Indoor Playground Heaven

As it is winter here (LOL), moms in Melbourne flock to indoor playgrounds where they can enjoy a complimentary cappuccino with their admission fee and enjoy the company of other moms while keeping a distant eye on their young. Luckily the structures are built with safety in mind and even toddlers can roam freely with minimal risk of seriously injuring themselves. That is until "those kids" arrive...these kids are trouble and are seriously neglected by their parents who chat on their cell phones while their offspring rough up younger kids. Unfortunately, money talks and the parents are smart enough to frequent the same playground enough times each week, spending loads of cash to be out of their homes with their kids, that the management has no choice but to accept their business despite the number of complaints they get each time the kids enter the building. As a result I am coaching Wyatt to say such things as - "You don't scare me, you are just a boy!" and when that doesn't work we send Zak in as the Wyatt's bodyguard and he has been known to say such things as "Leave these kids alone - and you smell!".

Each indoor playground has a different feel, Play Days is more for floor play and ride-on cars while Kids Space has some amazing climbing gyms and slides that look quite terrifying from the top. The favorite indoor playground thus far is Lollipops which has a carnival style car ride that my kids adore.

I have finally arrived!

OK folks...now you will hear about the dirtier side of our life here in Melbourne, life with 3 kids at home! You will be able to tell my blogs from Jeff's as they will include more details of life with the kids, fewer spelling errors (possibly more grammatical errors) and lots of ..............

The latest from the home front: Zak has a job, Julia and I survived our first sisterly fight (not bad since we've known each other for 21 years) and I am dreading the day she leaves as I have become quite fond of her :),


Wyatt is enjoying the company of his two new bestfriends (Declan and Loic) and has wholeheartedly embraced the cafe lifestyle.



Cooper is OBSESSED with balls (luckily not of the genital kind) to the point that he sleeps and drinks with them in his hands (see picture).

Maddy is enjoying her new Melbourne wardrobe and spends most of her day locating the boys favorite toys, showing them off, then hightailing it down the hall in hopes that she will be pursued. If that sounds like fun, you should come and visit, I will go on holidays and we can laugh about it all when I get back! I am not joking!




In terms of the places we have visited, I will include a bunch of pics with this post and others as soon as we download them to flickr (or so Jeff has told me). Just wanted you all to know I was still alive and you can expect some regular updates from here on in.

This week in Melbourne...

Wednesday night Mel and I went out to dinner downtown. Mel met he after work and we headed over to Lygon street. One of the restaurant districts in the downtown area.

The street is fairly major, two lanes going each direction in some places. What makes it special is that the sidewalks are super wide. So all the cafes have tables and awnings set up outside and you walk between the outdoor setups and the cafes. It has a very cozy feel. We ended up eating at a restaurant just off of Lygon called Chin chin's. The menu covered most of the asian styles and was a bit upscale cost wise. The food was pretty good, some worth the price, some not so much. We had some dim sum for appetizers, Mel had a Thai Green Curry dish with Shrimp and I had a Spicy Chicken stir fry. All in all it was pretty good.

Walking back we came across an Italian Pizza place what was packed so we will have to try that one next time. They had a ferrari theme going complete with a recentish Formula 1 car hanging from the ceiling.

Other than that we(mostly Mel) are trying to plan our July vacation. We are going to take two and a half weeks and fly to Brisbane and then drive up the coast to Cairns. I'll post a planned itenerary once we have it finalized. Should be a good trip ! Hopefully we can scout out some exceptional places to take the Grand Parents when they come for visits.

On a side note we thought hard about renting a Campervan (Motorhome in canada ) and living in that for the 2 weeks. However, the cost was not that much cheaper than hotels with a rental car and with it getter dark early we figured it might be tough to kill the time in the evenings. I'm still eager to give that a shot so maybe we can try it for a different trip.

That's all for now.

Jeff.

p.s. Mel has said that she will start posting her daily activities as soon as she finishes with planning out trip.

p.p.s I'll also get some more pictures up this weekend.

