It’s my 2nd week working & i am loving everything about it! My feet are extremely sore every night from being on them all day, but i have wonderful people im working with & a great environment. The staff are caring to their customers & i find it very easy to fit in with the store. I couldn’t be more happier )

Dean has settled rather well at work & even tho he spreads himself across 2 buildings in seperate parts of Sydney each week, he seems to be happy as well.

The house is pretty much unpacked now & we just have a few more furnishings to get to be complete. These things will come with time & we are in no rush. We make do without currently & havn’t had any probs with that.

I have recently found a new hot drink that i like to relax with. Chai Latte. It is actually a tea, not a coffee. Speaking of which, i have a steamy cup sitting in front of me now & find it mesmerising to drink a “Cup of Christmas” whenever i feel like relaxing. For those of you who have tried a Chai Latte, you will know exactly what i mean with that term.

We went to the NRL at Oki Jubilee Stadium this past weekend, taking our nieces & their dad so we could all spend Fathers Day together. We watched with plenty of excitement the St George Illawarra Dragons take out the Newcastle Knights, ensuring they do indeed receive the Wooden Spoon! We also got to bid a fond farewell to none other than living legend, Andrew “Joey” Johns. He played a great game considering in the 4th minute of the game he had injury to his leg. Unsure of the exact prob at this stage, but rumours went from a Corked Right Calf to a Torn Crucial. Im sure if i bothered to look up the NRL webby i’d soon find out. But, meh.

Looking forward to a nice quiet(!)weekend at home this weekend. V8′s, NRL & hopefully good weather to keep us happy whilst tending to the yard for a bit of TLC.

Cheerio for now… keep in touch )

As of next Monday I begin working with a lovely group of people who took the time out of their own busy & tiring schedule to consider a position for me.

I shall be working on a 4-day-a-week basis for the next 2 months or so whilst I am trained & get product knowledge behind me. There is a lot of studying & reading for me to do & plenty of research to be done. I am told that my training will be fast-tracked & that they will bombard me with “information overload” for some time until I am capable of being in the store without having assistance.

From then we will discuss whatever days are going to be suitable for us all, which must include a weekend day. There is flexibility in that & when the time draws closer we will come to that decision. As for now, I am just completely over the moon that I have been accepted by these Employers & that yet again I am back in the workforce.

I will be doing exactly what I set out to do. Working in Retail at a Baby Shop. I couldn’t be more delighted in succeeding at the task I had set myself!

Those of you close enough to me will know that I had this venture on my mind before actually finishing up with Family Day Care.

All the pieces are falling into place.

I guess on a personal note, Dean & I will be able to begin saving & planning for our wedding day.

I know that most of you out there are awaiting the news of when it will be. I promise you it will happen before the turn of the decade! Hahaha.

The house is becoming quite comfortable to live in & we are finally starting to put the last things in place. There is no hurry to do the odd jobs around the place that need doing. So when we have spare time on weekends, we will spend a lot of it outdoors.

Recently late one night, very late one night the power went off. It then came back on briefly… only to disappear again. This time for good. The power we lost was to all power points. So we had use of all of our lights. After waiting till 9am to call the Real Estate & being informed that “We have NEVER had this kind of trouble before now… I’ll call the landlord & get back to you”.. I felt a feeling of dread. Knowing that last call out of the Electrician only a mere 3 weeks or so ago ended with us footing the bill as a brand new but out of warranty toaster decided to blow up a power point in the kitchen & scared the living heck out of me!

After waiting patiently (just) till around 11.30am, I decided to call the Real Estate again to find out what the .. was going on with the Electrician. I was quickly informed that he indeed had my number & would call me with a call-out time. Literally as I was hanging up my mobile from that call, it rang. Of course it was the electrician so I could have saved my couple of dollars calling the Real Estate & waiting on hold till someone that new the story told me what was happening. These things always seem to happen like that! LOL

Cutting a long story short, the Electrician came out round 2pm. Found that the problem lay behind the very old fuse in the fuse box & that we were indeed at NO fault to what had happened. Apparently after years & years of wear this happens in the old system. He was a great guy & almost guaranteed that this problem would never happen again for as long as we tenanted here. I suppose that was good to hear! So I will bet our new landlord will be none too happy to receive that bill. Though of course, bad timing got us & i’m sure it would never have happened to the previous tenant if they were still here or to any new tenant that had of won the lease over us! LOL Pessimistic aren’t I?. HAHA.

