Category: Travel

Our mammoth long weekend – day 3

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Saturday morning my body clock woke me up at 6:30am (7:30am Victoria time) and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t fall asleep again. So at 7:30am I decided to stop trying and got up and leisurely got ready for my 9am doctor’s appointment. Being almost 37 weeks pregnant at the time, I had to get a letter from a doctor 24 hours before my flight, saying I was fit to fly. I decided to get there a bit early (8:35am) in the hope that I could get in a bit earlier, but didn’t end up going in til 9:05!! Oh well You win some you lose some. After stopping at the shops I headed home and woke Hubs up (lucky bugger) and had some yummy leftovers for brekky. We then started welcoming friends and family whom Mum and I had invited over for the morning. It turned out to be only about a dozen people who arrived and left at all different times so it was really nice to catch up with them.

During all of this, my gorgeous cousins agreed to do my hair for me for the wedding:
And, well, I don’t mean to brag, but as usual I think Hubs and I scrub up okay 🙂

The wedding was absolutely wonderful, and, as I suspected, I needed the waterproof mascara and extra tissues. The service was very traditional and similar to ours, so it was lovely to re-live the vows Hubs and I exchanged in the same place a few years ago. Jess, the bride, looked absolutely stunning, and Matt, the groom, was wearing the biggest, widest grin you could imagine. It was a very personal service that really suited them both and I’m so glad Hubs and I could be there to share it with them.

After the ceremony, we had over 3 hours to kill so we decided on the spur of the moment to head out to our friend’s place in Zilmere (about half an hour north of the CBD), as he was having his 30th birthday party. We turned up as a surprise and it was really nice catching up with them. The party hadn’t officially started so we had them mostly to ourselves for a little while.

We then headed back in to town for the reception and were delighted at the table we had been seated at – we met some lovely new people and shared good conversation accompanied by good food and (just a little) good wine. Matt & Jess had hired the same DJ that we had at our wedding, (from our recommendation) so we said hi to him and he remembered us which was really nice. They even played our wedding song during dinner (more tears) which was lovely.

Then it was time for us to hit the dance floor, and, as I already mentioned, we hit it HARD! Hubs was in fine form, pulling out The Robot and a good AC/DC head-bang. I couldn’t pull out my usual moves with my extra cargo, but still had my moments! Alas, all good weddings must come to an end, so at 11:45pm the bride and groom bid us adieu and we headed to the car. As we took off, Hubs looked at me, and I looked at him and we knew what each other was thinking. (Don’t be rude.) Our friends were having a Halloween Party out at Arana Hills (about 15 min from CBD) that night, so we gave them a call to see if they were still kicking on. And sure enough, they were!! So we headed out there and caught up with 4 really good friends of ours (including 2 of Hubs’ groomsmen!)

I truly don’t know where all the energy was coming from but it just didn’t stop! At 2am though, it was time to head home and I was pretty happy to crash into bed at 2:30. A full 20 hours of being awake, and one of the best/most fun/memorable days EVER! I begrudgingly set the alarm for 8am the “next morning” and drifted off into a deeeeeep sleeeeeeep…

Our mammoth long weekend – days 1 & 2

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Well it’s a good thing I have all this energy at the moment, as the 6-day-weekend we just had was not for the faint-hearted! It began on Thursday when we drove the kombi from Wang to Melbourne just after lunch, arriving around afternoon tea time to catch up with the staff at Newman College. It was really nice to see everyone and catch up on all their news, and to share my growing bump with them.

We then headed over to our friend’s place where Hubs and our friends headed out to a photography exhibition while I looked after their 2 & 4 year old sons and their neighbour’s 3 year old daughter. We had a great time in the bath (clearly that was the kids, not me) and had some dinner and then had lots of stories. I had them all in bed by 8pm and was commended for my “baby whispering”! I guess I just wore them all out with all those exciting stories!