Blind luck...

So, when we started looking at moving here I had found a blog that deals with cycling in Melbourne. I was really impressed that the author even took the time to document his commute with almost 100 pictures and a map of the route. I remember being amazed at the bike paths. Some are suspended under elevated highways, some are floating on pontoons on rivers, and some just look to good to be true.

Here is the post documenting the route.

Anyway, now that I have a bike and have gotten somewhat settled I've started thinking about commuting and planning a route of my own. I went back to that site to see if we might at least be coming from the same direction and low and behold I am living right around the corner from him and we are both working in the city. I'm eager to try out the route and see if it is nice as it looks on that website.

Weekend activities

On Friday we rented another van, this one until July 10th . We got a good deal with Budget as they still have some vans that are a couple of years old...their price was a good $20 a day less then elsewhere. Weather here this weekend was cool and overcast. Highs of about 14 or 15 but it was off and on drizzly rain almost all weekend.

Anyway, so on Saturday we headed to Scienceworks in Williamstown. It's a lot like the science center in Toronto...lots of hands on stuff for kids. They had a toddler area that the kids really liked as well as a science of sports area that was a big hit. We took lots of pictures so stay tuned for those !

Sunday we headed to the Waves leisure center. Basically a huge wave pool / swimming complex. Again, they had a great toddler pool that the kids loved. They have sprinklers, bubble jets, a slide, and huge waves to keep everyone entertained. Also, they seemed to be able to make the air and water the same temperature so you don't freeze when you get out. Cooper, Wyatt, and Maddie all seem to love the water and will be swimming in no time ! Wyatt and Cooper are fearless. You need to watch them very closely cause they will be in over thier heads in seconds. Wyatt is starting to put his head under water on his own now. We're going to have to get him some goggles or something. Cooper is obsesed with jumping off the edge and into the water. Maddie seems to have enough common sence to keep her head above the water.

That pretty much sums it up. I'll try to put up some pictures soon.

Jeff.

First ride in Australia

Well, I managed to buy a used ride bike on Friday through a classied ad on BikeExchange.com.au . For those who care it is a Giant TCR C2 with full Shimano Ultegra components. The previous owner replaced the stem, bars, seat, and tires which is good cause I probably would have done the same.

So, on Saturday afternoon I took Wyatt and went across Dandenong Road where there are two bike stores. I bought a new helmet for $100AUD and a pair of new shoes for $150.00 AUD since I left mine back in Canada. I then went over the bike and made a few adjustments and planned out a route for a ride on Sunday.

On Sunday the kids went down for thier naps at around 1:15 pm and I dressed and departed on my first ride in Australia. It was about 12 degrees, overcast, and threatening to rain. My plan was to ride out to Mt. Dandenong and back. Mt.Dandenong is in the Dandennog Ranges National park and has an elevaation of about 2100 feet, or 500 meters. Rought twice the height of Gatineau park in Ottawa.

The roads are great here and drivers almost always give you a wide berth. Almost as soon as I had left our area the hillls started. Nothing major at first but big enough ! The route was up and down the whole way out. I have to say that riding my bike down roads lined with Palm trees and Eucalpytus trees was pretty cool. Having been here for over a month I didn't think it would be a big deal but it was. The off and on rain was not quite bad enough to erase the smile from my face. Plus at the crest of every hill I would get glimpses of the base of Mt.Dandenong. Unfortunately with the rainy weather I wasn't able to see the top of mountain at all.

It took me about an hour to get to the foot of the National park and being the first ride of the year for me I figured it best to turn around and head back.

On the way back the sun started to come out. To think that this was the middle of winter and the the sun was shinning on my face and heating me up was a nice thought. It took me about anouther hour to get back to our place.