Enough grumbling & griping for now…

In the next few weeks we are hoping to start organizing our Bathurst pilgrimage. Though there’s a huge gripe to be had there too, let me tell you!!

And as the weather warms up we are hoping to spend many weekends relaxing in the yard or at the footy games & even down by the beach at Brighton-Le-Sands. We have adopted that as our leisure grounds. We have been there several times before moving to spend a day relaxing. We have successfully flown kites, kicked a mini footy & taken many a stroll along the boardwalk there.

It’s a lovely area & I do hope to have many more memories from there.

Ok people, so leave me a message on here please so I know how all of you are doing & don’t be shy to give us a holla.

If you’re around the area, let us know! You’re more than welcome to call in for a barbie or a drink or even just a quick hello-goodbye )

Finally I have some time to sit down & create another blog for you guys.

What are we up to these days????

We have settled into our new place fairly well & are both very comfortable with living here. We had the majority of everything unpacked within the first few days of being here, all the large items & furniture were in place by the second day. The important boxes & items were swiftly set into place & over the last few weeks, we have spent time unpacking slowly the rest of what was brought here.

Dean has become accustomed to using the CityRail system pretty well. He catches a train to the city & home every weekday & manages to travel to other areas for work purposes as well.

I am very proud of him & how he has made such big changes in his life to accommodate us both.

I have been comforting him in the evenings with lovely home cooked meals & have even ventured into making a few things that I have never done before! I seem to have a knack of being able to cook things off the top of my head & using “guesstimates”. Hehehe.

Me on the other hand, things have been slow.

I have spent many days doing the normal housework routine & continue unpacking small boxes of assorted items as well as fit in visits to my brother’s place for multiple reasons & look for work. Do the shops when things are needed & organize bills.

I am enjoying the time I have had for myself but am feeling a little stir-crazy as of late & deeply miss my once-normal routine of waking up, getting ready for the day & starting my working day from 8am with bright happy little faces & curious minds to entertain me all day. It’s amazing what you miss once it’s gone.

Anyways, back to the “job-hunting” front.

Even though we are in the Sydney metro area, jobs are not coming in thick & fast.

My initial plan as I pointed out in a previous blog before the actual move, was to try my hand in retail for a while if not indefinitely. I knew that there would be an abundance of retail shops in regard to Baby shops etc….. but I was surprised to find out that most of these are either Asian owned & don’t care for extra staff, or that a lot of the businesses are family orientated.

I researched some of the shops I found in the local Yellow Pages & set myself the task of “cold canvassing” these businesses, offering my resume for future reference to those that didn’t need any new staff immediately. Out of the 26 Businesses I called one morning, I managed to get 3 Not-Connected Numbers, 1 Asian who thought I was trying to sell HIM something, only 2 businesses that would accept my resume through the traditional Snail Mail method & 3 businesses I was able to successfully send a fax of my resume to.

I took a hold of this task & nurtured it for all I could. Admittedly the response was disappointing, but at least I was making that attempt. 1 business in particular had me smiling from ear to ear as they were very kind to speak with & showed much interest mirrored by my own enthusiasm.

So on I went, sending a fax to the 3 businesses that were kind enough to give me the pleasure & time to actually think I might still have some slight chance. Seriously though, my hopes were fading fast & I was under the impression that even though I was making the effort, I would have to go back to Day Care in some nature & just leave my small dream for either the future or to stay as it was. A small dream.

I did forget to mention earlier that I had already been emailing my resume to different Child Care positions advertised in local papers or the internet & out of the dozens sent, I have had merely 1 reply from Canterbury Council informing me that my Application was received & is being viewed by the appropriate peoples & that if I was successful in making it to the interview point, I would be contacted via phone immediately. Nothing since.

Ok.. So I got my task finished & was feeling a little down at the same time as feeling quite happy that I was, in fact successful in doing what I set out to do. Make contact with these businesses.

I went about my day as per normal, doing the little housework needed then got in the car & went over to my brother’s place for a fleeting visit.

As I was leaving my brother’s to head to a Hardware store, I received a call on my mobile from a gentleman at one of the businesses I had contacted earlier in the morning. I was ecstatic & im almost sure he could hear my heart pounding through the phone! But all in all I made a time suitable with us both to go meet him the next day.

I’m pleased to say that our meeting yesterday was quite fruitful & without any promises made, I shall be meeting with his wife at the Menai store which is where I shall be working with her if they agree to employing me. I am very very happy to have had this meeting & I am hoping I will make a good impression on them enough to allow my foot in the door where I can prove to them that it was quite worth hiring me & adding me to their team.

