Sophia Pictures

Some pictures of Sophia and the Marion adn Andrew's handmade cushion. Had a quite weekend really. Yesterday since netball was cancelled I sat infron of the fire and work on my assignment. Mum and Dad went to town. The Bog was really good. Just had drinks and nibbles. Went to Joe's 21st. Was at this shed that had been converted to a bar in the middle of nowhere. Awsome place! Lots of Gooners there like your mates and then also the scummy Gooners. So a interesting mix of people. Coached some ladies who are playing social netball at the gym dis morning. Was quite funny. Mum and Dad mucked round in the garden. We then went to town to the fairydown outlet shop just off manchester st and got trent a pack/travel bag he wanted for his 21st. Went to dressmart and that has been about the day. I have tomorrow off as it is field trip day. Only 4 weeks to go of lectures and 5 weeks until exams. A little scary.

Well have a good night. I'm moving back to the warmth of the fire!!! Enjoy your time off and having everyone to stay.

Love us xoxoxoxox

hi team

hi guys how are you all? sorry it has been a while since we last wrote. this week we have both been working alot hayden is up to day 7 in a row tomorrow and me day 5 but had a few mornings and not spent enough hours in bed with hayden woking late so feeling a little worse for where. at the moment we are watching our first crusaders game live since we have been living in melbourne - awesome to see them - foxtel is great. just went to tea at a a place on elizabeth st i had very yummy seafood risotto and hayden pizza; good, quick and cheap just what was required.
we are now very excited to be seeing dallas the day after tomorrow. we have alot of things planned as we both have some days off while dall here. we had to go and buy some extra culterly and things for when we will have a the 5 of us staying here. clarie i will be working while you here apart from monday but mornings so we will be able to spend the afernoons and nights with you two.
gail and ernine looks like there has been alot of progress with the new house will be in time for us to house sit when we come back to nz, when are are on your next big adventure. have a wonderful time on your lastest travels. aunty chris and dave where have you gone havent been many contributions from you on here but hello hope you are well. gary and jan sounds like you did pretty well on the coast in the bike race and that you had fun at the same time. jan hope you have kady proofed the house and are feeling fit to chase the troublesome bunny around all day hehe. dall her hair cut dosent look bad hayden said it doesnt even look different but is does just shorter.
alright better actually watch the rugga now instead of writting.
love you all and see dallas and claire and phil soon. from gemma and hayden xox

Five more days! Yahoo!

Then I'm kid-free AND in another country haha. I'll miss the kids though of course. Went to Little River yesterday for the pumpkin festival, was lots of fun. Couple pics up there of that... Kady was yelling in the car and Liam just wanted a photo taken with his lucky-dip prize of marbles.

Kady had her fringe cut today, it looks good but weird at the same time. Guess I just have to get used to it! Last photo is of her new fringe. I forgot to save a lock of hair though, for her First Five Years book, so I'm a bit annoyed about that! But hey at least she's not running into things anymore!

See ya on Monday Hayden and Gem. Hope I don't get lost haha.

Dall & kids

Hi Gemma and Hayden - This is my second attempt tonight - I had the note written and was uploading images and lost the lot, so here goes again

Have been busy - finishing boundary fences and getting this place up to scratch so when we are ready to sell there is not too much to do.

The house has finally started to move this week - with the boxing in for the foundqaions and floor - the outside foundations are to be poured on Friday and the floor the next Friday - 2 days before we go away - so we should see some changes when we get back!!!

Also I have been doing bookings for Italy - not as organised as some people are!!! Joanie had wanted to take Ernie to a convent in Rome - but unfortunately Sister Gertrude wrote to say there was no room in the inn - you can imagine how upset EJ is??? - I shall look for another convent however. - no double beds and curfews!!!!

This blog does keep me up to date with other goings on - had not caught up with the Davidson grandchild - congrats Granpa Andrew - looks as if she has you around her finger already!!!!

Now I will try to load the images of the house so far!!!

Update on my grandchild - Melissa says she walked up to 5 steps between her and Graham during the week - although it worked better from Melissa to Graham - "cos the other way she was so excited to see Mum that she lost her balance!!! I was the courtside baby minder yesterday - Melissa playing again for Fernside - unfortunately against Clarkeville first up!!! There were lots of other nanas there too - we could have coffee mornings there

Take Care and enjoy all your visitors that are about to visit.

