Hey folks!
2010 is well underway and life is good under the Team Jardine roof. I'm enjoying the sweltering heat (>30 everyday) and I can't say I miss the snow and wind chill on offer back home. Laura of course, misses our snowshoes but I think will begrudgingly miss the summer heat once we're shivering at night in June.
Not a lot to report since we rang in the new year, except for our first ever family camping trip. Ok so it was only one night and we went with our neighbors who had all the necessary gear, but it still counts right? Edie had her borrowed port-a-cot set up inside a three man tent from work and she got the best sleep out of all of us. In fact, in the middle of the day there was a downpour that happened to coincide with her nap, so she happily snoozed while we frantically tried to divert the mass of water that was accumulating in the middle of our campsite. Serves us right for building on a floodplain! We were all soaked to the bone but happy. It isn't a proper camping trip without a little discomfort. That night I shared the tent with Edie and her port-a-cot, and since the tent was only big enough to stretch out an average-sized adult diagonally, and her cot was taking up half the space, I spent the night in the fetal position and woke up with leg cramps. Hooray for camping! All told it was a lot of fun, especially since we were camped on the edge of shallow salty lake with a sand bottom, which made for some good splashing with Edie. One thing we learned is that Aussies sure know how to camp. I don't think I've met a single person here who didn't spend at least part of their summers camping while they were growing up. And some of the setups they had, you would swear they were squatters with no plans to ever return to civilization.
From there we stopped in with our friends Mike and Lisa (plus their three kids and Lisa's parents) in Coolum Beach to celebrate Mike's 40th birthday. The area actually reminds us a lot of the south shore of Bermuda, with long sandy beaches interspersed with rocky cliffs, beautiful blue water and rock walls on the roads. We stayed for two days and it was a blast. We had the entire downstairs of a rented house to ourselves, and the house had a pool with plenty of toys and was a 10 minute walk to the beach. We pigged out on curries and barbequed burgers, sausages and swordfish, swam three or four times a day, and generally forgot about all the stress of life for awhile. However the last night was punctuated by one of those "what's the point of our jobs and careers" conversations, aided of course by the combination of sparkling wine, beer and cider in which we were indulging. It was hard to drag ourselves back to work after that weekend!
Since I can't properly keep up with the NHL, NFL playoffs, or winter olympics buildup, I'm settling for the season of tennis that got underway this month with Australian Open warmup tournaments. Andy Roddick won the tourney here in Brissy, but the favorites for Melbourne are last year's champ Nadal and of course Federer. Regardless of who wins, we can look forward to high-performance athletes wilting in the Melbourne summer heat. All I can say is, it's hard enough to walk a hundred meters this time of year, let alone run back and forth swinging a tennis racket for four hours straight.
Laura starts back to work tomorrow, 5 days a week for 5 hours a day, so Miss Edie is headed to day care. A new phase for the Jardine clan, we'll keep you posted how it all turns out. Until then we'll keep enjoying the Aussie summer with friends both old and new.
PS - sorry about the lack of pics with this post - we'll get that sorted soon.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
Saturday, January 2, 2010
He looks at her, she looks at him, "we survived" they quietly wisper in unison
And this, folks, was what you would have witnessed on the deck of our friends' home at the stroke of midnight 2010, just after having released firecrackers, sparklers and a few silent prayers that Edie, who was sleeping in the room next to the very loud deck, would remain asleep through the hullabaloo. If you're wondering what exactly it was that we survived, I'd suggest that there's some great reading material in our archives from 2009...You can find all of the wonderful details there. I'm going to keep this very short as it's jolly hot here in front of the computer.
We spent our first holiday season in Aus this year, and it was good!
Certainly one of the things that has made it so great is the fact that we've been sharing a lot of the holidays with our friend Steph from Canada. Just having another Canuck around that appreciates the same things that we do in this season had been amazing.
We cooked a full-on holiday meal together (gluten free, which we weren't sure was possible) just before we left for Maryborough (4 hours north), and it was just what the doctor ordered.
Our stay in Maryborough was wonderful and relaxing...we've got some great friends up there who took great care of us and gave us the grand tour of the town which was built heavily around the train industry in Australia. Model trains feature a lot in all of the Chrissy Decos (Aussie-speak for Christmas decorations) in Maryborough. Edie enjoyed all of the festivities and slept really well, making things really easy on mom and dad. We've been meeting with friends over the break for lots of good food and socializing, and we spent New Years up the street with neighbours from all over. I can say with all honesty that this New Years Eve was the best I've experienced yet. I don't know if it was sheer relief that 2009 was finished and we really had survived, or because most of the friends there were new parents too and our kids were all asleep, or because we were just able to relax in good company, or because I've rarely made it to midnight on New Years Eve, but I will look back on this one with fondness.
