It's been so long since I posted, I don't really remember what this whole thing was about. I think it has something to do with the kids but we will see how it goes as I type.
The main reason for the delay is the internet problems I have had over the last year. Mentioned many times and complained about many more, lets just say it has not been an ideal situation to try to upload files and pictures to the internet. It takes so long and fails most of the time, that I just got tired of dealing with it, so I gave up blogging until the situation got better.
Well, it might be getting better. We just moved house again. I think that is once a year for every year I have been in Australia. I am sure that is some kind of record. Not too far from where we live now and closer to where we were when we lived at Shelly Beach. About a 20 minute walk to the ocean but farther from Maeghan's school. It is about 100 meters from where Maeghan and William went to pre-school, so we will see about getting William back in there next term.
I don't know if anyone has heard, but there was a child care crises here in Australia and most of the major child care centers closed. That was about a year ago and since then, several of them have re-opened or changed ownership. Where William was going actually did not close but lost most of its clients as they thought it was going to close so the parents pulled the kids out, which of course, caused it to eventually close anyway. William had already left by that time, which was around the first of the year, but at the end, there were only three other kids in his group and it was plain to see that they could not continue on like that.
So all this leads to the fact that we will try to get him back into the school where Meaghan used to go and he went for a couple of months. It never closed and is one of the better schools around in that it trys to prepare the kids for school so they can attend at the minimum age of 5, which is what Maeghan did. It is very competitive getting kids into it, but since William and Maeghan were there before, we think we might have a leg up for getting him in again as soon as a spot opens. And since it is barely a two minute walk to get there, that will be really convenient.
On the other hand, Maeghan will still go to the school she has always gone to. It is well liked in the community and she has a good relationship there, so we have tried to stay close to it so she can continue to go as long at possible. She did miss about a month of school at the end of last term, but I will speak more about that later.
Where we are now, it is a little farther to drive and we don't really know how long it will take to get her there and then pick her up, but we will make the effort so she will stay comfortable in school and not have to make new friends and new teachers. I think I might have spoken about this before as I seem to recall writing something about her new class and new teachers but I don't really want to check and will just assume her latest endeavors are known. If not, I am sure I will repeat myself many times if I get back into this blogging thing, so for now, we will leave it at that.
The new house has an inground pool and huge backyard. You might ask why we need an inground pool when the ocean is only a short walk away, but I prefer not to ask those kinds of questions as the answer tends to confuse me. Something that happens a lot lately so I stay in a constant state of bewilderment.
The house itself is a bit smaller but has a large room out back that is bigger than any in the house. I think it is designed more as a holiday house as that is what is all the other houses have around it. Meaning a big granny flat or in some cases, multiple granny flats in the back yards of the houses. Next door, it looks like there is a series of about three rooms that the owners in the big house can rent out during the summer and behind our house, there are a set of four small apartments that look to be holiday houses for someone. On the other side, there is a two story apartment building, fairly new and the same across the street, so during the summer, I am sure there will be a lot of temporary people living in the area, but we will have to wait and see what effect that has on the neighborhood.
I said the back yard was huge as it is at least half an acre in size, with the pool, the granny flat, and a large shed in back and still plenty of room left over for our swing set and trampoline. It looks like several large trees where pulled up in the back at one time, not sure why, but they did not do a very good job since lots of roots and wholes still exist where they have failed to take the trees out correctly. Even with all that stuff in the back, you could play a good game of cricket (had to say that since I am in Australia) or soccer or even a small game of baseball or football if you were so inclined. The kids have already had fun kicking the balls in the back yard as far as they can kick them and running to kick them back. The do tend to kick them over the fence in the pool area but I think they do that on purpose on the off chance that we will let them in the gate near the pool so they can get closer to it. It is much too cold to go swimming and probably not warm up enough for several months before they can swim in the pool, but I am sure they still want to give it a try. Hence the need to kick the ball over the fence on the off chance that we will let them in to go swimming.
We have mostly moved everything in at this point, just finished this past weekend. There are still a few odds and ends to move, like my desk and some other minor things, but for the most part, we have everything. It was debatable whether we could fit everything in the new house. Taking measurements, it appeared that the front living area was too small to fit our lounge into it, so we decided to make that the dining area and move the main lounge area to the back room. Even then, it was close as to whether the lounge would fit there, but it turns out, it does fit nicely in that back room. The front room now has the dining table, which is very large and square, in it plus the bookshelves, plus Juanita's desk, and the wine rack. It is a fairly busy room with all that in it, but it might work out.
The kitchen is large, but that is only because there is nothing in it. No bench space to speak of, no cabinets and a very small stove/oven. There is a small standalone pantry and plenty of room for the fridge, but the middle of the room is fairly empty. We put the glass hutch on one wall and are using it to store all our everyday dishes and plastic containers, plus the all the plastic cups, bowls and plates. Not sure if all the glass cups and things will fit in the hutch as well, but with no other place to put them, we will have to make it fit. All the other decorative stuff that used to be in the hutch has been moved to the dining room on the former book shelves and wine rack and anything else that will hold decorative stuff but in the end, we might just have to get rid of some things to make room for what we actually need.
We did have a garage sale over two weekends and sold a lot of things, but none of the decorative stuff. We did sell some of the kids toys that had been stashed in the garage not being played with. I am not sure the kids understand that these things are now gone but they have so much other stuff to play with, I am not really sure they will ever notice. We needed to sell a lot more of their things as we have rooms full of toys and things they have collected in their short number of years. I cannot believe we have gotten so much stuff but since everyone is always giving them presents and buying them things, it is no wonder they have things they have not seen in years that only get discovered each time we move.
William, for example, has at least three large buckets of small cars he has collected. Lots and lots of cars and each one was his favorite at one time of another. He still sticks with his Speed cars (from the movie Cars) most of the time, but he has so many, usually anyone will do. He still carries a car around with him anywhere he goes. Sometimes, he trys to carry cars that are much too big to be carried around, but you will almost never find William without a car in his hand, no matter what else he might be doing.
Since we have not been in the new house for more than a couple of days, Maeghan has not really had a chance to play in it yet. She spent the weekend at one of her friends house, so she did not get to see everything come out of hiding when we moved it. She has gone to school today and the rest of the week, so it will still be several days before she fully gets to take advantage of the new backyard and all the room to play with her bike and other toys. She was up until about 7:30 last night playing on the swings and riding her bike with William, but since it gets dark around 5:30 this time of year, I am sure she was not really aware of what all the possibilities are. We will begin to see as they become more used to the new environment.
Well, there is a lot of other things I wanted to get to and lots and lots of things to catch up on but this entry is getting a bit long and if I start anything new, like Maeghan and William and Juanita spending almost two months in Tasmania, then it will go on and on forever. Since I am doing this at work, where I have no new photos to add and should really be working, I am going to go ahead and close this out. I say it nearly every time, but as soon as I can get my new internet connection at the new house, I hope to do more updates. But, I say that every time.
Anyway, bye for now. Maybe do a new post tomorrow. Someone needs to remind me.
Talk to you later
