I’ve been M.I.A for a while now, rest assured we returned home safely from our trip away… just   Neither of us really wanted to leave Canada, it makes a big difference to be somewhere you love, where your own family is treated equally and where there are some of your favourite people.  Oh, and there is a Fluevog store close by

I guess I can sum up the trip in a few points:

• Highlight: Ziplining down Grouse Mountain
• Lowlight: Is that a real term?
• Something interesting: Um… when you herd ducks in to a backyard.. you have to remember they need to leave somehow.

I only needed to get terse with someone one time; we had had a very long wait at Athens airport and we got on the plane to Frankfurt to find we weren’t all seated together.  The stewardess watched as I struggled to strap the car seat in to Grunge’s seat and poor Grunge was screaming from a sore mouth.  When the seat was in the stewardess walked over and asked if the seat had been approved for airline use to which I said it had and then she said I would need to install the car seat in the other seat we were given.  It took all my strength not to vault the seat and start papercutting her with my boarding pass.  I calmly proclaimed, “That would have been nice to know BEFORE I installed it.”  and didn’t really mind when Grunge screamed for the duration of the flight.

Anyway, enough about the trip, one thing, if you want to take a toddler around the world, do it, it’s awesome fun   Oh, and spending 6 weeks straight with your partner rocks too

It was two years ago that we found out we were expecting Grunge, pretty cool if you ask me   She’s an awesome little kid.  This week she’s finally become brave enough to walk on her own and as my brother said she’s very “stable table”.  She loves dolls and to mimic whatever we do.  Grunge loves our animals and likes to stand at the back door and “bark” at the dogs and pat the cats, even offering them her cereal.

Since getting back, Em and I have been really busy, her with her new job and me with my “stuff” (that’ll all make sense in about 7 months). We’re also thinking about upgrading one of our cars.  The red car has been stalling at idle the last few months and the service centre hasn’t been able to find any issues and the car computer isn’t returning an error either.  Today they found a “known issue” with the ignition coils which are currently being replaced.  If the car still stalls we’re selling her as neither of us want to put Grunge in a car that has problems.

Oh, very exciting news, we were totally over the moon (moo) when Sar and Sparky welcomed Baby Elvis to the world on the 27th of September.  He’s a gorgeous little guy with two awesome parents.   Hooray for babies

We left Athens for Zaharos (Sugar Town) on the west coast on Tuesday. Em’s father grew up in a small village a little way from Zaharos and we’re here for their “final trip back” which was meant to be last year however we couldn’t justify leaving me and a new Grunge home alone while Em came along.

The train trip down was great, we were in a first class cabin on the train and got to see a lot of the small places along the way. The seats reclined to almost lying down and there were two foot rests on the chair in front, very nice! People live pretty much on the train line, in places you could have reached out and touched their houses. The train chugged through Petras where all the international ferries and liners pull in and we were about 30 metres from those boats, very cool.

We scrambled off the train at Zaharos station – station is a bit of a misnomer… a phone booth a metre wide concrete path and an old rusty caboose does not make a station; our new Merc taxis arrived and took us a few kms to out hotel.

The hotel is nice, pretty clean and the people are very friendly. They are all especially taken with Grunge which is cool. Our room is very small, it has a double bed, a single bed, a small fridge and a vanity unit so there is about a 40cm walkway around to the bathroom which has a hand held shower head at knee level and about a 50cm x 50cm cubicle for showering in. Apparently you aren’t meant to flush your toilet paper either, whoops.

We had a real hard time getting Grunge to sleep so we made her her own Gypsy retreat, two sheets hung from washing line around her bed to keep her sectioned off, so far it is working really well and she’s back to having a lunch sleep and a big ninighs sleep. She slept in the pram yesterday while we were heading back from the beach and tried to sleep in the pusher today coming back from the markets.