I decided to take a quick swing by the park with the velodrome to have a look at it on my way back. It is outside and in the middle of huge park with a playground and footie field. The track looks to be concrete but it has a blueish green surface on top. It isn't an oval exactly, but rather a weird circle with a few small straight section. It is open to the public but doesn't have lights or anything. At the time I got there there was one guy doing some training on a road bike and about half a dozen kids riding on it.

I did a few laps to check it out and then headed home.

It's pretty amazing to be able to ride an hour in our direction to mountains and 10 minutes in another direction to a velodrome. I'm looking forward to a chance to do a lot more riding ! Considering my first ride fell on the dead of winter here I'm very impressed.

The new house...pictures at last

Ok, being the weekend I was able to take some pictures in the daylight to show everyone our new place. If you want to google our location it is 15 Wilmot Street, Malvern East, Victoria, 3145.

Front Yard:


























Main Floor:































































































Back Yard:























































Second floor:























































Julia is living in one and the other is our guest room. It has a sofa bed, wardrobe, dresser, and small TV and is ready and waiting for it's first tenant ! There are 2.5 bathrooms as well as a large laundry room and garage.

Solstice...

So, looks like it's your moment to shine Canada...enjoy it. June 21st marks the point in the year where you are closest to the Sun and have your longest day. Your high today is forecast to be 24 degrees and you should have about 16 hours of sunlight by my calculations. Not bad, not bad.

We on the other hand are suffering through the dead of winter. Brrrrr. We have a high today of only 14 degrees and only about 10 hours of daylight. The day here is pretty overcast with off and on light drizzle. Sweaters and pants here for sure ! Time to bundle up.

Enjoy it while you can Canada !

Daddy is going to do what ??

Well, it just so happens that there is a cycling velodrome a few kilometers from our new house. It is the Packer Park Velodrome and it has quite a history.

It was built in 1952 as a training facility for the 1956 Olympics and has been in constant use very since. I haven't seen it yet but Mel has been to the park with the kids.

This particular track is owned and operated by the local council. The council is the very lowest level of municipal government here. There doesn't seem to be much of a city of municipal presence. Things tend to be done at the council level, a council usually represents a few suburbs.

It is free to use and open to the public during daylight as long as it has not been booked by a club.

I have been looking at bikes online and in stores here and hope to get a road bike in the next week or so and hopefully hit the track shortly after that and give it a whirl. Ultimately I would love to get a track bike, join a club , and give track racing a try. I think it is one of the few form of bike racing that I have never tried.

The Great Ocean Road

Now that we are settled in our house, we took the chance to go on our first weekend long outing. I had been mentioning that I wanted to get out of the city so Mel organized a trip to Lorne which is a small town along the Great Ocean Road.

For those who didn't read the previous post, the Great Ocean Road is a costal highway in Southern Australia about an hour from Melbourne. It was built after WWI by returning soldiers as a monument to those who didn't return. It took almost 30 years to complete.

The drive out of Melbourne is quick and as you cross the large bridge that spans the commercial shipping channel you get a great view of the city skyline.

Once out of the city the highway is pretty much what you would expect. Several lanes in each direction for about an hour at which point you reach Geelong. It's pretty industrial and a lot of people who work in Melbourne are moving out there and communting on trains to get affordable housing.

Once you leave Geelong you leave the main highway on a two lane road. It remains pretty straight but the scenery changes to forests and hills as you head towards the coastal town of Tourquay.
tourquay is one of the surfing capitals of the world. There are some top notch competitions at Bell's beach including some Big Wave stuff. I hope to return here to watch that when it happens next. All the big surf gear companies have massive stores here.

From Tourquay you get on to the B100 which is the Great Ocean Road.


The curves, twists, ups, downs, and scenic views start almost immediately. From Tourquay to Lorne we were pretty much speechless and the kids were all asleep...except Maddy who seemed to be crying about something....

