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 :)

Mother's Day

Mother's Day over here is not the same as in the UK but the same as in the USA, so it was May 8th over here. Will and Sam got up at 7.10 a.m, unheard of in the Morgan household at the weekend! Sam had made pancakes at Nat's the day before, so they came into our room with pancakes and ice-cream covered in maple syrup, strawberries and banana - yum! I was very impressed! Then Jack got up and presented me a wonderful present from them all, which is a Weekend Afternoon Tea at the Hotel Windsor in Melbourne, and equates to going to the Ritz! He had organised it with Jason so that Natalie got the same present, so we are off to that in July- how lucky are we?

The day got even better when Sam scored the winning header in his footie match!

Yesterday was Sam's 15th Birthday! He had his friends Harry and Aaron stay overnight on Friday because yesterday, he had his 2nd trial to be a Ballboy at the Australian Open next January. There started off with 1,200 hopefuls for 300 places, and Sam had got through to the last 800! It took place at Melbourne Park, the home of the Aussie Open and consisted of a multiple choice test, fitness test and ball control skills. He really enjoyed it, so we shall just have to wait and see - it's all good experience.

Then in the evening, we had Natalie, Jason and the Girls over for a home-made pizza night, followed by games, which consisted of the chocolate game ( if you throw a "6" on the dice you have to put on a hat, scarf and coat before attempting to cut and eat a block of chocolate) and the flour game (a dome of flour with a sweet on the top. Each person has to cut a slice of flour away and whoever knocks the sweet off has to use his teeth to get it out of the pile of flour!) Lots of fun and laughter! I will try and load some piccies onto our Flikr site :)

Life returns to normal...

Well, now the excitement of the Easter holidays is over, life gets back to its normal routine, apart from the Royal Wedding of course! Unlike you UK-er's, we did NOT have a day off, but since it was starting at 8p.m over here, I guess that was fair play! Not such a big deal over here by any stretch of the imagination - not seen any merchandise at all with Will and Kate on! But, did find a few interested girlies to have a little get- together with down the road! Robyn had decorated her house in toille and fairy lights and resurrected the best English china, so that we could all enjoy a right Royal knees-up! We dressed up and all took food and wine and had a most enjoyable evening :)

The footie season got officially underway on May 1st. Jack had his first reffing match "in the middle", earning himself 80 pnds compared to 15 pnds in the UK!!! It was a mens game and quite tough by all accounts, Jack having to give out several yellow cards. He is the youngest- ever ref in the state of Victoria to ref a mens match - he should be over 18 to do this! But because he had such a good reference from the UK, they have let him start early here!

Sam has been made Captain of his team for the year, which he was very pleased with. They won 2 - 1 which was even better!

Wills AFL team were thrashed at their first game, but he got stuck in, not at all bothered that he is the smallest and youngest and should be playing for the year below! They were so impressed with him that he won an award for his courageous and stirling efforts (even though at one stage he threw the ball as if it were a rugby ball!!!) Yesterday, he also won the cross-country out of half the school year so was on a real high!

Today, I tried my hand at "Stand-up Paddle Boarding". This is a relatively new sport over here which has developed over the past 4 years and where you stand up on a board much like a surf board but bigger and ...paddle! Today I stayed in the mariner while I got my balance and learnt the basics and it was pretty easy-going, but I guess it will be more challenging once you hit the sea! Watch this space...!

New blog views available...give them a try

Google have launched some new ways to view our blog. I was having a play around with them and I really like the way some of them work - they made me re-read some of our previous posts.

Take a look by clicking on the views below:

Flipcard view

Mosaic view

Sidebar view

Snapshot view

Timeslide view

I think the mosaic view is my favourite...cool!

If you want to create a link then just put in the usual blog address and add a bit extra at the end. For example, the URL for the flipcard view would be:

http://morgsinoz.blogspot.com/view/flipcard

Easy :-)

Surfin' Video...

We have put together a short video of the boys surfing at Apollo Bay over Easter......look out for a special clip of Chris surfing too....and some great photos.....hope you enjoy..... If you are wondering where Caroline is, she was chilling on the beach sipping a Chai Latte (her new drink of choice...excluding a good glass of red wine of course).

Easter on the Great Ocean Road

Hi Everyone...hope everyone has been having a great Easter weekend...we hear that the weather in England has been really sunny!

The Easter weekend here is a nice long one as Friday, Monday and Tuesday are all public holidays (Tues is ANZAC day), so we headed down to the Great Ocean Road for a couple of days. The start of the road is about a 2 hour drive from Mordialloc and it basically runs all the way to Adelaide winding along the coast with spectacular views.....however we weren't going to drive quite as far as Adelaide.

Our first stop was Torquay (Bell's Beach) which is the surfing capital of Victoria and this weekend the Rip Curl Pro surf competition was underway. Surfing is a hugely popular sport here and Kelly Slater who is 10 times world champion is a bit of a god. There were very big crowds and we couldn't actually see much but the atmosphere was good (lots of people with bleached hair and wearing Rip Curl, Billabong and Quicksilver clothes....).

After that we headed to Anglesea where we had arranged to stay at the holiday house of Maureen and Michael's friends. Anglesea is NOTHING like the Welsh place....it is a lovely coast site hamlet with a great beach and cool cafes. We went for a walk along the beach and the boys played some AFL (yes....) before we went for some food.

The next day we headed further along the Great Ocean Road taking in various sites - there really are some spectacular views...even the boys managed to tear their eyes away from their laptops in the car :-). Our favourites were the 12 Apostles and the London Bridge......lots of photos on our Flickr site as usual.

However the highlight of the trip was our surf lesson which we had in Apollo Bay. It was something that we just decided to do on the fly...and was great fun. We hired boards and wet suits and despite the weather being a bit dodgy it was brilliant fun. Jack had done it once before over New Year so we were expecting him to be an expert....and actually he was pretty good! The following day the 3 boys hired the gear again and headed out for more fun....this time they all improved and managed to stand up. It makes you realise just how good the professional surfers are...but I think the boys are addicted now!

That's all for now....we are busy planning our next trip - probably skiing....but New Zealand or Victoria...decisions, decisions :-)

The Jordans arrive!

We made it to the airport for 6a.m on Monday 11th April just as Jane, Olly and Alice walked through the doors. They had had a good trip, stopping off at Singapore for a couple of days to meet up with Jane's sister, so weren't too jet-lagged.

Since we were home by 7.30a.m and because the weather was going to be good, we headed straight out to Healesville to show them the wildlife of Australia and this time, actually got to see a wombat! She was 7 years old and called Florence!

The week was full- on - city trips, Mornington Peninsula, parties etc and Jane even took herself off on a one day trip down the Great Ocean Road, including a 10 minute helicopter ride over the 12 Apostles!

On Saturday, we met up with some other English friends who have just moved out here from Romsey - the Pockneys. We met them at the MCG and watched a FANTASTIC Afl game between Carlton and Essendon, which ended in a draw. This was followed by a trip to Wagamama for dinner, so it was a great day.

The week was over all too quickly but we had a great time, sharing our experiences with the Jordans, with the result being Alice and Olly want to move out here because they think it's so fantastic!