Soccer Season Starts

Starting school means starting soccer! After watching his brother season after season, Jonah was ecstatic to finally be playing soccer in a team. The family turned out in force to witness Jonah's first game for the U6 Bannockburn Rovers! Even though his team lost by a gazillion, it didn't matter to Jonah. All he could talk about was the two goals he scored...

Jerseys distributed. Elliot helping his younger brother

Gotta get the look...

Now we're ready for photos!

Pre game warm up

Exercise that boot!

Jonah's cheer squad!

Half time pep talk

A happy boy!

"We won! I scored 2 goals!"

The Great Hiatus

Until yesterday, this blog had sadly been neglected again for nearly three months. My list of excuses is rather long so I won't even go there. I would, however, like to give a special thanks to a very kind and patient friend who helped me revamp the blog whilst on holidays! Let's get to to business and start with the updates. In chronological order...

The Great Bushwalk
It was supposed to be the start of the Albany love for walking, in preparation for our National Park driving holiday in the US. We had purchased 2 books on the great bush and coastal walks in Sydney's National Parks. Malcolm chose the Mueller track, a walk graded easy set in the Ku-ring-gai National Park. I had pictures of boardwalks in my head but it was not to be! Four hours later, after manoeuvring through some pretty dense bush and tough terrain, we were still walking! Panic was slowly creeping in as we neared the Park's closing time. It then started to rain...

The children, including Jonah, coped surprisingly well. Jonah walked all the way without being carried. We treated ourselves to all things chocolate at Max Brenner's on the way home. We headed home to bathe the children and chaos broke out upon the discovery of a leech and a tick on Lara. Screams broke out from all. Lara was in hysterics and Elliot refused to get into the bath for fear of the tick jumping on to him from Lara. None of them ever want to go on a bush walk again.

It all started well...

Happily posing

"This is fun mum!" Famous last words

Photo op on a rocky ledge

A New Bahari
In late June, Brian and Asha welcomed Alysa into the great Bahari clan. I was delighted to become an aunt to a very cute little girl! It appears that everytime I near the shops whether physical or online, I end up making a purchase!

Alysa Sophie Bahari

Lara's First Lost Tooth
As with everything Lara, it happened with much drama. We had to inform her that the tooth fairy doesn't exist as we misplaced the tooth...Her response: "ok"

A Christening
We were very privileged to be witness to a dear friend proclaiming Jesus to be her saviour. Sue Lynn chose to do this in winter in a body of water at Linley Point Reserve. We will let the photos do the talking.

Family and friends dry upon the jetty

Getting ready...

Down she goes!

The deed is done

Err....is the water safe?

Birthday Boy #1
Brian celebrated multiple milestones in year. In addition to being a father, he turned a big 3-0! It was a simple celebration with family and friends sharing good food. Happy Birthday Brian!

The Completed Project
The skirt is finished! Now onto the next project, a jacket and skirt set for Lara...

Birthday Boy #2 and #3
On the 20th of August, we celebrated more birthdays! The baby of the family turned 21 and the patriach of the family turned 65.

Yes that's Lara asleep upright against the chair?!?!

Return Of The Nits
Enough said.

Soccer Champions
A big congratulations to Elliot's under-9s soccer team, who won the grand final in a nail biting 1-nil finish. They won with a golden goal in extra time and beat a team that destroyed them 13-1 in the first round!

The run-on side awaiting kick off

The winning moment!

Waiting for the presentation 

Elliot chosen as spokesperson orated beautifully

The cheer squad!

Birthday Boy #4
Malcolm's father also turned 65! Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo of the birthday boy...so here is a photo from the BBQ, one of Jonah impersonating Angry Birds...

Angry bird

Another Action-packed Albany Weekend

The Albanys only know how to do weekends one way...

Saturday started off with a 745am soccer match. It was Elliot's first game of the season and he was super excited. After being in a team that was unbeaten for 2 consecutive years, we had to prepare Elliot for more frequent losses this year. With a radically different line up from last year, his team had lost 13-1 in the season's opening match the previous week. Malcolm genuinely believed that it was due to Elliot's absence (the Opera House concert took precedence).

Elliot played extremely well and his team fortunately won 4-0 much to the relief of the coach. The coach further fuelled Malcolm's great paternal pride by awarding the best player of the match to Elliot. However, there was no time to revel in the glory. The Albanys had a full schedule of activities lined up.

The team getting ready for their match

Jonah ready for action as well

A very happy Elliot after the win in his new team uniform

It was a brief stop at home for a quick shower and an opportunity to rid our shoes of grass and mud. The washing went on the line to utilise the sunshine and we piled back into the car headed for Eastwood. We had just enough time for Elliot to have a hair cut at a great Korean hairdresser. They love cutting the children's hair and the children get spoilt every time they go. A hair wash, a trendy cut, another wash, and a blow-dry and style with products made for a very handsome boy. I am not biased in the slightest. At $15, it was also great value. The hair cut was necessary as we had a party to go to. We couldn't have a scruffy looking Albany. As Malcolm would say, we are after all, beautiful people...

A new look

We bought Derek a tray of persimmons and it was then time to pick Lara up from ballet. Fortunately, to keep with the beautiful people theme, my parents had the foresight to pack her a change of clothes. And a trendy outfit at that. Not that I would have forgotten...

