Trip to Esperance

On Friday Jan 15th Janelle, Sarah, Bella and I headed down to Esperance. Peter and Nicole were unable to come as they both had to work. We left Lucy at home with Peter as we thought she would be quite happy sleeping during the day as she always does. This was not the case and she missed us terribly. We had a good trip down and made it on one tank of petrol with the alarm going off just as we pulled into Dad's driveway. Janelle did some driving and did very well overtaking 2 oversized trucks carrying massive mining trucks and their escort vehicles.

Here's a look at a few things we got up to...

Janelle and Sarah played with their cousins Lisa and Toby...

We spent some time on our favourite beach, West Beach...

We went swimming at West Beach...

Exfolliated...We swum at Fourth Beach (on the day it was 41 degrees)...

Went fishing on the jetty and enjoyed a lovely balmy and windfree night. We caught a feed of fish and had a few tangles to keep Poppy on his toes...

We also went swimming at the little town beach near the wharf. Janelle and Sarah built a sandcastle...

Under the watchful eyes of Poppy...

Sarah did some more "fishing" trying to catch some of the tiny whitebait swimming around with an icecream container (something they used to spend many hours doing when they were much younger)...

We had afternoon tea at the Tearooms with Julie, Lisa and Toby...

Then we all went for a ride on the minature train...

And then a play in the park...

We went to up to Rotary Lookout and Janelle decided to run up the hill to get there twice...

Did the walk over the rocks and down to West Beach...

Bella had a great time (apart from the excessive amount of "wind" she had on the way to Esperance) swimming...

Walking...And sniffing...And of course no trip to Esperance is complete without a feed of beestings...

And a "Bobs" icecream...

A few other favourite phots are this one taken of Janelle by Sarah...

The beach by the jetty...

And some sunsets over West Beach...

We all had a lovely time and Lucy was very pleased to see us when we arrived home.

Happenings

On January 3rd Peter and I went up to Perth to celebrate one of Peter's customers Mother's 90th birthday.

We bought her this lovely bunch of flowers...

It was a big celebration with about 140 people in the entire Friends Restaurant at the Hyatt.

Plenty of entertainment had been organised which included the band Top Shelf, Absolutely Kylie (complete with feathers and dancers), A Dusty Springfield impersonator and Elvis himself.

It was a good night complete with a few Chinese traditions (Mama Alice) is Chinese.

Dad gave us some money for Christmas and we have heard so much about Julie's fantastic chips she makes in their new deep fryer so we decided to purchase one. Peter decided the time was right on Saturday night to have a go at making fish and chips.

I was at work so I missed the chip cooking but apparently they were a lot "better" when they first came out of the fryer! The first batch of fish was very "crunchy" but we are pleased to say that the 2nd attempt at the fish was quite successful. With all the cleaning up that goes along with the process $5 worth of chips from down the road seems a lot easier! But we will persist.

Nicole loves going to the gym and doing "attack" classes. Unfortunately she is now suffering from shin splints from doing so much. Anyway she has been busy at home and found the music they use at the gym and putting the routine together as if she was the instructor. Yesterday she bought it over here and "taught" Janelle and Sarah. They videoed themselves and I think Nicole could have a new profession!

Peter has been busy still tidying up around the spa. He put up some shade cloth to protect the cover from the sun and block out some wind. All was going well with the spa until he decided to take the panels off and have an inspection inside and found it has been leaking. We worked out the area around the light was where the water was coming from. So now we have to drain it and have a new light put in.

Thats Janelle having a little dip.

We have finally made the decision to go on a big holiday this year and booked our tickets to London on the 24th June, then onto Paris, Nice and Italy. Nicole has booked her tickets to Athens to later join us in Paris. How exciting (and nervous!)

Feeling Lighter

Poor little Sonic with all this fur in the middle of Summer! Today I took him to the hair dressers for doggies as his parents are working.

Before...

And feeling much lighter after...

Our Frangipani plant has just burst into colour with these beautiful flowers...

Hopman Cup

Yesterday Janelle and I went to Perth to watch the Hopman Cup. We watched Lleyton Hewitt and Samantha Stosur represent Australia and they played Victor Hanescu and Sorana Cirstea from Romania.

First up we watched Sam play Sorana in the womens singles. The match went to 3 sets with Sorana winning. Sam Stosur certainly has a well toned and athletic body...

The mens singles game also went to 3 sets with some great rallies. The Romanian guy got grumpy towards the end and ran out of steam and then got booed when he did an underarm serve. Lleyton got pumped up as the game went on and it was great to hear and see him do his "C'mon" antics...Lleyton won the match in a tie-break...

With the score one match all the mixed doubles should have been a great match but the Romanians won that quite easily in 2 sets which was a bit disappointing...

We checked out the trophies...

During one of the breaks a guy hit some balls into the crowd. If you were lucky enough to catch one you win a prize. Well I managed to catch one and apparently I won a movie pass (they have to post them out)...

There was an elderly man who had set up a display of old tennis memorabilia. I was very impressed with his tennis hat badge collection and he let me take a photo...

Janelle managed to get Lleyton's autograph as well as the 2 Romanians...

We saw Pat Cash and Lucy Hopman was dressed in hot pink (she is very frail now). Lleyton's parents were sitting not to far from us and it was very interesting watching the constant communication between Lleyton and his Mum. She is always nodding to him.

It was a great (and long) day out which we both enjoyed.

Popeye Pie

As we have an over supply of silverbeet in the garden Janelle thought she would use some of it up with a Spinach pie recipe she found. It took her a few hours to make as she made the pastry from scratch as well.

I had bits of spinach all over the kitchen as she had to start with 800gms of it and that is a lot of leaves!

She called it "Popeye Pie".

It took ages to cook and we eventually got to eat just before 9pm! But it was well worth the wait as it was very yummy!

New Year

2010

Welcome to a New Year and a New Decade and so much to look forward to!