Deck the Halls

 Monday, December 8th, 2013

We got a new trampoline!  We bought a 12 foot trampoline, (yes, it has a net!) and we put it together and 15 minutes after it was finished, Chaney hurt her ankle jumping on it.  She had to stay off the trampoline for 5 days.  But she is back on it again and jumping around!!

Everyone helps out putting the trampoline together.

Instead of picking blue or pink, we decided to make half the trampoline padding blue
 and half pink.  I think it looks like we have a circus tent in our back yard...

Thanksgiving

So Australians don't celebrate Thanksgiving.  So, on Thanksgiving Day the kids had school and Erich had work.  I did meet Erich for lunch that day.  We celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday with another American Family.  We had the full Thanksgiving spread.

Our $60 turkey. This was a great price around here.

Chaney and our friend found a snail on our Thanksgiving celebration day.

Our Thanksgiving table. (I forgot to take a picture once it was all set.)
I went ahead and decorated in fall colors and pumpkins.
 But it's spring here.  Totally weird.

 Christmas

It totally doesn't feel like Christmas.  It's so interesting how much the seasons play a part in feeling like the holidays.  I'm way behind in my Christmas shopping and hope our gifts make it to the U.S. in time!  We decorated our tree this last week while listening to Christmas carols.

Our Elf on the Shelf Louie arrived this past week.  He made a mess with the straws.  He finds a new place to hide every night and the kids enjoy looking for him.  At night he flies back to see Santa and to report on any good or bad behavior. 

My Random Thoughts and Observations...

• We call them swimsuits.  Australians call them swimmers.
• Garage door openers have key fobs instead of the remote you attach to your car visor.  Cars don't have options to program a button in the vehicle to open the garage door.  There are no buttons on the wall by the door into the house; you have to use your key fob to open/close the door. And there are no motion sensors to see if a child is in the way if the door is coming down. And they don't have the remote keypad on the outside to operate the garage door.  
• The dishwashers have filters you have to clean every month or the drain quits working.  We learned this the hard way. I asked an Aussie about cleaning out the filter and she seemed surprised that I had never heard about that before. It's status quo around here. 
• Every single bottle of wine here has a screw top.  Every. One. Cheap.  Expensive.  Doesn't matter.  All have screw tops.  Screw tops!!!  (Except the bubbly wine.) I collect wine bottle corks and I have only collected a couple from bubbly wines since we arrived.
• They don't have iced tea down here.   And in a lot of restaurants down here, if you want water to drink they give you a big glass bottle of room temp water to fill your glasses from.            
• Have you ever seen celery this big??

  

  That's a purple 12 inch ruler beside the celery.
  I literally had to cut it to make it fit in in the fridge.

•  If you ever move to Australia, and you bring a piggy bank with you, please note that the 50 cent pieces will fit in the top slot, but won't fit out the hole to remove the money. You'll never get it back unless you literally break the bank.  Charlie discovered this with his money.
• Chaney has lost two teeth in the last two weeks! One on the bottom and one of her front top teeth.  The other top front tooth is very loose!