It's been almost a year since I updated this blog and I think it's about time to update where we are.
Where we're living now...
After almost four years living in Putney we were offered the rental place by the owners as they were wishing to sell. We of course would get the first opportunity to buy the said house at the bargain basement price of 1 million dollars. Yes you heard that right! We were so shocked as the house is still a fibro and is in dire need of quite a lot of maintenance work not to mention the white ants. We declined politely and began looking for another place to live. We'd been paying $630 a week and soon found out that we wouldn't be able to find anything equal to what we were living in for anything less than an extra $200 a week. We were shocked! Really we would be paying a small mortgage without the benefit of having a house of our own at the end.
We ended up finding a wonderful house in East Ryde with a pool, but without a garage. The selling point was the bath. I've made good use of the bath nearly every day and during the end of my pregnancy I often had two baths a day. Just bliss!! The house is on a long narrow road around the corner from where we lived when we were pregnant with Isabella. Dave has an office downstairs and Josh not only has a large bedroom downstairs, but he also has his own bathroom with a shower and toilet. It even has a corner kitchenette with a little sink, basin and cabinets. Josh loves having his own space. We gave him our old queen sized bed but we haven't been able to give him a proper sized mattress yet, so he's sleeping on this huge bed with a mattress that only fits half of the bed. Sammy has her own bedroom and Isabella at the moment has her own room, but will eventually share with Hamish. We have an enormous bedroom, that is almost as big as the bedroom we had in Evans Head. We could probably have a small couch in our bedroom and still have room to spare. Hamish is in our room at the moment in his bassinett and we also have his change table in there too. We have a huge lounge/dining room that is open plan and a lovely large kitchen. There is an 'extra' room that was probably the formal dining room that I'm going to use as my craft room. I'm very excited about that!
Joshua is turning 14 this year and is in year 8 at Hunters Hill High. He is still doing drama with Kidz on Stage until the end of this term, but then he's going to change to doing karate. Now that we are living in East Ryde the travel to Homebush to do drama is too long. He's also doing drama after school on Tuesdays with his school drama teacher and the bonus is because its through the school it's free. We LOVE free! He's doing scouts on Thursday night and Dave is now the scout leader. Josh has gotten a lot of badges and is now a patrol leader of the 'Seals' group. Fridays he does hip-hop dancing and then it's always a long journey to get the kids up to Troys. We take the kids up to him on Friday night and Troy brings them back after he finishes work on Saturday night. It means that they are back between 11:30 and midnight. At the moment we are doing this every weekend. Now that we've had Hamish Dave is going up with the kids by himself as we can't all fit in one car now. Josh loves maths and is especially good at algebra. His favourite subjects at school are drama and maths. In another week Josh will be having an information evening to help him decide what subjects to choose for years 9 and 10. I can't believe that he's almost in year 9! He's grown so tall recently. Just before christmas last year Josh was shorter than my mum and he's now quite a bit taller than her.
Last year he did a dance for variety night by himself infront of his whole school. We were so impressed and the dance was great. People were whooping and applauding and Josh loved it. We were so impressed with him!
The variety night was only a few weeks after Josh had a falling out with his group of friends at school. He was uninvited to a party in the same week that he was shunned by his whole group of friends. This was started by his best-friend of year 7, Toby. I was so upset with this. Luckily he has found a new group of friends who seem lovely.
Josh is enjoying cooking and now that I'm home on maternity leave I've decided that the kids are going to be able to bake or cook a dessert on Tuesday nights. Josh has already decided to make us a chocolate lava cake next Tuesday. I can't wait! He's already made it at granny's house. Both the kids get to bake with granny when they visit by themselves and have a recipe book with their recipes in and a photo of them cooking. One day they'll look back on that with fond memories.
Sammy is in year 6, her last year of primary school and is coming up to her twelth birthday and has decided on a slumber party for her 12th birthday. This will be in just a couple of weeks. She's got a lovely group of friends and is looking forward to starting at Riverside Girls High School next year.
