This one's for Grandpa Rhomberg

Eight days until opening day of the White Sox home opener!!!!

When two cultures collide

This is what happens when an American boy is growing up in Australia... he puts on his baseball jersey to play cricket...

Best Mates Forever

These sort of shots bring tears to my eyes. Knowing they will end very soon and my son's heart will be broken when Fraser moves to Brisbane by May. I just have to suck it up and smile and enjoy it, knowing they are having the times of their lives and are totally oblivious to what will invetiably happen very soon.

Brother Day Care

While Emmalee was over playing with Jacqueline, Fraser and Andrew were having a ball today playing Wii, swimming and generally wreaking havoc all over the house. At one point I found them in the front with Emmalee's babies and pram "taking them for walks" up and down the driveway -- in the way only brothers can do.

Note the extra special handling and care the boys are taking with the babies. Imagine if they had younger siblings!

The Incredible Truth About Motherhood

Nicole gave me a book called The Incredible Truth About Motherhood to read on Thursday that we talked about at coffee that morning. Said it was really cute and talked about motherhood. Was surprised I hadn't heard about it. ( I figured it was because it was Australian or something) (Was right when I got the book and saw the author)
Had a look and really enjoyed it.

Description of book

Motherhood is the world's most demanding-and rewarding-job. It comes with incredible highs and gut-wrenching lows. How best to express both the joys and challenges inherent in parenting the next generation? Leave it to the one and only Bradley Trevor Greive. In this loving homage to mothers everywhere, the best-selling author has masterfully paired his insightful prose with humorous animal photography that quickly and succinctly sums up his narrative's loving nuances. From birth to toddlers to teenagers, The Incredible Truth About Motherhood covers the many stops and starts children make on their journey to adulthood and describes how a devoted mother is both teacher and student.

Spelling Update

Guess who spelled anaphylaxsis correctly on his spelling test today?????

How do you compare?

I just signed off on Andrew's spelling list for the week. These are the words for week 9, Term 1:

• needs
• this
• drift
• leaf
• here
• shift
• petal
• right
• craft
• often
• afterwards
• softly
• draft
• loft
• extinguisher
• immediately
• they're
• amazing
• anaphylaxis

The ones in Color are his extension words for the super spellers in year 1. Remember -- this child is still only five. If I asked Jim to spell half those words, he would have to think long and hard about them. WHOA! btw - Andrew can spell them all!!!!!

He's been Aussiefied

Its official. He may not have the accent yet, but he has picked up the lingo. No matter how hard Jim has been trying to get the language down -- it just hasn't been working for him. He throws out the g'day or the mate every once in a while to try to apease friends. And it just sounds dorky -- to all of us. Everyone agrees. It slightly worked on Easter when he said g'day to Andrew F. and no one noticed, so it might have sounded slightly less dorky than usual.

BUT, Andrew on the other hand -- no accent has yet to cross his lips, unlike his sister who is terribly hard to understand. Every other sentence we have to ask her to repeat because we can't understand her. Well, this afternoon when I picked him up from a playdate with his classmate, Seb (short for Sebastian) as we were leaving Seb's house, Andrew yells back to Seb, "See you later, mate!" like it was nothing. Just normal conversation. UGH!!!! He has been Aussiefied!!! No accent, but the lingo is taking hold. Please help me...

Absolutely Gorgeous Day

Today is an absolutely beautiful day. The sun is shining. There are just a few, big puffy cottony clouds in the sky. You can barely hear the waves rocking against the shore down below at the base of the dock below the house. There are really no boats speeding around. Just a few birds flying through the air. Slight breeze. Wind chimes playing a quiet song. No humidity. It would only be better if I didn't have a sinus problem or head cold.

Views from the deck chair

So, I am just sitting outside on the deck chairs mom and dad gave us for Christmas when we moved here. Got a sun hat on. Got the sun glasses on. Got my kleenex. And a book. And no responsibilities. Kids are at school for another 3 hours. And I am doing nothing. But reading. A girl could get used to this. Almost makes you not want to move back to the cold, dreary mid-west where there is virtually no access to this type of view or weather for so much of the year.

Power Tools in Use

Emmalee has been begging me to get this posted, so here it is...

You may want to turn down the volume a bit!
The cast is off!!!

Finally getting used to the beach

Andrew has taken all year (ok -- all beach season) to get comfortable in the water. He went from HATING the beach... the sand, the water, basically everything about it. To now, when we went to Balmoral on Monday -- he pretty much just jumped right in. He was body surfing, throwing the frisbee around with Jim and having a great time just playing in the water. He only had to come and get the sand wiped out of his eyes once or twice. A big change from every two or three minutes which was the norm at the beginning of the season.

