Worcester or Wuss – ta

After a very long 24 hours we arrived at Heathrow to be greeted by my Dad. He promptly drove us to our B&B in Worcester where Mum, Sonia and Aimee were waiting before heading off again back up to York to collect Michael, Kellan and Baeddan.

After several reminders by the owner to carefully close doors to not disturb other guests, we headed out in search of a pub for an early dinner. Seren barely made it thought the meal so we did not hang around long before heading back to our room for some much-needed sleep as our bodies were telling us it was about 5am.

Our first real day of our family adventure started quite early with Daelin and I sitting in our B&B eating complementary biscuits at 5am. I had a terrible night’s sleep due to feeling so ill so also spent some time searching online for drs open on Saturdays and ended up walking to a phone booth to call the NHS line. The service was fabulous, doing an over the phone assessment before making an appointment with a GP at the Royal Worcester Hospital for 10am.

Tieve accompanied me on my trip to the Dr using the local bus service and was rewarded with finding a penny on the floor which she subsequently donated once in one of those spiral donation boxes.

A very friendly Dr diagnosed me with Pharyngitis and an ear infection and I left with a script for some antibiotics. I thought I was terribly organised remembering to take my NHS card with me but no one requested to see that or either of my two passports. Having headed back into town we stocked up on painkillers, met up with the others and headed back to the B&B to meet Dad and head to Stoke Prior and our 3 Narrowboats.

On Our Way 2017

After many late nights marking, writing reports and preparing 4 weeks of classes for my leave we were finally packed and ready to head to the airport.

The flight was long and tiring with very little sleep for some. My throat had started to get a little sore on Wednesday and continued to worsen on the plane making sleep difficult. I am sure they have reduced the spacing of the seats since we last flew making movements a little snug.

Seren and I started in the middle but swapped after Dubai to have the window view allowing us to view Dubai at take off and London on landing. We all enjoyed the flight cam on the plane tail which allowed us to view the plane coming in to the runway.

Out with the old, in with the new.

Well nothing has happened here for the last 6 1/2 years for a number of reasons but it was certainly time to add Daelin. Stay tuned for lots of holiday posts.

Baby Fabric

Merle and I couldn't resist this fabric when shopping in Cleggs in the holidays (3 weeks before the scan). It really suits a boy but was concerned that it would not be there in 3 weeks and decided I would make it work either way.

Every thing worked out in the end anyway.








I will make a quilt with the panel, fitted sheets with the circle/diamond print & the main mixed animal print and have a smaller amout of the owls and the jacks to make cushions, lamp shade etc.

Introducing

Haircuts

Tieve seems to have just realised what she wants to do as a grown up and thought she should start practising on her sister and herself (mean while we were enjoying a public holiday sleepin).

Before photos:

Awesome Flash Mob

I get tingles up my spine every time I watch this. 20,000 people dancing as one.

Email Subscription

I have just tried out the link with one of my email addresses and it works a treat. Each day between 1-3am AEST the bot will send you an email with blog updates if there have been any in the previous 24 hours. It will save you checking back to see if I have put anything up.

Email update bot test

wondering if this will work to email me when a blog updates. Testing on my own blog

Advent Conspiracy

Star's Recycled Rangoli

Seren Walking

We finally managed to get some footage of Seren walking 2 weeks after she took her first steps (5th August).

Love this

Air Traffic Flow

A very interesting video to check out.

Seren's Room

And here is the design for Seren's room

and her duvet cover:

Tieve's room

The girls are growing up

So I thought it was time to update their cartoon images (Edited, Tieve really felt Seren needed pigtails even though she has only worn them once and she need her fringe):

Bag Lady

Tieve is obsessed with her many hand bags and tonight we went out to get dinner and she had a handbag over one arm (which had a purse and $2 inside) and another bag over the other shoulder with a tamborine!!! So there I was, walking through Footscray on a Saturday night with a 3 year old playing a tamborine, carrying two handbags.

Unfortunately I didn't get any photos :( I must put the compact camera back in my handbag for moments like these.

Germ fest

After Seren being pretty well the whole trip (no runny nose for 6 weeks!!!!), she was back a whole 3 days before she was sick again. One more day there and she also got conjunctivitis which she kindly shared with her sister. The cold got shared amongst the four of us so the visit from Glen's parents for the weekend probably wasn't as exciting as planned.

So it was 4 days on and 5 days off. Lets hope their immune system builds up quickly.

A Presidential Visit

His Excellency Jose Ramos Horta, President of Timor Leste (East Timor) visited Star today. Everything went really well and the girls' behaviour was perfect. Here are a handfull of the 500 photos I took!!!!

A different point of view.

My parents are also keeping a bog of the holiday (which continues for them into September). If you are interested, have a look.

Back on the Big Plane

Having been up late packing and then up in the night with Seren being sick we slowly rose and put the last few things in our bags. The trip to the airport went pretty quickly (helped by the fact that I slept the whole way there) and before we knew it we were saying farewell to Mum and Dad.

After an expensive couple of sandwiches and drinks (24 Euro which nicely cleaned out my purse) we boarded the plane for Dubai and say Au Revoir France.

The two legs were, again very long and I managed to watch about 20 minutes of a movie only to find that it wasn't available on the Dubai - Melbourne leg so I will have to get hold of it and watch it another time. I then gave up on movies and watched 2 short episodes of a UK comedy called Out Numbered which I highly recommend it you get the chance to see it.

I managed to get about 5 hours sleep overall, not sure what the girls got ( a little more than that) and no idea how much Glen got as I think he watched some tv while I slept.

Luckily we landed in Melbourne an hour early, collected our 9 pieces of checked in baggage and headed home taking a short detour to see the 'Sold' sign on our house around the corner! Funily enough, the tour was in its final 20km when we got home so Glen decided, dispite the late hour, that we should watch it while the girls excitedly had a play with every toy in the room.

We had a fabulous holiday and a wonderful time with Mum and Dad but it was lovely to be home in our own beds (well Glen and Tieve ended up doing a swap) and now we have 2 days to get organised and over our jet lag before the reality of returning to work on Monday after 15 months off.

One Day More

After a long, hot night in our service centre 'camping site' we headed back up to Fontainbleau, just outside Paris. We nearly didn't make it there though as the final payage (toll booth) was 98 Euro, that is about $Aus175 and the machine didn't seem too keen on taking our credit cards. Eventually it accepted our fourth card which happened to be ours, lucky as we were out of credit cards to try and between the four of us didn't have enough cash.

Dad had managed to book us into the site where he had initially wanted us to spend our Paris week but it had been booked out. It is a lovely site, right by the Seine, with lovely old stone buildings, great amenities (unlike many other spots we had been) and box hedges marking out the sites.

We rapidly put up the awning due to the time and rain and put on our glad rags for our final dinner in France. There was a resaurant not far from the site that had been recomended by the people running the camp site so we thought we would check it out. It had a lovely feel, right by the river and had a jazz band playing out side.

Tieve was being as cooperative as ever with trying to get a nice, natural smile for a group shot.

While Seren did some last minute revising of her French and helped us translate the menu.

Between courses Tieve and I popped outside and she had a little bop to the music.

It was both an early birthday dinner for Glen and thankyou to Mum and Dad and a wonderful way to end our holiday.