2007 Royal Melbourne Show

Its a footie mad weekend this weekend as the Grand Final of the AFL was staged yesterday. Its a huge event in Melbourne and everyone has their traditions of where to watch the match & what they do on the day. As mere specators of all the action we we can only equate it to the FA cup final in England. It just seems bigger than that in terms of everyone being interested in it and talking about it. For the record, the Geelong Cats thrashed Port Adelaide by a margin of 119 points - a record in the 120 year history of the AFL.....

Anyway, our weekend besides that, was looking for houses and going to the 2007 Royal Melbourne Show. It was a windy, rain threatend day but it didn't stop Ethan clamouring for the 'showbags' which as I said last year is another annual tradition in Melbourne. He finally settled on a racing car showbag and Aidan got a Bob the builder one (selected for him by his mother). Both came away happy... amazing what bright plastic toys made in China can do for your kids. Probably covered in highly toxic paint - but they love them anyway.

You can see some of the pics from the show here.

Arrrrgh Jim Lad !

Here's Pirate Ethan at his latest social event for 4 year olds in Hampton. Yet another one of his Kindergarten friends has had a party (it's just the thing to do you know)..... The theme this time was Fairies, Pirates & Superhero's. I was just very glad that it wasn't the former and he settled on a pirate. You can see a few more photos by clicking here.

Snow Patrol in Oz

Been a while since we posted again, lots of stuff happening around the house in the UK and trying to find a house in Melbourne so time is a bit on the short side. This year just seems to be flying by for us. We had a our first night out in a while last week when we went to see Snow Patrol in concert at the Rod Laver arena. They're on their last leg of a worldwide show, finishing up in NZ. They were excellent... Chasing Cars(obviously) got biggest cheer of the night.

Spring is in the air

Not posted in a while as there's just been no time. Busy, busy, busy.
Seems odd for the Northern hemisphereists among you but Spring is arriving in Aus.... Melbourne managed to get to 25 degrees one day last week and we even went to the beach yesterday (although its not quite warm enough for that yet). We've both been busy with work, Maxine taking on new projects and Martin spending a fair bit of time in New Zealand going live with a new SAP system.
In the mean time the kids have had colds, hopefully the last one's of the season. Aidan's getting bigger by the day and is now standing by himself (although not quite willing to walk yet). Here's a couple of pics of them in the garden yesterday.

In other news our house sale in Warwick has fallen through so we're looking at keeping it rented now and buying another house in Melbourne. We're keen to have our own house here, so we're just going to take the plunge.... so hopefully we will have our own place before Christmas. We're in the process of applying for permanent residency and have had all our medicals done and all the documentation filled in (and there's lots of it!). Getting that obviously allows us to remain here indefinately and not have to apply for residency extensions on our current working visas. Pretty soon it'll feel like we're Aussies for real. My cork hat is in the post.