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Photo Gallery(updated 17/8/06) Web Diary (updated 17/8/06) Guest Reviews(updated 17/8/06)
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THE BIT IN THE MIDDLE (UPDATE FROM JULIA)
Well, apologies to family and friends who I know check the website for updates, there haven’t been any for a while. This is for two reasons, mainly because we are on a really crap dial up system and are looking forward to getting back on to ADSL for a bit of speed. The other reason is because we have been too busy enjoying ourselves!! (and working of course).
Instead of trying to remember what we did when to back date the diary I will just do a quick update to fill everyone in on what we have been up to lately.
Tony has now been working at Movie World for about eleven weeks and is still enjoying it. He will be in training mode for quite a while as he has to have training on all of the different rides before he can be responsible for the maintenance of any of them. For the last week or so he has been working weekends which is Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday so this has broken our routine a bit.
I got a job at the beginning of March working 9am until 3.30pm at a small company based at Labrador which is around 15 minutes drive away. Unfortunately things didn’t work out and I was only there for 4 weeks. I had a bit of a bad experience there, however those of you who know me well will already know the story and I would rather not put it in print. Needless to say there are some strange people out there.
I then applied to a temping agency and have just started working at a company in Loganholme which is just over 20 minutes drive from home towards Brisbane. This is a brand new company just starting up (the desks were just getting delivered on the day I started). I have only worked here 3 days, but already I feel really settled and happy and think I will enjoy this. This job should last a few weeks and not sure whether there is a chance of being taken on permanently but will wait and see.
The kids are both doing well at school , and I have been up to their open nights to discuss their progress with their teachers
We now have a motor boat and regularly go out fishing in it. Tony is itching to explore farther than the local rivers but for the moment, until I feel more confident I would rather not as I get a bit nervous when we go out onto the Broadwater which is a wider stretch of water where a lot of boats go near Surfers Paradise. Fishing has been good lately and Nicola is currently in first place on the leader board, closely followed by Tony, with Julia and Jonathan trying hard but lagging well behind. Nicola even caught a sting ray the other day.
We had found a house that we were interested in and put an offer in for it however it fell through as the tenants asked for more time and were wrangling for money from the owner. It just gave us a bit of doubt about the whole thing so we cancelled the contract during the 5 day cooling off period and informed the estate agent that we didn’t know anything about the law concerning tenants in this country and didn’t want to find out.
We have since found another house and it has worked out better for us as it is a bigger house. The garden is smaller than we wanted, but the hours we have now spent looking around for the perfect place I think we knew we weren’t going to find it. Anyway, given that we hope to have a regular supply of visitors (hint hint to family … start saving for your flights!!) we think we have made a sensible decision buying a nice spacious house with four bedrooms.
We have had a Pool company out to check that we can fit in a small pool and have been given the thumbs up so this will be done as soon as we move in. The mortgage has been approved and we have had the buildings and pest inspections carried out and so we are looking forward to completion on 3rd May.
We visited SeaWorld a couple of weeks ago. This is a part of the Warner Brothers Theme Parks on the Gold Coast ( the company that Tony works for). We thoroughly enjoyed the day and took some photos, some of which will be put on the website. We enjoyed the dolphin show at Dolphin Cove, Shark Bay and the waterski show. We enquired about a yearly pass on the way out and they told us that they could upgrade us and as it happened there was a half price offer on so we got the passes for a year for about £100 in English money. We think that this is a good place for us to take Julie and Steffi and Tony’s mam and dad when they come to stay with us so it was best for us to get the annual passes.
It is now Easter and the kids are off school for a week and a half. It has worked out quite well with Tony’s new shifts as they have only had to be looked after for one day by Tony’s cousin Alyson who kindly volunteered to have them overnight. I was going to look into childcare options but haven’t needed to yet. Our Nicola is now old enough and sensible enough to look after herself anyway.
This weekend we are going for a barbecue to a work mate of Tony’s so we are looking forward to that.
We have also met up with a new expat family who hail from South Shields and have two girls. They have moved a couple of streets away which is great for our Jonathan as he can call round to play with the girls and vice versa.
All in all things have been going well for us, we have had a couple of minor problems (some of which didn’t seem minor at the time!) but in the scheme of things we feel that we have made the right decision to give this a go and feel it suits us as a family as we do a lot more outdoors together.
Once we get settled into the new house, I hope to update the website more often, however will probably have less to tell you so may be a bit boring.
Until then, bye for now.
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