June 7 2009 ~ Happy Birthday Queen Mum?

Well a couple of weeks ago, as we walked in the house from school, Lana noticed a parcel sitting by the door. Before reading the label she yelled out that there was a package. I said it must be for me. She picked it up and excitedly yelled out that it most certainly was addressed to her & her brother. Well, we just barely got in the door before it was opened and the contents were spilled out everywhere. Their timing was perfect. Lana's friend was having a Hannah Montana party in a few days & Lana got to wear her new shirt (Am I the only one who sees a bit of Jessica in this shot?) Also, in their journey Diane & Joe got Nuno the coolest t-shirt that he modeled while at the zoo.

June 1, 2009 ~ Catch up

I just mentioned that I got back to running. It was something that I had debated doing & something that really pushed me over the edge was hearing Trisha Meili interviewed by Leonard Lopate (to hear interview click here:)

April 22, 2009 Our adventure to Rotorua & Coramandel

April 17, 2009 ~Carriage Rides & Train Rides

Granpa sure made the kids' day when he took us all for a train ride....click here for pictures

April 16, 2009 ~ Patty cake, patty cake, baker's man...

Waiheke Photos

Nails with Gran

April 12, 2009 ~ Congratulations to our Sailing Wonder Woman

Gran invited Lana & I out to her school for chapel. It was a lovely end of the term service. Since the student body is comprised of a variety of Polynesian cultures they are all represented in the church hymns. The students sang in Tongan, Fijian, Samoan, Maori as well as English. One of the staff members is leaving the school so there was also a dedication to him. The reverend presented him with a gift and a former student spoke after which the students all chanted a school song. It was so powerful. You can see clips here & here.

Then as we were walking out of chapel the students all gathered for what I thought was a school photo. I was wrong. They were gathering for a haka in honor of the parting teacher and the visiting guests. It was AMAZING!!!!  You must check it out here.

April 2, 2009 ~ World Autism Awareness Day

4-2-09 ~ Yesterday morning I received this picture of Big D.

My first thought was how he looked more like his mother than his two BIG brothers. Well, minutes later I get this in my inbox.

Okay I was wrong. The B-boys are in fact clones!!!

Sydney, much like all of New Zealand, has signs of life everywhere too. (I won't even get into the spiders, snakes & sharks here.) One thing that impressed me when I flew over for the house hunting and drove around with Pam was the amount of 'green' throughout the city. The city planners should be proud. Just in Sydney center there are too many parks to mention. There are the Botanical Gardens, Centennial Park, and the list goes on. Between Cricket ovals, children's parks, and ALL the trees lining the streets there is so much green in this town.

Well, thank God Hildy warned me about the unique birds I would hear.  I kid you not, but if you didn't know better you might think a monkey or screaming child was moving through the trees. I have linked to the 'Birds in the Backyard' (of Sydney) page. Click here to hear the bird calls. I highly recommend you check out the laughing Kookaburra & the Noisy Miner. I am also linking out to the flickr page where I have a clip from the harbor nearest to us. I have also linked to a clip taken at 6am in our backyard. It is because of this 'wake-up call' that I can not leave my children's windows open at night. Yes, I love that I can live 20 minutes outside a very large city and still have such wonderful contact with nature, but at 6am gratitude  for this is difficult to process.

March 2009

Congrats to Rui & Sandra on the birth of their gorgeous baby boy

3-11-09 ~ The other day I discovered a necklace in Nuno's backpack as I was preparing his lunch. Click here to see a clip of the exchange. I thought you all might enjoying hearing him speak. http://www.flickr.com/photos/kiwigalo/3345787245/

3-11-09 Breakfast of Champions

3-10-09 Differences ~ School:

Since we’ve arrived in Sydney there have been many pleasant surprises. One of the things that we have been confronted with is the many differences in the schooling. To begin with, the calendar is different. Not only do schools run from late January to December, but the year is broken into four 10 week terms. There are advantages to both systems. Although I do miss long weekends, which are quite rare here, it is nice that we get 3 two week blocks where we can plan family holidays during the school year. This is especially good for me us as it allows us three possible times to go back to the States during the school year. This is something the US calendar doesn’t really afford us.

