Last Day Before School Starts

Both boys expressed to me last night that they are missing home/feeling anxious about starting school.  I chatted with my mom about it and like all good grandmothers, her solution involved food.  We made sure that I had their favourite macaroni and cheese recipe and I let the kids know that we would be having it for supper.

First the doodle and I spent the morning baking muffins.  Nuts are permitted in school lunches here, so we were able to use some nuts to make the muffins a bit higher in protein.

 I have no idea why the photos are sideways, I am turning them and saving them before uploading.  Sigh.

The boys were quite happy to have rasher bacon (we have not located pemeal bacon yet) and macaroni and cheese for supper tonight.  It should be great fuel for their first day of school tomorrow!

Week 2-Australia Day

Today dawned bright and early for the WB family.  We actually needed to be somewhere for 9am.  We got the Monkey dressed proudly in his Canadian Scouting uniform and went off to the local park to celebrate Australia Day (complete with bouncy castle!).  His group was responsible to raise the flag and he was chosen to hold the Scout Flag.  He was quite proud, as you can see from the photos.

On the way home we recognized that the roads were all but deserted...so I pulled over and THIS HAPPENED!!  Yay!!!  He stalled it a few times, but we practiced starting and stopping on level ground and at some intersections (such as there are in Mudgee!!).  With some confidence built up, he drove us home.

No idea why this is sideways.  I did try to straighten it.  He's driving, in case you can't tell

We had a wonderful 'straya day BBQ with new friends.  Apparently you must have lamb on Australia Day.  This was news to me but I was more than happy to oblige!

We got home and both boys individually expressed that they are feeling sad and missing home.  Monkey is telling me that he is missing Roxy.  The doodle says that he misses his room, the cold and the lack of scary spiders and things.  We've been here just over a week and as a family we've never taken a vacation longer than that.  It doesn't surprise me that they are finding that things are catching up with them.

Dave starts school on Tuesday and the boys start on Wednesday.  There are some big transitions yet to come.

Day 7 - A Trip to Dunns Swamp

Today we went to the Uniting church service here in Mudgee. The service was about an hour long and was quite delightful. The message was biblically focused and the people were warm and inviting. I assure you that the boys favourite part was the after-service social where we shared cupcakes and snacks, as well as playing outdoors. The congregation was loaded with people who wanted to get to know us and learn about Canada.
Following church, we loaded up the car and headed with two other families to Dunns Swamp. The name was quite misleading (phew!) and the day was absolutely gorgeous. The weather was superb and the scenery was some of the best that we've witnessed so far. I spotted my first marsupial (a wallaby in the bush while on a nature hike with two of the other adults). The boys (and Saje) largely hung out by the water's edge and enjoyed the company of the other four boys their ages.
Here are the boys each in different boats as they went out into the swamp for a paddle with some of the other kids and adults. 

 Monkey took one adventure over to the other side of the river with the kids and one of the dads. They climbed some of the rocks and posed for pictures as the rest of the parents looked on from across the water.

 I went on a trail walk (note: not a trail run, I learned from Saje's earlier adventures this week).

It was a 1.5 km walk along the edge of the water where every 500 m or so there was a spot that just opened up to a beautiful view of the water, landscape and rockfaces. 

 Near the weir (a small dam) at the end there was a high point with a warning sign. 
So I went past.

No fence.
No guardrail.
Nothing.

Just an absolutely spectacular piece of nature. (there's about a 300 m drop about 1 m behind me)

 When I returned to the area by the beach, the boys had decided to undergo their own climbing adventure. Here's Monkey on a 75 foot rock smiling for all his glory in the setting sun.

It was a phenomenal day to prepare us for Australia Day tomorrow.

Day 6-Breakfast of Champions

We woke up and enjoyed a breakfast of leftover pavlova from dinner that we shared on Friday night with some new friends.

 I am not sure that we will ever get tired of the beautiful surroundings that we live in here.

 The new friends that we got together with on Friday let us know that we have pomegranate trees in the garden.  Monkey and I set out immediately Saturday morning to find it.  WE FOUND IT!!  He is really taken with all of the plants around the house.  He loves to go out and explore them to find what is here and what might be ready to be harvested next.

Pavlova for breakfast means biking, rather than driving in to town, so I grabbed a bike and helmet from the garage and made my way in.  I discovered that the bank is closed for the long weekend, so we wont have any cash until Tuesday.  The post office and the grocery store are open though, so we can get what we need.  The vistas here are out of control.  Every corner that I go around looks like it should be on a post card.

 There's been a reasonable amount of rain recently, so things are nice and green.  We headed over to the neighbour's place for a swim and supper.  Their yard is all mowed ground and the kids wasted no time after swimming to come up with a game of soccer.

