" Guest" post from Hannah!

Hi everyone i feel very special to get to write my own post on mums blog i hope your all enjoying it so far! When i was playing outside i was riding Ethans new skateboard (from uncle pete) and i was sitting on it going down a hill and all my weight pushed on one side of the board flipping the board up and landing me right on my bottom hard on the concrete! At the moment my tail bone really hurts and so mum kindly let me stay home from school! i'm like yay no work! but of course mum still made me do work! :( shes found this book with all these maths and english questions, so thats what i've been doing! Anyway so i found this page where you had to do a description of a garden so i did that and here it is! Hope you like it!

The fun happy place to be!

The garden i'm going to write about is about a very special place to me but only recently. This garden is at St Andrews Hall! It is a awesome place to play in. To do cartwheels,handstands,hang upside down,ride you scooter or just play on the grass. For adults its nice place to sit, talk and have a coffee (or chai) we also have our BBQs out there every Wednesday. Which is enjoyable for everyone of all ages.

It is a public, fairly big garden centered right in the middle of all the action. With a path leading from the main house to the units. It is well maintained by the adults who come a go and also by our caretaker Sharon. We have a yummy veggie garden and a lovely flower bed.

Even though it is mostly greens and greys it looks and feels so much brighter because of the happy atmosphere everybody gives it by saying "hi" and smiling at you when you walk by. You can usually smell the fantastic,amazing dinner that Trudy (our cook) makes for us. and i think and wonder if its as yummy as it smells and it always is!

The weather is usually lovely! and we all love it! Tilly the cat also loves it she lies in the shade on warm days and when we tickle her behind the ear she's in heaven! The garden isn't quite heaven for me but its very, very close!

Hope i get better so i can go in district swimming tomorrow! Pray for me!

"g

Cranky Pants!

2 words... "forty" and "degrees"....I can think of some other words too, but choose not to share them publicly! Yes, heat and I do not agree with each other...bodes well for Fiji doesnt it? Anyway, I havent been a huge amount of fun to be around...just ask the kids. But I can hear the thunder rolling as I write this, so hoping tomorrow will be a little more bearable.

Anyway, had a lovely weekend with Uncle Pete and Eriko(Tonys brother and girlfriend). It was Petes birthday, but he was the one to shower the kids with presents from his trip to Japan. Green tea kit-kats are surprisingly tasty! I was given a jar of green tea cream, which I was about to rub on my face,when Eriko explained how great it tastes on bread or toast..... dodged a bullet there!! Anyway, enjoyed dinner at Union Bar, skateboard rides, playing cards and learning to braid hair. Lots of fun.

In the swing

Another weekend gone! Some of the highlights are:

1.Having our friend Graeme staying upstairs where we are- and him and Tony trying out more pubs and restaurants. Someones gotta do it!

2. The kids spending all day Saturday with the grandparents at Scienceworks -they loved it!! Really cheap too,followed by dinner at kid-friendly pub down the road.

3. Our new Fijian church on Sunday morning. Beautiful singing, friendly people, some of it was in english.......and of course, it only took about 12 minutes of walking into the building before Tony was up behind the microphone ha,ha!! The minster has already found a place for Tony on the preaching roster! Good thing too, since he has been having withdrawels. All the kids loved it and are looking forward to next week......I'm pretty sure giving the kids hot chips and coke in Sunday school helped.

4. In the afternoon, Hannah went off to a party (yay!) so we arranged for the Wrights to babysit the others and we actually had a "date". We went to the famous St Kilda pier, had a drink and then went to Port Melbourne where we ate hot chips and talked about the top 6 famous people we would want at a dinner party. I came up with Helen Mirren, Michael Cera, Ellen Page, Tina Fey, Chris Lilley and cant remember the other one. Anyway, lots of fun and good to be near the water. Shame I had to slam the car door on my hair when we got back to the car... had been so good until then.....

In other news, this is how Ethan and Soph spent their afternoon on Friday -seeing what they look like with ALL their clothes on..... you cant say us Wrights don't know how to have fun!! Here are the before and after shots:
Oh yeh, Judi Dench was the other one..in case you were on the edge of your seats..

An a-maze-ing week!!