So my next big blog will hopefully be to inform you all that indeed I am employed again & that happy days only are ahead of us all!

Ok.

I know i have not left any new blogs fer anyone to read as of late & i do apologise. Most of you will have probably read ShadowKnight’s webby in recent times & will know that we are now actually IN Sydney & that he has been working since we got into NSW at the end of June.

Recently we have spent many a night discussing & looking at pictures of houses/units i viewed almost every single day. With the help of my Brother & often help from my 2 nieces, we saw many places & became a little worried that i wouldn’t locate a property suitable for our residence.

Finally 2 weeks ago i came across a little 3 bedroom house. I went to visit it on my own & after us putting in an application for it, started wondering if i was actually doing the right thing or not & if i had made a mistake by grabbing the first place i liked. Altho i did believe that choosing 1 place for our liking out of the dozens & dozens i had viewed wasnt so bad.

So to cut a long story short, the application was accepted & we are now in the Bay yet again this weekend, but this time to pack house & shift out.

So i will get some time soon i hope to sit & write some more blogs for you all & finally get u all up to date with wats happening.

We shall be online within the next week or so from our own place so will catch up with you then.

XxXxXxX

Its the 2nd week since finishing work. I feel like am merely on holidays, which of course I am not complaining about! I think the reality won;t hit me for sometime as I have a great deal of stuff to keep me occupied & busy over the coming month, at least.

The weather here has been quite cold, wet & windy. Typical NSW Winter. I am told that it isn’t normally this cold over here, so perhaps it’s a strange phenomenom that the winter followed me here to prepare SK for the big move ahead.

Since being here I have spent some considerable amount of time with my future Mother-In-Law.

Hopefully my constant babbling isn’t enough to make her take pity on her son! Hehehe.

I am enjoying spending this time with her as I know that we won’t get to spend time together constantly after the move, considering we will be across the other sides of the country to each other.

Well, since leaving work & Batemans Bay well over 2 weeks ago, I had a busy few days to begin with.

On Sunday 12th June I left Batemans Bay to meet our eldest brother & my 2 adorable nieces at Nowra, where our other brother lives. We left mum in their capable hands & travelled back to Sydney listening to Gwen Stefani’s “Holla Back Girl” almost on repeat for the whole of the trip!

The girls have become quite attached to this song & its all I heard for the following 24 hours! They stayed with us overnight to much delight for me. H has a new way of singing the edited part of the song.. which is “B for Bananas, B A N A N A S!” LOL Very cute!

On Monday 13th June, we all got up bright & early in the crispy cold morning to head down to DOuble Bay where my meeting with the prospective Employers of the Baby Shop took place over a Cuppacino. It went well & I was quite confortable chatting with the owners. Their 2 children are georgous & if I don’t get employment with them, it was definately wonderful meeting them.

That was early in the morning, so we spent the rest of the day going here & there in the car, walking along clifftops at The Gap & stopping to get treats from a Chinese Bakery & taking them to a park for afternoon tea. It was a lovely way to spend the day & I do hope the girls enjoyed it before we dropped them home in the evening.

On Tuesday 14th June, my bro & I spent the day driving around St George & Canterbury/Bankstown suburbs viewing properties for rent. Nothing realy took my fancy, although 2 properties were to my liking. One we only were able to view the outside front of, as the agent gave me the address whilst driving around & he was tied up & couldn’t meet us there with the keys. The other property was in the middle of shops in Padstow. Its backyard was so huge that I felt too overwhelmed just looking at it from the back of the house. The house itself is VERY well maintained for its age. I did find looking through the house made me imagine where pieces of our furniture would lay. LOL

I made no attempt to apply for leasing any of these properties though, so for Dean & Myself, it’s basically back to square one. Because we are flying back in on Thursday 30th June, we will start looking at properties as of July 1st. Thanks to my bro who has offered to accomodate us for a time until we get a lease signed. If we didn’t have a place to stay I would have been a wreck by now from all the stress! LOL

On Wednesday 15th June, I was at the airport around 8.30am to check in, went to the end of the Virgin Blue Terminal where i could sit & relax & watch the incoming & outgoing planes from the large viewing windows. I boarded the aircraft around 9.25, 10 mins after the scheduled boarding time. We sat for what felt like an almost eternity, before making a very long taxi out & joined the cue behind 3 other aircraft waiting for take off.

The flight wasnt’t too bnad considering I was surrounded in the back of the plane by lots of children. Most being under the age of 3! They all did very well considering a majority of the children were flying for the very first time int heir young lives.

