Tuesday, March 22, 2011

What a Day!!





This morning Steve had to leave a little earlier so he could get to work with a coworker.   As hard he tried to stay quiet, I still couldn't go back to sleep until after he left.  I even got to sleep in because my kids enjoyed their DS's.  Sad I know, but you take what you can get! And I finished my blog last night at 1:30 AM so I figured I could use a little extra sleep...  But enough about sleep.

After allowing me to sleep for so long I made eggs, toast and juice for breakfast. The kids were thrilled.  Part of their jobs each morning is to make sure all of their clothes are in their luggage bags.  I'm mean because I scared them by telling them on the first day we were here that if they didn't, and they made piles, it was the perfect place for spiders to nest.  Noticed a trend here yet?  I despise spiders.  They scare me more than anything except heights.  Steve's joke is that he hopes they never find a spider that parachutes... Anyway,  it scared Jakob and Andy enough that they made sure everything was put away.   I still remind them to clean their room but I'm at least nice enough NOT to remind them of the spiders.  They remember. :)   So room cleaning happened and then they all continued with their DS playing.  Jakob got to chat with his cousin for a bit.

Steve got home a little early today in hopes that we could go house shopping. I found a couple of nice looking homes but none were ready to be shown today.  So we decided it was time to go get my phone fixed and to get a memory stick usb thing for my camera so I can FINALLY get pictures on this blog. Unfortunately, by the time we got there the stores were closed. We do that well.

On the bus as we were headed to Canberra Centre, I got to sit by two hilarious women.  They were very sweet and talked to me about getting houses and let me know more about Canberra. They praised me for having 6 kids and told me that we would be great for taxes later.  I told them by the time the kids would help with taxes we'd be back in America.  They said maybe the kids would see the light and come back. We'll see. :)  They ended up giving me a phone number to a great real estate agent to call. I will have to do that tomorrow. They weren't sure if we could get an agent to find a rental but there's only one way to find out!  They told me I needed two more kids - Joey and Matilda.  That way I would always remember they were born here in Australia.  They also told me that no one can not give us a house because of the number of kids we have.  One apparently works for the government here. She knew all types of laws.

We hopped off the bus and headed off to Aldi for the first time.  I stepped in there for all of five seconds before leaving 3 kids with Steve and heading off to a restroom with the other three kids.  They have those family bathrooms like you do in the US but this had a sliding door with an automatic deadbolt.  I felt like I was being locked into some kind of weird chamber - which I guess I was!    We went back and joined Steve in Aldi again and grabbed our groceries.  At Aldi you have to bring your own bags. And you don't bag them at the checkout. You have to go to a counter and bag them after.   We bought 4 bags for 15 cents each. 3 of them made it home in mostly one piece.  Thank heavens for a stroller that we could strap them over.  But you don't want to push that same stroller downhill or you may go for quite the ride. Just sayin'.

After we managed to struggle over to the bus stop we were thrilled that the bus was coming right then.  We, along with 3 other people, flagged down the bus. It pulled in - and then pulled back out and took off.  We all looked at each other and wondered what in the world had just happened.  So along with a few other people, four VERY heavy bags of groceries and our kids, we sat and waited for HALF AN HOUR for the next bus.  The kids ran around after leaves and asked every 3 seconds when the bus would get there. There was a lady there that thought it was the coolest thing ever that we have six kids.  She counted them and then guessed who was oldest and told me I was a very busy Mom about five times.  She was very sweet.

Finally the bus showed up and the kids ran off to the back of the bus like they've done every time.  They love the long bench in the back.  We all sat quietly (except Heidi who had to try to get something out of any bag she could possibly get to) and were happy to finally see our bus stop.  We pushed the button to say "next stop", got to the stop - and then they kept right on driving.  Apparently today is invisible day for us...  So, off we got at the next bus stop over.   Steve picked up Ethan and I took all the groceries in the stroller (after one of the handles broke).  And that's how I learned that you don't want to go down hill with a stroller full of groceries - and a baby. Luckily I was able to keep control of the stroller and we all got home safely.

We had a yummy dinner of fried rice. Gavin had 2 helpings which he has been doing a lot lately. I'm thrilled!!  We had ice cream for dessert. Why? Because it was almost melted from sitting at a stupid bus stop for over 1/2 hour.  But it was scrumptious so I'm happy.

Steve was a good Daddy and had the kids watch a documentary about wind cycles in Australia.  I don't do well with documentaries.  They bore me. But considering my kids hadn't done anything educational in the last 2 weeks (well, except the whole visiting two new countries and learning how to ride a bus in a strange country), I was happy they were learning. Except the clouds were apparently scary to Jakob who wanted to do something fun after the show to get over the fear of the clouds.  Ok, to be fair, they also taught about hurricanes, forest fires and other wind storms.  I just didn't think it was scary enough to warrant a way to forget about it before bedtime...

Tomorrow is another day.   We'll see what excitement it brings!

2 comments:

  1. Someone once told me that when a person says "You are a very busy mom," what they really mean is "You look completely out of control." HAHAHAHAHA. =o) Sorry, I couldn't resist.

    I like the idea of educational programs. You know I would have been freaked out at bedtime too. Maybe they can watch videos about nice furry critters. Or spiders. Hehe. Good luck with the realtor today!

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  2. ps - I like your background. Your your frequent posts. You're awesome!

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