I can only imagine what he would be like if it would have been a normal summer with real beach weather where it wasn't raining each weekend. I think we went to a beach maybe 2 or 3 times over the course of the whole summer. Even when we were in Hawaii we had such crappy weather with the rains and all.
Thank goodness we have this new house with a pool. He has become such a fish. I can see his confidence in the water grow each time he hops into the pool. I truly think it has helped him overcome his dislike/fear? of the beach.
Can't wait until next summer!

Perfect Brunch

Jim took a day off. Yes, you heard me right. Jim took the day off. We took the kids to school today. I did my normal scripture class and then we headed out for a day together.
First stop, Bill's restaurant in Woollahra. This is the guy (Bill Granger) whose cook book here in Sydney I actually enjoy cooking food from. The recipes are real food. They are yummy and true flavors. Not flashy or over the top.
Sat down. Ordered our cappuccinos and settled down with the menus. Decided on organic scrambled eggs with sourdough toast and a side of toasted apple, dried cherry and almond bread with ricotta and honeycomb spread (knowing Jim would eat my sourdough since I don't like it) and Jim would go with the ricotta hotcakes with bananas and honeycomb butter with a side of chicken chippolatas. A few minutes later the server came back saying that their fresh delivery hadn't arrived yet with the chippolatas, so he had to settle for bacon. Oh well.

Brunch was served. WOW! Was it beautiful! And tasty. If it wasn't for the darn bananas, I would have ordered the hotcakes myself. But, I salvaged one from the top of the stack and traded for half of my scrambled eggs. Good trade, if I do say so myself.

Is this thing on?????

Hello?!?!?!?! Is anyone out there besides my mom and Katie? And maybe a friend or two here in Sydney? I can see you on my statistics, but I can't see you commenting. I get little comments(yes, they do make it all the way across the world -- word travels FAST!!!) about how "DISAPPOINTED" you are when I don't post daily, but hey, I get "DISAPPOINTED" when you don't comment to my posts or email me either. Even weekly! I know you are reading. I see your IP address. I know where you live, you aren't hiding too well!
I am writing this to keep a history of what we are doing, but I do know you are out there living vicariously through it, enjoying pieces of it as you go. So, if you do pop in to read... please say so or send a message. Say 'HI' when you pop in to read. Drop us a line with a comment or two. Or an email. The kids do read the comments and are really excited when they read them. And then your comments become a living part of our history, too!

I am stepping down from my soapbox. Stepping down, now.

What a day

I can't believe how much we did today. We woke up to a thunderstorm at 7 something this morning. Thought it was going to be a crap day, so we just rolled our eyes and thought about rolling back over and going back to sleep (and ignoring the kids). (No such luck of course!)
Got up, watched the clouds fight with the sun over who was going to win. Jim walked up to Bond's Corner to grab a coffee and of course they weren't open -- Easter Monday. Official cafe holiday. Businesses not open until Tuesday. No coffee for him! But banana bread at home at least! :)
I hopped in the shower and no sooner did I do that then Andrew Ford called and said since the sun had come out we should all go down to Balmoral Beach for a couple of hours. It was agreed we would meet at their house in 30 minutes. I changed and packed up the gear while Jim and Emmalee grabbed a quick swim in the pool. I talked to mom and dad back in IL to wish them a Happy Easter -- listening to them talk about the 12 inches of snow they are dealing with while we are swimming and going to the beach!

Hustled off to the beach by 10am. Building sand castles,

Emmalee and Anthea building in the sand
bridges and holes by 10.15. Had fresh cappuccinos in hand by 10.30. All the kids swimming in

the surf by 10.30.

Emmalee, Andrew and Anthea playing in the surf at Balmoral Beach

Jim and Andrew pose in the surf at Balmoral Beach

Emmalee, Andrew and Anthea playing in the surf at Balmoral Beach with Jim and Andrew Ford watching

Packed everyone up around 12.15 for lunch back at our place and more swimming at our pool.
Next thing you know, we get a call requesting a Barton drop-off for a couple of hours. Sounded good to us. The more the merrier! By 1.30 we had 6 kids, 2 dads and 1 mom over. Looked like after school care gone amuck! Kids were splashing in the pools, riding scooters, doing art, playing dolls, playing yard tennis, skateboarding...
Ended the day of course with a couple of quick Wii games of tennis and bowling. Can't have a playdate without Wii! Especially if Fraser is here. But man did we pack in alot of stuff today.

Amazing Manners

It was time for another Thursday afternoon assembly for the kids. I knew I had to go since Emmalee's class was putting on the performance. She has been excited for it ever since school has started.

