took about 2 minutes with Sam :))

We're looking forward to seeing Mum and Nana next week, even if there is a fair bit of cleaning the house still to be done. I'm getting Wednesday and Thursday off work (which I appreciate even more after this week) and then Friday Cheryl and I will go out for a few drinks with friends to celebrate my birthday. Gotta make the most of the experienced babysitters :) Monday is a public holiday too! It's going to be a good week :)

Hmm.. I think that's it from me. Hopefully Cheryl can pop on and say how her work is going, and anything I might have forgotten. I'd better get back to work!

Happy Birthday to Cheryl

Happy birthday Cheryl
Have a great day.
Lots of love from
Mum

Happy birthday to Trinity

******Happy birthday to Trinity*****
Have a great day. I'll see you tonight.
Love from Nanny.

Happy birthday to Dayna

Happy Birthday to you,
Happy birthday to you
Happy birthday dear Dayna
Happy birthday to you.

Lots of hugs and kisses from me to you and from Nana too.

We'll celebrate your birthday here on Sunday, when we go out for lunch.

Happy Birthday Daria

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday to you

Happy birthday dear Daria

Happy birthday to you!

Have a great day!

Update from Adelaide in the form of an epic novel

Hey all,

I thought it's about time we did an update from us. Let me start with childcare..

Friday a week ago was to be Oscar's first day of childcare, and Cheryl's first day of work. We were totally psyched for it, I was going to take lunch off and we would both drop Os in and ease him into it. Unfortunately, best laid plans and all that, Os got a fever Thursday night which continued throughout the day. We decided it was better for Chez to have her first day, so (with big thanks to my boss) I took a half day, dropped Cheryl at work and took Os home. Unfortunately his temp continued to rise, and once it got to 39.6 I took him to emergency. 3 hours, much poking and prodding and a very unhappy Os later we were able to take him home, Cheryl having left work early to catch the bus. The doctor's final report was along the lines of "probably a virus, we can never be sure with kids, no other problems so he'll be okay in a day or two".

It wasn't an ideal first day.

Over the weekend his temp sorted itself back out and he was looking fine for his Wednesday childcare when on Tuesday arvo he picked up a fever again. Thankfully while generally these things are 48 hours or so he was fine on Wednesday and was able to have his first day.

Once we got him there, he was fine. I suspect if you surround him with toys and girls who smile at him he'd be happy anywhere (and who wouldn't?). Apparently it took a little while to get him to sleep, but once they found out the tricks (rubbing his blue bear against his face, patting his leg) they got there and he was asleep when I arrived to pick him up.

Oh, that's the other thing. On his childcare days I leave the house before 6am, walk 4.5kms to the train station then train into the city and bus to work, to be there by 8am. Then I leave at 4pm, bus to the childcare and pick him up.. although the plan is for me to stay there with him for a while, to help him get comfortable until around 5:30 when Cheryl finishes. There's probably a bus I could catch later in the morning, but I need a couple of big walks in the week. Plus when Os is older I can say "back in my day I had to HIKE for 45 minutes through the SNOW etc etc".

On Friday he stayed home with Nanna and Granddad who by all accounts doted on him and carried him everywhere like a little prince :) So he's only had the one day.

Sunday (today!) we had his birthday party. We had something like 25 adults and 10 kids, but somehow we didn't run out of food or seats.. Certainly not something we could have done at any of the units we lived in ;) It was a really great day.. Os had a sleep from around 10:30 until 12:30, so he was in a really good mood for his party. He even got to eat some cake, although I'm sure he didn't realise it was a treat. Babies played with Os' toys, kids played the Wii and ran around outside, and adults ate, drank and generally made merry. Just as a first birthday should be. I'll post photos up to flickr later, and I'm sure Cheryl will post some to facebook too.

I might get Cheryl to jump on now and tell you how her first few days of work are going..

Cheryl here :) Work is going well. My first shift back my supervisor got me to do most of the sales to help me get back into the swing of things. Nothing like being thrown into the deep end to refresh your memory! Apart from wondering how Os was doing, it all went well. I'm enjoying being back at work, and Os & I are slowly working out our new routine. And I'm enjoying not having to worry about all the supervisor stuff I used to do! It's also great just being around my work friends and students :)

Okay, that's it from us.

Happy birthday Glenn

Hey bro,

I know you had a fab day with cake and fizzy drink (but no fairy-bread.. awwww). Hope the rest of the year is as good as today has been.

Haaaaappy birrrthdaaaay to yooooooou...
Haaaaappy birrrthdaaaay toooo yoooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuu...
Haappy biiiiiiiirthdaaaaaaay deeeeear Glennnnnjiiiiiii...
Haappy biirthdaaay toooo yooooooooooooooooouuu!

keep smiling!
*hugz*

Happy birthday Dad

Happy birthday Dad!
Hope you have a fun-filled day with lots of smiles.
*big hugz*

Haaaaappy birrrthdaaaay to yooooou...
Haaaaappy birrrthdaay toooo yoooooooooouuuuuuuu...
Happy biiiiiiiirthdaaaaaay deeear Daaaaaad...
Happy biirthdaay toooo yooooooooooooooooouuu!

Happy birthday Damien

Happy birthday to you...
Happy birthday toooo yoooooooooouuuuuuuu...
Happy biiiiiiiirthdaaaaaay deeear Damiennnnnnn...
Happy biirthdaay toooo yooooooooooooooooouuu!

Hope you have a fantastic day, a lovely week and a terrific year.
*hugz*

Photos photos everywhere, and all the boards did shrink

For those of you who have been waiting patiently for the photographic evidence of our trip to sunny (actually quite freezing cold) Bendigo, here they are in all their glory. We took a lot more, but trust me, these are the best ;)