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
Farewell Party November 8, 2008
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We had our final hoo-hah party today at our house. We’re not actually moving out for another 5 weeks, but if we had the party in the final week there’d be nothing to sit on and no time to tidy up after!! I quite enjoyed my eclectic menu – otherwise known as “what is this I have found in the back of the cupboard and what can I make with it”. We had all sorts of stuff, chinese, italian, indian, snacks, etc. I may have a gone a bit overboard with the invites as we ended up with about 35+ people in the house at the same time. In a 3 bed semi this is quite impressive and it ended up like one of those sliding-tile puzzle games where you have to move other tiles out of the way to get the tile you want to a certain place. Why is it at parties people always congregate in the narrowest bits? At the early stages of the party everyone was standing in doorways and no one was on the sofas!! I’m going to miss everyone so much and I think I’m finally coming out of denial and realising that this might be the last time I see some of them. Of course everyone is welcome to come visit once we’re all settled but I suspect that we’ll not see most of our friends again (boo hoo hoo).
We managed to get rid of all the food; I even had to cook some more mid party, which is unusual for our parties as there’s usually way too much food and leftovers. We got rid of almost all the alcohol (3 bottles left from probably about 30 bottles of spirits). Managed to drink up most of the champagne during a toast (cringey trying to work out what to say – hubby NOT helpful at all as he just kept schtum). Everyone left with something – only 2 potplants and a few candles left to get rid of.
We do however seem to have gained an awful lot of fireworks! And the house was a bombsite the next morning as it was like a monsoon outside with the fireworks and everyone came back in with wet shoes, clothes, coats etc leaving small puddles all over the place. Good thing we don’t have any carpet downstairs.
Dinner Party October 8, 2008
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We had a nice evening soiree tonight with a few friends over for dinner and wine. I decided that we needed to eat some of the more interesting sauces and potions at the back of the pantry that I had bought from the chinese supermarket. So I made a Hoisin Roast Duck (yay and it turned out that whole ducks were 1/2 price in Tesco this week). Also Beef Rendang, Coconut Rice, Noodles and some veggies. It was nice using the dining table again (it was turning into a bit of a dumping ground for bags/coats and post). I’m really gonna miss my friends. I can’t imagine what it will be like next year when I decide to hold an impromptu party and have no friends to invite It will be really strange starting a new circle of friends from scratch – of course, my current friends will still be friends but they’ll be on the other side of the world to me. As with many a party it all descended into watching Monty Python for some reason (Holy Grail this time).
After yesterday’s shenanigans, I found out that Boots are doing 1/3 off the price of lots of Tommee Tippee stuff at the moment (not as good a deal as the recent Baby Weeks at Tesco or Asda though). So I gave our local store a call to check they had some and then sent hubby out to fetch it. We ended up getting a Tommee Tippee Electronic Steam Steriliser for £26. Not bad and we can pack in in our suitcase to bring to Oz.
Pass the Parcel September 6, 2008
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My parents threw a welcome party for Evie so all the family could see her. I think they ended up with about 25 people at the party. Evie was a bit overwhelmed but she dealt with it really well. I’m surprised she was so alert and being very well behaved and cute when she was being cuddled. She got cuddled non-stop all evening – which I suspect she really loved. She got a little grizzly when she got hungry (which I got the brunt of), but after a feed and a bit of peace she was alert and ready to play again. She’s really getting her own little character now – she’s smiling more and making goo goo noises.
Dinner Party September 3, 2008
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I invited my best friend and her partner over for a small soiree (excuse for me to cook something nice). Spent the morning wondering what I could cook that didn’t involve me having to stand by the hob all afternoon – knowing Evie wouldn’t stand for not having my attention every now and again. I searched the internet and decided to make meatloaf. It’s a funny thing, you always hear on US TV programs that they have meatloaf yet I had no idea what it actually looked like or tasted like. I found a recipe on Nigella’s site and tried it out. Just chuck all the ingredients together and then bake. I also made a potato gratin. Rach and Lou came over and we all chowed down – yummy! Played Guitar Hero again afterwards. Then as it was Evie’s bath night, we had to cut the evening shorter.
