People

People are still dropping by, making me feel guilty about not blogging. So I have.

Tempting to stop there ;o)

What have we done? The window got fixed, not had the bill yet though!!!

On Sunday 24th January We went to Pemberton,about 1 1/2 hours away and spent a rather lovely day there, sadly without camera. Looked at the town, it was small, wandered around the tourist info, Museum under construction but enough to look at, tried to get lunch at the local Cafe. Far too expensive for us, evening meal prices, so we toddled off and found somewhere that sounded like a coffee house tucked up along a few lanes. It was lovely and peaceful with gardens for the tribe to wander around while we read the Sunday Paper, I do miss having a choice of Sunday papers, need to take a book in the car methinks.

Lunch was nice, Nachos, breakfast pie (um that'd be quiche then) decent coffee, there were a couple of galleries on site so we mooched, admired furniture, fainted at the prices and left.

We found the Gloucester tree, a huge pegged fire lookout tree which people were climbing. Sadly we all had the wrong shoes so we watched and made jokes about falling off and no safty net! The pegs wobbled as people climbed.

We asked if many people had died climbing the tree, a few was the answer!

We stopped at a resort on the outskirts and walked to the falls, pretty. Drove around to the lake for a swim. I think we could happily spend the day there which includes the use of canoes, boats, archery...and a gorgeous fresh water lake to swim in.

We were very late home, quick dinner and bed.


Monday we worked, Tuesday was Australia Day, a public holiday (yay)
We got up early and dressed the cub/Scouts ready for parade. Our Scout troop attends the Dunsborough ceremony, raises the flag, looks smart, plays for a while when the adults start chatting amongst themselves and then run off in many directions.

It was one of Missys' friends birthday so off she went to beat everyone at golf again, a five every time on a par 3 isn't bad at 11 years old :o)

The rest of us went off for breakfast and a wander around Dunsborough. We went for a drive and found a few arty places, mostly closed, a Chocolate factory, with samples, a winery, also with samples and came back in time to collect Missy.

On Friday Marisa had a sleepover with a couple of friends, the boys went swimming with a friend and we made plans for tomorrow.

After work on Saturday Marisa was returned after a good day out at the Bird Park, we all ate and got rugged up for a night at the Drive In.

I think Busso Drive In is the last survivng in use in WA, we watched Cloudy with a chance of Meatballs, quite funny but boring by the end, followed by 2012 and as we all enjoy a good disaster movie it went down well, we loved the big screen and were happy that the battery wasn't flat by the end as we listened to the soundtrack on the radio.
The hot dogs and coffee were ok but the midnight finish was a tad late, and cold.

When we got home Carolyn finally had a chat with her Dad after not being able to catch him at home (teenager!) but not for long as it was so late.

Late start on Sunday, worked on some menu changes for the cafe and in the afternoon went to a local Country Farm play place and fed animals, kids ran amok in the play areas and adults read the papers and drank endless coffee, instant but free and about 6 types to choose from.


A good end to the holidays.

Oh yes she did

Marisa was jumping indoors even though she has been warned many times that this isn't safe. Jumping is for outdoors, oh yes, for good reason.
Marisa stuck her foot through a window, she lay on the floor and bled. A lot.
Her lovely Mum picked her up and carried her to the car, she cried a fair bit. Missy not Mum, she will cry when the bill for the broken window comes through.

Missy was cleaned up and poked at to make sure there was no glass in her foot.
It hurt. A lot.
Missy had to have a Tetanus jab, she didn't enjoy that bit either.
She got stuck back together and had an iced lolly for being fab.
She got a huge bandage on the offending foot to make her Dad feel sorry for her and not kill her when he got home.

Marisa spent the afternoon hiding in her room waiting for Dad to get home.


Dad did not kill her.
Dad did cuddle her though.

We made her go out as it was Petticoat Lane markets tonight and we wanted to go. She wore her heeleys and got wheeled along most of the time.
We didn't find anything we wanted which was a bit of luck, so we left.
Had dinner.
No one else broke anything so we went to bed.

AJ2010

The scouts had a fab time

They looked like this when they left, early in the morning.

They spent 2 weeks with 10,000 other scouts at Cataract Park, they had an awesome time, so I'm told.
They looked like this when they came back :o)


Marisa managed to get into a local paper in Sydney so will have to scan that one in later.

Short and sweet, just like Missy ;o)who is currently in trouble, but I'll save that for tomorrow! Doncha love a cliffhanger?

