Red Balloon!

While Stan worked at PwC, employee incentives would be either a bonus ($$), dinner somewhere posh, alcohol (which is lame since we are non-drinkers) or redballoon gift certificates. Red Balloon is a company that puts all the "things to do" in Australia/ New Zealand under one umbrella; basically it is a marketing/ advertising company that has created a web site where you can book an experience. You book with them (redeem your gift card) and they pass the booking onto the designated company in Sydney. It is great for tourists and ex-pats like me because it is a quick answer to the question "what can you do in Australia?"

Some examples of thing you can book are sky diving, sleep-over on a yacht, cooking classes, massages, chocolate tasting....you name it. Anyway, we had three gift certificates all about to expire in the next two weeks so I booked some things we could do as a family. Which by the way was a HUGE sacrifice on my part for not checking myself into the spa while everyone was at school :-) First off, we went up to Penrith to put-put golf. We got the second game for free because we booked through red balloon (score). The kids did well but Thomas was terrified by most of the exhibits. i.e. haunted houses, ghost towns, alien invaders etc...

Technique!

Check out his grip!

Pirate section

Thomas scared to death!

Alien invasion section

Miss Mary

Pirate section

Egyptian/ mummy section (when your ball goes in the hole a mummy comes up).

Jungle section

Stay tuned for a few more red Balloon activities in the next little while.

Ps. YES, I am going to work here some day....Can I say perfect fit with my educational background? AND...as an employee you "try" out experiences so my family would pretty much have Saturday/ party day set for the rest of their lives!! http://www.redballoon.com.au/

First Day of Work & Valentines Day

This Friday Stan got a phone call from Bain that said his visa had come through and he could start work on Monday! ....Valentines Day!!! :-( Because we didn't know what to expect nor did we want him to leave work early we went out on Saturday night. In hindsight this was kind of funny because Stan was being interviewed to be the new Stake President at our church and then we played hookie during the Saturday Session of Stake conference so we could go out! (Seriously, who does that, obviously not Stake Presidents b/c he ultimately wasn't picked!) Thanks Stan, I had a wonderful time! We just went out to a Thai restaurant but were having so much fun we totally lost track of time and were almost an hour late picking up our kids from the babysitters (oops!)

On Monday, Valentines was more about my kids than my sweetheart. I got some heart balloons for each kid and taped it to their chair for breakfast. I made them breakfast and then got treats for their class (heart cupcakes) to share. Olivia was pretty excited about Valentines and made one love card for her secret crush. Stan kept telling her if she hands it out he will know she likes him but she didn't care.

Valentines morning I forgot the card was in my purse and when Olivia asked me for it after school her crush was gone! She was pretty sad and is now too embarrassed to give it to him b/c Valentines is over. The best card I got this year was from Olivia she thanked me for being a great mum and it really caught me off guard to get one from her! Also, thank you Granny Joanne for the shirts and great grandma/pa Tengelsen for the cards; my kids were elated to get mail!

Valentines is much bigger in the USA than Australia. At school there are no cards, in the stores there are no heart shaped candies but there are lots of roses and chocolates and the marketing is more targeted towards the young/ dating crowed. When Olivia brought in treats (which she cleverly masked as her show-and-tell (I forgot) the teachers were curious what the occasion was....she was like, "today is Valentines Day!"

(Side note: I think, due to the high Asian population, that Valentines is largely ignored as Chinese new year went from Feb 9--23rd (year of the rabbit, and Sydney has a very high Asian population!)

Monday night when Stan came home from work he was tired, excited, and overwhelmed. Bain is fantastic and he loves it. He really did land his dream job.

Here is his desk and view....yes, that is the opera house!

The first two weeks are training and then he will have two weeks to work on a case until he is flown to the USA for more training. I am sure he will keep up just fine but Stan insists that with training there is a lot of stuff to remember and the power point slides just aren't that exciting! I on the other hand, saw his training schedule and the final night he gets to go on a champagne/harbor cruise party....So yes, he will be drinking apple juice but I would sit through two weeks of power point slides any day to end it with a cruise by the opera house and harbor bridge! Seriously, Happy Valentines Stan

Cyclones and heat waves!

Australia is having a very bad summer this year. First it wouldn't stop raining and Queensland and Victoria (two of the seven territories in Australia) flooded. This was bad but then a few weeks later Queensland was hit by a Cyclone. It was not as bad as they predicted, but they predicted the worst Cyclone in history and it wasn't. Still the devastation was quite bad.