Really enjoyed this weeks classes -lots of stimulating lectures/ discussions on different worldviews -particularly animism, where we looked at witchcraft, sorcery etc.. Very interesting! Also getting used to a different pace of life( i.e having to turn up to the same place at the same time) unlike my previous life of leisure!! I often wonder how Macquarie Centre is holding up financially without me ha,ha!!

Another lovely thing has been having Tony's parents visiting us for 10 days. The kids have loved being picked up by them from school, being read to before bed and showing them their new place. We took them out of school yesterday and went to a place called "Enchanted Maze Garden" (pictures below). Full of hedge mazes, lolly shop, slides, obstacle courses etc, lots of fun...not sure how to explain the kids absence tomorrow though!First a few photos of our romantic dinner for 7 on Valentines Day!

Up and running.....

Well, managed to make it throught the first week of our time here! Pretty much just " get to know you stuff ", working out rosters/ duties and personality tests to learn more about ourselves and each other. I was pretty stoked to get confirmation that I HAD a personality and it fit into one of the 4 quadrants. Not surprisingly Tony and I turn out to be polar opposites-I dont think any of us needed a 5 minute questionnaire to tell us that!


Also had a field trip to find a part of Melbourne that was very multicultural and we had to observe people, eat somewhere with food we'd never tried before (not hard as I had never even tried falafel!!) and then report back to the group. Using the mens toilet wasn't on the list of "must try", but heck, I thought I'd give it a red hot go anyway.....mmm...yeh...

Love love the people here, so all in all, should be good. Highlights for the kids are that Sophs teacher got engaged, Ethan found the worlds biggest witchety grub and for Hannah, well, probably the bell ringing for hometime on Friday afternoon at school......babysteps.

Saturday afternoon was spent with lovely friends from Sydney -Jane,Grace and Patrick(pictured below) and then Trev for dinner, before the boys headed out for a beer.Excellent to see all of them. Also enjoyed a bike ride to Lygon Street on Sunday morning (strange not to be at church at that hour of the morning) and then home for lunch and a few grumpy/tired/bored/ silly mood hours and alot of " no you can't go on the ipad unitl you've read a book"..that kind of day. Enjoyed church at 4pm and then home for nachos and Young Talent Time. Ready for week 2 tomorrow!(below is church-did i mention who got married here???still exciting.)

A fun surprise!!

We just had a wonderful weekend with mum and dad driving down to surprise the kids at hometime at school last Friday -hooray!! They checked into a hotel with a pool about 15 metres from our place and then headed out to the trendy Lygon Street for dinner, and even trendier Brunetti's for dessert!! Nice.

The next day was a mixture of swimming, fish and chips at Port Melbourne with other relatives, and a bucket load of ice-cream. Then,having decided we were all sick of eating, went out for yet another big dinner! Do you detect a theme here?

Anyway, lots of fun was had and we were very sad to farewell them on Sunday after church.But we cheered up at our first combined lunch with the other students at SAH and then collapsed into bed...after Young Talent Time, of course.Good weekend.

Today was officially the first day of our course -lovely to be together to sing, pray and pretty much just go through some admin. type stuff and which rosters we are on. I am overseeing kitchen duties, kitchen rosters and cleanliness....I have no problem with that.... Tony got general maintenance and handyman duties - and his first comment was " the best way I could serve the SAH community is to stay away from anything that vaguely resembles a handyman chore" Should be quite entertaining!

School begins..

Tried to make the most of the last few days of hols!Went on a 5 hour jaunt around Melbourne on the tourist bus and found a cute little model of Shakespeares village (pic. below)..... and spent alot of time finding tall buildings, not so we could appreciate their architecture, but so we could get some relief and enjoy a bit of air-conditioning!! Also went to the Melbourne Sports and Acquatic Centre -heaps of fun slides and hot chips.

Our last day of hols were spent  buying last minute school supplies, more library visits, yet another slurpee from 7-eleven and, most exciting of all....Hannah getting a paid babysitting job for some other students here. Loved seeing how great she is with babies and it made her day!! Later that night the parents of the gorgeous baby knocked on our door and gave the kids a "starting school " present each - so lovely! (pic. below)

And that brings us to the first day of school -which, thankfully went well. All 3 kids made a friend each and seemed to cope with the massive difference between the school they are used to.......funnily enough, they had no problem coping with the "no homework" policy!! Riding to and from school (only 7 minutes) is a huge highlight. So far, so good!