We were up at 6am Friday for our 9am flight from Avalon. We drove the kombi to the airport hassle-free and the plane left basically on time. We arrived in Brizzie just after 10am (thanks to daylight savings) and headed over to Nanny and Grandpa’s for a spot of lunch. It was lovely to see them as usual and so good to have yummy Nanny food again! And she was very happy to see us, though she couldn’t help herself and told me I shouldn’t be flying now that I am a “big lady”. 🙂

A snap from lunch:

We then headed to St Andrew’s Uniting Church in town, the location of a very memorable day in December almost 3 years ago, for the wedding rehearsal for “Brisbane’s Wedding of the Year”. Hubs rehearsed walking the lovely bride down the aisle,

and it was a pretty typical wedding rehearsal, other than the pregnant lady sitting in the 3rd row having a little cry. Yes. At the rehearsal. You got something to say about that? I knew that the following day I would have to a) wear water-proof mascara and b) take extra tissues.

We had kept the evening plan-free just in case of a pre-wedding dinner, so when the bride and groom decided to just have a quiet night in, we arranged for Hubs’ Mum, sister and kids to come on over for dinner at my parent’s place. In the mean time, we hung around town for a bit and grabbed a coffee and just chilled out together. It was really lovely being back in our old stomping ground and enjoying the lovely warm weather. We were talking about who we might run in to, as is inevitable whilst in Brisbane. And sure enough, on our way to the rendezvous point to meet my Mum for our lift home, we ran into very good friends of mine and their 6 month old daughter whom I hadn’t met yet!

She. Was. Divine. And her dear parents were very lucky that I’m about to pop out one of our own, or I may have run off with their little cherub. I actually had tears of joy and awe at this gorgeous little girl (seeing a hormonal pattern here people??) I simply had to get some shots with her.

The lovely Henna and the gorgeous little baby Iida

It was SO nice to see our friends and have a little catch up! We headed back to Mum and Dad’s for a feast of seafood marinara and carbonara pasta and Nanny’s apple pie for dessert. And of course, we had to play with the lego as well.

Lego time!
And we had to take some fun photos! Mine’s the biggest!!

And our friend Ian popped over around dessert time as well, so that was another bonus! So that was the first 2 days of our awesome weekend – and they were the most restful days! So much more to come…

I’ve still got it

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Yesterday we went to Brisbane’s “wedding of the year” (blog post to come) and I don’t like to brag, but Hubs and I shook our groove thing on the dancefloor at the reception for almost 2 hours with only a few drink/toilet/not-our-kind-of-music breaks. Let me remind you, ladies and gents, that I’m 37 weeks pregnant AND I was wearing heels. Heels people! I was pretty impressed with my efforts to be honest. I’ve been a little nervous about losing energy at times when energy is needed, but my Duracel batteries just kept going and going – from 6:30am when I woke up (not on purpose – my body clock was being a pain) til my head hit the pillow at 2:35am this morning (we decided it would be fun to go to our friend’s Halloween party after we left the wedding last night – totally worth it!)

Needless to say I cannot WAIT to get into bed tonight as I’m sure it’s going to be the best night’s sleep I’ve had in a week. And maybe, just maybe I’m not going to have as much trouble with the upcoming sleep-deprivation as I thought I might?! (One can hope!)

Another Swap Meet

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After going to the swap meet in Shepparton a few weeks ago, I wasn’t about to start doing cartwheels when Hubs said there was another one he wanted to go to in Melbourne. “But this one’s a VW only Swap Meet” he says. Like that’s supposed to make it better?

I was a little sceptical but we got up at 7:00am on the Sunday after the game as we wanted to “fight the crowds” and “get a good parking spot”. The swapping and meeting started at 8am and we arrived around 8:30am at Williamstown. As we were “looking for a park” we saw a few VWs and then drove right past the venue – there were parks right outside!! Obviously this meet was a lot more low-key than the last which was absolutely fine by me!

We actually had a really nice time chatting with fellow kombi and VW owners about this and that and Hubs bought himself some carbis!

I’m not sure that he needed all 3, but considering he also wanted to buy a whole “new” engine that I talked him out of, I let it slide. Thankfully there wasn’t the junk at this meet that there was at the last meet, and it was wholly VW-related. Some of the cars were just gorgeous!

