2 Years Today December 23, 2010
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2 years today we arrived in Australia for good. I can’t believe how fast these last couple of years have gone by. 2 years ago we were heavily jetlagged with a 4 month old baby. We rushed around to get lastminute Christmas pressies and food. This year is our first Christmas out here by ourselves. My parents decided to stay back in snowed-in Blighty this year for a change. We had our annual “Landing Party” today. It’s really lovely as we have made quite a few good friends and it’s a brilliant excuse for some pre-Christmas celebrations.
Our Yummy Celebration Spread
Happy 30th Birthday Hubby!! September 25, 2010
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It’s my hubby’s 30th birthday today (the young whipper snapper ha ha I predate him by 13 months). We had a party with about 35 people and the house and garden were packed. I didn’t even realise we had made so many friends. Such a stark difference to my 30th last year where I refused to have a party cos I didn’t know many people.
John's Birthday Cake
Spent most of yesterday making his birthday cake. He loves Guinness (sadly it’s not made of Guinness but is chocolate so he still loved it).
We had a big BBQ (well you have to in Oz dontcha?). And also there were 2 big games on today so we had the big cinema screen on for peeps to watch and “bond” over 
Fab party with fab people. We’ve thoroughly toasted in John’s 4th decade!!
Happy 2nd Birthday Evie July 25, 2010
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It’s Evie’s 2nd birthday today. I can’t believe it’s been a whole 2 years already. We had planned to have a little party at a local park, but the weather forecast was bad for today so I called it off at the park and changed the party location to our place instead. Rather typically we awoke this morning to bright sunshine!! We got Evie a little toy kitchen and play food for her birthday (along with some colouring books and hair clips) and had all the pressies ready wrapped up for when she came downstairs. At first she was confused and then she was excited once she realised she was allowed to open them all.
In the afternoon we had a little tea party for her and 4 other little friendies (all aged between 18 months and 3.5) on their own little party table complete with hats, streamers, party plates and of course lots of lots of sugary items (hey it’s a kid’s birthday party what did you expect). We adults had similar food with the addition of some salad, curry puffs (tx my friend Shirley), chicken wings and a lovely big Siew Yuk that I roasted (which turned out perfect yet again). I was pondering on how to entertain the kids for a couple of hours and ended up doing some face painting first, then eating, then generic playing/mess making, pass-the-parcel, present opening and finally the cake. Oh it was so sad when the cake got cut (I couldn’t watch) but boy it tasted good The party ended around 5.30 with all the kids coming down off their sugar highs and the rain finally made an appearance.
So Happy Birthday my darling little daughter. Hope that you will remember some of this party and you will enjoy many more to come.
Happy Birthday Daddy & Chec April 3, 2010
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It’s my Dad and my sister’s birthdays today! We had a big lunch party for my Dad. Cos of the events on Thurs I was the sole chef!! I served Siew Yuk, Tofu veggies, Home made rotis, Salmon sashimi, salmon and avocado sushi (maki), Sambal prawns, Beef rendang, Baked lemongrass chicken wings, Fried wontons, Gado gado, and some stir-fried asian greens. After a 3 days of planning and 2 days of cooking/preparing here is the eventual spread!!!
The siew yuk was the most successful and disappeared in 5 mins flat!! First time I’ve made siew yuk too (well under the supervision of my mum) – and it was perfectly crispy all over.
It’s Been a Wonderful Year July 25, 2009
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I can’t believe it has been 1 whole year already. Today our darling daughter, Evie turned 1. In some ways it seems like she only arrived a short time ago, yet in other ways it feels like she’s always been there. She’s grown up so quickly and can do so much now. Going from helpless baby who can’t move properly to toddler.
Last night we snuck into her playroom (which is next to her bedroom) and put up her new table and chair set (it has legs that look like giant pencils) and tied a big ribbon on it. We also wrapped all her presents (both from us and from various friends and relatives from the UK) and put them in a big pile in the middle. Then spattered a few balloons around the floor. In the morning we went in to get her up and she was wide awake and smiling. We helped her to walk into her playroom and she was just standing there looking confused pointing at things (sort of like “that wasn’t there yesterday” and “what’s that”) before she sat down and crawled over to everything. Hubby helped her open the pressies (which took 30 mins to do as she was more interested in chasing balloons around). In the afternoon we had a little tea party with some little baby friends of hers and played pass the parcel. Also had the obligatory jelly and ice cream too. The kids were manic after the sugar high! All in all a lovely day.
The Birthday Girl
So happy birthday our darling, precious baby. We hope that you had a lovely day and will enjoy all those presents you got. May you have many many more blessed years to come.
Christmas in July July 18, 2009
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We were kindly invited to my friend Flora for her annual Christmas in July. Cos it’s so hot in Australia in December they don’t tend to do the whole roast dinner then so some bright sparks (prob expats) decided to also celebrate Christmas in July (in mid winter) so we can enjoy eating a roast dinner without roasting ourselves! It’s not actually Christmas in terms of celebrating the birth of Jesus (although these days a lot of people don’t celebrate Christmas for that reason anyway) but more of a doing the traditional things that happen. Coming from a large extended family who all celebrate Christmas together, I know full well the nightmare of roasting a big meal (especially with only one oven) so I suggested that we could do the roast potatoes/winter veggies. Ended up roasting 5 trays of veggies over the course of 2.5hrs!! It was hot work as today was unseasonably warm (20 deg C).