While Queensland was getting hit by the Cyclone New South Wales (the territory where Sydney is) had the biggest heat wave in 150 years! For 5 days we ranged between 95-108 and it did not cool down at night! Each day we would get up and head somewhere with AC. When the kids couldn't sit long enough anymore (like how we had to leave the play area in the public library) we would go somewhere else. Every time I sat down somewhere with AC it would be a crazy battle to not instantly fall asleep....and I couldn't fall asleep, not with three kids who were tired but excited with all these new places we were visiting.

I do not think I will ever forget Stan pulling the car over at about 1:00pm in the afternoon during the day it was 108 F heat and rolling down the windows and asking everyone to breath in the heat and make a mental memory. Thank you Stan....it only took 30 minutes to get the car tempurature back to what it was before the memory :-)

On a sour note I think at the end of the 5 days we as a family were behaving the worst we have ever behaved before. We have never fought, or yelled, or cried, or teased etc.... the way we did after a week of no sleep at night and minimal refuge from the heat during the day.

To top it off Stan has been very disappointed to not start at Bain when he had hoped too (he missed the initial training with all the new hires). As the Australian government has not transferred his work visa sponsorship from PwC to Bain. To work you must be sponsored by a company if you are not a resident. So legally he cannot work until this comes through and since we are on a work visa we cannot leave the country until this comes through (in case we were thinking of going on a holiday with his extra free time--which we were)....So we will stay in Australia with the heat...and no AC and wait!!

First Day of School!

The first Monday following Australia Day is the first week of school. In Australia the school year goes like so:

Term 1: Jan--March (then two weeks off for Easter Break)

Term 2:April--June (then two weeks off early July--winter holiday)

Term 3: July-Sept (again two weeks off (sadly, always during Olivia's b-day)

Term 4 Oct-Dec (then the last two weeks off for Christmas break)

This year both Olivia & Mary are attending Russell Lea Infants School. This school is for children from kindy to year 2; which is why I like it! Although a public school, I find it gives a lot of attention to the little kids as it is a very small school. I drive through two other towns to get to it every day. There are no school buses in Sydney (everyone takes public transport or their parents drive them; with the exception of the private schools). So I drop them off and pick them up each day.

Olivia (year 2) was very excited for her first day of school as she was put in the class with all her friends and her classroom is a place called "The Cottage". The school is set up like any school in a tropical climate with classrooms as separate buildings, with a court yard in the middle and awnings to cover you from the sun when you switch classes. Basically, The Cottage is away from the rest of the school buildings and they have their own little garden in the back of their classroom.

Olivia on her first day of year 2

As an older kid, Olivia now gets to do special school assignments like getting to lock the school gate each day, or putting away recess equipment or being a trash monitor! She told me she needed to have a meeting with her friends so they could think of ways they could be leaders at school and help everyone. She said they would need to use the Wii for the meeting! :-)

A big win on her first day of school was that Olivia was the only kid in her class to have learned some of her multiplication tables over the summer. She was buzzing to tell us how math time was spent with the teacher asking a question as she was giving every answer.

Mary (kindy) is the tallest girl in her class! She also got Mrs. Stephenson this year who was Olivia's kindy teacher. We liked her very much so we were very happy to get her again. Mary was very brave the first day but was tired at the end of the day (106 F) as the power kept going out and the schools could not run their air conditioning. The second day she cried because she said "school is long and we don't get to play that much!" I later learned that recess/ lunch play time were cancelled as it was too hot to play outside and the children had to stay inside to watch a movie. In addition, due to the heat I was also able to pick Mary up early from school. Either way she is right...nothing like preschool!

Mary's first day of Kindergarten!

At Russell Lea, each year two child picks a kindy child to be their buddy. They walk the kindy kids up to their class, carry their bags for them, teach them how to jump rope and help them at recess time. This year Olivia is Mary's buddy; and for the first time in about a year (or longer) the girls (1) did not fight in the car when I picked them up from school and (2) played together without fighting until bed time--crazy hu! It could be a good year!

Olivia being Mary's buddy and walking her into class!

First day of school! New backpacks....imported from America!

ps. I am so excited for this next year as I am no longer running the uniform shop for the school and I will have some serious free time! I guess I should think about potty training Thomas!