A picture post

I guess by the visits we are getting people still want blog posts, and as we haven't managed a proper one in, oooh a month or two here are some more pics to keep you going.

We went to the Ugg shop in Dunsborough to check out the price of Cardi Uggs for Vic and accidentally bought me a top and skirt :o)



The cake, thanks again H.


Christmas day on the beach with friends, no Fraser and Ian, they were in A&E for 2 hours as Fraser is determined to be allergic to stingers.


This is what happened on Christmas eve, don't ask!!!


This also happened Christmas Eve, snigger, sorry B!


Maybe in honour of our 16th wedding anniversary on the 8th Jan we will get Kristian to take a pic of us as well.
Fraser and Marisa are in Cataract Park, Sydney for the 2010 Australian Scout Jamboree and shan't be seen again until the 15th, no photos sadly but many a scary tale I suspect.

It must have just passed midnight in the UK as Skype is kindly reminding me my Mum should be celebrating her 67th birthday. Yeah. Great. Miss you xx

Christmas Day 2009

Friday 25th December 2009

We were woken up at a reasonable hour this morning, 7.30am isn’t bad, by the kids, they had brought their duvets (doonas) out of their rooms and set up camp outside our bedroom.
They are so well trained, they just sat quietly outside our room, for at least thirty seconds anyway, before one of them made a silly noise, closely followed by another and then another, it sounded a bit like a frog chorus without the frog sounding bits, in fact, if he hadn’t already done it Paul McCartney could have used the idea to make a hit single.
Eventually, after about 5 minutes, we gave in and let them make us a cup of tea in return for them having the pleasure of us watching them open some of their presents.
So our day started with us drinking tea in bed, made and very well we must add, by the children, while they unpacked some of their presents at the end of our bed, they loved it and we think it’s fun too.
We had eggs and bacon for breakfast cooked by Ian, then opened our presents and the kids presents from friends and family, before going down the beach for a swim.
There have been no reports of stingers this year and if we stayed local one of Marisas friends was going to come with us, so we went to the beach at the end of the road, the water was warm and calm and we were soon swimming around with our snorkels.
After about 20 minutes Marisas friend and her mum turned up, then about ten minutes later Fraser got caught by a couple of stingers across his face, one of them was right next to his eye and he had what looked like blisters pulsing up and down under his skin.
As it was so close to his eye and in an area where it would be difficult to use ointment without getting it in his eye, we decided to take him to hospital to get it checked over.
Ian and Fraser were in the hospital for about two hours with a hot compress covering the affected areas before Fraser was seen by a doctor, they checked the lens of his eye to see if that had been scratched and it hadn’t, so all they could do is give them a bit of advice and send them home. By the time they got home, Carolyn and the kids had come back from the beach and had started to prepare dinner.
The advice we got just in case you’re interested, was use a hot or cold compress, have a hot shower, take panadol or ibuprofen and use an antihistamine.
We think we’ll just stick to our own advice and drive to Meelup in future, even Fraser, who seems to attract these stingers, never seems to get stung down there.
For Christmas Dinner we had a Duck stuffed with Turkey Breast and Quail, we cooked it on the spit over the BBQ and had it with an assortment of fresh salads and mashed potatoes whilst sitting under the patio in the early evening, it was delicious, a bit like a Boxing Day dinner really.
In the evening the kids played with their presents while we watched a couple of episodes of Only Fools and Horses, then had an early night.

Merry Christmas and Apologies

Early November to 24th December 2009

Firstly, to anyone out there who is still remotely interested in what we are getting up to, or whether we are still alive and kicking, we apologise for the lack of regular blog over the last six or seven weeks.
The last few weeks have been manic for us with regard to work and play and we just haven’t had the time to sit down and blog on a regular basis, and you know what it’s like, get a few days behind and you’re looking for a gap in your life when you have enough time to blog about those few days in one hit.
Don’t find enough time to blog about a few days for a few days and you are looking for a gap in your life when you can blog a week etc, next thing you know 7 weeks have gone by and it’s time to hold your hands up, apologise, say Merry Christmas, and promise that it won’t happen again.
That is to say, the lapse in blog won’t happen again, not the say Merry Christmas won’t happen again, after all we would hope that we would still be around next year to say it again, the merry xmas bit that is.
We will from now on be eating allbran for breakfast in an effort to get a bit more regular, and if we don’t manage it every day we’ll try to make sure we keep you in touch with our movements at least every couple of days.

