FRANTIC MAMA

The weather did not let up much this weekend. Our last soccer games were cancelled, which was actually a relief as it overlapped with the annual Physical Culture Dance Competition that the girls were in. Trophies were still issued and the girls will probably get them today from the kids at school who collected then on our behalf.

The PC comp was exciting. Jess was up first. She did so well. She is the tallest in the group by far, and probably the skinniest too. She is a lanky thing! Her marching was great and her routines were good too. She needs to remember them more by heart, but on the whole she did great.

Meg was then up and her marching was spot on. She did great routines and was clearly the best there! She was recalled for the marching, which means she had to come back and march with the best from each age division to determine the best overall marcher. This was exciting!

Holly then up and she was the bomb. Holly had the most competitors in her age group so it was difficult for the judges to decide. I thought she was awesome and she did a sterling job of all her dances.

When the times for results to be called out I was a bundle of nerves. I was clenched up so hard that I had a crick in my neck. I just wanted the girls to do well and come away with something. When Jess’s division was called out she didn’t get a place. I could have cried for her. I knew that sad little face would come to me afterward and be devastated. She had her heart set on winning and believed that she could do it. My heart was breaking for her.

Meg came first in her section. She was thrilled and it was well deserved. She got a big trophy and a big grin. I was immensely proud of her.

Holly came 3rd. I knew that she was going to be upset about that because she has won the past two years and has been working really hard on all her routines. She did a great job out there, but on the day it depends on a lot of things. My heart was heavy for her too. I was feeling like an emotional wreck!

So on the way home, Meg was all goo goo gaa gaa over her win and Holly and Jess were glaring at her like she was showing off. We can’t deny Meg’s success I said. She was a worthy winner so lets celebrate that. Jess was down in the dumps and Holly felt ripped off. I felt like I had been riding an emotional roller coaster for 3 hours – put myself into bed and had an hours sleep!

Sunday was Father’s Day and Justin requested a fully cooked breakfast so I made scrambled eggs, baked beans, chipolatas and bacon on toast. It did us the whole day. Holly and Meg has dancing practice at various times, so in between that I did the shopping, got lunch, made some things for the lunchboxes this week and then we all went out to Lisa’s for Afternoon Tea. We didn’t need dinner!

I managed to get some tickets to see Margaret Fulton (the cook) giving a talk at the National Museum of Australia. She is talking about cookbooks and how they have changed to social scene in Australia over the decades. Mum, Lisa and Penny are coming with me – since we have our own cookbook, love to bake and talk about cooking all the time, I thought it was only fitting! Can’t wait.

Time to go my for my run. Amy was a pain in the neck and cried a lot in the night. Dunno what is wrong with her but am considering putting her up for sale. Any takers? So a run is what I need to get rid of all the anxiety from the weekend – might need to go twice as far, am a little wound up!

Have a great day.

Have invested a lot of time in recent days off to jet about town looking for bathroom accessories and tiles. Have chosen the vanity (x2), showers, tapware (x4) and toilets. Still can’t decide on the tiles but am getting close. Just hoping now that it all fits in and doesn’t look awful. Am learning a lot about tiles – it is now the thing to have a vertical feature, not a border feature; and everything is in neutral colours, can’t find a blue floor tile anywhere.

Meggie did a great job in her PSSA run yesterday. She won her heat and we are waiting to hear if she gets into the next round. Holly didn’t make it into PSSA after all – it was the other Holly at the school!

Holly and I did have an adventure on Sunday though. We caught a bus at 4.45am to Sydney for a Physie (dancing club) competition. It was an extremely long day and Holly kinda botched up her dance so didn’t get a place there. She was bitterly disappointed but it just goes to show how much more work she needs to put into it – she can’t just cruise along as she is doing now!

Two more soccer games to go – that means only 2 more training sessions and 2 more Saturdays of freezing conditions on the oval. Yippee. Bring on Summer and hopefully netball…

Old photo of the day…..

Love this one. Holly is at preschool here, Meg about 3 (the same age Amy is now) and Jessica about a year or so.

Have a great Wednesday

Meg in 2005, just 3 yrs old, found the goggles… then put them on Jess

This is Holly, Meg, Jess and I. Jess is about 4 months old and we took a driving holiday down to Melbourne to stay with Kate. This is us dancing on stage at the Myer Music Bowl. I think we were singing Hi-5 at the time. Great Acoustics in that place.

Miss 3 woke me up at 2.45am today. It is going to be a long day. She and Holly both have ear infections. I am a bit frazzled to say the least. Off to look at Bathroom supplies as we got the quotes back and have accepted one. Renovations can commence whenever we get sorted! Golly am I ready for workmen in the house to add to the insanity!!

Have a great day.

