Kindy FIrsts

Thought I'd document some of Ella's first from Kindy. First of the first was the Student Achievement Award she received at the first junior assembly. The award was for being confident by settling into kindergarten as well as showing enthusiasm and a positive attitude to school and learning!

Next was the first home reader. Ella had chosen Little Red Riding Hood and enjoyed reading it to Andy and Katy. Both Andy and I are amazed how she can actually read..it's a wonderful process to watch develop.

We've had our first letter (and probably not last) home stating someone in the class has nits ...luckily Ella's head had escaped the infestation.

The next exciting first was the three kindy classes hosting the junior assembly! Andy, Nana and Grandad came to watch. Ella had 2 speaking parts - the first one was welcome to the country which included quite large words (acknowledge, Ngunnawal, traditional custodians). And although she had a bit of help with this first part, she breezed through the second part  a poem based on a book they had been reading in class.

On the weekend we had the school fete! The girls had fun on the batman jumping castle and the giant slide, got their faces painted (Katy chose Hello Kitty and Ella chose a butterfly), I got my bike serviced and we made a few purchases.  The beautiful sunny afternoon made it even more enjoyable.

This week, Ella's class KZW are off on their first excursion to the tip sorry recycling centre.

Happy 100th Canberra!

Today was Canberra Day... and what a spectacular day it was. Just perfect for turning 100 although that's officially tomorrow. So what did we get up to ... started with a street breakfast - egg and bacon rolls at #13... chatting with most of the neighbours.

Next we joined up with a work colleague and her daughter for lunchtime fish'n'chips at the Yacht Club at Yarralumla. Hadn't know this place even existed. The fish'n'chips shop is only open over summer and is served from a window at the bottom of the building. More chatting in a beautiful setting with fairly good food. Definitely will be back.

Then we scooted around the shore of Lake BG to Reconciliation Place to see what the celebrations were all about! I've never seen so many people around the lake in Canberra, although (having not even glanced at a program) it wasn't easy to see what these people were doing, or planning to do. Unfortunately by the time we made it around both girls were flagging. Two fire trucks briefly caught their attention and improved their spirits but we knew that we'd done our dash and turned for home. Maybe when Canberra turns 105 we might have the stamina to last until the fireworks ...

Traumatic Tuesday Update

You probably read about Ella's bike Lucy having a run in with the garage door last month. On closer inspection of the car, it became apparent that the roof rack could not go back on the car due to the bent bits on the interior component of the driver and passenger doors. The doors themselves closed perfectly and the dent in the roof was minimal.

Anyway we rely heavily on the bike roof rack so decided to have it assessed to see whether to make a claim on our car insurance. Let me say we had never before made a claim and we were about to get educated!

Now our old car, aka Betsy, was a 2000 Nissan Pulsar, she had seen better days but was perfectly fine for us especially since we are off to the UK in 6 weeks time. We had just renewed our car insurance policy ($600 for the year) where Betsy had dropped $1500 to $3000. So it was extremely unfortunate that the garage incident happened 5 days into our new policy.

Thinking that we would be paying an excess of $600 to have Betsy repaired just so that we could use the roof racks, we were astounded when the assessor rang to tell us that Betsy was too expensive to repair and would be written off!  He explained further that the whole roof panel needed replacing, it would have to come from Japan which would take 6 weeks and following that the whole car would need to be spray painted all costing much more than the car was worth.

The words written off was Betsy's death sentence. From that point in time Betsy was no longer insured (except for 3rd party person). Even if we cancelled the claim, Betsy was branded as written off and still not insured. We had no option but to take the cash (minus the excess of course) and we were instantly without a car!!

Thank goodness for family, we were able to juggle using Nana's car and all of a sudden we were in the market for a new car. Luckily we had already been discussing the options of our next car envisaging to buy one towards the end of the year. These discussion were all pointing towards a small, front wheel drive SUV.

One saturday afternoon we left the girls with Nana and did a lap of the car yards at Belconnen. Our list quickly whittled down to Mazda CX5 and VW Tiguan. An annual leave day in the following week saw us test drive both as well as negotiate the best deal.

Introducing Loopsy, aptly named by the girls, the Mazda CX5 who we picked up today!

Sunday Activities

Sunday dawned and Andy headed to Slap Up Creek for the day (he is controlling the 2013 Australian Long Distance Orienteering Champs event to be held in October). Rather than go on the merry-go-round in town, we ventured out to the Hall Markets for a real pony ride. Ella was convinced that she was going to ride a Falabella (miniature pony) she had seen in a book.

Meet Calypso, a 20 year old chestnut pony who dutifully took Ella and Katy around after I had emptied my purse of money ($9 per child for about a 200m loop!!) Both girls beamed and were very excited by the whole adventure. We enjoyed some dutch pancakes and that was the morning.

Our afternoon plans involved attending Josh's 8th birthday party. He had decided to have an orienteering, code breaking, treasure hunt around his suburb.  Wasn't sure how Katy was going to keep up with 8 year olds so I threw in her balance bike which proved to be an awesome move. 

Maki, Ella, Katy and I started the course early and managed to mostly stay ahead of the pack. At each control, there was a symbol with corresponding letter as well as a little challenge e.g. go down slide 3 times, throw 3 water balloons at someone....there was even a monster who jumped out of a thicket...Ella looked worried, Maki said that's my monster mask and Katy just cried!!

Eventually we got to the last clue, cracked the code to discover the treasure was hidden in a nearby hedge! Susie, Patrick and Grandpa did an awesome job at organising and coordinating the whole thing without losing any of the guests as well as making a very impressive treasure chest cake!