It took us about 45 minutes to get from Tourquay to Lorne and we decided to stop there for lunch and to check in to our hotel as Maddy would not stop crying....just as we parked she let us know why she was crying as she processed to puke several times all over everything within a 2 foot radius. Mel and I spent the next half hour washing clothes in a near by creek and cleaning puke out of the car seat while Julia and Zak took the kids to a nearby park.

We checking in, got some nice rooms and then headed to a cafe across the street for some lunch. Lorne is really a one street village with the beach and some parks on one side of the main street and shops and cafes on the other side of the street. We had lunch at Cafe Kaos and then went to the "trampoline park". Pictures will explain it better than I can.








After lunch and play time, we packed up the kids and hit the road again to see how much more of the Great Ocean Road we could see in the remaining daylight without making the kids sick. We got almost to Apollo Bay before turning around. We decided to go back to where we had seen some Koala's in the trees and spend a bit of time there instead of trying to rush more of the road in the dusk.





That evening Mel and I went out to dinner at BaBaLo a local restaurant and made friends with the Owner. He gave us his card and told us that he has lots of friends in the area who rent out their places to families for weekends. We will look into that as it would be a great place to go for weekends.


On Sunday we had breakfast in Lorne then headed back to Tourqay. We checked out some surf shops and then spent a few hours in the massive park they have over looking the beach. After a quick lunch we drove back to town to end our first weekend trip. All in all it was great fun and the reason we have come all this way. We're looking forward to our next adventure. If you want to see more of the pics check them out at our flickr site.

p.s. Our internet connection at our new house is up and running so I've uploaded a lot of new pictures to flickr. Sorry for the mass upload but the pics were really staring to pile up on me.

Speaking Australian 101

Some common Australian terms and thier North American translations:

stroller = pram
to phone = to ring
rent = hire
diaper = nappy
elevator = lift
french fries = chips
take out = take away
power bar = power board
liquor store/beer store = bottle shop
consignment store = Op
Shop garbage = rubish
cookie = biscuit

Plans for the next few months...

For Father's day Mel had planned a trip for everyone down along the Great Ocean Road. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Ocean_Road . We will rent a van pile everyone in Saturday morning and drive to the western edge of the road. We'll then come east along the road in the afternoon and wind up in Lorne where we will stay overnight. We'll then decide whether we need to back track and see more of it on Sunday or explore some the little towns along the highway on Sunday instead.

Should be a good weekend and provide lots of great pictures for the blog.

The project I am working on will be taking a bit of a break in July. I will be on vacation from July 10th till August 5th. We are looking at heading up to the Great Barrier Reef area for at least a week. We just need to find someone that is not ridiculously expensive. I'm looking forward to seeing that part of Australia a lot.

Getting tired of waiting for Telstra to deliver my modem. I should have just bought it from an electronics store instead ! It would have been much faster and probably cheaper. Seems phone/cable/internet companies are the same world wide.

Queen's Birthday Weekend

Well the weekend is over and we are almost settled in.

We got into the house on Friday afternoon. The house was much better than we had remembered it being. For some reason the bathrooms stuck in our heads as being terrible but when we saw them again we both realized that they were not that bad at all.

The furniture rental people showed up Friday afternoon and in the matter of an hour moved all our rental furniture into the place...they had a team of men to move all the stuff in and then a team of women came after them and unpacked everything. We went out to run some errands and when we came back it was all done for us.

Julia and Zak brought the kids over on the train while Mel and I used our rental truck to go pick up some used cribs that we bought, as well as go to Ikea ( yes, they have an Ikea here ) and buy some additional furniture. We had to spend about $750.00 on stuff at Ikea and another $200 at Kmart to round out our place but thats not bad at all. So that took up all of our day on Friday.

Saturday we just let the kids play in the back yard and at some local parks, then we went to dinner at the house of a Canadian couple that Mel met at one of the parks in Hampton where we were living. They are doctors from Winnipeg with 2 small children ( one older than Wyatt, one younger than the twins ). They are here on a fellowship and have been here for 10 months and are leaving in 2 months. It was interesting to get another Canadians take on the Australian cutlure. Oddly enough, turned out that Mel when to University with the husband from the couple ! She had only met the wife in the park and had no idea she would know her husband. A true "small world" moment.