In the mornings I walk up to the bakery up the street and buy a loaf of bread for lunch and Em and I sit on the balcony with our tomatoes, cheese, oj and bread like real wogs

Dinners have been good too. We found a local place that makes great food and they are really proud of what they do cook. Last night the owner was kind enough to let me bumble my way through our dinner order (a yiros without meat with chips and 3 soulvlaki and two kokojeros) and makes the tastiest yiros

We’re in Greece and all doing well – both girls are napping so I thought I’d add a bit of information on what we have been up to.

We flew from Adelaide to Changi Airport in Singapore on Sunday the 31st; the flight wasn’t bad at all and Em tested out her new no motion sickness bands which worked a treat. Grunge slept well in her car seat; we were really surpried. The flight attendents were lovely and gave Grunge some toys, nappies and wipes. We arrived at Changi around bed time and checked in to our Transit Hotel inside the airport for our 6 hour lay over. The hotel was lovely and gave us a cot for Grunge to sleep in so she jumped in the shower with me and then went to bed. The hotel is next to the movie cinema and butterfly garden inside the airport and upstairs from lots of shopping including a Giordano Junior store We caught the skytrain to the next terminal for boarding and set off for Athens with Singapore Airlines.

During the flight I was playing with the onboard entertainment system and found an old Japanese puzzle game and worked out how to play it – both Em and I got addicted to it and played on and off for the rest of the 11 hour flight. The interactive system is built on Windows 3.11 and I got to watch our rows system reboot as the overhead lights and call buttons didn’t work. Watching DOS boot on an aircraft is a little daunting

It was pretty cool to know we were flying over places like Dubai, Mumbai and pats of Iran and we landed in Athens on Monday morning after about 24 hours travel. We got whisked through immigration, found our bags and went to find Em’s parents. There was no security at all! We trained it to the hotel in Omonia and all went to bed.

We had a quick tour of Athens seeing an awesome red sunset, the flea markets and the acropolis from a distance. Overall it was a bit of a hole however an interesting place; we’ll be heading back for a few days next week.

Have I introduced you about our neighbours? For the purpose of my own amusement and the prosperity of the tradition of giving important people superhero names.. they shall hence forth be known as Rogue and Wolverine (yes, I’m slightly addicted to X-Men ).

Rogue and Wolverine have a gorgeous son, Wonderboy, who is 12 7th of awesome. Yesterday Rogue and I were outside playing Wonderboy Pong while Ickle happily practiced gardening in Em’s non prize winning rose moving dirt one handful at a time and relocating it to the grass or her mouth. Even Rogue’s airplane rides could not break the habit so I suggested Ickle jump in the bath.

Ickle is a big fan of baths, she tries to climb in full clothed and has started to undress herself thinking she’ll get in quicker. Yesterday she’d played with so much dirt there was even dirt in her nappy… and she was wearing a onesie!

We’re down to a week and a bit until we go away. We’re so excited and seem to have everything under control at the moment; random. We still need a few things and I’m hoping Ickle will be interested in coming shopping with me today to pick them up. I managed to find the only shop that was selling shorts in Winter in Adelaide and picked up two pairs of shorts that actually fit – within the week every store must have heard I needed shorts as they all started selling them. I need to call all the airlines we’re traveling on to ask about car seats on the plane – I guess I should do that now while grunge is asleep

I know I already mentioned the day at the zoo with Aunty Smorgy however I’d like to thank her again for a great day out. Having family so close is awesome!

It’s a little over 30 days until we head overseas; we’re getting really excited. We’re looking in to buying another car seat to take with us however we’re having trouble checking the laws in Canada and Greece. I’m booking all our Canadian accommodation, each place is a one bedroom suite which means Em and I can hang out in the living area while Ickle sleeps (she’s a light sleeper and will do anything to not nap). Our Toronto hotel has babysitting services so we might be able to get to the last Blue Jay’s game of the season and are hoping to ask Em’s host parents if they’d like to come too.

