What’s  been happening…

House Hunting = Well, we are still in the same flat, waiting patiently to hear whether we have a new house or not. We signed a contract on Friday night to buy a great place in Rozelle, and went out for champagne to celebrate this long, long, long awaited and wanted house. An hour into the celebrations we get a call to say the owner won’t sign! What a beeearch! She apparently needs more time to think about it (something she could’ve said before we got our hopes up and signed the contract!) and will let us know on Monday night…fingers crossed!

Tandem = We bought a tandem bike! It is awesome! A blue, 21 speed, mountain-bike styled tandem bike. We’ve been for a couple of rides now to Watsons Bay and around Bondi – so much fun!!!

Surftober Fest = Simon founded ‘Surftober Fest’ – a month of surfing everyday to raise money for Samoa’s tragic tsunami victims. And he and Nick G almost surfed everyday! Well done boys!

Weddings = Pete married the gorgeous Nicole (my newest bestie) in March at the Pilu restaurant in Freshwater. It was an amazing wedding and loads of fun (the food was delicious!).

Jon Swimming-Pool married Sarah at the end of October at the Jonah’s restaurant in Whale Beach – another beautiful wedding with food to die for. They have since moved over to Sydney and will be joining us in the Bondi Beach haven. We have Jon to thank for introducing us to our Bondi Besties, Colin and Hatty. We will forever be indebted.

Janine’s getting married to Tony in 6 weeks time! How very exciting! I will be blogging about this event no doubt – pictures-a-plenty!

Work = Simon got a promotion a few weeks ago. Now the boss of a team of 5. Working very hard and appears very stressed-out, but seems to enjoy what he is doing.

I’m still at Grammar and loving it. I teach a Year 1 class this year. They are cute and so funny! I come home with some funny as stories! Should write a book.

Timo’s eyebrow scare = Tim had to get a mole removed after tests confirmed it was malignant. It gave us all a mighty scare and we had many sleepless nights as we waited to hear whether it had spread. Thank goodness the docs got it all, and he has had a number of checkups since and been given the all clear each time. Whew! He has a neat scar now where his left eyebrow once was, but he is still as handsome as ever (not as handsome as you babe). We love you Tim!

Wales = We had a wonderful trip to Wales with the Smiths. We stayed in a beautiful, quaint town called Solva, in this huge, stone, barn-like house. It was flash as. We ate lots of nice food, swam at a nearby beach, drank lots of beer, competed in the local Trivia Night contest, went shopping in the cute little shops, went for long coastal walks and played a bit of beach cricket and touch. What a choice time we had…

Camping = Simon, Pete, Nicole and I went camping at Norah Head. It was such a gorgeous place! We stayed in a really nice camping ground and used our wedding present tent for the first time (thanks John and Neisha). Nicole and I had to put up the tents while Simon and Pete skateboarded around the camping ground. How old are those two anyway? The campground was within a short walks distance to pristine, white-sand beaches (like Bondi but without the thousands of people!), so we spent a bit of time there. We went out for drinks (Nic and I had some tasty cocktails for $8! As opposed to $18 in Sydney!) and dinner at the RSL next door. They had a meat raffle and we won! True Aussie/Kiwi style. We chose a breakfast pack and cooked it all up in the morning.We’ll definitely be going back there real soon.

Stace went to a hat restaurant in Kings Cross where they all had to wear silly hats and there was a shaven gentleman whom I don’t want to hear anything more about, and then out dancing, coming home in the early hours to find me passed out in front of England’s abysmal game against Scotland.  Yesterday was a write-off but there’s more to come next weekend in NZ! See you there!

I was also really spoiled with lots of pressies from the family and from Simon. He surprised me with a treasure hunt which lead to a youtube clip displaying a new guitar he bought me! It was awesome!

New Year’s was also great; we sat on the deck around the table with my family and ate and drank a great deal. We sang songs to the guitar and then after midnight we all walked down to the stream (Vicky had a bit of difficulty as she was smashed) and stood on the bridge to see the pretty lights Dad had placed along the stream. We also checked out the glow-worms along the bank and the star-filled sky. The stars were like nothing you’ve ever seen! Amazing.

Simon and I made a quick trip to Whakatane to see the cuzzie bros and Nan and Pop. Karen and Mark’s baby boy Caleb is gorgeous!!! Check him out!

So awesome to catch up with everyone. We ate fresh oysters Karen andMark had gathered that afternoon, met Mark’s palimino horse Dusty and Simon managed to fit in a round of golf too with Mark and Uncle Alan. Karen took Simon for a run and she caned him! What was he thinking trying to run with one of NZ’s top runners? He was tired for days afterwards. Poor thing.

We then headed to Pukehina Beach where my mate Aimee’s parents have a bach. There were 12 of my good mates staying there too. We ate beautiful food including bbq’d Tua Tua shellfish we got at low tide, drank Pimms and sat around a camp fire on the beach. We saw a couple of small sharks 5 metres out from the shore, so Simon waited until the morning to go surfing with Skip. They were out for 3 hours though and were the only ones out there for miles! He said it was like surfing in your back garden – we were all on the deck of the bach eating breakfast as the guys surfed right below us.

