Whistlestop tour through our week.......Monday 22nd February to Monday 1st March
Marisa was poorly on Monday as were almost all her friends...hmmm not good, I had to work so fortunately a good friend had her for the day, Tuesday still poorly so at home with Mum and couldn't go to Scouts, Wednesday still ill so another day at home. Enough already and back to school please :o) Well enough to go to the pool Friday night though!
Busy morning on Friday for Carolyn, monthly pilgrimage to see the accountant while the children enjoyed games and crash test dummies and kite flying and cooking etc etc for Jubilee Day at school, K had a friend round after school which was fun, nice chap.
Saturday night was WOMUBU a music festival held on a local estate called Broadwater Farm great music and free tickets for us which was fab. The children climbed the local travelling climbing wall and we listened to music till long after dark. Good times.
Late start on Sunday, I wonder why? trip to Bunbury as nothing better to do looking for odds and ends and stuff for Ian, another pair of sunnies to be replaced for our offspring who seem to lose or break sunnies regularly. Fish and Chips on the Marsden Waterfront which wasn't great, have had much tastier one there before.
Monday was a public holiday so like all sensible people we went to the Beach at Meelup, stopped at a coffee shop based at Ngilgi Cave on the way home to drink coffee and read the paper while various kids, not all ours, roamed around eating ice creams.
At home the children watched a film while we sat out front of the house and enjoyed a light breeze as we read till it was too dark, popped some fish in the oven and chilled out. No cubs this week due to public holiday but back again next week.
Showing posts with label Evening Out. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Evening Out. Show all posts
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
Saturday, December 26, 2009
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
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
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Breast Cancer Research
Thursday 22nd October 2009
This morning while Ian was setting up the Café, the milkman informed him that there was a fire down at the other shopping centre.
Luvvly Jubbly thought Ian, hoping that nobody was hurt first of course, we should be in for a good day if it’s anything like the last time the centre was closed.
It turns out that there was a fire in the roof space of the record shop at the other shopping centre and when the sprinkler system came on, the water got into the power box causing the electricity to do what electricity does when mixed with water, leaving the centre with no power.
Our hope of a bumper day, was however short lived, IGA the supermarket for that centre has got their own generators and whoever lit the fire forgot to light one under the generator as well, so after the fire had been put out IGA were up and running and we failed to benefit by much more than a quick flurry first thing.
As it turned out, today wasn’t much better than the early part of the week until most of the staff had gone in the afternoon, then for some reason we had an influx of customers that kept us busy for a while, helping to make up in part, yesterdays debacle.
This evening Carolyn went to Curves fitness centre in Busselton for a fundraising event, it was to raise funds for Breast Cancer research.
Despite meeting hundreds of local people every week, it’s amazing how few people you can recognise at one of these events, so after making a few bids for goods on offer and chatting with the few people she did recognise she went home, but she’s not going to let Ian know how much it cost him.
This morning while Ian was setting up the Café, the milkman informed him that there was a fire down at the other shopping centre.
Luvvly Jubbly thought Ian, hoping that nobody was hurt first of course, we should be in for a good day if it’s anything like the last time the centre was closed.
It turns out that there was a fire in the roof space of the record shop at the other shopping centre and when the sprinkler system came on, the water got into the power box causing the electricity to do what electricity does when mixed with water, leaving the centre with no power.
Our hope of a bumper day, was however short lived, IGA the supermarket for that centre has got their own generators and whoever lit the fire forgot to light one under the generator as well, so after the fire had been put out IGA were up and running and we failed to benefit by much more than a quick flurry first thing.
As it turned out, today wasn’t much better than the early part of the week until most of the staff had gone in the afternoon, then for some reason we had an influx of customers that kept us busy for a while, helping to make up in part, yesterdays debacle.
This evening Carolyn went to Curves fitness centre in Busselton for a fundraising event, it was to raise funds for Breast Cancer research.