The car never moved today.  Which technically means that I did not use the windshield wipers in the place of the indicators.  I am still hoping for the day when I can say that for real!  

Day...5?

Today will not be the day that I manage to drive the car and exclusively use the indicator rather than the windshield wipers, to let other drivers know where I am going.

Dave gave driving a second attempt, but there is a lot going on here and the hilly roads and the manual transmission are still causing him grief.  I took over after a feisty older woman specifically roller her window down to tell him off.  I'll have to get him out to the back roads and practice with the manual transmission.  Me learning to drive a manual transmission many years ago was not exactly what you might call a "bonding moment" for my father and I.  Please pray for my marriage.

We met up with a woman living here who grew up in Ottawa.  She gave me a tour of the town while the boys checked out the library.  I will admit that even I find I to be hot here.  I'm not complaining,  but the air conditioned library did feel nice after walking around the town. The house is kept cool naturally,  but there's not much relief to be had outside.  Luckily we are having dinner tonight with a family who has invited us to first come and swim in their pool.  The boys and I will be taking full advantage of that!

We then went to the boy's school to see their classrooms and meet the doodle's teacher.  It is so completely different from Canadian schools that I don't even know where to start.  First off, the school is made up of a series of buildings and the students move from room to room, including the bathrooms, by being outdoors.

 Here's the doodle sitting in his new desk (above) and in the doorway of his class room (below)

The special needs classrooms are in their own section of the school campus and even have their own play yards. We were very impressed with the set up.  We didn't get to met Monkey's teacher yet, but we will on Wednesday when the kids start school.

 This was a dog that one of the teachers had brought in with him today as there are no students in the school.  He was more than happy to snuggle up to the boys as he had stories of long suffering and neglect that none of us believed.

 Tonight we went for dinner at the house of some new friends.  Peady is the dog of our exchange family and he was excited about us from the moment our car (his family's car) pulled in to the driveway.  He is convinced that he is a lap dog and snuggled right up to us.  It was all I could do to convince both Peady and the Monkey that he was not coming home with us.

 Both Monkey and Doodle had a ball with the gaggle of boys who turned up for the dinner.  Here a game of cricket has just sort of happened.  Monkey seemed to be learning the ropes pretty well.

Day trip to the Drip Gorge

Today we ventured out to the Drip Gorge in nearby Ulan.
Here are some shots of the family exploring about:

SJ and Monkey try holding up the massive rockface along our hike through 'The Drip'. It was super cool that every so often a spray of water would gently tumble down from the rocks high above. 

To provide a little scale, here are SJ, Monkey and Doodle stopping by one of the open features where there are all sorts of nooks and crannies where little animals (like bats in the evening) look to make their home.

Here the family stopped for a group shot after lunch. This is about the spot where we decided to turn about as too much exposure in the middle of the day (plus the heat) are ill-advised.
It was a stunning hike and the constant sound of the thousands of cecadas around us was super cool.

Day 3-yummy food with no dramas!

I'm not saying that Dave's first driving attempt went badly.  What I will say is that while I was cuddled up with these two I heard the car leave the driveway.  I only heard footsteps come back...followed by a request to help him push the car home.  I am going to go and take the car out for a solid drive and see if the battery will charge all the way back up, or if we need a new one.

We are heading over to a former Ottawa resident's house for lunch today and then to dinner with a new colleague tonight.  I took peaches and mint from the garden and whipped up some salsa to bring with us.

 I forgot to take a photo of the finished salsa, but it was yummy, so you'll just have to take my word for it.

Dave just had to rescue Monkey from a daddy long legs that was joining him in the shower.  Picture the two of them cowering in opposite corners of the shower stall.  Dave caught and released it in to the yard and all was fine.  In other "Dave is my hero" news, he took on not one, but TWO female red back spiders today and emerged as the sole survivor.  The ER nurse from yesterday said that we should not allow them to live on our property.  He took that one on like a boss!!

I took the car for a long drive and got the battery nice and charged up.  It has not given us any trouble since then.  I have driven it three times today and was almost at a trifecta of not turning on the windshield wipers instead of the indicator, but blew it in the final moments of our drive out to dinner.  There's always tomorrow!  Tonight I even drove in the pouring rain.  That means I was dealing with the manual transmission, indicator AND the windshield wipers.

Dave has not yet tried again with the car.  Stay tuned on that.  

Well that clears things up

Nutmeg?

I can promise you that this was not what I was expecting to find when I opened up the "nutmeg" container (whilst making peach muffins).  Too funny!  

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Day 2-Rookie Canadians!

