Saturday, December 21, 2013

Katy Graduates!

As the year comes to an end, we had many functions/ parties and gatherings! First was Fun Night at Acton, where the 4 and 5 year old children who are leaving the centre stay back having fun until 8.30pm. They make their own dinner of pizza, fruit salad and ice cream followed by playing lots of games.

Andy, Ella and I took the opportunity to go out for dinner, meeting up with Susie, Patrick and family at Edgars in Ainslie. Our pub meal was nicely complimented by an ice cream all except Mia who chose frozen peas as her dessert from the local IGA!!

Back to Acton to pick up Katy and we were treated the the best part of Fun Night - the fire show put on by one of the carers and her husband. With the children safely tucked inside behind the glass windows, Mark and Pixie perform their tricks! Mark breathes fire like a dragon and waves a fire sword around, while Pixie very cleverly twirls firesticks. The children watched in awe and made some pretty funny observations and comments.

Next we attended the Acton Childcare Christmas Concert and Graduation Ceremony. Katy joined her fellow Kanooka classmates and sang several songs including a few in Spanish before receiving her graduation certificate and packet of seeds.




Yesterday was Katy's last day of childcare...yipeee! She took in home baked chocolate chip cookies. We are blessed that our children have attended such a fantastic centre with so many wonderful carers, children and parents. However both Andy and I are extremely excited to complete this era of our lives and very much look forward to having two girls at school.

Real v's Not Real

Last weekend we took the plunge and headed to the mall for a Santa photo as it has been several years since the last one. I think half of Canberra had the same idea as the line was very long...we estimated an hour's wait so opted to go shopping, lunch and coffee in hope that the line may decrease.

Wishful thinking...we returned to find the line a little shorter so made the decision to look at the line at the Myer Santa. Much shorter, slightly cheaper but as we stood and waited and waited and waited it was obvious they were way less organised and efficient. Eventually we found ourselves at the front of the line and ready to meet Santa.

While waiting in the line, Ella had declared to me that this wasn't the real Santa! Who was he then? Just a man dressed up - one of Santa's helpers and the other Santa in the mall wasn't real either! Probing further I asked who was the real Santa and where was he? Ella then went on the making it up as she went along...well there are 2 no 4 Santas...one for this half of the world, one for that half of the world.....

Daryl and Michelle went on a holiday to Finland and sent a postcard of the real santa in the snow with his reindeer...but Ella wasn't convinced with him either. I can't remember why he wasn't the real one. Oh the complex mind of the young ones figuring out the world! At least one thing has been consistent and that is their present request from Santa although Katy's request has expanded to include a scooter... or one might say someone planted a seed!! Here is Ella's first letter to Santa.

Dances

For the second half of last term, Ella's class participated in dance lessons. She would come home excitedly to shows us the new dance....chicken dance or the macarena and she was a little surprised when we joined in on this one! Brought back memories...

On one particular afternoon Ella began singing in her own words ag a do do do. Andy who was home at the time suggested he may have the words to that song and pulled out his 1985 On Fire record. Not sure why we have these old records since we don't have a turntable.....anyway Ella was curious as to what he was doing. Andy replied that it was how we used to play music only to have Ella exclaim but Daddy it won't fit in the CD player!! Yep we're getting old!

And just incase you are wondering the lyrics to the 1984 hit are -

Ag-a-doo-doo-doo, push pineapple, shake the tree
Aga-doo-doo-doo, push pineapple, grind coffee
To the left, to the right, jump up and down and to the knees
Come and dance every night, sing with a hula melody

Saturday, December 7, 2013

Home Day

Today was just lovely. We had no commitments and decided to have a home day. Katy and I are recovering well almost back to normal. Andy who also got sick last week decided to have a quiet day.

It was a lazy (sleep in) start to the morning followed by eggs and bacon for breakfast before heading out into the garden. The vegie patch is coming along nicely. Potatoes look great, corn tassles are out doing their job, tomatoes are flowering with even a few green ones developing, rocket and spinach have gone nuts, the zucchini looks like it's going to be a bumper crop this year and the rhubarb is growing well showing no signs of distress since we moved it.



 



Katy has been busy picking her snow peas that have been fruiting over the past few weeks.


Ella decided on growing carrots which she harvested today. She washed and peeled the little carrots and together with the snow peas made a nice addition to tonights dinner :)



However the most exciting discovery was seeing that our pear tree is fruiting for the first time! I'm hoping that five or so beautiful beurre bosc pears will survive long enough for us to eat them!


On Call

Part of my new work environment involves going on call....that means for a week between the hours of 7.30 to 8am I am the person the emergency department doctors will call if they need an urgent ultrasound. To say I was a little nervous about this would be an understatement! The on call phone was always close at hand and I'm sure I wasn't sleeping properly constantly worried about missing the call. Anyway no calls the first night; a call on both the second and third nights which required no action; all quiet on the fourth night and by this stage I was beginning to think this wasn't too bad after all!

Famous last words! It was tiring all this waiting business so I headed to bed early on fifth night only to wake up at midnight with a temp of 39ยบ! Had a contingency plan for everything else except this. Prayed really hard for the phone not to ring and I think someone up there was looking out for me. Not surprisingly called in sick for work the next day. A trip to the doctors who diagnosed a virus and wanted to write me off for the next five days! Said I couldn't do that...I was on call which included working the weekend too. Did I mention that Katy was sick too with similar symptoms!

Slept all afternoon waking in the early evening and was very glad that one of my colleagues could cover my on call for the night as well as my day shift the next day. Eventually got out of bed at lunchtime the next day as the high temp has finally subsided. Felt fairly average but thought I'd be ok for the rest of my on call shifts. Got called in that night at a respectable time of 9.30pm and managed ok for Sunday which turned out to be a nice amount of busy.

Arrived home at 5.30pm Sunday night and while Andy was cooking dinner, the girls and I got out the Christmas tree. We put the tree together, draped the lights around and then the on call phone rang! Luckily I had time to have dinner before heading back into work. Andy and the girls completed the tree decoration while I was gone.


 


So my first experience at on call will be one that I'd like to forget. My tentative plans for my two roster days off last week were foiled by still being sick (along with Katy). Oh well at least next time can't be that bad.....won't have to wait long to find out.....next on call shift is in early January!

Monday, December 2, 2013

Little Aths

Now an U7, Ella is excited to be doing little ath's again. So most Saturdays you'll find Andy accompanying the U7 girls group around their events with little Katy in tow. Of course apart from discus and long jump being her favourite events, playing around with the other girls and eating icy pole at the end of the morning makes it fun too.

Keen to improve, Ella has been going to wednesday night training where the focus is on technique. So her discus and turbo jav are looking much better. Perhaps Andy should give her some tips on starting based on the photo to the right.

Actually the girls will take advantage of any opportunity that comes up to practice! And Katy is keen to do more than follow the leader and climb trees....