10 months!

Will had a good birthday weekend and enjoyed not one, but TWO birthday cakes! I made him an AFL football cake with sparklers which he had with his friends.Then Sam went to HUGE efforts with Natalie to make an AFL jersey cake in the Geelong colours - it was fantastic! Natalie, Jason and the girls came round for tea on Will's actual birthday where he had the cake and we played the chocolate game once more!

On Saturday evening, Chris and I went to a 1960's Ball with work, based on the theme "Mad Men" which is an American drama which seems to have passed us by! Apparently it's been on in the UK but we have never seen it. I dug out a dress and was madly sewing netting into the lining (to make it stand out) just hours before we were leaving. Piled my hair up 60's style, whilst Chris was busy using a whole pot of gel to smooth his down on one side! Boy did we look dashing! The best bit was when Sam said... "Just imagine if you were going on the train like that!!!" which, in fact, we were! It was a good, fun evening, with live bands and dancers food and wine.

More fantastic news we received yesterday.... Chris has got promoted to "Director!". We have been waiting about 6 weeks to hear, after he was put forward by his boss and had to put a case forward as to why he should be promoted. So last night we went out to a Mexican restaurant to celebrate. He certainly deserves it after all the hard work he has put in and the new work he has gained for PwC since his arrival in Australia. Very proud of him :)

The Boys finish school on Friday and have 2 weeks holiday. The second week we are going skiing to Mt. Hotham which is about a 4.5 hr drive away, so we are all very excited about that! It'll be very strange skiing in July and interesting to compare with Europe. So the next blog will probably be from there...!

Good News!!!

Well, the news is in, hot off the press! We had an email late this afternoon to say that Sam has got through the trials to be a Ballboy in the Australian Open 2012!!! How pleased are we all!! He got 1/300 spaces out of 1,200 kids, so did really well. He starts training in September and has 3 training sessions a month. Even the parents have to go to two - how exciting!

Wills Birthday on Monday, so he is having a birthday weekend! He is turning 13, so 3 teenagers in the house! He is having some friends round for the day tomorrow who are also sleeping over - fun,fun,fun! So I will put some fotos on next week and report back then :)

Sorry :(

Well, just wanted to apologise for not having up-dated the blog recently, but really, there has not been anything exciting to report on!!! Life is just in the swing of work (for Chris), school (for the Boys) and training (for me!).

We are now officially in Winter, but the weather has been nice - cold mornings and evenings but lovely and sunny by lunchtime, so temperatures ranging from 3 degrees through to 15/16. At least I can still get the tons of washing dry outside!

Sam had a week at school called "City Camp" - no camping involved at all, but every day meeting up at Federation Square in the city and doing sight-seeing basically! He had trips round the MCG Sports museum, Ethiad Stadium and Rod Laver tennis arena, plus got to interview some AFL players, so at least it was better than school!

Will had a 3-day camp at Portsea last week where they did exciting things like rafting, zip wires ,climbing etc which he really enjoyed. Shame it was only 3 days though. Unfortunately, when I was on my way to pick him up on Wednesday, someone pulled out into the side of my car at a roundabout. All Ok but just the inconvenience of getting it fixed.

I started swimming lessons 5 weeks ago at an in-door pool, learning how to free-style. As a child I only learnt breast- stroke and have never been happy in the water, so decided to overcome my fear so that I can compete fully in the next Triathlon season, starting in November. Last week, to my absolute amazement, I managed 22 lengths (with flippers and stopping every so often to recover!) but was very pleased with myself. Still need to sort out the breathing out under water bit but amazing to see what I have achieved in 5 weeks!

Sam's football team are still performing well, having only lost 1 match so far. Will, unfortunately, is the opposite! His AFL team have not won a game yet and yesterday got absolutely hammered, not scoring a single point with the opposition scoring 290!!! Unbelievable! One lad from their team went off in an ambulance with a broken wrist - brought back all those awful memories of when Sam broke both of his 18 months ago :(

Chris is working incredibly hard and getting a bit fed up - more work than play. His project that he has been doing in Sydney is now starting in Melbourne which means at least he is getting to spend more time here. He is winning new business all the time for PwC but they haven't got the experienced staff to implement it and he feels it is all falling on him. So he is also interviewing people which is very time consuming and not very productive. Anyone want to come and work over here let us know!!!

June already and we have been here nearly 10 months - the time is just rushing by. Anyway, will report back when we have something interesting to write about :)