And some had the potential (maybe… eventually…) to be so:

And one kombi in particular, around the same model as ours (1977) was fully restored. It was nice to see what our kombi could maybe look like one day…. (but, you know, with our own kids…)

And of course there weren’t just kombis! It was a VW affair after all.

I had some photos of some beetles as well but don’t seem to have them with me right now. But you all know what they look like 🙂 It really was a nice way to spend a Sunday morning and afterwards we went and had a coffee and cake, but that deserves a post all of its own.

Oh what a game

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Even if your life doesn’t revolve around AFL, that is, you’re not a Victorian, you would have heard about the drawn grand final on Saturday between St Kilda and Collingwood. Hubs and I were with friends at their friend’s place in Melbourne, so we only knew 3 other people out of the 30-odd who were there, but that didn’t stop us from cheering like mad. As I’ve mentioned, you either support Collingwood, or you hate them, so most people were hoping the Saints would win.

St Kilda were behind for almost the whole game, and at one stage by 3 or 4 goals, but we were never out of it. We never lost hope of being able to come back. And in the 3rd quarter, named “the premiership quarter” we came back and kept Collingwood goal-less. It was incredibly exciting and certainly the best game of football I’ve ever seen in my life. When we hit the lead for the first time, the room, bar the 3 Collingwood supporters, went absolutely nuts! But it wasn’t won yet. Both teams stepped up to the challenge and played like they’ve never played before, and to be honest, a draw was one of the best results possible. What I mean by this, is that you just couldn’t separate the 2 teams on the day. They were both deserved winners, and Hubs thinks they both should have been able to take a trophy home and be done with it.

But that’s not how it works in the “real world.” When the final siren blasted with the scores deadlocked at 68 all, we assumed extra time would be played. But no. That’s not how they do it in the AFL. They started talking about “coming back next week to battle it out again.” Say what now? I have to go through this all over again??? I barely avoided labour this time around!!!! (People at the party kept looking at me and a few asked “when are you due again??”)

So that’s the way it’s going to be. This Saturday at 2pm they will have a re-match. In a lot of ways, it’s no big deal. Another game of footy to watch – what’s wrong with that? But if you consider all the things that are planned for the week after the AFL grand final, Victoria is a mess! All the grooms who have said to their brides-to-be “as long as the wedding isn’t in September, that’s fine” to which they reply “okay honey-bunny. We’ll make it for the first weekend in October.”

Oh boy. There would have been a lot of nervous brides at full-time.

Anyway, the main point of this post was to say how amazing the game was and how much Hubs and I enjoyed it and how it was all people could talk about afterwards. We witnessed history and it was great to be a part of that. Now we just have to go through it all again this Saturday. GO SAINTS!!!

The Swap Meet

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Ever been to one? Even know what one is? Any interest in attending one? Before Sunday the 12th September 2010, my answers to these 3 questions were “no”, “not really”, “not overly, but Hubs is excited so that’s good enough for me.” Hubs has been working very hard for the last few weeks to get the kombi up and running, and his hard work was rewarded on Thursday night when he had completed all the jobs he thought would fix it, and the beast started. And it hasn’t stopped since!

Over the preceding days we had been talking about buying another car – something a little more “family-friendly”, and one that… you know… was working. But as we were taking the kombi for a test-drive around town on the Thursday night, Hubs with a big grin on his face, I turned to him and said “We’re not going to be getting another car now, are we?…” His response? “HELL NO WOMAN.” And seeing that smile was all the convincing I needed. We were due to head down to Melbourne over the weekend and come back through Shepparton on the Sunday to attend the Annual Goulburn Valley Swap Meet. We still need a few parts for the car (including a centre seat) and thought it might be a fun way to spend a Sunday.