Below mentioned 3yr old has struck again and here I am up at the crack of dawn. YAWN

I am proud and pleased to say that this house is now (and has been for about a month or more) a nappy free zone! It is surely the end of an era – non stop nappies for 9.5yrs. Oh the joy of never having to go back to that again. Three cheers for Amy.

Random photo of the day…..

Ahhh, this is a good one. It was taken in 2005 at Dunsborough WA, when we went with all the WA family on a 3 day holiday. The beach was magnificent. This was the holiday when Jess was a baby and there was limited room in the house (with about 16 adults and the 3 kids), so she slept in the travel cot in the walk-in wardrobe! Happy days!

It’s early Monday morning and I’ve been kicked out of bed by a snoring 3 yr old who climbed in at 5.15am. Rather than be subjected to that I decided to blog cause it has been ages since I’ve done that!

Things that are on my mind today are work related. I’m a bit down in the dumps about work it because it is not going as well as I had hoped or imagined it to be at this stage. It has been 3.5 months and things are slow. Some days (most days) I have no patients booked in, and then there’ll be the odd day with 10 bookings. I love it when it is thriving and I’m busy and the atmosphere is charged. I guess that it is getting me down because I am just bored. This can transcend into trouble at home, because I am so frustrated with my lack of busyness that I am cranky and crabby. Justin seems to cop it the most! The position is to be advertised soon (it was just a 6 month contract to get it up and running) and I am beginning to wonder if I will apply for it. I have been there from it’s inception, written all the policy and procedure and have great plans, but without the patients and actual day to day satisfaction ……I just dunno!

Yesterday the rain was drizzling and the girls were a bit stir crazy so I taught them how to finger knit. It was a hit. They went nuts with it and had metres and metres of long knitting all over the house. Kept them amused and contained for hours. Andrew came over for a play and he got in on it too. He was actually the fastest.

Holly has been hit hard by a flu this past week. She had all week off school, went Friday then was bad again over the weekend. I hope she wakes up chipper today! Both she and Meg made it into the PSSA for track events, after stellar performances at the Athletics carnival 2 weeks ago. I’m going to see if I can get the day off work to go and cheer them one. Hell, there won’t be much happening there so why not!

Here is a funny pic to cheer me up! This is Jess when she was about 5 months maybe. Wasn’t she cute!!

Have a great day. I’ve got my new boots and will be wearing them today. That is enough to keep me smiling!

Baptised on 1st April 2001 and First Communion on 1st August 2010.

Sorry about having to stand on your head to see these. Can’t work out the rotation….JUSsssssssssssTIn help.

Justin took the girls to Old Parliament House yesterday, which now houses the Museum of Democracy. We’ve been there before and the best part of it is the dress ups. Here they are…

I have just been showing Kate and Lisa my photos of Hong Kong and remembered that I still haven’t put this post up. I wrote this ages ago, but then couldn’t get the photos done. Still haven’t done the photos but here is the post, better late than never!

Hong Kong
Our Long weekend/girls trip to Hong Kong was a great success. We left Canberra on Thursday arvo, met Kate in Melbourne and flew overnight to Hong Kong arriving there about 6am. It was hot and muggy, but we were excited and enthusiastic about what adventures lay ahead.

We made our way to Kowloon and got to our hotel which was in the heart of Nathan Road, the main street, often called The Golden Mile, because it is a very long street with jewelery shops everywhere and all the neon signs that you associate with Hong Kong. We were lucky enough to get our room well before check in time so we could freshen up and have a quick nap (Lisa and I) before hitting the streets. We decided to do some tours, as I figure it is always better to get someone doing the driving and tell you the facts.

First up though we took a wander down Nathan Road. It was bumper with knock off shops, tailors, cheap eats and souvenirs. Loving it all. We got some brunch at a YumCha place where we were the only white people. We ordered a few dishes, with the best being a pork bun. Most divine thing I have ever eaten. We even ordered another lot of them before we left, but the girl misunderstood us and we ended up with some other thing. Our quest for more pork buns had begun! Back down the road further and bought some dresses for the girls and little kicknak things for them. After making our way back up to the hotel again we were ready to join our tour of Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong is actually made up of hundreds of little islands, the main one being HKIsland and right opposite it, Kowloon Peninsula which is attached to China mainland. So our bus tour took us under the harbour and over to HK Island. We then went up a mountain, Victoria Peak, grabbed an ice cream like all good Aussies on holiday do and got some photos of the view. Just amazing up there. Then we went along to a jewelry factory where we could see them making the rings and necklaces etc. We had a chance to buy some things, but it was expensive and a little tacky too! We had a stop at the harbour where we got onto a SAMPAN and went for a little sail. Many fisherman families live on the water in these rustic old boats. We passed the Floating restaurant which is owned by the richest man in HK. He has 4 wives who each live in their own mansion, and even though he is 88 he is looking for a 5th wife. Even though multiple wives is now illegal in HK, they turn a blind eye because money talks! From there we went to Stanley Street Markets which we all loved and could have spent many hours there. I bought some handbags for my girl peeps, and things for the kids. Then we were escorted back to our hotel where we freshened up then headed out for dinner. We were pretty exhausted after this very long day and the flight, so we ducked into a close noodle shop and ordered off pictures on the menu. Kate wanted a beer, so pointed to a pic on the wall of a $16 beer (about $A2.50). I got one too and we nearly fell over laughing when it arrived and was nearly a litre bottle. Good value for money! The dinner was the same. Huge meals for about $A5.