They did a little play about the Hottest Boy in the World, adapted by their class. It was quite good. They each read a line or two. Then at the end they had a huge volcano that they paper mache'd over the past few weeks -- filled it with dry ice or something and used a soundtrack and lights to make it seem like it was exploding. Very cool!

Emmalee and her friend Jack Lear

Then when it came time for awards, Mr. Andrew was presented with a surprise award! He was awarded an award from his teacher, Mrs. Wilsczek, an award for his amazing manners in class each day. That was a very nice award to have given to him. You should have seen him up in front of every one trying so hard to be proud and not to grin or smile to hard! It was great!!!

Andrew after getting his award for great manners! Hip Hip Hooray Andrew!!!

I can't believe it

I had to drop Andrew off at Letetia's house this morning at 8am this morning since we had a 9.15am appointment at the Children's Hospital to have her cast removed. It was bound to be at least a 1 hour drive with traffic.
When I got back from the cast removal and drop off at school I met up at Schmooze with Teesh to check up on how the morning went. She said well, but when it came to walk up the hill to school, Andrew started to complain, "My legs hurt" so Letetia offered to kick Timmy out of the umbrella stroller and stroll Andrew to school instead of Tim. Andrew took her up the offer!!! Little toad! Tim wasn't too happy either. Even the thought/threat of being teased about being pushed in a baby stroller wasn't enough to stop him. What a lazy guy...

The Gangs All Here

I got in the car this morning to take Emmalee to the hospital to get her cast removed and who did I see, but Nikki, Katie and Pinky the Heffalump. So, we ALL go to the hospital with camera in tow for the removal. (Video uploading as I type!)
Nothing like a huge armful of not-so-real little creatures to haul around.
We get taken into the patient area by the doctor since they are 2 physios short today. UGH! Sounds like we are going to be waiting a while since all the beds and chairs are full of clumsy children.

Then, next thing we know, the actual orthopaedic doctor strolls over with the vacuum saw. I wasn't even sure he actually knew how to use it, but he assured me he did. So, I got the video rolling on the camera and 2 and a half minutes later, her cast was history!
He said her wrist looked great. The tan lines looked a bit funny, but that was to be expected. Her muscles had turned to jello, so the kids at school got to wiggle her arm a bit. Its still quite tender, so we are baby-ing it for the next few days until she gets used to it again!

It's All Japanese to Me

Sitting here are dinner tonight I felt quite left out. The kids were quizzing each other in Japanese. "What is blah blah blah? "Oh that is 'at the whiteboard' or 'please sit on the floor' Not exactly useful when hanging out in a Japanese bar or in the Japanese workforce later on in real life, but still -- way more than I could ever do. Plus, who know what else they are learning. And this is only year one and two!!!

Birthday Dinner

We celebrated Sophie's 33rd birthday a week early Saturday night with a BBQ at the Ford's house. Sophie's parents are still in town, so they were able to come and have dinner with us and celebrate too.

I broke out my asian style marinated pork tenderloin and kicked Andrew off his BBQ (totally emascualated him!) and Letetia made the chinese cabbage and noodle salad so they offset each other perfectly. Was a great dinner. I made an America's Test Kitchen Chocolate Cake with Alton Brown's Chocolate Ganache Frosting for dessert. Decorated it with hand made white chocolate flowers in pink and white. Turned out beautifully. Had alot of fun!

p.s. John challenged Jim to a rematch of NFL Football on the Wii tonight and Jim is the champion Jim is the Champion! Oh wait, I am not gloating! I am just cheering!!!! Hip Hip Hooray!!!!!

Dancing the Night Away at the Noodle Market

The sun was finally out all day on Friday so we were able to go to the North Sydney Noodle Markets for dinner. Oh, and Jim made it home on time, too! So we packed up and made it down there. Met up with the Ford family down there. Was a bit disappointing because not all the noodle vendors were there (must have had something to do with all the dark ominous clouds in the sky at school drop off in the morning) so there wasn't a large selection of food, but there were dumplings nonetheless.
There was a band playing with lots of dancing, especially by the little people and eventually joined in by the daddies.... Those dancing lessons at school have been coming in handy!

The Other Boleyn Girl

Decided to have a Girls Day Out. You know... too tired to go out at night. Don't want to get a sitter, etc. And there was this movie, The Other Boleyn Girl we all have been waiting to see. Sophie, Letetia and all had all read The Other Boleyn Girl eons ago and really liked it. Heard the movie was coming out and said when it did we would go see it together.
Well, it opened today and we got the first showing.
Met at 10.50 at Chatswood. Sophie brought her Mom(Esther) along. The seats Teesh & I (mostly Teesh) chose were too close for Esther's eyes, so she wanted to move back. When we did, Esther noticed that the rope to the La Premiere seating (BIG CUSHIE SEATS -- $32 a ticket instead of $13) was down and said lets sit there until we get asked to move! So we did. We sat there -- and acted like we were supposed to be there even when a member of the staff walked by. Didn't even question us!!!
The movie was good. Followed the book pretty well, added a few things that weren't there that really didn't need to be there. Skipped some things that we all thought were quite important to the main plotline. But it was a LONG book, so you do have to pick and choose what you keep and drop. But for the most part we did enjoy it. And I think it was a welcome break for Sophie from her house building/renovation work and for me, a break from my headaches.