Once landing on Western Australian soil, Mum greeted me at the baggage claim carousel & off we went towards my home for the following 2 weeks & 1 day.

It was wonderful greeting my baby when he finally arrived home from work. To feel all the anxiety & pressure lift in that first embrace was magical indeed. I am looking forward to my relaxing time ahead here.

So I guess I don’t have a great deal of news for everyone at this post, except for 1 important thing which has taken a lot of pressure off of us both. Dean got his Transfer through from KAS NSW! Although we don;t know fine details as yet of pay, hours/days to work & what date to start, it is definately a good step in the right direction to progress.

Congratulations baby, I Love You! XxXxXxX

It is the end of the workday, Friday 10th June 2005.

It is the end of my career as a Eurobodalla Family Day Carer.

I am considered from this moment on as “unemployed”…

So where to now?

Saturday, I shall be packing house.

Sunday, I shall drive to Nowra & meet my Eldest Brother whilst dropping Mum at our other Brother’s house to stay while im interstate.

Monday, even though a Public Holiday, I shall be meeting with owners of a successful Baby Store in Double Bay. I hope I can make a good impression & allow them to get to know me in the short time we will be together. I am hoping that I can take on employment with them & possibly join the staff in their existing or brand new store.

It will be a wonderful adventure with many things for me to learn. I also know I can offer them a trusting employee with dedication for my work commitments.

(Wish me luck!)

Tuesday, our Eldest Brother & I will be travelling all over the St George Area in order to view houses & a few units for rent. I do hope that we find a place suitable for SK & I, but if we do not get to apply for anything on Tuesday, then that’s Ok. We have the opportunity of staying with my Brother until we do score ourselves the place we are hoping for after flying back from W.A.

Wednesday, I get on a Virgin Blue plane & cross the countryside for a few hours to my beloved Fiancee waiting for me in W.A. This is the day our lives change forever. And for the better.

From the moment I land & am in his arms, then we are together forever.

I do hope he STILL is going to be in W.A when I land!!!!

I sit here now, thinking to myself that there is so much i’d like to say right at this very moment.

So many people I would like to thank.

So many people I would like to remind, how much I love them.

So many memories to reflect upon…

But instead I am going to leave it at this, shed a few tears of joy & sorrow, put my mind into a different place & prepare myself gathering the last few important things I need to remember to take with me for after Sunday.

My Resume…. My Diary…. My Address Book…. My scribble pad with info on properties on it…. My dinner….

OH! Dinner is ready!

Ok.. I’ll stop now before I loose the plot completely.

Keep in touch peoples.

Love you all.

Miss you all.

XxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXxXx

Well… I am not looking forward to tommorow very much at all, as it will be the first of many goodbyes.

Every Thursday fortnight, Family Day Carers gather with their little ones for Playgroup.

I have attended almost every single Playgroup session since the beginning of my time with Eurobodalla Family Day Care.

Each visit is welcomed with much fun & excitement from the little treasures in my care.

We toddle off in the VS wagon with Happy Smiles & Red Hats adorned. Anxiously anticipating the moment we pull up at the kerb & spy the Activities that are awaiting our little hands & the friends who have arrived earlier than us!

We have craft activities presented for us to experience & enjoy, books in a lovely book corner to sit & read, a HUGE Home Corner to enact our daily routines & roleplay our most impressionable ones, many toys to stimulate our curiosity & learning & wonderful playmates to share it all with.

Caring staff that organise each session for our arrival, social interaction between other carers & their children & a nice warm cuppa to spin a yarn or have a whinge(!) over.

Who wouldn’t enjoy Playgroup each fortnight????!!!!

Sadly, tomorrow is my very last Playgroup as a carer. We have a picnic organised at Broulee, as long as the sun graces us warmingly & lovingly & I am hoping that as the session draws to a close, it will be like just a normal Playgroup ending by waving goodbye to each other & sharing a smile.

I do not want a farewell goodbye as such as Firstly, I will see everyone again & hopefully on a regular basis.

Secondly, I will become a blubbering mess & the young’ns in my care may be shocked at seeing their main support system in care crying, & possibly not understand.

Thirdly, because I will be driving back from Playgroup through town & along the Highway & prefer a clear head when making trips with these tiny & vulnerably dependant souls in my car.

So… just keep the brave face strong.

I don’t think it will last, but one can only try.

I mean, seriously… how easy is it to hide a breaking heart?