The rest of the time was spent doing loads of wedding planning and wedding consultations (only 10 weeks to go!!!), hanging out with the kids, swimming in the waterhole with Jess and her whanau, weeding and pruning the garden with Mum (we must have filled more than 4 trailer loads), working on the land with Dad (digging, shovelling, driving the digger), eating xmas cake and going shopping.

The weather was fantastic pretty much the whole time (which is very unusual for NZ weather) and I arrived back in Bondi on Friday where it has been raining off and on since!

I had such a great time! My holiday is not over yet though! I don’t go back to work until 29th Jan and Vick, Mo, Jamie and Matt are coming to stay on Friday for a week! Choice! Work is for losers! xxx

Me and my new guitar (I’m not naked, I just have a strapless dress on!)

This is the house Colin & I celebrated our 30ths in last weekend, about 1.5hr north of Sydney on the Central Coast. In appropriately 30 degree heat we spent a couple of days eating, drinking, surfing, pooling and jacuzzing and apparently breaking a $450 pond pump, which we dispute was our fault…

The weekend before Mark & Collette came up from Melbourne (they’ve just moved there from Vancouver & you may remember their hilarious blog ) and we had an epic day on the 14th (day before my actual bday) which started at 5am in the Bondi Hotel to watch England beat France… unbelievable. The pub was packed at that time & there must have been 200 French to about 50 English. What a sweet, sweet victory – I won’t forget chanting ‘au revoir, au revoir, au revoir’ to the rapidly departing French contingent as all the English went mental when the final whistle blew. Even Stace nearly joined in! As far as the RWC went it was nearly as good as beating the Wallabies the week before, which we watched in Notting Hill just prior to flying back from our trip home.

Let’s make a start in February. Since then I’ve been on 7 trips to Melbourne and one to Perth with work. I’ve started to get complacent and have left dirty undies in three hotels (note: some places send them back for free, and washed!). Stace has also been working hard as her school has the Ofsted inspectors in later this term. So that is why we’ve been behind the times in blog world. Having said that we’ve had some awesome weekends in the last four months, had a few more visitors from England and a trip to NZ over Easter for Aimee and Eugene’s wedding which was choice and mean as. We drove around a bit out there visiting Stace’s family, including (cuzzies) Mark & Karen’s new baby son Caleb who is a really cute and peaceful baby, but a useless badminton referee. Mark took me on a one day intensive sniper training camp and I improved from missing a possum at 3 yards to taking out the enemy plastic coke bottle filled with water across a ravine at 80m (don’t ask how many bullets). I think I wrote already a while back about how cool their house is out there – perched on top of a mountain surrounded by bushland and with panoramic views out to the sea, the hinterland and a volcano (!). It is the perfect place for an ex-special forces sniper to hole up becuz he is disillusioned with his treatment at the hands of the government and I think it’s only a matter of time before the same ‘suits’ change their mind, realise that I am the only person who can do the job they need doing and come to find me, tails between their legs, while I’m probably out the back chopping logs or something with a dog by my side. (Stace is likely to be inside playing with Baby Caleb as this is going on and maybe making a nice carrot cake for my tea). (Karen’s playing Netball and Mark’s at work).

Also in NZ – Uncle Steve took me fishing with Dion and Kirsten and we didn’t catch owt – but look at the size of this bad boy that Dion hooked and caught all by himself the week before!

The rest of our trup to NZ was spent planning for and getting very excited about the wedding… if you can make it over please think about booking tickets asap cos they’re not going to get any cheaper!

In other fishing news, I also didn’t catch anything when I went out deep sea game fishing for marlin and sharks on Sunday, though we did see whales and a giant pod of dolphins that swam all round us for ten minutes whilst we were 20 miles out to sea in Sydney. Got some good video of them but it’ll probably take until 2010 before I get round to processing it.

Other highlights since we last wrote include the V Festival in Centennial Park, where Stace and I were lucky enough to score free backstage passes through Timo’s mate Andy Love who played for the mighty Buca J’s with us in London. We saw Groove Armada, Gnarls Barkley, Phoenix, Beck, The Pixies and Pet Shop Boys – Andy Love was their backing singer which was quality. Aside from the music we had fun throwing empty beer cans at Pete and Nick from inside the VIP enclosure as they sweated with the pikey masses on the outside. Eventually they managed to get in too, despite me explaining to the security guard that they weren’t allowed to be there and he should make an example of them and turf them back out. Throughout the day we bumped into numerous other faces from out here which goes to show how we’re settling in and becoming part of the scenery I suppose.

Here’s a final little picture of the Stace & me at Eug & Aimee’s wedding. Think there was something wrong with the camera.

Aside from all of that we’ve been driving around and exploring new beaches with Pete and the surfboards and catching up with the other new addition to the Bondi Massive along with Petay – baby Jaxon, to Kirk and Shelley, who is another unbelievably cute little fella (Jax, not Kirk – the survey results below proved it).

Hope everything is well with you. Happy birthday Olitch! RIP AA & Mossy (anniversaries). Good luck for the wedding Mar & Suz! S&S xx