Despite meeting hundreds of local people every week, it’s amazing how few people you can recognise at one of these events, so after making a few bids for goods on offer and chatting with the few people she did recognise she went home, but she’s not going to let Ian know how much it cost him.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
XXXX=This (anagram)
Saturday 10th October 2009
Today was probably our quietest Saturday since we have been at the Café, there we were all stressed out with loads of inexperienced staff at our beck and call and the customers didn’t come in, the whole shopping centre was as dead as a Dodo and for no apparent reason.
By 12 noon we had come to the conclusion that things weren’t going to get any better and started cleaning up ready for close, we were so rarely disrupted by customers that we were finished and walking out of the door by 2pm, over an hour earlier than our previous best and we had cleaned the fryers as well which normally gets done on a Sunday.
This afternoon we went down to Broadwater Beach Bar and Restaurant (Stilts) and had a couple of beers, it looks like this place is going to be like a long running soap, nobody seems to know what they’re doing, they’re brand new wine list is already out of date because Carolyn drank and enjoyed the only bottle of pink fizz that they had in stock, last week and they also ran out of the beer that Ian drinks after his first pint.
When we got there we ordered the bottle of wine for Carolyn, the same wine that she had enjoyed last week, after about twenty minutes of two members of staff trying to find it in the fridge they came to the conclusion that they didn’t have any, but didn’t have a clue as to what to offer as an alternative.
We scanned the wine list again and selected another Rose wine which turned out to be very nice and at only 6.5% was very drinkable, as for Ian, he had to settle for drinking XXXX Gold and was not impressed, he has come to the conclusion that XXXX is only called XXXX because you can’t write SHIT on a beer pump and won’t be drinking it again.
From there we walked up to the Broadwater Food Hall for something to eat, the kids love going there because they have five different outlets to choose from and they can choose from any of them.
We felt the kids deserved a treat at the end of the school holidays, they have had a pretty good holiday anyway but they have all been really good over the last couple of weeks and enjoyed their meals.
From there we walked home and were in bed by about 9pm, still knackered from the stress of the last couple of weeks.
Today was probably our quietest Saturday since we have been at the Café, there we were all stressed out with loads of inexperienced staff at our beck and call and the customers didn’t come in, the whole shopping centre was as dead as a Dodo and for no apparent reason.
By 12 noon we had come to the conclusion that things weren’t going to get any better and started cleaning up ready for close, we were so rarely disrupted by customers that we were finished and walking out of the door by 2pm, over an hour earlier than our previous best and we had cleaned the fryers as well which normally gets done on a Sunday.
This afternoon we went down to Broadwater Beach Bar and Restaurant (Stilts) and had a couple of beers, it looks like this place is going to be like a long running soap, nobody seems to know what they’re doing, they’re brand new wine list is already out of date because Carolyn drank and enjoyed the only bottle of pink fizz that they had in stock, last week and they also ran out of the beer that Ian drinks after his first pint.
When we got there we ordered the bottle of wine for Carolyn, the same wine that she had enjoyed last week, after about twenty minutes of two members of staff trying to find it in the fridge they came to the conclusion that they didn’t have any, but didn’t have a clue as to what to offer as an alternative.
We scanned the wine list again and selected another Rose wine which turned out to be very nice and at only 6.5% was very drinkable, as for Ian, he had to settle for drinking XXXX Gold and was not impressed, he has come to the conclusion that XXXX is only called XXXX because you can’t write SHIT on a beer pump and won’t be drinking it again.
From there we walked up to the Broadwater Food Hall for something to eat, the kids love going there because they have five different outlets to choose from and they can choose from any of them.
We felt the kids deserved a treat at the end of the school holidays, they have had a pretty good holiday anyway but they have all been really good over the last couple of weeks and enjoyed their meals.
From there we walked home and were in bed by about 9pm, still knackered from the stress of the last couple of weeks.
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