Are Rainbows lucky?

We’ve seen two whole rainbows today – not for us these half-arsed efforts that disappear behind trees, oh no! We’ve seen two huge ones today that stretch all the way over the horizon in a beautiful semi circle. Which (for the quick amongst you), also means that we’ve had some rain……. Lots of it! I think we’ve had the entire winter’s quota in the last two days and there is lots more forecast for the next fortnight! Good job Oz is an Island already, otherwise I think we would have broken our tether and would now be headed for New Zealand! The boat’s sat on the drive collecting water like a very expensive washing up bowl! It’ll take us a day to dry it out after all this rain. It feels nice though. I get a strange happiness now from a day’s rain – in a similar way I suppose that we all used to feel happier after a day of sunshine in the UK. It’s lovely to hear the sound of the rain hammering on the roof tiles (lucky we haven’t got a rental house with a tin roof! Can you imagine the noise that would make?).

Well, the kids are now back at school. First week of the UK holidays and my lot are back with their noses to the grindstone! It feels as though they haven’t had long enough off though. We’ve done quite a lot with them I suppose, with days out and trips here and there, and we’re more knackered than Sam and Darcie are! The thought of back to the routine of shouting at them in the mornings to get their teeth washed and their faces brushed doesn’t fill me with glee – especially when Paul can’t get his carcass out of bed until 8.20am!! [:-(

We are now on ‘Fish Watch – Week 3’. One of Darcie’s beloved, best friends in the whole world, her bestest ever birthday present (her fish), has travelled to meet his maker on the porcelain pathway three weeks ago now – and Darcie hasn’t even noticed! She’s fed them (very occasionally), stared at them and poked her finger in the water, but she’s still yet to notice that one’s gone AWOL! And we thought about getting a dog? Good grief, none of us would remember to feed it in a fortnight and sit talking about how thin it’s looking. Perhaps we should know our limits and realise that we’re not good with children and animals!

So for the last week of the school holidays we visited Burswood Casino and treated the kids to a huge buffet lunch. You can eat as much as you like and after Sam’s fourth plate of pasta and lasagne, he reluctantly moved on to pudding – only to declare the savoury stuff much nicer and finish his meal with another slice of freshly cooked pizza! They had a pizza oven in the middle of the restaurant, so you can’t get much fresher than that! Darcie loved it too as they had a chocolate fountain in the middle of the restaurant! You got little wooden skewers that you could stick marshmallows on and then dunk them in the melted choc……..yum! Adam looked like we had held him by the legs and dunked HIM in the chocolate by the time he was finished – he is quite a messy eater! He’s also like Darcie and has a sweet tooth.The funniest thing was, as we came out of the restaurant, there was Santa Claus in full dress handing our sweets to the older people that had been there for the ‘Christmas in July’ celebrations! Darcie just ran towards Santa as fast as her legs would carry her! Santa smiled and posed for a photo and dished out the chocolates meant for the old folk to us! Paul joked however, that they were all the hard centres and we should check for denture marks before we ate them! I would love to show you the photo that I took of Darcie and FC, but I only had my mobile and don’t know how to download the pictures – doh! We also went to Kings Park so the kids could have a play for a while. It's beautiful there - over so many acres it's unreal and there are about 4 different kids parks - as well as a scary looking tree top walk that we haven't managed to persuade Paul to do yet!

Ooohhh, also had a very strange experience in a shop last week! Over here they offer something called a 'lay by' where you can get the store to keep the item for a few weeks/months whilst you pay for it in installments. Sometimes they charge you a few dollars for this service, but it's a good idea to start buying for birthdays - plus you don't have to worry about storing the stuff. Well, last week, Target had a HUGE toy sale and were offering free lay by until Christmas Eve. Well, we went in there at 10am on the day it started and it was like the opening ten minutes of the Harrods sale! It was complete bedlam! There were hundreds of hormonal women with shopping trolleys piled as high as they could get them with every possible toy imaginable - they were ALL doing their Christmas shopping - IN JULY! They must have taken a fortune that day and all the Mums left the store happy in the knowledge that they had broken the back of the Christmas shopping, could pay for it in installments between now and Xmas and collect it all on Christmas Eve if they wanted to. Mad? ........or a good idea? We bought a ten foot swimming pool with pump for less than £35!! That'll keep them cool in the summer (if I can be bothered to fill it up; although, yes - we don't pay for the water here, the landlord does, and he wouldn't let us have a dog in his poxy palace, so I may well fill one for the neighbours as well from our outside tap ;-)

Paul was very chilled out last week. Monday afternoon we even took the boat out when he should have been working! – although a bit of a hairy moment when his mobile rang with an important customer on the phone and he left Sam to almost steer us into a bridge! All adds to the fun, I guess! We saw more dol-chins. Perhaps they were looking after us, like the Mermaids used to try and lull to sailors onto the rocks, perhaps the dolphins were trying to save us from the bridge and tow us out of the way of the oncoming concrete!