On behalf of Team Jardine, here's to you and yours with hopes for a great new year.
Laura
We spent our first holiday season in Aus this year, and it was good!
Certainly one of the things that has made it so great is the fact that we've been sharing a lot of the holidays with our friend Steph from Canada. Just having another Canuck around that appreciates the same things that we do in this season had been amazing.
We cooked a full-on holiday meal together (gluten free, which we weren't sure was possible) just before we left for Maryborough (4 hours north), and it was just what the doctor ordered.
Our stay in Maryborough was wonderful and relaxing...we've got some great friends up there who took great care of us and gave us the grand tour of the town which was built heavily around the train industry in Australia. Model trains feature a lot in all of the Chrissy Decos (Aussie-speak for Christmas decorations) in Maryborough. Edie enjoyed all of the festivities and slept really well, making things really easy on mom and dad. We've been meeting with friends over the break for lots of good food and socializing, and we spent New Years up the street with neighbours from all over. I can say with all honesty that this New Years Eve was the best I've experienced yet. I don't know if it was sheer relief that 2009 was finished and we really had survived, or because most of the friends there were new parents too and our kids were all asleep, or because we were just able to relax in good company, or because I've rarely made it to midnight on New Years Eve, but I will look back on this one with fondness. 
On behalf of Team Jardine, here's to you and yours with hopes for a great new year.
Laura
Monday, December 21, 2009
Missing.....
In honour of our first official overseas Christmas (after making it home in time last year), we present a top ten countdown of our favorite things about the Christmas season in Canada.
10 – Snow and cold weather are still “quaint”. It’s easy for us now to see footage of a frozen landscape and feel nostalgic about the onset of winter. But let’s face it, most of winter just plain sucks (note, this is Tim writing, Laura loves winter). However we can all agree that prior to Christmas, everyone is in good spirits and the harsh reality of another four months of winter hasn’t yet set in. The warm looking Christmas lights adorning people’s homes add to the charm. Of course, those same lights are often still up in May, but who cares, it’s Christmas!
9 – Real fireplaces. In the absence of any need for a fireplace in this part of Australia, ever, we miss the coma-inducing heat kicked off of by the blazing hearths back in Canada at this time of year. There is nothing like waking up too early on Christmas morning after no sleep that night, overindulging on chocolate and turkey during the day and passing out in front of the fireplace for an afternoon siesta. We find ourselves slightly embarrassed by the fact that a DVD of a burning yule log with cheesy Christmas music in the background has got us through a number of evenings here over these past weeks.
8 – Tim again. Saturday NHL hockey, Sunday football, World Junior hockey. I’ve tried to watch North American sports on my computer, using some handy internet links, but it just isn’t the same. I really miss wasting a whole day on the couch with the NFL, especially dozing off around 4:00 (usually late in the third quarter of the early games), then summoning the energy to go and have supper, overeat and then return to the tv for the late games.
7 – Christmas movies. Not sure what it is about Aussie TV networks, but they don’t feel the need to bombard us with the Christmas classics until Christmas day. They seem to be more in favour of the Christmas day marathon, rather than the November/December marathon that we enjoyed back home. So, in vain we’ve been searching the TV guide practically every night trying to find a good Christmas movie to drown our homesickness with, to no avail. So, despite our broke-ness, we’ve gone for the rentals. We’re currently enjoying watching John Candy and his polka band as they drive Kevin Mcallister’s mom back to NY to find Kevin. Ahhh, Home Alone. Christmas goodness. Last week it was Elf. I will say that both of these movies evoke more emotion than they ever have…There’s a lot of eye sweating going on around here.
6 – The collective decision by society to shut things down for a week or so. This doesn’t happen often enough. After all the eye-opening realizations of the global financial crisis, particularly that we’re married to our jobs and don’t spend enough down time with family, shouldn’t this become even more important?
5 – Christmas plays. Given our infant situation, we miss out on the school play scene, and because Edie’s typically asleep by 6:30, pretty much any other family Christmas gathering is off. I’m guessing we’ll get our fill of Christmas plays in the years to come, though I think that Edie’s a bit sad that she didn’t get invited to be baby Jesus this year. She thought she was a shoe-in for the role, though apparently Jesus didn’t cry (see "Away in a Manger") and well...we don’t promote lying on the resume.
4 – Work Christmas parties – most notably the Canadian Rivers Institute annual party and the UNB Biology party. Both were always memorable, including good food, bad karaoke, excess alcohol, and even the occasional violation of the Christmas tree.