Up until Thursday night, we were thinking we’d have to hire a car, but thankfully I have a brilliant Hubsband who fixes stuff, so we jumped in the kombi on a sunny Friday afternoon and headed down the Hume towards Melbourne. We caught up with friends on Friday night and the Saturday, and loaded up the kombi with all sorts of marvelous baby furniture and paraphernalia, thanks to our wonderful friends the Baileys and the Bakers. We then caught up with Hubs’ uni friends for dinner on Saturday night and watched the end of the Bulldogs vs Swans game – a great night was had by all, and it was so lovely to see all our wonderful friends.

Sunday morning was an early start with the alarm going off at 5:30am. “We” (Hubs) wanted to be at Shep by 8am ish, but ended up getting there closer to 9am. (I slept half the drive.) I was quite intrigued about this whole “swap meet” thing and Hubs was telling me that it was a “Classic Cars Swap Meet” so I was looking forward to seeing lots of restored vehicles and, well you know, Classic Cars!

I was to be frightfully disappointed.

The reality was more like this: Every August, wives of Goulburn Valley start pestering their husbands to “clean out all the junk in the garage” to which the husbands respond “it’s not junk! This stuff has a lot of value!” The wives say something along the lines of “I don’t care what you do with it, just get rid of it!” So the husbands cleverly think to themselves “I know – the annual swap meet us coming up! I’m sure I’ll be able to sell my junk there.” And that’s 80% of what we saw. Junk from people’s garages. The “classic cars” were few and far between, and it became evident VERY early on that we weren’t going to find what we were looking for.

Add in some soft rock playing on a loop in the background (80s and 90s baby – I was in heaven!), some sausages on bread, the odd mullet or 2, more than enough ugg boots, and 1 lone kombi (a 1977 model – one year younger than ours*) and you’re pretty much looking at 3 hours of Wifey being very good at not complaining but wishing she was lounging around somewhere else. Anywhere else!!

Here are some examples of what we saw:

Now to be fair, there were SOME classic cars. They seemed to be either looking like this:

(believe it or not, this one had a “SOLD” sign on it)

…or this…
…or this! (NOW we’re talking!)

(For more fab photos, visit Hubs’ flickr page here.)

So we arrived with the desire to buy a couple of carburetors, a center seat, and a new engine :-). We left with a “new” saucepan ($10), 5 lemons ($1), 2kg of nuts ($20), 2 cook books ($2) and some snow chains ($5). I was excited with my little treasures, but Hubs was annoyed he didn’t get to buy anything manly. The snow chains were a bit of a “I want to BUY SOMETHING” purchase, but hopefully they’ll come in handy.

Hubs has since heard through the grapevine that there is a VW Only Swap Meet in Melbourne in a couple of weeks time, so we’re heading down for that one too, and will hopefully find what we’re looking for. Although, if the last one was anything to go buy, it might just be a whole lot of non-car-related junk from VW owners’ garages. Only time will tell…

*technically the kombi we drive still belongs to Hubs’ family, but Hubs adopted it 10 years ago and has never left it’s side.

Another baby shower!

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I headed up to Brizzie a few weeks ago to visit with my family and friends to share this whole “growing a baby inside my belly thing” with them. A few of my girlfriends were really keen to throw me a baby shower, so how could I possibly say no? Hubs wasn’t able to come up with me for this visit, so I went solo. It takes longer (obviously) to get to Brizzie from Wang, than it does from Melbs. Throw in a cancelled flight and more delays, and you have one tired Wifey arriving in Brisbane at 6:30pm, after getting on the bus from Wang (to Melbs) at 6:30am. It was totally worth it though!

We went and visited Nanny in hospital (she’s much better now) on the Thursday night after I arrived, then I had a lovely sleeeeeeep in on Friday and had a nice day with Kate and Alex (mmmm….. baby cuddles) and then had a nice relaxed evening at home with Mum and Dad. Dad and I watched the footy and had an early night. Then I had brunch with Ma and came back to Mum and Dad’s place for lunch before the showering began!

It was so lovely, as always, to see all my girlfriends and rellies. We played a couple of games, but mostly I just got to hang out with the most amazing women I know. There were lots of belly rubs (which, as you know, I don’t mind!) and oooohing and aaaaaahing over delightful gifts. I felt quite overwhelmed by all the love and support, and it certainly made leaving the next day harder.