The party was fabulous and there were so many families and all the kids running round and playing on toys. Evie thoroughly enjoyed crawling about all over the place and bullying the older kids… tsk tsk. She kept ousting them from whatever toys they were playing with – either that or randomly crawling off to eat leaves and grass surreptisciously from behind a beach ball. There was lots of stuff for the kids to do and Santa Claus even turned up and distributed pressies. Evie didn’t much like the look of Santa and in her picture with him she just pulled and upset face and tried to wriggle away. Poor Santa – snubbed on their first meeting. I think in a few years hubby and I will look forward to when Evie will be able to enjoy the excitement of Santa (prob between the ages of 2 and 7 before she sees through the fallasy).
Housewarming! June 13, 2009
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We had our housewarming party today. Our house is officially warm (good thing too as it’s been a bit cold lately)!!! Got up at 9am and started the mammoth task of cooking! Here’s the menu:
- Siew Yuk (Aunty Jo’s speciality)
- Steamed Dim Sum/Yum Cha (Siu Mai)
- Garlic Bread
- Garlic Creamy Mushrooms (cooked on teh BBQ)
- Chicken Satay Indonesian style
- Potato Salad
- Mixed Green Salad
- Sausage Rolls
- Beef Rendang
- Homemade Beefburgers (with sundried tomato and gooey cheese middle)
- Sausages
On top of that various guests brought desserts. We ended up with 4 cakes and two puddings as well!
We were a bit worried about not having many friends yet in OZ as we only moved out to Sydney <6 months ago but we managed to get a respectable 25 guests at the party. It's strange that we used to have mega houseparties in Loughborough with about 20 people and our house would be so full people would be sat (or passed out) on the stairs. With 25 it was busy but there were enough seats/sofas/chairs for everyone to sit somewhere without developing a thoroughfare bottleneck.
To everyone that came – thanks for coming. We had a grand time and our house is now officially warmed up!
First Dinner Party & Bloody Phones May 6, 2009
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We moved into our new place on Monday and had our first mini dinner party tonight. Because we’ve only got 1 frying pan to cook with each person brought along a small dish. It was kinda strange having people over in the midst of all the mayhem/boxes/mess!
Because we were meant to complete on Friday we’ve been paying for the telephone connection since then (even though we actually completed on Mon). On coming in on Monday there was no phone line. Apparently the Telstra engineer came on Tues whilst we were moving things and decreed that the phone line was working fine. Odd, just static on the line here. Checked the phone with the neighbours and the phone isn’t broken. Hubby decided to inspect the wires coming into the house. The previous owners were with Optus and when they changed the Optus engineer just ripped out the Telstra cable and pushed it under the floor board. 10 mins later and one very dusty, grubby hubby and the telephone was sorted out. Joy – now we can get the internet sorted out.
Double Prosperity Aunty! March 7, 2009
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It was my Aunty Chik Chay’s 88th birthday party today. Not only is it a great feat to get to 88 years old and still going strong but in Chinese tradition all things to do with “8″ are very auspicious. I always remember Aunty CC in my childhood. She killed and cooked our pet chickens 
We forgave her though. In fact I still have the patchwork blanket that she made for me. Even though it’s been 20 years she still looks exactly the same to me. She can still fleece you big time at Gin Rummy too
Happy Upside Down Christmas! December 25, 2008
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It’s Christmas – hurray. Thank you Lord for sending Jesus to be our Saviour! and thankyou for bringing us all safely to Australia.
It is very surreal having a Christmas that is sunny. We woke up this morning to an very unusual Christmas breakfast – leftover chicken curry on toast with cherries. My brother said that this is a traditional Aussie Christmas brekkie, but I think he is lying!! We opened presents around 10am. We got mostly cheques and Aussie dollars as everyone knows we need money to get ourselves set up here. Evie got a bucket and spade set. She was so excited waving the spade and fork thing around she almost clobbered her Daddy in the face. We got Evie some Baby Rice. She’s 5 months old today and we decided to try her on her first solids today. The advice is to exclusively breastfeed till 6 months, but the latest news coming out that 6 months is too late and their stomachs won’t develop. Hmm so how do you wean and not wean at 6 months at the same time??? ’tis impossible. We decided to split the difference and try her at 5 months to see if she’s ready. She very much enjoyed sploodging baby rice around her mouth and over her face. She had about 5 watery teaspoons worth – but I think only 2 of those actually made it into her stomach
We had a massive Christmas lunch – even had a roasted turkey. My brother over cooked it and it was the consistency of biltong. Lucky Mocha got a lot of the turkey leftovers. DzE (my brother’s cat) got the leftover smoked salmon. Such pampered pets!
We went to the beach for a swim and play in the late afternoon. Was lovely. Evie paddled a bit in waters. Mocha enjoyed jumping in and out of the waves but didn’t want to swim to us. We had to keep carrying her into the water then she swam back to shore and shook herself all over the other families (oh dear).
Christmas Day – church in the morning, pressie opening, massive spread for lunch, Wii on a 15ft screen, beach fun in the afternoon, sleeping in hammock afterwards, Skyping friends and family back in the UK in the evening. I could really get used to Christmasses like these