Nothing else exciting happening; the recovery from my knee surgery is slower this time and it’s much sorer than last time and Em has had tonsillitis the last week so we’ve been hanging out watching lots of tv. Em’s also being the engineering manager at her work so has been really busy the poor poppet.

Oh, freaky thing, the youtube video I posted a while ago… in the recommended video section of it the second link is the little guy from next door and down further is Stacey and Angele’s Riley – a bit spooky.

Anyone want fajitas? I’m off to make dinner!

Ickle is a character, she’s always doing something to show how clever she is.  She has a new sign for Mia which is part of the song “Clap Hands Till Mia Comes Home” and likes to do the actions for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.  She’s always “reading” her books and pointing out things in them too.

Aunty Smorgy took us all to the zoo on the weekend, it was a lovely day and I got a bunch of photos.  Ickle ended the day with a mini meltdown which was totally acceptable given all the “Dog” and “Duck”s she had pointed out to us…. After a month of saying “Cat” in context, every animal is now a dog or a duck.  She got very excited at all the animals and the other people and enjoyed the hot chips from the cafe; she even claimed my cup and fished her own out!

The afternoon milk drink has finished which means we still have the ninighs bottle and that’s it.  I still pack a bottle for day care for just-in-case but she seems fine without it.  She’ll eat pretty much anything and we get told she’s a “great eater”.

More teeth are charging through and today they were upsetting her and she wouldn’t eat any dinner, poor Ickle Grunge.

This week I had my second knee operation and got some sad news, it seems the cartilage in my knees is degenerating which is really rare in someone my age however it explains why my meniscus keep tearing.  This year I’ve had 50% of the meniscus removed from each knee and after speaking to the doctor tonight it doesn’t look like I’ll be going back to soccer again.  Positive side is that I don’t need the painkillers I’ve got as the surgery wasn’t too bad this time

I realised tonight that I’m no longer as excited about my birthday as I am doing our accounts with the accountant…

Click here to watch movie
Who would have guessed Em’s daughter would dig Tiggers

Hey, where have you been? Oh.. really? Ok, so maybe I’ve not been that good at updating.

Tomorrow (7th July) is Ickle’s due date anniversary so I’m taking my girls out for dinner It’s strange to think that this time a year ago we were already out of the baby factory and home with girls.

The first birthday celebrations went really well. All our friends stepped up and helped out at Ickle’s birthday party and both Em and I got to socialise and chat with everyone Ickle’s Aunty Mish helped us out the day before with all the preparations and helped me with the cakes which came out really cool! Ickle had a great day and was still partying in the car on the way home. It really is times like these that I realise how lucky we are to have such a great group of friends and family.

Ickle is still in love with daycare; it’s so much easier to take her when you know how much she loves it. I was reading Fletcher’s blog and realised I could have cut and pasted from it and said the same things about our carers and how much Ickle loves it She’s still not sleeping so well there and can be Captain Mega Grumpypants when we get home however it’s totally worth it.

Ickle is a funny little one; she loves books, socks, babies and remote controls.. and apparently all these things can be used as a makeshift phone to talk to Nanna Kez “Haaallllloooo Naaaannaaa Kezzz”. She loves to be involved in our conversation and laughs along with us. It’s my favourite to watch her dancing along to the stereo in the car and I’ve missed the lights changing to green a few times having chats with her in the car. She’ll eat pretty much anything but mango and mandarin.. she even ate fish curry at daycare last week (none of the other kids did) and tonight fed herself pasta that I’d made.

We’re off to the zoo this week to jump in puddles And today is our 6th anniversary of living in Adelaide

So there has to be cake right?:D

Day care held a party for Cody’s birthday today, the chef made a very tasty banana cake and all the little kids from the infants, toddler and kindy rooms came in to the music room (it was so cute, the all lined up and sat in a circle and sung) and had cake.

We made a year

Extra special birthday squishes to LMN and Fletcher who also share this special day – what a great day to be born. Congratulations to Kylie and Carolyn for making it through the first year.