My word, what a busy week!

The get together with all the ex-pats in Kings Park went well. We had a large turn out and there were so many families who had only been in WA a matter of days, it was invaluable for them to meet up with all the old timers and find out the ‘no nos’ and the ‘must dos’. Everyone was lovely and grateful that I’d bothered to organise it (not a lot to organise really; just post on the net the day and the place and everyone else makes it a success. I just made sure everyone had my mobile number in case they got lost or couldn’t find us). I might do another one in Mandurah in a month or so. It’s the Red Bull Air Race in November, but I don’t know if I want to share that; it was so fab last year.

Not a bad turn out for a Sunday afternoon.

Sam made it. He got to double figures without either Paul or I maiming him or filing for divorce, which in itself, is a great achievement; well done Sam!

Walking on water in King's Park.

He had a good day. His friends spoiled him at school; singing Happy Birthday half a dozen times and he liked his presents, so all was good with the world on Tuesday. He got lots of money, gadgets as usual and Nanny B posted him boxes full of goodies from England – like skips, munchies and jaffa cakes (and the jewel in the crown – a chocolate orange!).

Happy Birthday, Sam!

When Mum arrived on her visit, the Customs officer at the airport frowned at her for stowing a chocolate orange in her case; ‘you can buy those here, you know!’. Yes mate, but I’m not paying the equivalent of a FIVER for one – OK! Mum also sent some pocket money for Darcie and Adam, which their eyes lit up when they saw. Darcie was restrained as she was at school for the day, but Adam kept bringing me my shoes like a little puppy, demanding to go to the ‘shopping centre’ so he could spend his ill-gotten gain :o) He drove me mad! Mum found it hilarious; I wasn’t so amused! In a moment of madness, Paul said that Sam could have a sleepover on Saturday night. He’d invited four friends and the countdown to chaos was on…….

Not too many candles!

During the course of the week, we were finally locked out of Arthur as the tiles were delivered and the kitchen arrived on site on Thursday; along with the bathroom cabinets :o)

Lots of tiles.

My spa bath has also arrived, so all is good! We had a major shock with the kitchen though as we chose the colours for it all nearly two years ago and completely forgot what we had picked. Both Paul and I were convinced it was a high gloss, white kitchen, so you can imagine our surprise when it turned out to be a coffee colour! Very nice though and I’m glad really that it’s not all white – I think it’d be too overpowering and too hard to keep clean! Just as shame as we’d had the Dulux lady round earlier (snobby cow that she was) and we’d chosen all our colours to compliment our sparkling white kitchen!

Our 'not white' kitchen :o)

Also, we’ve made a major boo boo in that the recess for our fridge isn’t wide enough! We kind of forgot that all fridges are different sizes and ours turns out to be 45cm too large! Bugger! Never mind….. we’ll have to claw it back from another budget – like food, or something equally as unimportant! We’ve all got enough blubber to last us a few weeks fasting to save up for a fridge. Well, apart from Mr Cheese who’s all skin and bone. Mind you, they feed him well at nursery, so at least he’ll have two well-fed days out of a week.

En suite cabinets - the spa bath's round the corner..... waiting.

As you can see, we have a kitchen (worktops to come later), cabinets in the bathroom for the ‘his and hers’ sinks and a cupboard in the laundry to house all the washing powder and crap. Hopefully the tiling should start this week and today they’ve undercoated the render for the downstairs. They couldn’t really do this earlier as the weather’s been so wet.

Laundry - exciting, innit?

The kitchen fitter reckoned they only had about 5 weeks work left on site. That’s about 10 weeks in Perceptions (our builder’s) weeks in that case, which would be about right for our November hand over.

The White House...... but not for long.

Other news….. the new boat arrived on Friday! Paul rushed down to Mandurah at 8.30am after specifically asking the delivery guys to phone him when they were on their way so he could take photos; only to arrive as it was literally being dropped into the water (not literally dropped – that’s a ‘boating’ term :o)

On the trailer.....

Coming off the trailer......

It was sickening to see how expertly the guys handled it – anyone would think they did it for a living. Mind you, this was still only a baby one for them as they sell boats in the $$millions$$. The Mandurah boat show is on in a couple of weeks and they’ve already started bringing the boats in; some of them are as much as a small town!

I think the smile says it all :o)

We spent a few hours with Mark from Challenge Marine and he took us all over the boat and made sure we knew the essentials like how to flush the toilet , connect the shore power up and fill up with petrol (*gulp*). It was good fun and we had a bit of a sea trial to get to learn how the trim tabs work etc.

Come back!!!

