Parents visit

Ann & Les (aka Mum & Dad... or is it Nanny & Poppy? :) arrived safe and sound in Adelaide last Thursday afternoon. Damien whipped up some lamb kebabs for dinner, yum! Friday Damien & I worked, so Ann & Les spent part of the day at a nearby shopping centre, and then the rest of their time fixing things around the house (Parents... bless 'em!).
Today we drove out to Willunga to have a look around the local farmers market. We ended up with a lot of yummy (and cheap) grapes & strawberries. Les also managed to find some lemon flavoured olive oil and dukkah (both for dipping bread into).
Next stop was McLaren Vale, one of the large wine regions in Adelaide. We stopped at about four wineries and then had a break at an olive farm where we enjoyed a platter of local produce for brunch. We then went on to four more wineries.


Our last stop before home was a bakery in the town of McLaren Vale for a late lunch/afternoon tea. After a bit of a rest at home we were out of the house again, this time to the local beach, Port Noarlunga, for fish'n'chips and a bit of a dip in the ocean.

(It was a little chilly & I think they were daring eachother to go deeper into the water, hehe ;)

I've entered a book design comp !

well I found this comp in a girlfriend mag and really liked the sound of it see the details here. well when i get on my computer i will post a pic of my book cover.

A White Christmas..

It's about time for an update.. I know there's a few trips I've not mentioned yet.. I'll get to them soon.. *grin*.

Christmas didn't really feel like Christmas this year.. probably a combination of it being cold, no decorations at home (I still don't want to buy too many 'non-essentials' - though I did buy a stick-mixer to make soup today.. but that's another story), no pressies to unwrap (I bought boots from Nana and Mum and Dad They're great! *big hugz*) and we didn't have a real Christmas lunch. Nevertheless, there were sparkly Christmas lights in both Manchester and Budapest, there were some pretty Christmas trees in Budapest (including the one to the right which had HUGE decorations!) and it snowed on Christmas Eve in Budapest so I got to have a white Christmas. *grin*

Budapest was good. I took a LOT of photos, so I've got the Highlights set with 111 photos and the Everything set with 257.. I think I need to cut down the highlights some more. There are comments on most of the photos, so if you view the pics as a slideshow, put the cursor over a photo and click the "i" to see them.

Highlights of the trip:

• Snow the night we arrived - I know this picture looks fake but it's not!
• Very sweet hot spiced wine (it was mostly white wine - I'd only had hot spiced (mulled) red wine before)
• Entertaining Hungarian guide who showed us around the Royal Palace and told us good stories
• The post-Christmas Christmas market (I bought a hat that makes me think of Dr Seuss - blue and black on the top right)
• Beautiful buildings and churches

Lowlights of the trip:

• "Hungary doesn't do vegetarian" muttered the Concierge when we inquired about where we might go for food on Christmas Eve..
• Chapped lips and bad skin from the cold (-5 degrees Celcius)
• There wasn't enough time to see everything.

Overall it was a great trip - lots of fun and definitely somewhere I'll return to... sometime.. (possibly when it's warmer. *grin*)

It was good to hear from everyone and great to see the photos of Aussie Chrissy. *big hugz*

Christmas photos and videos

Ok, this is mainly for Dayna, Glenn and Dee.. I've posted some photos up on Flickr here and also a couple of videos here. The trin_foxy.avi is well worth watching if a little bit gross :)

In other news I've been pretty sick - I had a stomach virus that hit me Wednesday night. I'm getting better but still feeling a bit dodgy... Cheryl stayed home Thursday to look after me, but neither of us really got to enjoy our "day off". We got our new kitchen table and chairs and a bookcase delivered on Thursday too, and i've already filled the bookcase... but i still have boxes labelled "books".. whoops.

We're looking forward to Mum and Dad visiting next week, hopefully the weather is nice so we can drive to the beach or over to McLaren Vale (since it's quite close to us now).. there's also a Hardy's Winery just on the corner near us. I'm going to try to clear out the spare room this weekend so they don't have to share the space with all our boxes.

Ok, that's enough from me. I hope you enjoy the Christmas pics.

Thanks for the prezzies

well thanks for the prezzie dayna i had trouble getting it to it as u said. it was funny to watch everyone try to open it we all thought that there was no key with it until we noted that it all slid the get to the key. this is my e-mail address kittycatcarolynn@yahoo.com.sg .

This one is for Lisa...

Apparently this was played on the ABC between shows back in the 80s.

Roger Glover and Friends - Love is all

Gee that brings back memories :)

Ahaaa

** Happy New Year! **

Let me be the first to wish everyone a fantastic 2008.... woohoo.. and as my friend Toby said, I'm from there, so my new year has started already.. yay!

