We arrived back late on Monday night and I rolled up on time for work on Tuesday. Straight back into it all with no time to decompress. The holiday was good with plenty of fun parts and a couple of stressful parts. I’ll get into it all later. For now, I’ll throw a few pics in.
Fraser is heading off with Matt this morning for his second ‘big school’ orientation. Last week’s went well enough but not without it’s hitches. Until the day before, I hadn’t thought to explain that all his friends from pre-school/daycare would be going to other schools. We had lots of tears. I explained it again on Thursday morning and reminded him that he would be going to ‘big school’ with H, his friend, whom he’s known from playgroup. On arrival at the school he wouldn’t let go of my legs, and started crying when the teacher and year five mentors came to take the little kids to class. So I walked up with him and then H arrived, at which time Fraser was happy enough to go without me. When I came back an hour and a half later it was all smiles and laughs. This morning should go much more smoothly as the kindergarten teacher will be running the show and she knows what she’s doing. Unlike the shemozzle of last week.
The last week has been very busy. Out to sewing class last thursday night, out to dinner with the playgroup girl on Friday night, out to lunch for Dad’s birthday on Saturday, and then the in-laws down to our place for lunch on Sunday for MIL’s birthday. In between times I managed to sell a few CDs on ebay, and pack some of the gear we’ll be taking away. We leave early Saturday morning - 4am! 
- to drive to the airport.
I’m arranging to meet some ‘internet friends’. I would have run a mile from that sort of thing in the past - too shy - but I’m really looking forward to it. I doubt that I’ll be online long enough during the trip to post, but I’ll try to upload to Flickr and I’ll send updates via SMS to twitter.
And to bump up the pictorial content of this post I am reaching back in to the past. It’s our seventh wedding anniversary while we’re away. Enjoy!
Friday is a good day for baking. We get home from playgroup at lunchtime, Lincoln goes down for a big nap, and I can fossick around preparing dinner or baking goodies. Last Friday, it was blueberry and white chocolate muffins. Blueberries were cheap at the supermarket so I bought two punnets. Fraser and Lincoln ate some and the rest went into the muffin mix along with a bag of left over white choc buttons. As the cool kids say… ‘nom nom’.
Sewing class last Thursday was good. I learnt how to sew a zipper on. I have cut out the pieces for a skirt so hopefully I get to sew that together this week. I have commenced project box cushion cover. It’s going to be quite a tricky exercise with inserting twisted piping and joining it together. And, unless I’m a complete wuss, I may even insert a zipper into this. First things first, I’ll need to make sure the stripes are all aligned and joining up properly at the edges. *boggle*
Another major project on the go right now is sorting and selling my CD collection. We don’t even have a working CD player in the house these days and when Lincoln pulled the CD tower down on top of his face last week I knew it was time to do something. He cut his eyebrow and got a bleeding nose!
So I’ve sorted out the ones I want to keep, ripped songs off the ones I don’t need to keep, and am preparing to list all the “heard of” releases on ebay. I’ve unprotected my Active EBAY sales tab at the top of the blog so you can have a sneaky peak at what I’ve listed. Unfortunately, I can’t get it to display all my stuff so I’m just fiddling with it. You get the idea, though.
All three legs of our Adelaide holiday are booked as of today. Five nights on Kangaroo Island, two nights in the Barossa, and the remaining nine nights in the CBD. I’m quite excited. Perhaps I’m a nutcase for being excited about going to Adelaide but I guess it’s all about being somewhere different. Showing the boys some different scenery. I’m craving the visit to Adelaide Central Markets to buy french bread sticks and cheese; The kids can have a play at the beach/es; We can take the tram to Glenelg; Sit on the verandah in our Barossa accommodation with a bottle of wine and a cheese platter; visit the largest private Lego collection; go to the water park at Semaphore… The list is endless. There’ll also be a couple of days where Matt will be occupied for the weekend so the kids and I will be at a loose end. Shopping in Rundle Mall, perhaps?
Last weekend is the first really summery weekend we’ve been home to enjoy the outdoors. On Saturday the landscapers came to measure out the kids playground area and turf that we’d like to complete before Christmas. We were outside for alot of the day. On the swings, wandering around pointing at the cows, playing with reels of string line, kicking and throwing balls, etc. There are stakes in the ground now and the landscaper will email us a design in about a week. Apparently, it will take two weeks to build from the time we say ‘go’. It’s certainly nothing complicated. A bobcat, a dingo, some earth moving, laying irrigation and turf, a sandpit. We’re still deciding whether to go ahead with the idea of building a cubby/fort construction in there somewhere. It’s great that the boys will have a nice soft area to play in the beautiful warm weather.
Lincoln has become quite fascinated with the cows. He’ll point to them and say “bbooooo” and is not afraid to get up close. He loves being outside. The patio has become a great play area which is what I’d hoped would happen.
On Sunday we had some family portraits taken. They were a fundraising exercise and so all taken with the same formulaic, cheesy pose. I’m looking forward to seeing how they look though, as we have very few photos with all four of us. Lincoln kept trying to crawl away but once it was over, he wanted to keep going just so he could see himself on the back of the digital camera. And a Lincoln datapoint to note: he nods ‘yes’ now.
We got the official letter from ‘big school’ giving dates for orientation days. I’ll take the morning off work to take Fraser to his first orientation, and Matt will take him to the second orientation the following week. We’ll be away for the parent information morning so we’re aiming to get all the relevant info on the orientation trips. Fraser will meet his year 5 mentor, see where to put his school bag, and he’ll have his morning tea there before getting picked up.
This week is a busy one for me. Sewing class on Thursday night, dinner out for a friend’s birthday on Friday night, an engagement party Saturday night, and then Matt’s away in Melbourne for a few days.
Twelve months ago I was lamenting at how I’d missed seeing Kristin Hersh when she last toured here. I’m very excited to hear on the grape vine that the Throwing Muses are coming back in January ‘09 to do 4 dates in AU and NZ, plus Krisitin will be doing a show as part of the Sydney Festival. I’m yet to find out the dates but I will be attending all the Sydney shows, if possible. You couldn’t have wiped the smile off my face when I got wind of this gossip on Wednesday.
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We all had a great time last weekend. The boys had a sleepover with their cousins Savanna and Lily. They both had a lovely time and slept through! Jane took all four kids to the shops on the train where they had icecream and did a bit of shopping. Matt and I had a good night out with Mum and Dad. We had chinese for dinner then went to see Billy Elliot. It’s a great show . Very spectacular in the first half and quite moving in some parts.
For breakfast we had a buffet at a nearby garden centre and the made our way over to pick up the kids on Sunday morning. When we arrived Lincoln was napping, and Fraser and Sav were doing craft and practicing their writing.
After that, we met up with Miss Bindy and Uncle Dan at Eastgardens. We did a quick shop, more chinese for dinner, and just hanging out at Casa de bindy.
Can you tell we don’t get takeaway much ?