After Mark left, Paul, I and Mr Cheese went back out on it for a few hours, to get used to it and pootle about. Saturday we couldn’t take it out as it was……… dur.. dur….. dur…..’the sleepover from hell’

The kids were due to arrive at 5pm, but one of them phoned and asked if he could come at 3.30pm as he was too excited (WTF!!!), and it kind of went down hill from there. I can’t believe how the kids have everything and they are so bored and unimpressed with everything! They were rude; no pleases or thank yous for anything! They didn’t acknowledge you when you spoke to them; at best you got a grunt! And they just completely ignored us whenever we asked them to calm down or be quiet. They just had no respect at all for us or our house, or even Sam. They showed off and sulked and one of them even pulled me to one side about 9.30pm to say ‘Thank you for inviting me, I’m very excited to be here…….it’s just that it’s a little boring. There’s not much to do, is there?’ This is after Paul did the boys a BBQ, hired them Spiderman 3 on DVD, I’d done them a pass the parcel (jokey one with glo sticks and false moustaches) and they had a playstation and more games to choose from than I can count on two hands. Oh, no – this was not good enough, obviously! They even sulked because there were 5 of them and only 4 controllers for one of the playstation games! Good grief! Even Sam was getting hissed off with them at about 10pm. He couldn’t believe how hard it was to try and please them all and was very close at one point to telling them all to bugger off home! Two of them had a row and one went off in tears in Sam’s room and it took us an hour to get him out. Perhaps we take for granted how mature Sam is. But then again, we can see where he gets all his particularly annoying traits from too!

Before you say it, Miss Parcel's booked in for an upper lip wax on Wednesday.

They were like lunatics! So hyper, they just wouldn’t calm down at all. Paul hid the fizzy drink in the garage at one point as it just became too much. We went to bed at midnight, hoping that they would all settle down, but NO. Paul kept going out to reason with them, getting more and more annoyed. We were gobsmacked. The way Paul was having to talk to them to have any affect was so strong; we would have been mortified if any of our friend’s parents had spoken to us like that when we were kids! We came to the conclusion that they were too young really to cope with a sleepover. Only one had ever been to a sleep over before and I think that was Sam’s mate who’d been to ours a few weeks before. They just didn’t know what to do or how to act. Eventually after Paul really shouting at them at 2.30am, they gave in and went to sleep.

In the morning, they were just as maddening. One of them even went rooting through the garage and found the fizzy drink that Paul had hidden and started dishing them out to the others – no asking – nothing!! They were all being collected between 10 -11am, so I started feeding them smarties and coke in vast quantities. I told all the parents what a nightmare it was. I wasn’t strong enough about their behaviour though. I know Sam’s no angel, but I would be disgusted if I ever found out that Sam acts like that at someone’s house. Paul gave them a half hour lecture on respect and they still didn’t have a clue. We just found the whole experience very sad. The kids have everything, but it’s never enough. Perhaps it’s the parents fault – us included. We all want our kids to have everything they want and to be happy, probably as compensation for the lack of time we give them. It’s a sad reflection on modern times, I think. WOW, that’s heavy for my blog.

Anyhow, we got rid of them all and went out on the boat again. The wind in our hair was a good stress reliever! We bought a portable DVD player so the kids could watch it and let us have some peace and quiet whilst we moored and it worked really well. The law of sod states that whenever we need to concentrate on something, the kids will kick off and world war three will break out and the peace will be shattered. This new tactic worked well and we shall be exploiting it here on in; long may it continue!

Jump!!!

Then Monday was a public holiday for the Queens birthday, so we were out on the boat again! We cruised around the estuary, getting used to the controls and moored up the river and stopped for a picnic. Lovely. The weather was nice too.

Then today, I had tickets to take the kids to Thomas the Tank Engine live on stage. We’d taken Sam to one in Wembley and it was brill, so we were expecting big things (although this is WA and Sam and I were joking in the car on the way that it may just be a woman on stage reading a book, or cardboard boxes painted as the train characters!).

Can you see Thomas, or just the woman in front's head?

It wasn’t that bad, but the seating was like a school play and the kids couldn’t see properly and stood on their chairs, which in turn meant that the kids behind them couldn’t see…… Adam was chuffed with it and had a good time; although a little disappointed that he didn’t get to meet Dorgon (Gordon) or James.

Miss P enjoys the show.

Darcie quite liked watching all the action on stage, but Paul and Sam sat behind looking like Statler and Waldorf from the Muppet Show.

Statler and Waldorf?

Paul and Sam?

Every time the characters on the stage were asking for audience participation, shouting out ‘clap, clap, clap’, Sam was shouting back ‘crap, crap, crap’. How rude! I try and organize all this fun stuff for them all; I really don’t know why I bother. No one appreciates me. I may just go down the bottom of the garden and eat some worms! Until next time; can you post me some alka seltzer? It may help with worm heartburn. Thanks :o)