I'm not convinced that there will be a daily blog post for the whole year, but so far so good!!

I woke up at 3, Dave at 4, Monkey at 6 and it is 7:15 and the doodle is still sleeping like a champ.  That kid fell asleep in about 15 seconds last night (more on that below).

I find that there are still a lot of things running through my head, things that I need to deal with and once my mind starts at 3 there isn't much point in trying to sleep.  The house has an office as part of the master suite, so I tend to come in here and pound through stuff.  This busyness will pass I'm sure.  For now it is trying to get the car insured, dealing with a Canadian banking snafu (thanks Gen for being my girl on the ground to deal with that one!!), buying phone/ipod charging devices, submitting health insurance claims from the $2000 in medications that we had to get in Richmond when our carry on bag was mislaid.  Just stuff.

It occurred to us that we are not sure that the car is still insured.  So today Dave may get a reprieve from learning to drive it while we sort that out. (update, we found insurance, this driving thing is totally happening today!!)

The peach popcicles are ready this morning and the kids were over the moon when I said that they could have them for breakfast.  They are peaches, a bit of sugar and milk-that suits me just fine!!

The day took a bit of a turn from that point, but I'll spoil the ending and say that we're all fine, so don't fret.  We had booked an appointment at the medical clinic to get a referral for the doodle to see a pediatrician while we are here.  We were told that he needs that in order to continue his current ADHD meds (long story short, he doesn't).  He got up around 7:30 and was absolutely a limp noodle.  Just utterly lethargic.  We were both worried that perhaps he'd been bitten by something and were relieved to be already heading to the doctor's anyhow.

I hopped in to the car and discovered that I had left the lights on yesterday (hey, there's a LOT going on when I am driving right now!!) and the battery was dead.  The jumper cables that we found in the garage were not working, so the neighbour drove us to the appointment.  The doctor was immediately very concerned about the doodle and called over the the ER to let them know that we would be right over.  Gen to the rescue again with contacting the medical insurance and having them call me since I could not figure out how to contact them from down here.  In the end the ER doctor concluded that the doodle was very dehydrated and we got a talking to about staying hydrated over here.  The doodle fights us about liquid consumption anyhow, so this will be an ongoing battle even more so now.  They hydrated him with special freezies, confirmed that he does not have diabetes and sent us home.

I had to pay for the appointment with cash and was instantly thrilled that we did not exchange to the United States.  The entire bill was $120.  We got seen right away and received excellent care.  I snapped this shot once we knew he was okay, but you'll have to forgive me that I was not thinking much of capturing this rather high stress time in photographs while it was happening.

Our new friend Neil came and picked us up and drove us home and another colleague met us there to jump the car with different cables.  He even left us the cables.  He came home and (had a whole bunch of water) ate a great big lunch and went for a while on the trampoline.  We're thrilled to see him so much more upbeat.  

So that is our day up until 1:30pm!

First day in Mudgee

Today was our first full day in Mudgee.  The doodle and I both woke up at the crack of 3am while daddy and Monkey slept right through to sun up.

I got off for a run to clear the travel cobwebs from my head and daddy and the boys went for a bike ride to tour around. The view behind me is the view from our front porch.  I don't think that we will ever tire of it!!

I had the extreme pleasure of negotiating with a juicy black spider that lives in our letterbox. He let me have all of the mail, and I gave him ample time to move away from each piece before I grabbed it.  No photos of that one, mostly so that a couple of you will continue to follow the blog! (see below, we already didn't follow the "no spider photos" rule)

Some new friends popped by with their little one and we had a good chat.  They offered to let me follow them in their car to help me get to town.  Boy oh boy I was nervous getting behind the wheel in a country that drives on the other side of the road!!!  I did it though!  I only hit the windshield wipers instead of the indicator about 1000 times and I didn't stall the car at all.  Dave only had to holler at me once about a truck that was coming along in the inner lane whilst I was attempting to turn in to the outer lane.  We all made it home alive so I am calling that a win!

 Dave says that he is going to try driving tomorrow, so stay tuned!

We have a tree just covered in delicious ripe peaches.  Oh my word the peaches!!  We have been eating them non-stop, giving them to people and still I don't know what to do with all of them.  Of course, that made me want to call my mom to get recipes from her.  She has promised to send me some cobbler and cake recipes (later update, she sent no less than 8 recipes for peach yummyness).  Funny how you can be on the other side of the world and still want your mom.

We are juicing up some of the peaches to make popsicles. They should be ready when we get home from the community pool.