Kookaburra

Kookaburra
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree.
Merry, merry king of the bush is he.

Laugh, Kookaburra,
Laugh, Kookaburra,
Gay your life must be.

Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Eating all the gumdrops he can see.
Stop, Kookaburra,
Stop, Kookaburra,
Leave some there for me.

We had these glorious creature visit us last week early one morning while Jim was clipping his nails on the deck. Something about the sound of his clipping drew them in. So much so that we (I) could get right up close and take their photos. They kept flying in -- I think we had five at one time. Two on the rails, one on the floor, one on the bbq and one on the roof. It was quite a sight.

Birds of Paradise

These things really do look like birds. Its so uncanny.

And this has to be like a $50 dollar bouquet or more. All I did was cut 4 of these beauties from the patch in the front yard and then a bunch of lily leaves for greenery and voila!

Stainless Kitchen

So to speak. Because you know with Andrew in the house, nothing is stainless or fingerprintless or without smears... But here it is in the moment of almost clean.

Bedtime Stories

Because I am such a mean mommy (which in English means they didn't listen to me for the 5th time in a row to get their things picked up and get into their rooms for bed) they both lost out on me reading stories to them before bed tonight. Sooooooooooo, Emmalee decided they would just read to each other. Fine by me!

If you have 4 minutes and 53 seconds you will have a complete story read to you by the Rhomberg Children, complete with giggles and all!

ABBA Gold

Heard throughout the house this a.m.

...
Mamma mia, here I go again
my my I can see your undies

at least they were getting dressed

and singing happily...

Earth Hour

We have joined the movement. We did it last year when mom and dad were here. Turned off all the lights for more than an hour and enjoyed the darkness that was all around us. So this year we are making it official by pledging to do it. You can do it too!

Sign Up for Earth Hour -- March 29 - 8pm!!!

Kids Eye Views

Last weekend the kids had possesion of the camera while Shannon's parents were in town. Jim took them into the city for lunch and before he sent them off on their own into the Rocks, they had lunch together. The kids documented some of the antics and fun they had...

Surfin Dude aka Surfin Dad

Jim took his first surfing lesson EVER today. He got three lessons as a birthday gift from his parents. And before anyone asks -- no, they aren't trying to kill him -- he wanted to learn how to surf. YES -- at his age!

So, we meander up to Manly Beach for 9am surf lesson Sunday morning. One of the first nice weekends we have had in forever. He squeezed in because it happened to be council day for women and it was free surfing lessons for them. So there were tons (heaps) of women out for free lessons. Good for them, bad for Jim. Plus, the instructors said it was the smallest waves they had seen since Christmas!!!!!

So, out to the sand for 30 minutes of on the sand instruction. Then into the water for baptism by waves. 90 minutes of on again off again board riding. Unfortunately, this time around Jim didn't get to catch a wave. There just weren't any big enough with his name on them!

View from the Outside

I am working on it. I promise.

This is the view from our drive way of the front yard. And of the walkway to the back of the house. I know its not much, but its something. The front yard is green grass. Soft enough to actually walk on in bare feet, not St. Augustine grass -- just watch out for the bindiis. Or spiders. We have a blue jacaranda tree growing on the left hand side facing the street

and some sort of tree that is now blooming purple just at the front of the yard just before the brick wall that surrounds the yard. There are various types of bushes scattered around the yard in a haphazard way. The birds of paradise are located on the right hand side of the walk and they are in bloom right now too. We are even lucky enough to have a frangipani/plumeria tree growing on the other side of the neighbors fence right over our garbage bins, so it masks the terrible odors!!!

On the opposite side of the walk from the laundry as you head to the back there are two huge hydrangea bushes. I think they bloom a deep mauvey-lavender color, but I am not totally sure as they were already bloomed out by the time we moved in. I just get the fun of cutting the dried blooms off. All through-out the back there are south african lilies which bloom with this huge ball of periwinkle blue of star shaped flowers in December and January.

Then they just leave tall green leaves afterward. And I can't even venture guesses as to what else is growing in the back gardens going down to the water, but the scents of the flowers when they bloom are heavenly.