This year Sammy is doing Contemporary and Jazz instead of Contemporary and Hip-Hop dance classes. She does these on Wednesday afternoons fromm 4 to 6 and walks from school to the Gladesville Uniting Church with a group of girls that all go to dance. She has to wear bright pink and black clothes and often when she comes home we get to see her latest dance moves. Sammy is also doing scouts now after leaving Guides with Brittnie and is enjoying gaining badges. The scout troop is growing and there are now girls and boys in the unit and Brittnie's mum Sandra is also on her way to becoming a scout leader.
Sammy really enjoys cooking and recently made granny's cheesecake recipe with only a few words of advice from me. We got to eat it for dessert over two nights. On the second night Sammy was too full to eat her piece of cheesecake. Of course it made itself into the fridge, but sweet things don't last long in our house and I couldn't help but eat it on the second day of just sitting there in the fridge. Sammy came home late from scouts to ask if she could eat her cheesecake slice and I had to sheepishly admit that I'd already eaten it. I've promised her that we'll make it again soon.
Josh and Sammy are now visiting their dad every weekend and enjoy spending time with their new sister Eve who will be one a couple of days before Sammy's birthday.
Isabella is now in the big pre-school room and will be starting 'big' school next year. She has enjoyed the transition from full-time care to just two days a week now that I'm on maternity leave. We are starting to get into a routine with our week. Mondays is the day for mother's group. We get to see Kaitlyn and her new brother Liam, Cooper and Mitch and Logan and Eliza. We take turns having it at our houses and bring along morning tea. Isabella and I have been enjoying making biscuits and slices and the rest of the house is enjoying eating them. Day-care days are now on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and Isabella's friends at the moment are Jessica, Meggy and Lucy. We've had a few playdays with Jessica and Meg already and I'm in the process of organising a catch up with Meg, Lucy and Eve who used to be one of Isabella's best friends until she moved pre-schools. It should be great to catch up with Sophie and her two little cherubs. On Wednesdays Isabella still does Mighty Mites and comes home on those days with stories about what Coach Kim taught them. She has just started this week having no rest or sleeptime now that she is starting 'big' school next year. She was so excited to tell me this week that she didn't have to do any resting and got to play instead. Thursdays are turning into baking days and then Fridays are our playdays day when I'm up to it.
Isabella has found having a new brother a bit of a difficult transition and she has reverted back to having accidents at school and wetting her bed. She is also having the odd tantrum and is refusing to wear warm winter clothes even though it is freezing outside. We've had days of 10 degrees and its only the beginning of June, so really unseasonably cold weather. Hopefully this is not what we should expect for the rest of winter. I've just started a star chart which is proving to be effective and will hopefully help this adjustment period to be less traumatic for all of us. Especially her parents who are both severely sleep deprived at the moment.
Hamish came into this world on the 7th of May and is fitting around our family routines as a fourth child would. He's an easy baby and rarely complains about anything and when he does he is very quiet about his annoyance. Dave likes to say that Hamish doesn't cry and he's pretty close to the mark. He's just started in the last week to notice his surroundings and will now look at us intently like he's trying to figure who we all are. There are a lot of us after all! He is starting to look less like Isabella but it is hard to know who he'll resemble at the moment as he seems to change from week to week as he fills out. He's turning into a little chunky monkey and at his first visit from the community nurse at two weeks old he had put on 800g from his birth weight. It reminds me of Josh who also became pretty chunky pretty quickly. Hamish has been a very spoilt baby and he is still receiving gifts from people. I've done only half of the thank you cards that I need to do and I just haven't been able to find time to do the rest. I have an excuse at the moment that he is only just 5 weeks old, but this excuse won't last long. We all love having him around and are glad to now have a family photo with all of us in it.
Well I'm not sure how to get multiple photos, but here goes:
