Happy 11th Birthday Milly!

 

Matilda turned 11 today. Our beautiful, kind, loving, smart, artistic, musical, bookworm, minecraft loving daughter is 11. She still lets me do her hair in the mornings, she still crawls into our bed on the weekend for a "morning cuggle" and she asks me every night if I am ok.

 

We had a party down at the Country Club pool, 9 of her friends for pizza and a swim. We all came home exhausted! Happy birthday Milly Moo!

Tonights Dinner!

Congratulations Milly!

 

Milly received the Academic Achievement Award for her class at the Whole School Assembly today. Her grandparents popped down for Lake Argyle to see her receive it which was cool. Well done Milly, my learning super star!

Lake Argyle Swim 2015

It is that time of the year again, the Lake Argyle Swim. All those weeks of training and the big weekend is here. This year I have been promoted from supportive wife and babysitter of children back at the caravan park to kayak support! Because Lake Argyle is such a large body of water, the swimmers can't see where to go, so there has to be a kayaker alongside the swimmer to guide them, that's me this year! Here is Daz and I taking a pre race selfie on the 40 minute boat ride to the start.

And here is the scary team I was supporting, they thought the face masks would psych out the opposition.  Daz is feeling a bit confident and wearing his "I Survived the Lake Argyle Swim" tshirt before the actual swim!

This was my view for most of the swim. Water, hills in the distance, a few boats there in the distance we are trying to catch up with. If I looked to my right though, I saw this....

Here is Daz with the finish line in sight!

Here are the boys doing a change over. You can just see the finish line and boat in the distance on the horizon on the left. They had been swimming for about 3 hours by this stage.

And now is the time to put on the shirts! Daz received his zebra rock coaster for finishing, the fourth one to add to his collection. Does that mean we have to do it twice again to get a complete set of six?

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 4.

So after the wedding, we woke up the next day, returned the dress and tux to be collected from the concierge dude and then packed our bags and jumped on the plane to head back to Los Angeles for the last leg of our trip. We stayed in Hollywood, a few blocks back from the Walk of Stars strip. Didn't like the strip so much, was full of people hassling you for tours all the time. We did one of those Hop On/Hop Off bus tours one day and that gave us a good view from the top deck of all the antics on the streets below. That was as close as I wanted to get. We did the Warner Brothers Studio tour which was pretty good. Sat on the Friends couch, saw where Ellen parks her car. They had an awesome collection of props and costumes from the Harry Potter movies on display. Milly and I are big Harry Potter fans so that was the highlight of the day for us. We also did a day at Universal Studios. It was a lot like the one in Singapore but that was okay by us as we had a great time last year there! There was a slight delay in getting in as there was a problem with our paperwork, so after 25 minutes of debate at the ticketting window, the only way we would get in would be to pay again. Which we did and kept all the paperwork so we could get a refund when we got back to Australia.

It was an amazing holiday, lots of wonderful memories.

Our Summer Holiday in the USA - Part 3.

So then after San Diego we jumped back on the plane and flew into Las Vegas on a Friday. I was looking forward to "Vegas Baby!" We stayed at the Paris Hotel which was right in the middle of the strip and like being in Paris, Las Vegas is a full on city, Lots of casinos obviously, lots of smoking, lots of hassling when you are walking down the street. Lots of wealth, walking through the foyers of fancy hotels like the Bellagio, the Venetian, Caesars Palace, the opulence was jaw dropping. On the other side we saw the most homeless people in Vegas. Our day trip to the Grand Canyon was unfortunately cancelled due to bad weather. Oh well, next time.

 

The big highlight of our Las Vegas leg of the trip was that Daz and I renewed our wedding vows at the Graceland Chapel. We got remarried by Elvis! It was so funny!! We had the best day. We hired the dress and tux, had a limo pick us all up and drive us to and from the chapel. Elvis himself was hilarious and had us in stitches for the while 15 minute ceremony. He walked me down the isle to Love Me Tender, we all walked back up the isle to Viva Las Vegas. It was awesome. After the ceremony we all had dinner at the very fancy Eiffel Tower Restaurant and then Daz and I went to see Rock of Ages at the Venetian. Due to us still being in our wedding attire, we got upgraded in out seats and free champagne at the bar next door, Daz is a bit worried that he now has to remember two wedding anniversaries! The next morning however it was everything back into our suitcases and off on our last leg of this amazing holiday, Los Angeles!

Back to School for 2015

 

Back to school for everyone this week! Grace is in High School now, year 7!!! Milly is in year 5. As always she is ready to go, eager and enthusiastic while Grace is "Really? Do I have to??"

Our Summer Holiday to the USA - Part 2.

So after the adventures of Anaheim we got on a transfer bus and drove down to San Diego. We then hired a SUV for this park of the trip which gave us some freedom to do what we wanted when we wanted. Here we hit some animal parks, San Diego Zoo, San Diego Safari Park and also Sea World, I'll admit I didn't like the Zoo as much as Singapore Zoo last year. Still the giraffes and panda were worth seeing. Sea World was interesting, Daz went back to the hotel that night and googled all the incidents about Orca whales in captivity.... Then after we had done all our animal parks we went to Legoland! Friends who had been said it wasn't the best but we had an awesome time! We had a great day, came home with a few bags of minecraft lego...

Because we had our own wheels, we were able to get off the beaten tourist trap one morning and I convinced the boys that we had to go via Jo-Ann's! There was no way I could come home from America with no fabric! It was just like a giant Spotlight really just bigger and better. They knew I was coming as they had 40% off all fabric and so I got some Denise Schmidt fabric for $7.49. San Diego got the thumbs up from all of us. But before we knew it our five days were up and it was time to return the hire car and get on the plane for Vegas Baby!

Our Summer Holiday to the USA - Part 1.

We have just come back from an amazing three weeks on the West coast of the USA. I will admit I have nevertheless had much interest in visiting America but we had some such an awesome time, it's a journey I would recommend to anyone. We started our trip with five days down in Anaheim visiting Disneyland. Eight photos don't do our days justice! We rode all the rides, even the scarey California Screaming Roller Coaster in California Adventure Park. It was very cold, we had beanies and five layers of clothing on. We were in Disneyland for New Years Eve which was pretty special, busy too, never qued so much for the bathroom/lunch/a coffee. After Anaheim we went to San Diego, but that is another blog post....