SYDNEY | Zoo Zoo Zoo

One of the things that I love about Sydney (apart from the weather) is the things that we experience.  Our life style is sometimes hard.  But those that know us,  know that we jump into each move with both feet and enjoy what each place has to offer.

A regular and favourite at the moment is the Zoo. 

We have been a few times over the past year.  Each time I ask the children to choose an animal each.  We do those animals and a show or two and then head home.

And which other Zoo in Australia has this view?

2015 : Gone but not forgotten

Sorry about the lack of blog posts this year.

2015 started with a huge move for us and settling everyone into city living, new schools, jobs and making new friends. 

If I had to describe the year in a word : it would be EMOTIONAL!

It's a year that I don't want to repeat in a hurry.  I've learnt a lot about friendships, family and love.  Lost two very special people in my life. (one far two early for my liking) 

With each new year we have a chance to restart.  Many wipe the slate clean and start again.  I learnt a lot about myself in 2015, and for all of these experiences, although hard at the time I think that I am better for them. 

2016 has started off with a bang.  We bought in the new year in Sydney and watched the fire works with friends.  We have been blessed with some quality family time and have enjoyed spending time with the friends that we have made during the year.  I am not making new years resolutions this year,  I never seem to keep them anyway, but I would like to sew for myself and expand my skills in both sewing and knitting.

I have been sewing (If you follow my Instagram feed you would have seen what I have been up to,  I am hoping to get some modelled photos this week so I can blog those)

Thanks to those that have hung around.  I promise to pop up in your newsfeed more than twice in 2016.

Camping in the Garden of Eden

There is something special about this place.

Be it that we get away from it all and spend time as a family.  The walks along the beach at sunrise and sunset or falling asleep hearing the waves crash on the shore.  Eden has a place in all our hearts.

Soccer Season

The 2014 Soccer Season has come to an end.

I will miss our Saturday morning drive down the highway.  The cold breeze blowing against our face and the icy cold weather. I enjoyed being the soccer Mum, I grew up around the soccer fields watching both my father and brothers from a very young age.

This little man has developed so much in the six months that was the soccer season and it has been requested that I find a team for him when we move.

This Week @ mealyandi

It's hard to believe that the first week of the school holidays have finished and we are onto the second. 
Being that we are on the move again next year, we have taken the opotunity to visit a few 'to-do' places of interest on our list.

 

1. Visiting the local winery's and enjoying lunch
2. Our first look inside H & M.  Gone is the boutigue shopping destination. Instead it is filled wall to wall with people pushing and shoving each other.  Don't get me started on the lines to try clothes on or heaven forbid, actually purchase something. 
On the way out I heard a group of girls gasp and say "It looks just like Singapore"  It took all of my effort not to say "It is a piece of Australia's history originally built in 1859" 
3. It seems I wore the kids out with all of the sight seeing.

{a long weekend}

This weekend we are hanging around home. A long weekend of eating, knitting and spending time together.

There are hotcross buns rising as I speak and the kettle has boiled many times today.  The days are getting shorter and cooler.

A few of us here have other plans.  He is busy preparing his kayak for a paint job.  Goodbye canary yellow.

What have you got planned for the long weekend?

Back to the Blog...

Where has the time flown?  I don't know about you but it feels like I have blinked and we are already at Easter.

One term into school and I finally feel like I am getting on top of things.  The young man started his formal school learning this year and is doing very well.  He has come such a long way over the past year with his language and social development and we are thrilled that he has a loving a nurturing teacher to continue that this year. 

I've gone back to work this year as well and am loving being back in my field of early childhood and making a difference in little people's lives.

I have been knitting (more on that later)  Requests from both kids are coming in thick and fast with the weather slowly changing.  I am also part of a fun new blog about travelling with kids.  Pop on over to Punch Bouggy Travel and say hi.

{Eight}

With the blink of an eye my little girl has turned eight. 
She is growing into a little young lady before our very eyes.

This year she requested a 'craft party' for her birthday.  I limited it to 5 friends (six pairs of seven and eight year old hands were enough for one Mum to manage)  They all did a great job.  Some did more then others.  Some did not move from the table and had to be encouraged to have something to eat whilst others came and went.  I think that I re threaded their needles 100 times each over the three hour period. 