The process of enrolling in a school is also dramatically different. In Australia when you register a child for school, the forms ask me for his/her citizenship status. This is actually against the law in the US. I had been warned that if she were not and Australian citizen, which she is, that we would have to pay for her schooling. This would cost about $6,000. Fortunately she is an Aussie. That being said, there are still other fees. We had to pay about $100 for her books, $245 for the resource fee, $40 additional classroom fees & the library fee of $60 which is optional & tax deductible. I am not complaining about these fees. Lana attends a lovely school and we can afford to pay. Yet, I can not help but think of how this would work in the states. There is much that needs to be improved in American public schools, but it is wonderful that any child can rock on up and get a completely free education no matter who they are and what their citizenship status is. Then again, maybe some families would put more value in their child’s education if they had to pay for the paper & books that their child utilizes.

Although Lana was not very excited about it at first, I have to say the most convenient thing for me by far is the uniform. Yes, there is a cost at the beginning of the year, but after purchasing two dresses, and two sports outfits we were set. We opted for mostly new gear, but donated second hand uniforms can be purchased from the uniform shop at the school (all schools have their own uniform shop). Oh yes, we also purchased a school backpack, jumper (sweatshirt) & cap. I love it. Not only does it make my life easier, I love the fact that all the kids are on an even playing field. There is no competition with clothes. Also, the kids all look like kids. I love that Lana looks like a little girl. Zira had asked if different schools had the same uniforms. From what I have seen, every school in the same general area has a different uniform. As we walk/bus around town we will see kids from all the schools in their uniforms. It is a way to showcase school pride. Although I do like seeing these kids in their uniforms, some of their hats are quite….dated shall we say…  But once again, it’s about school pride and you see that displayed all the way through high school anywhere you go in town.

As you can imagine food options are different here. I’ll go into that in a later post, but suffice it to say that the school’s canteen special on Friday’s is buttered chicken, HOME MADE buttered chicken. If you know my daughter, you know she loves Fridays. The other thing she loves is that her mommy works the canteen. You see, what they do here is employ one person to work the canteen with parent volunteers to support her. This allows more of the money earned from the sale of food to go directly to the school. Parents are asked to volunteer once a month. My first day is this Thursday. Let's see how we go making a gazillion vegemite & butter sandwiches.

....a link to simone's flickr page. www.flickr.com/photos/combhua AWESOME photos & videos too

January '09  ~ Congrats (however belated) to Mike & Kath on the birth of little "g"

and here's his big brother cookie monster...

February 2009 ~ Although I was sad to not be home to celebrate. Very sad actually, Stephen & the kids did a great job making the day a special one. They gave me a lovely bracelet where I now carry around four special charms with me all the time. I enjoyed my emails & phone conversations too! Then there were the flowers. I was really spoiled in that department this year. Two stunning bouquets that still  look gorgeous. However, no one sang me parabens a voce....which means of course it's not official, so I am still considering myself 37!

2-24-2009 ~ It's funny, but I had to even think about typing the date. Not sure if you Americans know, but it seems we're the only ones in the world that write the month first. I would actually have written it the other way, but ALL of our photo files are in one system so to change them now would be a nightmare. Well, we're back. I am thrilled really. One of the hardest parts of being here is not being able to have you see Nuno blooming. His language is really coming along and he just says and does the funniest things. Hopefully this will make us seem a bit closer. Lana is great too. Settling in was tough, but she's made some friends and is doing really well.

So much has happened since we last said hello via kiwigalo. I can't list everything, but there are some recent developments that I will post. Meanwhile, we have the flickr page that we have posted photos to.

www.flickr.com/photos/kiwigalo

Miss you:)