The Big Update

We have been on the Sunshine Coast for just over two months now and are settling in nicely.





The first two weeks we spent in one of Mum and Dad's apartments while we set up our own base. That time was spent doing all those time consuming things that one needs to do to set up residence, banks, houses, jobs, medicare cards, cars and so forth. We did do some R and R in that time but a lot of the time was taken up with the necessities.





We were very lucky and were accepted for the first rental we applied for. Apparantly it's quite difficult to find rentals here so we applied for the first one we saw and everything was go from there. We're in a lovely area called Kawana Island which has some fabulous walk and cycle ways along the canals and mud flats dotted with lots of little parks / playgrounds on the way. There is also a wonderful cafe and restaurant situated next to a manmade beach 10 minutes walk from our house we frequentlly visited the cafe prior to getting our coffee machine! Our house is perfect for now but once the warmer weather arrives it will be just too hot (there are no security fly screens, air-con or fans). Our lease expires in October so we will look to have purchased by then rather than renew it.





Gary has a job! Worked out to be right place at the right time ......... He had to do his four week internship to get his required Queensland Registration and through this got offered a permanent position. He seems to be really happy there. It's quite a different pharmacy to what he's been used to in regards to size and amount of staff (he's still learning names after 6 weeks!) but also down to the differences between NZ and Australia. It took him about three weeks before he even had to count tablets as they come pre-packaged as monthly supplies. Anyway that's Gary's department so you never know he might actually add a blurb to our blog one day.





Caitlin has started pre-school - yippee! After 4 weeks of no preschool and none of her own stuff around her we were all ready for her to have some structure in her week again. We bumped into some people on our walk one morning and had long discussions about preschools, schools ........ they had their preschoolers in Buderim Meadows which sounded similar in their approach to Caitlin's previous kindy. They were all really happy with it (after experiencing one they weren't so pleased with) so we headed along to check it out, we would have enrolled her there and then but the owner suggested we go away talk about it and ring her back, we did and Caitlin started the following Monday. She was like a duck to water. The good thing about changing preschools was that it got Caitlin out of the habit of being clingy when we dropped her off, probably the four week break helped too. I went to pick Caitlin up yesterday, it took me a while to see her and when I did she was with three other girls under the playground, I watched with interest along with a teacher to see what they were doing. When they spotted me (so much fun to watch them when they don't know you're there) I went over to investigate, they had made a nest with some small twigs and the bark in there was the eggs. Caitlin was being the "mother chicken" and keeping the eggs warm ....... she would then get off they would all put more bark "eggs" on the nest and someone would jump back on and be "mother chicken" again. Got to love the four year old imagination. Apparantly that is a frequent game played in preschool but usually only by the girls! Caitlin has also been on an excursion to Australia Zoo. It was their completion on studying native Australian animals. Very exciting for her, so tired by the end of the day. Bit nerve wracking for me as she'd only been going about a week and this was her first big excursion but hey she was fine. Caitlin has also started swimming lessons, most of the kids in her class are three and I think that is because they get to practice so much more outside lessons as the weather is more conjucive to everyday swimming (well in summer at least) that they advance through the stages / levels quicker. They don't use any arm bands, backpacks ....... at her level, which initially freaked her out but after the use of the wonderful parenting tool otherwise known as bribery she is now fine at jumping in and swimming independently to the teacher. She is mastering freestyle quite nicely now. Other than that Caitlin is Caitlin hasn't changed too much since we've left NZ.





Our big two year old on the other hand has and is changing quite a lot. Ahhhh the two year old development. Apart from his stubborness whch leads to his tantrums he is just great. Can have little conversations and do roleplaying with him now. Has obsessions with diggers (quite good there is so much road works going on) and all that boy stuff, but is also quite happy to sit down and play babies 'bebe" (sounds very French) with Caitlin. Ryan and Caitlin have just got to a really good stage of playing really nicely together, they will head off to her room and be absorbed playing with picnic toys and babies for a good 15 minutes without any parental intervention required. I have just enrolled Ryan at swimming and he will start next week. He had lessons about a year ago but although he was very confident he didn't like being told what to do and would through big strops - no fun for anyone. Here's hoping he's outgrown that.





As for me, I'm not working at this stage. Gary will be working every second weekend and we don't like the idea of having no weekends off together as a family so we'll wait and see if we need me to work or not. The group of people that we met in the park (the one's we were talking to about preschools ...) meet up every week and have formed their own little coffee group so I have joined in too. They all seem really nice and it's great to be getting out there meeting some people in a similar life stage to me.



So settliog plans from here are to start house hunting and search for a school for Catilin.. We also have a few visitors in the pipeline which will be wonderful.