I kept the party food simple and set up a buffet style table where the girls were able to help themselves to it during the party. 

Happy Birthday beautiful girl enjoy your year of being Eight.

Where is the year disappearing?

I don't know about you but this year has disappeared at an alarming rate and before long it will be Christmas and we will be wrapping up another year.

The car speedometer says that I have done alot of km's in the car this year and I know that it is not lying.  Baden is attending a kinder two towns and 30km from home.  Then there is the swimming and dance lessons in town and back and forwards from Melbourne for different appointments and it feels like I am never out of the car.

I have also managed to get myself onto two committees this year.  I am scaling down next year (I know famous last words) and will stay on one.

There is knitting happening here and there and then there is the pile of material that I bought at the very beginning of winter that I had massive plans to sew things for myself that is still sitting taunting me from a to-do pile.

I would also love to get back into regular blogging.  Hi to all those that have hung around waiting for the next post to pop up in your reader.  So to kick things off I thought that I would join in with Pip's Taking Stock

Making :  An Eco Fairy for a WWFY job
Cooking :  30 second Orange cake
Drinking :  Raspberry, Strawberry and Loganberry Tea
Reading:  The End of Your Life Book Club (have a feeling it is a box of tissues read)
Wanting:  More time in my day
Looking:  At the pile of washing that needs tending too
Playing:  Connect 4 with the kids
Wasting:  To much time on Pinterest
Sewing:  A calico strip on the back of a blanket for a friend
Wishing:  That my sore neck would take a hike
Enjoying:  Listening to the kids laugh
Waiting: For Tim to come home
Liking:  My special friends that are more like family here due to our closeness
Wondering: What next year will bring
Loving: That my Mum hoped on a plane at a moments notice to come down and spend the week  
               with us so I could go into Melbourne for a few appointments and not worry about the kids  
               or being back for school collection.
Hoping:  That tomorrow's morning tea goes well
Marvelling:  That Baden has done so well with his speech this year and so many people have         
                       commented on how well he has done and how they can now understand him.
Needing:  To do grocery shopping
Smelling:  Dinner in the slow cooker
Wearing:  My bright yellow cowl
Following:  Two kids on their bikes
Noticing:  The change in the seasons just around the corner
Knowing:  I am loved
Thinking:  Of what I should be doing
Feeling:  Overwhelmed
Bookmarking:  Ideas for School Holiday Craft Program
Opening:  Bills
Giggling:  With the kids

Do you find that the year is flying by?
Do you need extra time in your day to get everything done?
What have you been making?

Sometimes...

Sometimes living on an Army Base means that we are exposed to some really cool stuff.

Last week the Tigers flew in as part of an exercise (think big bangs, the type that make the house shake)  They invited us to the air strip to get up and personal with the helicopters before they headed home.

 Baden was very interested in all of the buttons and asked a lot of questions.  Last week he wanted to fix helicopters, this week he wants to fly them.

bebé Piper

Last week I had the pleasure of photographing the babe that came from this belly.  And what fun I had.

 I knitted her a little mohair wrap and crocheted a little headband.  Miss P was three weeks old in these photos.  She was the perfect princess and continued to sleep like this with another blanket on top of her for her Mum for another three hours after I finished taking photos of her.

Life Lately : Straight from the iPhone

This is all that I can muster up at the moment.  If you are in instagram, you would have seen that I have been busy playing nurse and loving wife.
My husband has had reconstructive hip surgery (no, he is not old!) and we go back on Wednesday and do it all again for the other hip.

 

 So, here is a little snap shot of life around here at the moment 

(I thought that I had better at least explain the last photo)

1. We escaped to Eden for Easter. It was lovely to get away and possibly our last real camping adventure for the year.

2. The beautiful red coast line of NSW

3. Green Cape Light House: Ben Boyd National Park.  We went to the top of the lighthouse. 

4. Being wheeled off for surgery

5. Reading up on the operation

6. I wandered the streets and found a little gem in Melbourne.  A new yarn store in Fitzroy that opened in Feb.  The store is called Yarn & Co

7. A coffee and a hot apple pie stop on the highway on the way home.  

8. Our monthly girls night.  This month was an 80's theme.  Here is Carly and I enjoying a Victory Cigarette (Similar to the Fags that were around when we were kids, but not as sweet) 
Clearly, I have never been a smoker!