Random Things

I have a few things on my mind that I thought were worth sharing but didn’t deserve an entire blog post on their own…so here ya go!

1). Australia is totally trying to domesticate me!  I said that I would probably not be hang drying my clothes that much here, but when your electricity bill is 4-5x higher than what you’re used to…you do it!  It’s not very enjoyable for me yet, but maybe it’s just a process.  Here’s my wash from today hanging in the winter (72 degrees today) sunshine.  We have also become Electricity Nazis turning off lights immediately leaving a room and just using the sunshine coming through the windows for light during the day.  By the end of 2013, all houses will be a timed meter that has peak, shoulder and off-peak times when it costs different amounts.  People set their washing machines, dishwashers, bread machines, etc. to run late at night when it costs less…crazy!  There’s a lot more to think about here!

2). 4-Square heaven!  For those who love 4-square, come visit us…this is at Alaina’s new school…we could get a great 4-square party going!!

3). Happy to be able to back out of my driveway! I told Brian that I barely felt comfortable pulling in to the driveway between those tight gates with this huge minivan…I would never back out for fear of scraping or ripping off the mirrors.  I’m happy to say, I do it quite well these days (as well as parallel parking & backing into spaces…much improvement from previous post!)

4). Cockroaches-are you kidding me?? So, I don’t have any pictures of these huge, hideous things, but we have found 3 in our house so far (I hear that is normal around here).  First 2 were just in the doorways, so not a huge deal, but when I found one underneath Hallie’s pack & play mattress…I freaked out!!  I didn’t even know how to dispose of it!  I am NOT a bug person, let alone one that big & gross.  Thankfully, my kids don’t mind them and Alaina saved the day!  We also have seen quite a few little lizards slithering around.  These are things I DO NOT want to get used to!

5). McDonalds ice cream!  So, pretty much everything is WAY more expensive here, except wine and Macca’s (Aussie nickname) ice cream.  We love to get our $0.30 cones!

6). Air shipment!  It will FINALLY be here today (Friday)!!!  I can hardly wait!  I can’t even remember what all is in there (other than clothes and some toys), but I think it will feel like Christmas to us…and especially to the kids who have been deprived of toys!  Since we have not had many toys to play with, we have resorted to building little homes out of appliance boxes and materials!

7). Green hair meets tomato paste.  Our hotel hot tub had turned my hair green at the ends…not cool.  I’ve been living with it since we had so many other things going on, but I finally put tomato paste in my hair during my shower last night (stinky!) and it’s no longer green-YAY!

8). Our Garden.  It really is beautiful and all the flowers smell amazing!  We have a few fruit trees as well (lemon, mandarin, and some other type of orange or clementine)  Here’s a sample of one of the beautiful flowers.

9). Pride & Prejudice. I’m pretty sure that if we were living back in the States that we would not have taken time or had limited resources available to watch this classic that neither of us have seen or read.  There was not a large selection at our library here for movies, so I grabbed this up and we are enjoying it!

10). Parks. This may actually be an entire blog post down the road…love all the parks here!  We have been going to a new one every other day and exploring the different areas.  I can’t believe how many there are and the girls are loving them!