Mummy G and EJ

Hi
Update on Sophia Davidson - 1st photo attached. She visited on Saturday. Granddad very smitten. Lovey little girl, very long, dark hair. Seems quite placid at this stage although too soon to say. Melissa and Jonathan coping well so far. Hope this finds you both fit and well and enjoying some good weather. Quite cold here this weekend. Had a good night at the rugby with a win to the Crusaders. Good news Gemma about your apraisal, not that we expected anything less! Not long until we are over, you will hav e non-stop visitors, hope the cake tins are full!!!!! By now you will have heard about the netball win, great result. Take care
Love from Marion and Andrew

Hey guys.
We havn't been up to much, trying to save to come to you guys. We get in at 8.35pm on the 3rd and leave at 5.05pm on the 7th. Can't wait! Will be good to catch up with you guys and also Dall, and we will also see my friend Mel who was in the Gold Coast but went to Melbourne the same day as you guys came back from New Zealand. I have just finished work today, only worked 7-10am as the family are going to dreamworld cos their family is over from NZ, but I still get paid my normal hours.
We went and watched the Gold Coast Titans play Brisbane Broncos at Suncorp Staduim on Friday night. What an experience! I'd never seen leauge before..but it was a lot of fun - especially since we had $40 on Titans to win by 12 or less points. They were up by 16 with 4 minutes to go, then the Bronco's scored bringing it down to Titans winning by exactly 12..woohoo, $210 for us, as they were paying $5.25. That staduim is huge! It's in the middle of Brisbane, and seats 70,000! We were walking up to our seats thinking we'd have shit ones..but we had really good seats! We were second row from the back right up the top infront of the coaches box. So we saw everything!
We have a busy weekend this week, Phil's friend is having an engagement party on Saturday night that we will only be able to make for an hour or so, and then we will have to go to Phil's brothers 30th birthday party. He's having a pig on the spit, and supplying LOTS of alcohol, so should be fun. Then on Sunday we have our friend (who lives in the complex with us) their daughter Courtney is 4 and we are invited to her pool party..we will prob be hung over but oh well! Haha!
We have been car shopping lately, our's has almost done it's dash. I'm wanting to get some cheapish (well, as cheap as you can get a car in Aussie!) but Phil has his eyes set on his friends car which is a Holden SS Commodore 2002 I think..it's a nice car, but I just think $18,000 is a lot to pay for it. But like Phil says - he'll be the one paying for it! Haha. We've also been looking for a little car for me..just one to get me to and from work etc.
I'm glad you went and brought that doona inner like I said too! Haha! I brought fleece blankets for our bed the other night so when we come to you guys we will just bring our blow up mattress and those blankets to sleep on the night that Dall is still there. I'm really looking foward to it!
Anyway..i'd better go. I'm going to get a haircut :D
See you in a little over 2 weeks!
Love Claire and Phil.
Ps. Dallas - give my poor neice a haircut!

hi guys how are you all not long until we will be seeing alot of the contributors to the blog site. wohoo we cant wait we are getting the house all prepared on saturday we went to fantastic furniture and brought a sofa bed couch.. it is not real leather- black, that turns into a bed by the back folding down. comfy to sit on and hopefully good to sleep on as well. we also went to i-kea again and got some cushions duvet inner etc. so we have had to rearrange the lounge a bit we both wanted it a different way... at the mo it is the way i like it.. dont know how long for though. we also both got a brand new jacket each on saturday mine a white blazer that can be worn alot of different ways and haydens is a black heavy woolen with lining hoodie. on saturday night i went to an act at the melbourne comedy festival with some of the nurses on my ward. very funny auzzie lady that just told stories about her family (reminded me of sarah noads story time at my house) sunday waited for the couch to be delivered and hayden worked... boring day. Today (in case you didnt know i had a 3 day weekend) i went out to chadstone with hayden when he went to work. i went shopping at the myer out there as they have a 25% off everything sale i wanted a pair of boots there but they didnt have my size luckily another store in chandstone had them so i have a beautiful pair off new black flat boots, new jeans and a couple of tops. this afternoon got foxtel installed into the apartment so now we have a lot of channels and will be able to see a few of the crusaders games.. shoud be good.
thats all for now so now everyone else now has to tell me what they have been up to in the weekend. love gemma and hayden xxx

Hey everyone!

Photo of Miss Mini-Yeti: Reckon I should get her fringe cut or not?

Eeek, been a while since I last looked at this so thought I'd better make a contribution. Hope everyone's well and had a great break over Easter Weekend. We went up to Ashley and Kellie's new place in Motueka Valley.. the turn-off was just past their old place, on a bridge over the Motueka River and a wee bit up into the hills, off the beaten track. I'm sure that at a few points in time, we all thought we were lost hahaha. But Kellie saw us go past and ran out onto the road and luckily, we turned around (end of road, as it goes up to the walking track etc) and came back down and she met us. It was a really good weekend... really neat place. Tis quite a bit of land, farm.. two houses - Ash and Kel live in one and the owners live in the other. Two horses, too many dogs and cats, a few chickens and two sheep (that we saw anyway). The kids LOVED it up there and we slept in Chris and Will's place which used to be a barn. Chris hangs her horsey stuff downstairs so the smell took me back to Napier and Janet and Alan's farm.. kinda like home really. The sandflies were a pain though cos you could actually feel them bite. Quite painful. Had a bonfire going all weekend, the engagement party was awesome, really good turn-out so lots of guests (I was surprised cos they do live quite a way out). Drank a bit too much though! I blame that on Ash and Kel though cos they bought heaps of drinks haha. Was nice to catch up with some of their friends though, Tim Gough stayed all weekend with his dog. Yeah it was awesome to go up there and I actually can't wait til next time, it's really relaxing and very fresh and quiet up there.

Anyway, Liam and Kady are well. Had Liam's parent/teacher interviews last week before school finished for the term. He's doing really well, reading is 11.5yrs, comprehension and maths is at 10.5yrs. So he's doing really well and his teacher is thrilled with his work. He wants to get an educational psychologist in from Teachers College to assess Liam properly again, cos the last time was '05. It should be good to accurately assess where he is at, and I'm really pleased he's enjoying his new class. Much better this year than last year.

I've been really busy with work (had extra kids this week so was full-time work, 8am til 5.30pm) and just generally trying to keep up with things and saving $ for going over to see you two. Two more weeks! Yay! Five whole days with no kids. I can't wait... this waiting sucks haha.

Anyway, hope everyone's well. I'll see you two, Hayden and Gem, when I get there!

Seeya around!

Dall

Happy Easter!!

Hey guys!!
Hope everyone is having a good easter and not stuffing themselves with chocolate. Havn't been on this site in ages..has been a busy couple of weeks.
The reason we still havn't booked the flights is because Reon and Hannah (phils friend and his girlfriend from NZ) have been staying here. God was good to have them leave haha...have found that our friends from New Zealand seem to have different tastes from us these days - like keeping a house tidy!
We are defintly coming to Melbourne on Friday 4th May in the early evening, bout 5pm and leaving Monday 7th about 6pm. Booking tickets this week. I can't wait! I've been saving my penny's.
We havn't done much since Phil's friends left on Friday. We spent the day yesterday cleaning and Phil put new brake pads on the car and then last night we went to Phil's friend from NZ's house for a BBQ as their parents were over from NZ. Spent the night indulging in NZ toffee pops, Griffins choc chippies, jaffa's and jetplanes that they had brought over on the plane. Oh, the NZ luxuries I miss that I can't get here!
Phil and I went for a picnic today, were heading towards Gold Coast's Lamington National Park, took a wrong turn and ended up at Gold Coasts Springwood Rain Forest. It was so beautiful..we did a 10km walk through the trees and waterfalls which was really cool. Got some wicked photos. We got back to the car to grab the esky to eat lunch, and what stupid people we are - cos we left it on the bench at home! So we went for a drive, and actually ended up over the boarder into NSW which was crazy, cos it felt like we were heading North towards Brissy not South! So we stopped at the cutest tea rooms for lunch. Was a good day, exploring our way around. We just got back from Phil's mums for a family easter dinner.
Anyway..i'd better go i'm going to have a bath.
See ya's in May!!
Love Claire xoxo

Hi from Ohoka

Hi Gemma and Hayden - cant believe that you've been back for a week -we are having a quiet Easter - getting the place tidied up before we head away in 4 weeks. The great news is that the house has finally been started - was all go here last Monday - Taggarts moved in to change the entrances in the yards - so this block has an entrance from Baileys Road into their yard and we just have the entrance into our yard - then they moved down to the house paddock to form the drive off the "avenue" towards the house site - and we just had time to get it marked with paint before they were ready to start, and the builder marked out the house site for the top to be scraped off-and the next 2 days was finishing the drive and dif=gging around the perimeter for the boxing for the foundations - and now it is sitting waiting for the builder to come back - hope it is next week!!!! Monday night your Mum and Dad come over briefly and we drove in the new drive and parked Paulie's car in the garage!!!!! Looks quite small to me at the mo' - Ernie says it is not, so can't be!!!! Will send you progress pics when there is somtehing to see.
We have been wquite boring this weekend - cutting off lots of growth in the trees etc and clearing out cupboards - some from when I moved in 3 years ago. Friday was a lovely day and I managed to get EJ out on the bike late in the afternoon - we took easter buns arounds to the Macdonalds - as everyone else in Ohoka is away - I wanted to bike with my rabbit ears on my helmet - but Mr B said I couldn't go back for them - wasn't too much traffic so wouldn't have shocked the natives. Anyway we wore the ears to Casey's last night when we went to watch the rugby and took easter eggs with us. Was an awful day yesterday rain and cold, but beautiful again today and I got another bike ride in around the big block - Ernie didn't come as he was still hacking away at the bushes up the drive. Tomorrow we are going to the Court theatre with Casey, Usshers and Cartwrights - looks as if we will go in the new bus, early in the afternoon (the show is at 6pm) park up and have lunch somewhere and/or an early tea.
Brianna and Melissa came on their weekly visit on Wednesday -(it was their last swimming lesson for this term) -you can quite clearly see her 2 bottom teeth now - and her balance is getting better - spent most of the time here walking around clutching my 2 index fingers - is hard on the old Nana's back I can tell you.
Take care - and enjoy the rest of Easter - Mummy G and Ernie xxxxxx

