The best day!

We've had the most fantastic day - Perth is host to the finale of the Red Bull Air Race. This is a free event over the weekend. The contestants, 13 pilots today, tested their skills along the Swan River, flying as fast as possible around a course of inflated pylons. It was absolutely FANTASTIC. We were some of many thousands on the river banks, watching the event right in front of us and on the huge tv screens. The weather was perfect, 30 degrees C, blue, blue sky (not a cloud to be seen just to rub it in) and everyone there was out to have a good time so it was a great atmosphere.

We moseyed on down by bike - 15 mins from our house to almost the city centre - and finished our day drinking wine on Richard's parent's balcony watching more stunt flying (they live a stone's throw from the foreshore) and Iz and Katie cooled off in their pool. I'm sitting at home now looking through our 198 photos, the best of which I'll post for you to see along with some from the official site so you can get an idea of what it's all about.

Before I finish, if any of you fancy coming over for a holiday, this time next year would be a good date for your diary as the Race returns to Perth for its third year. Now onto the photos.....

Countdown to the race.....

Watching the action

It's been a while....

Okay, okay we're very overdue for an update on here (aside from posting up news). Well, in 4 days we'll hit the 6 months mark. Rich has been at work for 3 and a half months, I'm doing some web site work again (for my old UK company) and for those of you who don't know, I'm also a Tupperware demonstrator! Yes, you really have read that right, and no, I'm not pulling your leg. Tupperware is BIG business over here like you would not believe. Even single guys order the stuff and Rich has realised that the money I earn is quite useful.... Enough said about that.

So, what have we been up to? Well, with the warm Spring weather (30 degrees C this week - just to rub it in), we've been to the beach a couple of times, visited Rottnest Island with it's 63 beaches (not that we managed all of those in 1 day!), Rich has had a go at kite surfing and decided he wants to take it up as a hobby. Katie had her 3rd birthday back in September. The photo above is of Katie and her friend Imogen at her birthday party. Our first birthday party at home, great fun but exhausting!

We're all seriously into our coffee which we've probably mentioned before. I took this photo of Katie when she had her first baby cino (it's actually hot chocolate but she thinks she's drinking coffee!) Cafe culture is very much part of our life here and the girls have totally taken it for granted that that's what we do. I was told by Tony last week that when Katie spent the morning with them, not only did she dictate exactly what they were going to do but it included a trip to their local cafe for lunch :o)

One of our favourite things to do here is to go out on our bikes as there are cycle paths everywhere. We've bought trail-gators which attach the girls' bikes to ours so that we can move along at a sensible speed. Rich took this photo of me and Katie weeks ago, probably to show you that I do do a bit of exerise....

And in case you're worried that the rest of the family don't exist, here's one of them at Mandurah beach...

So, reading back that's not a lot of news but it's really hard to remember what we've been doing! Anyway, I hope this gives you a bit more of an insight.

Hope you're all well and aren't thinking too much about Christmas. I was told today that it's only 8 weeks away, I don't think that we'll ever be ready for it as it's soooo not like Christmas time over here. Even the shops having Christmas departments haven't convinced me, although I think Isabel and Katie would complain very loudly if Father Christmas missed them out!

Take care all and when you get chance, please get in touch!

Love

The Ramshaws in Oz xxxxx

They're a rough lot here.....

We've laughed out loud at one of today's news stories and felt we had to share it with you....

"CANBERRA (Reuters) - An Australian barmaid has been fined for crushing beer cans between her bare breasts while an off-duty colleague has been fined for hanging spoons from her friend's nipples, police said Wednesday.
Police in Western Australia said the 31-year old barmaid pleaded guilty in the local magistrate's court to twice exposing her breasts to patrons at the Premier Hotel in Pinjarra, south of the state capital, Perth.
The woman "is alleged to have also crushed beer cans between her breasts during one of the offences," in breach of hotel licensing laws, police from the Peel district of Western Australia said in a statement.
The barmaid and the hotel manager were both fined A$1,000 ($900), while an off-duty barmaid was fined A$500 for helping to hang spoons from the woman's nipples, police said.
"It sends a clear message to all licensees in Peel that we will not tolerate this type of behavior in our licensed premises," local police superintendent David Parkinson said."

We'd just like to point out we don't know them, honest!

Where have 15 weeks gone?

Well, today marks our 15th week here. You could not imagine how fast the time has gone since we first arrived. I thought I would be updating this blog much more frequently than I have been doing but I always seem so busy!

Anyway, enough of my excuses, I thought I should share with you some of the local ways that are a bit different from here.

Well to start with, the lingo is a bit different. Obviously it's English but common words we've encountered are:
Manchester - all forms of linen. Why "Manchester" I have no idea. Oh, and a duvet is called a "doona"
Snags - sausages
Eggplant - aubergine
Zuchini - courgette
Capsicum - pepper
Router - Rich has discovered that this is pronouced "rowter", as "router" means to shag :oD (Cause of embarressment at his office!)

I'm sure Isabel knows more (she's determined to learn them all) but she's in bed so I can't ask her to fill me in on the ones I've forgotten. If you really want to know, then let me know :oD

So, what else can I tell you. Well, postie does his round on a motorbike. Houses over here don't have letterboxes in their doors, but letterboxes at the front of their garden. Newspaper delivery people do the American thing of throwing the paper on the lawn.