Sunday we decided to leave the unpacking and took a trip to the Werribee Open range zoo. The idea is you show up and then take a 45 minute guided tour around the Zoo in a safari bus. The weather was great and the kids were ok on the drive to the Zoo, but got a bit restless on the bus ride itself. Seemed geared towards older kids to be honest...also, we got a late start to ended up on the bus around nap time so that didn't help. After the bus ride we packed them in the car and drove out to Geelong while we let Julia and Zak to explore the rest of the zoo on foot. The drive was nice ( highways here are in great shape ) and we took a quick detour to the waterfront in Geelong then turned around to head back and pick up Julia and Zak and head home.

Monday was a public holiday here and we were scheduled to attend a birthday BBQ for Wyatt's australian friend Declan. We thought it was going to be our first Australian BBQ but it turned out to be more of a Scottish BBQ. It seems that this particlur social group was one of Australian women married to Scottish men. Very surreal sitting in Australia with a bunch of Scottish men discussing Soccer and Scottish politics.

We now have cable and phone at our house, but no internet until a modem arrives by mail. Once we get that set up I will add some more pictures. They are building up ! If anyone wants our new phone number just email me at jeff.faulds@gmail.com .

Jeff.

Big weekend ahead...

June 9th is a holiday in Australia...Queen's Birthday. And we have planned a busy schedule for ourselves.

We need to be at our new house today at noon to get the keys, fill out some forms, and then supervise the arrival and setup of our rental furniture. Also, we will be getting cable hooked up today. We have rented an SUV to help with moving our belongings from the temporary house to this house. Should be about a 15 minute drive. Mel has also found 2 used cribs for $200 so she has to go and pick those up as well and we need to find a good bed for Wyatt.

If things go well we should be able to sleep at the new house tonight. We will have both places over the weekend so we can take our time.

Saturday we have been invited to dinner at the house of another Canadian family who have been living here for 10 months. Mel met them at a park when she noticed they had a chariot stroller. It seems to be the easier way to pick out the Canadians !

Monday we are invited to a birthday party at Wyatt's friend Declan's house. The party is actually for Declan's younger brother Sean.

In between moving and socializing we will try and maximize our time with a car and get out to see some things outside the city. Hopefully we can go to the Weribee open range zoo on one day and perhaps go to the Dandenong National Forest on another day. I think we need to get out of the city to reming ourselves that we really are in Australia.

We will have a new phone number that I can email to any interested parties shortly. Unfortunately we will be without a phone or internet until Monday morning at the earliest. Internet might be a bit longer as we will need to wait for the modem to arrive so this may be my last post for a few days. (Utilities here are comparable in price to Canada)

Thats it for now. Hopefully my next few posts will be full of pictures and I can talk about a good weekend where we didn't have to traverse the city looking for a house.

Jeff.

p.s. We joined the masses here and got some prepaid mobile phones.

And the winner is...

Well, it looks like we went against all the voters on this one.
After a weekend of thinking things over and checking out the Camberwell area we decided to go with the Malvern East house.

The biggest factor was the backyard and patio. Also it was the only one that gave us 5 true bedrooms so that we will have a room for visitors. It was also the closest to the city. Another point was the fact that it is close enough to where we live now that Mel can stay in touch with the friends that she has made here.

Bentleigh was not a good option with no yard, and Camberwell was just to isolated.

We get the house on Friday at noon. Our rental furniture will be delivered Friday afternoon. Cable will also be hooked up Friday. We'll have to wait till Monday for our phone and internet though.

We're going to rent a van for the weekend to help with moving our stuff across. We'll probably also need to hit the Ikea or other furniture store for a few odds and ends. Hopefully by Monday we are settled in and ready to move on to seeing more sights instead of house/area shopping.