hope easter bunny came

hi every one happy easter from gemma and hayden. we both have the day off today hada big sleep in then went to the markets and out to port melbourne. it is very nice down there not what we had expected at all. The middle photo is off one of the huge/flash apartments down there. there are some very nice looking restaurants down there to that we will have to try one day... maybe we will take some of our visitors down there. (it reminds us a bit of freemantle in perth where we went for tea one night last trip over here). the other two photos are taken from federation square last night after hayden and i had been out to lygon st for italian for tea ( a different place than last time tho). the international comedy festival is on here at the moment and so that is why the ferris wheel is there. the other eiffel tower looking thing is on top of the national gallery of victoria. p.s all these photos were taken on haydens and mine new phones. it is so easy just hook them up to the computer and we can put them on here for you guys to see.

jan and gary hope you are having a nice relaxing time up and mot and that ash and kellies engagement party went well. PRAM hope punakiki went well and that you managed to get some good weather to get some kayaking in. sorry gail and ernie, autny chris and uncle dave and clarie and phil but i dont no what your plans for easter were. maybe you could all blog and tell us what you have been up to. claire ring us and tell us when you have finally booked your flights here so we know what time you are arriving departing etc.

PRAM hayden had a look and it doesnt look like much is happening when your guys are here. but we may hear about something closer to the time. even if there isnt an event on there is enough shopping and exploring to keep us entertained.

dad have a happy bithday tomorrow and nana the day after.

hope everyone had/has a good easter. love from gemma and hayden.

Hi

Hi everyone, i started at my new store yesterday out at chadstone. It's a hell of a lot smaller than the richmond one with not a huge amount of room for bikes and storage, in fact to store boxes you have to walk up a fairly steep set of stairs which i'm pretty sure osh(or whatever it's called) back home wouldn't be too keen on. everyone there that i've met so far seem pretty good, theres more road riders at this store than richmond although the people at chadstone have heaps more experience as the other newest employees there were employed this time last year. its good cause it means i don't have to tell anyone what to do they all know what needs to be done and do it. it seems like a pretty relaxed place to, if everything gets done the manager doesn't mind them sitting around and talking as long as jobs are done. it was good to get home and see everyone, well as many people as we can in the short time we were there i guess. oh and I also got paid annual leave for some reason which is good so i can pay the bills. Bit weird but i'm not asking questions just in case they buggered it up. oh well better go do something on my day off, its been a bit chilli here the last week.
cya'll

Hi
Just a quick blog to say Happy Easter, hope the Easter Bunny can make it to the 13th floor. Hope you get some time off, or if not, some good overtime for the stat days. PRAM are off this afternoon to the Coast (Punakiki) to do some kayaking and swot the sandflies!. Weather for tommorrow not looking good, so might be a rest day and big OE research. Hopefully we can find somewhere to watch the footy. Have a great weekend
Cheers M&A

Returned to Melbourne

hi everyone we are now re installed in melbourne safe and well. the flight homewas good apart from the lady next to us who used her camera during take off and landing (when your not allowed to because can interfere with the plane) and she was LARGE taking up my room and had the most disgusting cough ewww. i had a wee sleep cause a nice air hostess got me a blanket and pillow. got though the airport quickly and then home. went to bed very early Saturday night about 8.30 our time. work for the both of us yesterday. i wasnt as tired as i thought i was going to be and work steady (not busy, not quite) so good. working an afternoon today then a morning tomorrow. im about to make the neighbours some muffins soon to say thanks for looking after our place.
PRAM- that is so good that you got into the medina that is attached to our building i don't know if i told you but our floor you can walk though so hopeful you can just come up or down in the lift to our place. wohoo. and did you get a 2 bedroom one or two singles?
i got a new phone yesterday but still has the same number it is a beautiful nokia 6088. it slides out has a big screen with a 2mega pixel camera with 8x zoom it comes with a memory card. also has mp3 player and lots of other features it is awesome i love it.
now that i am back i cant wait to see all you guys here its going to be a busy house with dall then claire and phil then PRAM.
love you guys see you soon from gemma xxx