The Café has been very busy over the last 7 weeks, this has also coincided with us staying open until about 5’ish Monday to Friday, which invariably means that Ian isn’t home before 6pm and as he starts at about 7am most days and is trying to get fit enough for this bike ride that he wants to do from Busselton to Augusta at the end of the summer, we are not normally in the mood to do anything other than relax after dinner.
The bike ride is the one that he had planned to do at the end of November, but because of the longer hours in the Café and the fact that we are not going to have daylight saving this year, Ian wasn’t getting a chance to practice and he felt that although he was pretty sure that brute force and ignorance would get him through it if required, he wouldn’t enjoy it and he wants to be able to enjoy it, so it has now been put back to the end of the summer.

Over the last few weeks the kids have had loads happening as well, there seemed to be something extra to do with Scouts every week, Bowling, Billy Cart Racing, Garage Sale, Meetings, Camps, Fundraising, getting ready for the Scout Jamboree in January, and all this on top of their usual meetings.
The kids have all done well at school, with Marisa being one of a select few to be in the “One Club”, you only get in it if your results are predominately “1” and definitely have none below a “2” for effort, but then she would wouldn’t she.
Kristian has been taking it easy at school and doing just well enough to keep everybody happy, but he didn’t break into a sweat all year over his class work so we will be pushing him a bit next year to try and get a competitive edge to is work and get him into the “One Club”. He knows he can do it, it’s just that nobody told him that’s what they wanted him to do, so he kept his head below the parapet and had a nice life, in which all his teachers think he is so wonderful.
Fraser has really come along great guns in the second half of the year, after a few misunderstandings between Fraser and his Teachers in the early part of the year, they have worked out how to keep him interested and motivated and he has really come on well, finishing the year top of his class in Science and well graded in Maths, while also working extremely hard to get good results in most of his other subjects.
We are very proud of all three of them.

The school packed up a week before Christmas and we have tried to work it again this year that Carolyn is able to stay at home with the kids, looks after the house, reads the instruction on how the Hoover (Vacuum to you non-English types) works, that sort of thing, while Ian slaves away in the Café, and so far it has worked quite well, the Hoover got switched on on Christmas eve.

The Saturday before Christmas we went round to some friends house for a few drinks in the evening, that is to say Ian went round at 6pm as he didn’t want to go to the Carols by Candlelight service in Busselton, he might have gone if it was going to dark but the thought of Candles in daylight didn’t really do it for him, Carolyn and the kids turned up after the show and the kids played computer games with our friends kids while we had a beer and put the world to rights until about 1am when we caught a taxi home.

On Christmas Eve we invited a few friends and neighbours round for drinky-poos and nibbles, including the kids there were 19 of us and it turned out to be a very relaxed, pleasant evening.
It was the first time that we have had people round for drinks since we have been here, quite sad really, but it is something that goes back to our days in the pubs back in England.

As a landlord of a pub, everybody wants to know everything about you, you don’t know everybody in the town, but everybody in the town knows you and it is quite unnerving at times, you just don’t have a private life except when you are locked away in your own little flat with the curtains drawn, so we have always tried to keep ourselves to ourselves and it has been hard to get out of the habit.

We are only a couple of months short of being in Busselton for 2 years now and up until these last couple of weeks we have still been using the pub as our place to unwind at the end of the week, as we would have done in England.
As in England, a night in the pub over here can be expensive, whereas a few drinks with a few friends sitting under the patio over here can be just as much fun at a fraction of the cost, you just have to drop your guard a little bit and let people get to know you, it’s taken us nearly 2 years to work that out, positively frightening really, but we’re confident we’ll get better at it from now on.

We hope you had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy and Prosperous New Year

It's Christmas time

Straight to the point. If you are expecting a Christmas card and haven't got it yet, chances are it either got posted on Monday, or is still on my hall table. If you love me you will consider it something to look forward to when the excitement is all over. If you don't love me then why would I send you a card????

Talking of love how can you not love someone who sends a surprise box full of goodies?

Thank you P :o)

Also talking of love, how can you not love someone who remembers you moaning about not being able to buy Christmas Cake decorations in Oz, and posts you some gorgeous ones. Picture of cake will appear after the event.

Thank you H :o)

Here are the babies (ahem) 6 months old already and the size of a healthy young horse. Gorgeous :o)

Kristian filling the doggy paddling pool, it gets hot out here y'know.



The beach at Gnarabup, near Margaret River, lovely spot for a swim and a coffee.


We shall think of you as we eat outside in the blazing sun, Roast meat and salads and treats for us.

Merry Christmas everyone, yes, even you lot that don't let on you are here ;o)