Visiting Melbourne

This morning I headed into the city to meet up with Shane and Elina at Melbourne Uni.  It has been a while since I spent time in the area and it is changing fast.  There are new buildings everywhere.

There are cranes and  building obstructions everywhere.

One building that has not been demolished is this building where I worked for about 3 years in the 70s.  It once housed the Curriculum and Research Branch of the Education Department but it is now part of the Education Faculty at Melbourne University.

Sophie and Madeline

It will not be long before Madeline comes back to live in Melbourne.  We think she will enjoy having more time to spend with her big cousin.

Spring Visitors

Spring has just arrived and the garden fauna is starting to change with the season.

Justin's Fundraiser Evening.

The fundraiser evening that Lisa and her team had been organising was held last night - and what a massive night it was.  The School Hall was full for a fun Trivia Night.

Lisa welcomed everyone and outlined the reasons for the evening -

and then it was down to an evening of trivia and fundraising for Cancer Research.  The highlight of the evening was the auction of the cricket bat signed by the whole (winning) Australian Team - Australia v India 2011.  Mark was the auctioneer for the night.

 Julia and Simon bought a painting donated by Elina.

Basketball - James

The Celtics are into the finals of their season and this week they were up against a team that initially seemed to have their measure.  The Celtics seem to like relaxing in the first half and then coming home with a rush.  They left their run late this week but still came home winners 49 to 38.

Basketball - Pat.

Pat's Team won the first round of the finals last week but this week they could not follow through and went down to Ivanhoe.

Patrick worked hard and shot a number of goals but Ivanhoe was better on the day.  Maybe next season.

Netball - Ebony

Ebony had not been well and neither had some of her team so they were under duress today but they came out fighting.

They only had the required number of players so there was no rest for anyone.  Despite the adversity they only went down by one point and Ebony was certainly a major contributor.

Holly Turns Eight

Holly is in the midst of her birthday celebrations at present.  Today she went shopping with Granny for her present from us.  She had decided that a robot dog, "Zoomer" was the way to go.  In her words, "you can turn this one off, you can't turn Monty off"

Holly will be able to document the life and times of Zoomer with the camera she got for her birthday.  We hope that he is easy to teach and he is house trained out of the box.

Lachlan the Explorer

Lachlan had seen the trees being chopped down a couple of days ago so he was interested to see the result and the consequent mulch mountain.

He also likes to explore so getting under the house was an important part of the agenda for the day.

Mum's A Winner

When we caught up with Lachlan last night, he was the proud owner of of some new Art.  Mum had put her face painting skills to good use to create Spiderman.  He did not want a shower this morning in case Spidy was washed off.