We also managed to fit in a trip to Perth museum. Sam was desperate to show us where he went with school and it was a good day. It’s like the Natural History, but about 1/50th of the size. Sam’s favourite part was the ‘poo draw’ where you can see samples of different animal’s poo! Very informative. Although the Curator didn’t seem that keep on Sam’s offer to add a new exhibit to that particular draw! It would be even better if Adam did it – all the spiders would use one of their eight legs to pinch their nose; I don’t know what happens to Adam’s food whilst it’s being processed, but I tell you, it smells BAD!! There was lots at the museum about how life used to be for the first settlers and covered everything from aboriginals, wildlife, through to the three fences the length of Oz built to keep the rabbits out! (I kid you not!). It was an enjoyable few hours away from the rain, and the best bit was, you only had to make a donation to get in. Paul and I shoved some coins in the box; Darcie put in a sweet wrapper, Adam tried to shove a train in and Sam attempted to withdraw some money as if it were a cashpoint!

Paul having an 'off' day!

Call that a snake? THIS is a snake!

We still haven’t completely finished the paperwork for the house…… they keep forgetting to cost for things that we thought had all been resolved, but then turn up to bite us in the a**e. They did it as we chose the more expensive kitchen doors, but on our pre-start they forgot to cost for them; that was another $2500. Today they phoned to say they’d forgotten to cost for the upgraded cabinet doors in the kid’s bathroom! We’ve already signed everything off, and it’s like accepting a tender to have a job done, only for the contractor to say….’sorry mate – I know we quoted you to lay a patio, but we forgot to include the cost of the slabs in the price……’ Stupid! So needless to say, we are in dispute with the builders already! They are being reasonable though and the Contracts Manager was VERY embarrassed when we spoke to her this afternoon. We’ve put a lot of pressure on the builder to get the site though as we had to have permission from the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) to purchase land in the first place as we are not permanent residents and as part of this grant, we had to start continuous building within the year. This didn’t happen and they gave us an extension until the end of August, but they must start building by this date…..tick, tock, tick, tock………. Mind you, they couldn’t do anything if they went to site at the moment with the weather being as pants as it is! No – I don’t want to hear about how lovely and hot it is in Blighty, thanks all the same.

I think that’s about all our news for now. The kids have done a week back at school now and are tired out, but happy. Darcie’s class assembly is on 16th August and they are rehearsing now (the theme is something to do with monkeys – very appropriate, I’d say!). Sam’s had his mate Chad over a couple of times this week and they jumped on their bikes and went to the deli, bought a bag of chips and met up with some girls from their class. How mature! God knows what he’ll be like at 9 – shaving, no doubt! Darcie’s got a little fan club going at school and everyone seems pleased to see her in the morning and a few of them compete to get her to sit next to them. She also has a bit of a love interest (well, rivalry actually), in the forms of Ashley and Sean. Both of them have proposed and Darcie is a bit spoilt for choice! Sean never stops; he’s like a little ‘Billy the Whizz’. I think I’d personally go for Ashley – I’d be exhausted trying to keep up with Sean after a week!!

Oh look, it's Mum and Dad.

Adam’s fine – talking more and more every day and he’s becoming a lot easier to understand. His new favourite saying is ‘YES SIR’. I ask him to get his socks; ‘Yes Sir’. ‘Adam, put your coat on!’ ‘Yes Sir’ ‘Adam, finish your breakfast.’ ‘Yes Sir’. I don’t know where he gets it from. Perhaps I’ll have to stop him watching ‘Soldier Soldier’ before bedtime. He’s pineing a bit for Sam and Darcie now they’re back at school and we do the register for them and their friend’s about 100 times a day. It goes like this…….

‘Mum? Where’s Darcie?’

‘At school darling’

‘Mum? Where’s Sam?’

‘He’s at school too’

‘Mum? Where’s Sean?’

‘At school.’‘

Mum? Where’s Amy?’

‘Ummm, at SCHOOL!’

‘Mum? Where’s Chuck?’ (Sam’s friend Chad – Adam can’t say his name, so it's a cross between Chad and Jack, hence Chuck!)

‘At school, honey’

‘Mum? Where’s Tick-la?’ (Sean’s sister Nicola)

‘FOR PETE’S SAKE ADAM – THEY ARE ALL AT SCHOOL. NOW BE QUIET!’

‘Yes Sir!’

Tries the patience of a saint, my son! Bye for now x

P.S I've organised a telephone number that you can dial from the UK which is just like a UK number and the calls are only 3p per minute. If anyone's interested in giving us a call, email me or post a comment on here and I'll let you have the number, Thanks!