Off to Newington then for Uncle Derek's Birthday party. We were the first to arrive and thus we were able to enjoy the fantastic spread on the table without having to fight anyone for it! Derek and Laura had made falafel from scratch and chorizo balls amongst many other yummy things. They had slaved away for 2 days to provide a magnificent spanish themed feast.

It had been a while since we had met up with friends from University and we had a lovely time catching up. There were so many babies around which were so delightful! Derek then produced the ultimate Birthday cake, a hazelnut praline cheesecake. It was awesome!!!! The whole afternoon flew by and the time came to go home.

One of the best cheesecakes ever!

And look who's there ready to take the first slice

The children had a date with Oma and Opa for a sleepover. Yippee for us! Over Big Macs and chocolate sundaes, Malcolm and I took the opportunity to do some holiday planning. We had to work out the most efficient way to use our time for our upcoming September trip to the US and to reduce the risk of being caught in snow up at Glacier National Park. Somewhere in our schedule, we wanted to include a cowboy stay. We must have looked at nearly every dude ranch in Montana plus others in Wyoming and Colorado. Our shortlist was thankfully reduced to 2! It was also a relief to book our accommodation for Jackson and Yellowstone. Incredibly, much of the lodging within Yellowstone National Park itself had already been booked out for September. All this planning took us up to nearly midnight!

Today, therefore, has been somewhat of a blur. We didn't wake up early enough for our planned shopping expedition. We were rostered to provide morning tea for church. We then also realised that we had nearly forgotten to pick the children up from my parents' house! Amazingly, we somehow managed to stuff breakfast in, buy the food, pick up the children and arrive at church on time. Call it skill.

Church was a great place to rest and re-energise. As members of the Sydney Cricket Ground, we were given free tickets for the League match of Canterbury versus St George. In preparation for the match at the Sydney Cricket Ground, we had an Indonesian lunch at nearby Mascot with the Kohs. We had mistakenly assumed that 75 minutes would be plenty to get to the SCG. BIG mistake. The traffic was horrendous. To make things worse, it started to rain. Both families managed to find parking and we soon met up outside the member's entrance in time for kick off. Again, call it skill...

It was disappointing to watch Canterbury play a poor game, especially against St George. In the wet, it was near impossible to catch up. Having hot chips and a free Sunday paper did not make it that much better. I found it quite amusing though, to witness such well-behaved Canterbury fans. There was a group of young, beefy males decked out in bulldog colours close to us. They watched the game quietly and played "words with friends" during breaks. Certainly not what I expected!

The Kohs quit just after half time and headed home. We followed suit soon after. It was a blessing as Canterbury went on to lose and the rain started to pelt down harder. Traffic going home was just as bad. After we got home, we scrambled together something quickly for dinner, put the children to bed and tidied up the great big mess that is our house to prepare for the first weekday of...the school holidays! Oh joy!

No more soccer!

Sorry Elliot...hurray for the end of soccer season! As much as I try to embrace it, I struggle with being the Saturday morning taxi service. It can be a challenge at times to get Elliot and Lara to soccer and ballet respectively with Jonah in tow. This Saturday, we had to travel to woop woop (Kenthurst) to play our last game. Having to travel for 35 minutes by car with no traffic is having to travel 35 minutes too far. It was fortunately a great game for the boys and they ended the season undefeated.

Soccer was closely followed by a lunch of KFC with school friends to celebrate a Birthday. It was hot'n'spicy season and the opportunity was not to be missed. Ali and Richard satisfied their annual KFC quota while the rest of us simply enjoyed the fat. Hester and Shane seem to be keen on a Disney cruise in 2013. Yippee! Perhaps we might join them...

My brain seem to be incapable of coherent thought of late so I'll summarize the other highlights of the week (will have to pull up my socks for future posts...), again in no particular order:

We finally made it to our very first music trivia at the Bayview Hotel on Friday night. It was nice to have dinner together without the children, however, it felt strange being at the same pub 2 nights in a row. Amanda was the only other member of our team that night and we confirmed our ineptitude at popular music trivia. Fortunately, she seemed to know a lot of the answers and for a team of only 3 (compared to the 8s and 10s of other tables) we came a respectable 9th out of 17 teams. It also made Malcolm and I feel better to read that official rules cite "teams must have at least 2 members. We were vital after all!

I had a lovely day out at Bronte Beach with Su and her cousin on Thursday. We had every intention of walking the Bronte to Bondi walk. We turned around at Tamarama Beach. I blame Jonah and the pram. I had planned to take so many photos for my scavenger hunt like "lifeguard" and "kite in flight" just to name a few. Alas, I had to be content with "pail and shovel in sand". I had to make good use of the props that I lugged all the way from home.

My visit to Canberra for a TGA visit on Friday was thankfully cancelled. Well, I didn't have to go...the rest of team went ahead without me. I finally managed to get myself to a hairdresser. My first haircut in over 2 years. Now my mother will hopefully stop nagging about me being "tight" with money.

We bought the in-laws a "bab"-top to help with communication. Teaching them how to use the device was interesting...They have finally made it on to their Asian Odyssey cruise. Hopefully they'll be able to have a decent break with no incident. Fingers and toes crossed in earnest.

My Kindle has developed a cracked as a result of the case. Fortunately, it appears that Amazon will replace my Kindle at no charge including shipping of my Kindle back to them. They will also credit me the cost of the Kindle case. Hallelujah!