..now to clean my house....

Merry Christmas!

I know I'm a bit early, but I'm off to Budapest tomorrow and i'll stay at Simon's tonight cos the bus to the airport leaves from near his place. :)

found this great site - click on the picture to see something very funny.. hope you enjoy it as much as me and dee.. heheh..



p.s. make sure the sound is on!

new hair, new job

just wanted to let everyone know that as of next Feb, i'll be coordinating Lab in a Lorry for the North-West of England.

Lab in a Lorry is run by the Institute of Physics and is essentially a mobile physics laboratory. A 10 tonne truck travels to schools where volunteers run lab sessions with school students (11 - 14 years old). My job will be getting it all to happen: booking schools; liaising with the lorry drivers to make sure the truck gets there; recruiting, training and organising the volunteers; welcoming students to the lorry; making sure the experiments are working (and maybe coming up with some more); handling any media.. i'm sure there's more that i just don't know about yet. *grin*

Because the job is for the North-West, I get to stay in Manchester (where I have good friends and a comfortable place to live), and the extreme project management for this position is going to be good for me... as long as it doesn't kill me. *grin*

I've got a lot of ends to wrap up in my current position before February, so I think I'm going to be busy over the 'break' (not to mention that I'm going to Budapest from 24th - 28th.. woohoo). But I hope to be able to chat to all of you sometime in the next couple of weeks - on Skype would be good, just let me know when you'll be around.

happy happy happy

happy birthday Lisa!

Have a great day sis.
(haven't been able to get your pressie yet.. sorry.. it'll be in the post soon)
*hugz*

Happy Birthday Carolynn!

Happy Birthday Carolynn.

It was good to 'chat' to you this morning (my evening).
Hope you have a great day, get good shopping done and have a great time at the break-up.

*hugz*

Housey house stuff

Today (after a minor freak out with the car and a call to RAA, but that's another story) we picked up the keys to our new house! We took out some stuff, and we'll take out more as well before the removalists arrive (7am tomorrow)

Here's some photos we took while out there... there's not many inside the rooms because really, all the rooms look pretty similar :)









Also, they're not in the photos but Cheryl's friend Bron bought us a couple of garden gnomes! We put one in a clear place, and the other is hidden a bit further back. I think the house really has character, especially that back yard. Plus the second shed is huge! I'm already planning a gym/games room in there ;)

We look forward to all of you visiting, and we'll add some more photos when our rooms actually have furniture in them :)

13 days until Christmas

Well, I told Damien I would attempt an update, so here goes.

Carolynn has been invited to ESC's award night, which means she has done well enough in her classes this year to get a good number of awards. They can get an award in each class for achievement and effort, and there are 7 classes per semester. Last semester Carolynn got 5 awards. The people who get an invitation to the awards night are the highest scoring, so to speak. It's somehow worked on the average of the class. Anyway, Carolynn has been ahead in most classes this year.

She's also been given her subject list for next year, and I was happy that instead of Astronomy she has been put in to one of the other science classes (living world). She didn't want to do it because of the teacher, but I think with her other subjects, and the fact she's been doing so well, this means she can move in to Biology or Chemistry, I think.

Jared has been going well at school as well. His teacher is really happy with his progress, especially in reading. They give the children books and MP3 players so they have to read the book at the speed of the recording. Jared's teacher said this slows Jared down, because he tries to rush. I'm hoping it will help with his speaking as well, since when he talks he has a habit of slurring his words.

Trinity is becoming more and more of a chatterbox, and a cheeky one. A couple of weeks ago we were looking at photos and I was telling her the names. She repeated, quite clearly, "Aunnie Se-well" but refused to try any others. When we visit friends she says excitedly "Day-me" (Jared's friend Jamie's house) She is still pretending to be a puppy when we visit Nanny and Poppy. I'm not sure what Foxie thinks, but he seems to enjoy the extra pats he gets because Puppy Trinity asks for them.

I'll try to put some photos up on koffeekat, will get resizing this weekend if I don't start earlier!

House update

Hi all,

Cheryl and I are well into packing boxes now. For example, exhibit a - our spare room:



Of course if you think that looks bad, you probably shouldn't look at our lounge room at around 3:30 this afternoon, which I like to call exhibit b - armageddon:



It doesn't look quite that bad now.. close though :)
The reason we are in a flurry of packing is that the truck comes to pick up our stuff on Saturday 15th, giving us less than a week to get everything we have into cardboard.. and we seem to have a fairly large collection of stuff. Where does it all come from?

happy birthday Dee!