Some happy snaps from the day:

The Belly Shot

Two Mums

Another 2 Mums! (Nanny’s still not happy that we live in “Victoria”)
With Ah-del and Bethie
The Nappy Cake (guess how many nappies!!)
(Bethie, you’ll have to leave the answer in the comments section cos I can’t remember!!)
I have some other photos but am having uploading issues, so I’ll hopefully share them another time! (And if you have any shots from the day, please feel free to email them to me!)

We then headed over to my bro’s birthday party at his place which was lots of fun. I got to catch up with a few of his friends whom I haven’t seen in a long time, and I met some lovely new people as well. It wasn’t a late night, and I was certainly ready for bed when we got home.

The next morning I had a leisurely brekky with Mum and Dad and then I had to sort through the 4 vacuum-sealed bags of clothes that Kate had left for me! That was quite a task! I picked out a few things that I thought might come in handy early on, and left the rest for when we stay in Brizzie over Christmas. There was just so much!! We left for the airport for my 1pm flight and arrived with plenty of time to spare. I was trying not to think about the actual leaving side of things, but as we walked to the security gates I lost it. I couldn’t stop crying and didn’t want to let go of Mum and Dad. The security guards told them to come through with me, which just meant I had to go through it all again once I had to board the plane!!

I managed to somewhat keep it together until I got on the plane, and then the waterworks began again. I was trying to be discreet, but it obviously wasn’t working as a flight attendant came over to me while everyone else was boarding to see if she could do anything for me. I just told her I was just a little bit sad and she looked at my bulging belly and said she understood.

Anyway, I made it home safe and sound around 10:30pm that night and was utterly emotionally and physically exhausted, but oh so happy as well. Hubs had texted me to say he had made me something and this is what greeted me on my arrival home:

I do love this man oh so much. If I remember correctly, it may have started the tears again, but in a really lovely way. Thanks again to everyone who came along on Saturday and sent their best wishes for our family. We know we’re a long way away, but I feel so close to you all and can’t wait to share more special times with you.

From Newman to Wang

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So as they say, better late than never. I’ve finally gotten around to going through all the photos we have taken the last couple of months, so I’ll be able to fill you in on our big move. First of all, packing up our unit at Newman was a mammoth task that we put off mostly until the Wednesday/Thursday/Friday before we moved. The funny thing about having limited space and trying to move all in one go, is that you end up packing the stuff you hardly ever use first, and have to leave the stuff you use often because it can’t fit in! Ridiculous, no?

I must say a very big thank you to everyone who offered to help and who did help, whether it was by manual labour, bringing over banoffee cakes, packing a trailor load of stuff to take up for us, and taking things off our hands (too many to mention). Oh, and to the cleaners at Newman for cleaning our flat for us on Monday!!! Something I thought I would have time and energy for, but Littlefoot decided to sap all my energy for the weekend so it didn’t get done.

As happened last time we packed the kombi, I just left Hubs to it and he did a great job. Even though it looked like this time we wouldn’t fit half our stuff in!

We were worried about pushing out the windows towards the end! I’m not sure we could have fit another thing in!!!

Deja vu anyone? I wanted a photo with the door open, but everything would have fallen out, so we had to make do. We were all packed by about 10am Saturday morning which was a pretty good effort if you ask me! Now Hubs, where do I fit??

This was a bit unacceptable for little ol’ preggo Wifey, so we dropped by our friend’s place who was already taking a trailor-load up for us, and left a few more things with him. This made for a much more pleasant trip. Victoria put on some glorious weather for us as we drove out of the Newman gates for the last time and onto the Hume.

The next chapter I already spoke about here, but here are some photos to go with our first couple of days in Wang.

Hubs trying to keep warm on our first night
Our lounge room and makeshift bedroom for the first few nights
Where oh where will it all go?

I’ll leave you with the “before” shots to ponder over, and let you get excited that I actually have some “after” shots to show you in the next few days!