3 – “Silent Night” at the end of the Christmas Eve church service. Gets me every time. Although we may get this one here as well. We'll know in a couple of days.
2 – The food! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, chocolate, potato chips, egg nog (Laura only, Tim hasn't forgiven egg nog since an "incident" at Terry Leggatt's a few years back). All the things we routinely deny ourselves during the year, we turn loose in late December. Today we had cinnamon rolls and After Eight mints for breakfast.
1 – Family and friends, of course. Regardless of how you feel about Christmas, there's no denying the power of loved ones at this time of year. It's the reason people fight their way through crowded airports, drive on icy roads, and endure all the other frustrating elements of late December to share the moments with people you care about. And you really start to appreciate it when you're away from it. So enjoy it while you have it. Merry Christmas everyone!
10 – Snow and cold weather are still “quaint”. It’s easy for us now to see footage of a frozen landscape and feel nostalgic about the onset of winter. But let’s face it, most of winter just plain sucks (note, this is Tim writing, Laura loves winter). However we can all agree that prior to Christmas, everyone is in good spirits and the harsh reality of another four months of winter hasn’t yet set in. The warm looking Christmas lights adorning people’s homes add to the charm. Of course, those same lights are often still up in May, but who cares, it’s Christmas!
9 – Real fireplaces. In the absence of any need for a fireplace in this part of Australia, ever, we miss the coma-inducing heat kicked off of by the blazing hearths back in Canada at this time of year. There is nothing like waking up too early on Christmas morning after no sleep that night, overindulging on chocolate and turkey during the day and passing out in front of the fireplace for an afternoon siesta. We find ourselves slightly embarrassed by the fact that a DVD of a burning yule log with cheesy Christmas music in the background has got us through a number of evenings here over these past weeks.
8 – Tim again. Saturday NHL hockey, Sunday football, World Junior hockey. I’ve tried to watch North American sports on my computer, using some handy internet links, but it just isn’t the same. I really miss wasting a whole day on the couch with the NFL, especially dozing off around 4:00 (usually late in the third quarter of the early games), then summoning the energy to go and have supper, overeat and then return to the tv for the late games.
7 – Christmas movies. Not sure what it is about Aussie TV networks, but they don’t feel the need to bombard us with the Christmas classics until Christmas day. They seem to be more in favour of the Christmas day marathon, rather than the November/December marathon that we enjoyed back home. So, in vain we’ve been searching the TV guide practically every night trying to find a good Christmas movie to drown our homesickness with, to no avail. So, despite our broke-ness, we’ve gone for the rentals. We’re currently enjoying watching John Candy and his polka band as they drive Kevin Mcallister’s mom back to NY to find Kevin. Ahhh, Home Alone. Christmas goodness. Last week it was Elf. I will say that both of these movies evoke more emotion than they ever have…There’s a lot of eye sweating going on around here.
6 – The collective decision by society to shut things down for a week or so. This doesn’t happen often enough. After all the eye-opening realizations of the global financial crisis, particularly that we’re married to our jobs and don’t spend enough down time with family, shouldn’t this become even more important?
5 – Christmas plays. Given our infant situation, we miss out on the school play scene, and because Edie’s typically asleep by 6:30, pretty much any other family Christmas gathering is off. I’m guessing we’ll get our fill of Christmas plays in the years to come, though I think that Edie’s a bit sad that she didn’t get invited to be baby Jesus this year. She thought she was a shoe-in for the role, though apparently Jesus didn’t cry (see "Away in a Manger") and well...we don’t promote lying on the resume.
4 – Work Christmas parties – most notably the Canadian Rivers Institute annual party and the UNB Biology party. Both were always memorable, including good food, bad karaoke, excess alcohol, and even the occasional violation of the Christmas tree.
3 – “Silent Night” at the end of the Christmas Eve church service. Gets me every time. Although we may get this one here as well. We'll know in a couple of days.
2 – The food! Turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, chocolate, potato chips, egg nog (Laura only, Tim hasn't forgiven egg nog since an "incident" at Terry Leggatt's a few years back). All the things we routinely deny ourselves during the year, we turn loose in late December. Today we had cinnamon rolls and After Eight mints for breakfast.
1 – Family and friends, of course. Regardless of how you feel about Christmas, there's no denying the power of loved ones at this time of year. It's the reason people fight their way through crowded airports, drive on icy roads, and endure all the other frustrating elements of late December to share the moments with people you care about. And you really start to appreciate it when you're away from it. So enjoy it while you have it. Merry Christmas everyone!
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)