Customer service is great in the shops. You are greeted with a genuine smile and even on the phone people greet you with "How's it going?" and always end with "Have a nice day". I still find it amusing.

Driving.. Hmm, this is an experience. It's left hand driving as in the UK BUT you can overtake on the inside as well as the outside. Lorries can drive in any lane. As a generalisation most Australians will automatically zoom up to the car in front if you indicate that you would like to move over to their lane. This means that you have to negotiate changing lanes a good few minutes before you need to in order to guarantee you can swap lanes in order to turn off. Supermarket bumps on car doors is common. We have already been scraped twice. Grrrr.

However, despite the 4 weeks of almost continuous rain, we are not complaining. We've filled our weekends without any effort and staying in the house to "get on with stuff" is a rarity despite wanting to make lots of changes to put our stamp on our new home. Going out is always so much more appealing.

I have got through the first school holidays which loomed upon me without too much thinking about. I have become network queen and met lots of great people :o) Isabel even went on Guide Camp in the holidays (yes, aged 6!) for 4 (blissful days). Harsh you may think but it meant there was no rush for getting to school and she loved it anyway!

Last week I went to see Gwen Stefani on her only night in Perth. She was fantastic. It was my first concert in nearly 10 years so to make up for lost time I'm already planning my next one to see Justin Timberlake in November.

We're off on our first minibreak in a couple of weeks to a place called "Billingup". I have learnt this week that any place that ends in "up" means that it is an Aboriginal place name that means close to water.

Photos - we have taken some, just been useless at checking them out. But I can assure you that there are some beautiful spots here and Iz and Katie are growing fast. In fact, Katie is 3 in less than 4 weeks (gasp!) and Rich is another year older a couple of days earlier. So birthday celebrations are being planned.

Anyway, I hope the sun is at last shining in the UK and that you mums are managing to do more than soft play in the school holidays.

Take care. We miss you all. Drop us a line when you get time.

Jennyxxxxxx (and co)

No longer unemployed!

Yep, you read that right. Rich has joined the ranks of the Perth employed and is now an IT Consultant for DSC-IT. He's valiantly opted to commute by bike but rain has thwarted his attempts this week (well that's his excuse for getting me to drive him in!) So a second car is on the cards....

Off to bed now as it's late but will post more soon.

Recent photos

Katie enjoying herself at the Ivy Watson playground

Isabel in her school uniform

It's been a while.......

Hi All

It's been a while since we updated the blog. Apologies, etc, etc but let me get on and tell you what we've been up to. Well, since Rich added the photos of our house to this blog we moved in 4 weeks to the day from when our offer was accepted! So a little quicker than how things went in the UK and we've now been here 4 weeks and 2 days. Isabel and Katie are really settled in their new home. Rich and I have done 90% of the unpacking, most of what's left is garage stuff and "lets just shove it in the spare room for the time being" stuff which will get done eventually :o)

We've finished moving our furniture around to fill in the large gaps that this house has provided and now have a long list of desirable things we'd like to buy as and when we can afford it. All donations gratefully received.....(!)

We've got very used to our new home now and particularly enjoy the fact that when we're at one end of the house and the girls at the other, it's still so peaceful! Having such a long house also has its drawbacks, particularly when unpacking a 100 or so boxes whose contents need to be carried from one end to the other. It also meant that on discovering that we had no loft insulation (gasp!) and were all freezing in the cold winter mornings (yes, it's true, it gets cold at night and before the sun comes out) it cost a lot more than a square 2 storey house to insulate. But hey, it's one of those things and we're now not shivering in 2 layers of clothes at night.

Four weeks down the line from the move, Rich has been busy job hunting (more of that in a moment), while I've been busy shopping, seeking out the variety of shopping centres to buy the food basics, furniture and general house stuff. Katie has become my number 1 shopping buddy, although her favourite question is "Mummy.... can we buy this?" Unfortunately for her, most of the time I say "no".

Shopping is a different experience here as it is the norm to haggle on price. You always, always ask for their best price and in most cases they'll knock some money off. Money here is different too - aside from it being dollars and cents - there's no paper stuff, only plastic "monopoly" notes plus coins. There's no 1 cent coin either, so if something is priced at 99 cents it gets rounded up to the dollar. It works both ways so for instance if a bill came to 9 dollars and 96 cents then you'd get the 5 cents change from a 10 dollar note.

As someone pointed out having plastic money means that if you do accidently leave some in your pockets then they don't disintegrate in the washing machine and you can take it to the beach without having to remember to leave it somewhere dry.

Some of you will know from our emails that we still don't have broadband. A strange concept for us especially when I tell you we've only had a phoneline for 10 days (a long and frustrating story). WA really does stand for Wait Awhile..... so we're currently dialled into the net via R's mobile phone, a useful add-on to his mobile contract and pretty cheap compared to UK prices.

Anyway, back to R's job hunting. He's been offered 4 jobs from 5 interviews (the fifth company said that if they had the right project they'd employ him but currently they couldn't place him in the firm), so finding a job isn't exactly a problem. Clearly he's a picky so and so but fingers crossed we'll have some great news later in the week.

Right folks. That's all for now. More news and photos coming soon.