After a sensational nights sleep and long sleep in, we headed up Nathan Road to the Ladies Market. On the way we saw the Gold Fish market which was quite amazing. In HK everyone lives in high rise, low cost apartments and you need a permit to have dogs and cats. So everyone seems to have fish instead. These markets have all the fish in plastic bags on display so you grab the one you want and go. WE walked in and out of markets (electronic, sporting goods, vegetable and general cheap stuff, and then the ladies market. Handbags, shoes, sunglasses, clothes etc etc. I got 2 Jimmy Choo handbags for about $A30 each. Dior sunnies, shoes, nicknack’s and so much more. Trying to bargain with the shop-holders was daunting at first but then I became quite good at it and I think (!!) i got value for money. We continued our search for the best pork bun in HK by eating some more.

That evening we were picked up for another tour and taken to Temple Street Markets (loved that one – many bargains and great things) and then picked up again and taken to the Peninsula Hotel for dinner. The Peninsula is the oldest and grandest hotel in HK and dates back to when the British were in charge. Inside is so elegant and refined that I could quite imagine being there in the 20’s and 30’s. We took the express elevator up to the penthouse floor where there is a world famous restaurant called Felix (check it our here) We had a window seat overlooking the city and we settled back to enjoy an evening of fine dining. Food was delicious and we really enjoyed our moment of elegance. After dinner we took a walk along the harbour foreshore where there is a ‘walk of fame’, no unlike the Hollywood Walk with all the famous stars on the pavement. Names like Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan etc were there. Back up Nathan Road, which was bumper to bumper with shoppers at 10pm, not to mention stinking hot, and into bed. Great day.

Up Early Day 3 to get to our tour of Macau. We had to catch a ferry over which took over an hour and then get through immigration (another stamp on the passport). Macau is part of China, but a small island about 30sq Km, with 32 Casinos. First up we headed out to the ruins of an old Catholic Portuguese church. Macau was inhabited by the Portuguese for 400 years and even though there are not many of them left, the culture is still very strong. I was starving so tried some hot roasted pork belly. OMG totally delicious. I chased that up with Portuguese tarts. James made these for us once when he was here visiting and Mum now fancies herself quite good at it. These ones were sensational ( I have to say better than Mums and James’!). Also at this stop we saw the ruins of an old fortress. Up the top was a great view of the island and into China, as well as our first glimpse of the casino’s. Far Out!! Check out this one – opulence or what.

We had lunch at a buffet restaurant before being let loose in the city square for shopping and bug-eyeing. We walked up to Victoria Square which looks like an old European village – reminiscent of the old Portuguese days. We then hit the golden Casino. We each put $10HK in the pokies, but lost (surprise, surprise). We wandered around looking at the other casinos, before having a cuppa at a fancy hotel and meeting the tour to get back home. Kate found some bargain perfumes at the duty free in Macau and we all had a little sleep on the boat ride home. Once back at Nathan Hotel, we freshened up then went back to the Temple Street Market for another look. Bought some more things (!) and then went home for a big sleep.

Monday morning we went to the Jade Market – lots of Jade which is a symbol of good luck. Got some things for the girls and then headed back to the hotel to pack up and check out. We said our goodbyes to got and muggy Nathan Road, caught the airport shuttle to Kowloon and checked our bags in there. Then we got the fast train to the airport where we then got a taxi to Lantau Mountain to see the Giant Buddha. To get up to the Buddha we had to catch a Gondola up a very steep incline and over great expanses of water. It was thrilling – the weather was against us, starting to rain a little, getting windy and the gondola shaking. Made it to the top and the fog was rolling in. We couldn’t really see more than a few meters ahead of us. We pushed on to see the Buddha anyway. Up a very steep set of stairs (thanks boot camp for getting me into some sort of shape!) but it was so foggy that we couldn’t see the big Buddha at all. It was only just in front of us, a meter of so but.. nothing!

We had some lunch up there, then made our way back down on the gondola and back to the airport where we spent the rest of our Hong Kong dollars on chocolate and wine before boarding our Qantas flight and heading home.

It was so nice to be home. Cold, but nice. I had the next few days off work, so it was good to settle back in, catch up with everyone and do the washing!. Girls loved their pressies.