 Dave just finished moving the wood pile that was right up against the house.  I could hear him negotiating with the spiders from the window.  For the mom and pile of babies he moved the log they were on and spoke reassuringly to them.  For these beasts (see blurry photo and make rude comments about the photo quality and then come over here and take your own photos while trying to clench your cheeks together firmly...), he stepped back, let them know that they could keep the wood pile and then he came in the house.  There is a Red Back that currently owns the water tank too. When he saw that, he just closed the lid, walked away and came in the house.  So much nope. We are happy to give them the yard if they just stay out of the house.  Shudder.

Safe arrival

We're currently driving through the beautiful Blue Mountains towards our new home away from home. We're in good spirits, still talking to one another.  

We are just looking forward to getting home and getting something to eat.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

The Vancouver to China leg

As I type this we are just past the international date line. So this will post when I get to Guangzhou or, if I don't sort out the WiFi there, Sydney.

The kids are travelling like champs so far. They've been sitting side by side with us behind them. On the flight to Vancouver they watched the on board TVs. Now they are watching their ipods. The doodle was not impressed that the TV channel system was different from West Jet to China Southern Airlines.  He is apparently boycotting the on board TV on this flight-lol.

Dave just pointed out that he and I have been to South America, Europe, and (obviously) North America. In a few hours we'll hit Asia and then Australia. Now we will just need to hit Africa and Antarctica and we'll be set!

Later...

6 hours to go.  I saw some cool mountains.  Luckily they were well under the plane and not right in front of it.  Now we're over the Sea and Okhotsk (autocorrect grabbed that sea name the first time around-come on, cut me a break! It was hard enough to spell the first time!!).  I'm sooooo bored.  Seriously.

Later still...

Seriously, China Southern Airlines runs a classy show. The seats are big and there is lots of leg room too.  The bathrooms are clean and even have a selction of soaps and stuff.  I usually fly with Air Canada, so thrse thigs are noteworthy!!  The grown ups managed to score 3 seats to ourselves which has allowed for a good rotation of people and laying down and cuddling short (and tall) people. 

Just over four hours until this plane lands.  The kid's ipods have barely left their hands.  A big thank you to everyone who chipped in for them and for the iTunes gift cards!  

Later still. ..

We are on the ground in China. We actually walked down stairs and got to touch Chinese soil.  Very cool to be able to say that!!

Still talking!

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Almost in Sydney! !

The sun streaming the windows of this plane is shining down on Australia!!  We will land in about 2 hours.  We all got some sleep on this leg of the flight.

I did manage to get wi-fi in China, but the Chinese filters would not allow sites like Facebook, Gmail, twitter and blogger to work.  I was able to BBM a few people and (oddly enough) check out CNN. 

We are feeling done, but then they just came by with eggs and bacon for breakfast and we are back to being full of energy.  From here we have to get off this plane, get our bags and get through customs then drive the 4 hours to our new home away from home.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Heading to China

We got up bright and early Vancouver time and hit the pool and whirlpool. The shuttle bus came and picked us up after a carb-rich breakfast to take us to our flight.  

Monkey took some great shots of the plane with the mountains in the background.  Looking forward to lots of togetherness spent on that fabulous fart-tube for 13.5 hours.

We are currently speaking to each other.  There was a brief moment of distress and reduced communication  when we discovered we had mislaid a rather important carry on bag. I'm not pointing any fingers, but I will confirm that *I* was not responsible for that particular bag. It has still not turned up, but we've recovered from the loss as best we can.  We're hoping that is the end of the drama for the trip.

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Bye bye for now Ottawa

In the air leaving Ottawa. Photo posted during a brief (planned) stop in Toronto.  We won't be getting out here, just waiting to take back off to get to Vancouver.

So far we still like each other and we're even still smiling.  Stay tuned...

Sent from my Samsung Galaxy smartphone.

Off we go

Where does the time go?

It seems amazing how when you start to track time how quickly it passes by.
I started making blogposts again when the countdown had 100 days or more on it.
Suddenly we're at about 43 days - or 6 weeks away. 
The paperwork continues to stream its way into and out of our mailboxes.
To-do lists get drafted. Items get completed. More items appear and get prioritized.

But already, some really great things are happening.

I've noticed the value that we put on time with friends.
Each moment seems more purposeful and more productive.
Tasks get done that need to get done. The less important things fade away.
Time together as a family already seems to be 'better' as we focus on the things that really matter.

Family.
Friends.
Relationships.

In going to the conferences and reading the on-line discussions of people who've been on exchange, they speak of 'before Australia' and 'after Australia' in terms of how they live their lives.

We're not there yet.
But we're making our memories of this adventure already.

I can't wait to get our feet on the (warm) ground and experience all that this adventure has to offer.