Gone Fishin’

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A couple of weekends ago, we organised for a group of us to go on a fishing charter with Hubs’ Uncle Wayne. Uncle Wayne and Aunty Alida have been running this business for years (decades??) and we have been meaning to go on a charter with Wayne since we got here. So we FINALLY got around to setting a date aside. My friend Beth was visiting for the weekend, so I tentatively invited her along. I say tentatively, as the last time Beth and I went on a fishing charter, we spent most of the 4 hours hanging over the side of the boat, providing burley for the rest of the fishermen/women. But we weren’t perturbed by our last experience (I’m not sure how!), even after receiving a call from Wayne in the morning saying it was a bit rough out on the water that day. We thought “let’s just do it!!” and so we rendezvoused with the group at 12:45pm and set off.

It was such a beautiful day – bright blue sunshine! – but it was quite windy, so Wayne headed for more sheltered waters, and we cast our lines and waited. We didn’t have to wait long before we got some bites, and Beth caught the fist fish of the day – a pink snapper, or “pinkie” as they call them. Though, she wasn’t so impressed with getting up close and personal!

It wasn’t big enough to keep, so off it went, back in the drink. She did however catch the only “keeper” for the day a bit later on – a nice little flathead that we all had a little taste of for dinner that night. I had had lots of bites and my line felt quite heavy, but it wasn’t putting up a fight. I thought I might have myself either a log-fish or a crab. I was wrong!

Yes, that’s right folks. I caught myself a star fish. A first for me!! Hee hee. Quite a few of us were catching fish, but none of them were big enough to keep 🙁

Hubs and his catch

Wifey, convinced she’d caught the same fish as Hubs

Luke and Grae, catching… ummm….. not much at all! 🙂

Uncle Wayne cooking up a storm for us on the BBQ
Beer + Friends + Fishing = Awesomeness!

Melbourne really turned on some great weather for us, and thanks to travel sickness tablets, ginger tablets and ginger beer, Bethie and I didn’t provide any burley for the trip. Hooray! We’re so glad we managed this before moving out to Wang. Something else to cross off our “to do” list!

Travelling Tassie IV

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We noticed how close Launceston was to Swansea and decided to “pop in” on the way back to Hobart. We said our goodbyes to Lesla and Mike…

(Not the best photo, but you can see how close they are to the water!) and were on our way. It was suggested that we head to Cataract Gorge, so armed with a map we drove through the beautiful town of Launceston. And beautiful it was! I love that all the houses are different colours (same as Hobart!) and the Autumn leaves really set it off! We parked the car near the gorge and started our walk.

Did I mention is was cold? I mean, the locals were wearing light clothing, but I had 4 layers on. Chilly!!! It was a very pretty walk though, and we started warming up quite quickly.

When we got to “the end” it was like we’d stepped on to a movie set, hidden away from everything! There was a swimming pool, a restaurant, a cafe, a bar, a chair lift, a suspension bridge and a park. It was really amazing! And wouldn’t you know it, I don’t have any photos of it on my memory stick. I’ll have to see what I have at home! It really was gorgeous! There are 2 ways of returning to the start – the high road or the low road 🙂 We had taken the low road there, which was the easy route, and we had planned to take the high road home which was more of a hike, but I was just too knackered. We got back to the car and started our journey back to Hobart.

We arrived back at the B&B and this time we were booked into a room at the back of the building, with our own ensuite! Gorgeous! And oh so quiet (sssshhhh sssshhh). We returned the car with no additional costs (woo hoo!) and caught the last quarter of a Carlton vs Geelong game at the pub. Then we used our last $19 to buy some dinner (noodles/rice at a cute little Asian take away joint) and it was back to the B&B for a night in.

What a great trip! We had such a lovely time and really enjoyed the ease of getting around Tassie. Hubs wants to do a Cradle Mountain hike one of these days, and it’s definitely a place I’d love to come back to. I’m so glad we were able to visit while still living in Melbourne. The next trip on the list? Back to Brissie for a weekend at the end of May. Hope to see some of you then!

Here’s what I was talking about when I mentioned the different coloured houses in Hobart. Just beautiful!