Happy Belated Birthday Andrew

Inspired after watching another episode of Grand Designs we logged onto the website hungry for the inside track and saw that there is a Grand Designs magazine that you can subscribe to. Figuring as Montague Crescent will be getting too small for the growing Williams clan and Andrew is probably dreaming of building is own tree house in the sky we'd give him a head start and so now he can expect his fill of Grand Designs for the next year with his subscription being delivered from July.
There is one catch with this present - you need to keep all the back issues for Bek to catch up on when we visit!

Bek is starting to feel better, to celebrate we're going to have a little midnight feast that any 10 year old would be jealous of given that Bek spent $20 and I spent $35! The weigh in isn't going to be kind tomorrow!

Get Better Soon

This has been my worst winter for sickness - we started with Chalky having Bronchitis and then I got it and haven't quite been able to get rid of it, I've now picked up a sinus infection as well so...I've got a week signed off work to get better, lots of soup, garlic and some help from anti-biotics and I hope I'll be back in circulation next week.

To cheer me up my lovely boyfriend bought these home with him today....

Ship to Shore

We headed up to Lake Macquarie for the weekend to visit Ben & Kylie and to see the top tourist attraction in Newcastle - the ship that went off course and ended up on Nobby's Beach.


A quiet Saturday night in with Kylie, (Ben was working - due back at 10pm) we enjoyed a risotto Kylie cooked and had a glass of wine to be polite. The idea was that by going to the Lake we wouldn't be tempted to go out partying and drinking and we'd come back feeling really relaxed and healthy. Unfortunately a few Pure Blondes put an end to Chalky's best laid plans...Ben came home and wasn't at all tired and was keen to chat and enjoy a few beers with Chalky...we ended up going to bed at 2.30am! Not much different to staying in Sydney!


Ben & Kylie are now home-owners of the lake and they have put their stamp on the house giving it a lick of paint. It was lovely to have the fire roaring in the lounge room.


Sunday we headed to Nobby's Beach to check out the boat that ran aground after the recent storms, rain and flooding in Newcastle, so did lots of other people...the traffic was a nightmare and we had planned to see Kylies football match at 3pm but we didn't make it back in time. Even though we have seen the ship on the news you really don't appreciate it until you're there. I hope the photos give you perspective.

Grounded on Nobby's Beach

Where the ships should be...

And when I asked for the rain to go away in the last post I didn't wish for it to head to Yorkshire we've been following all the flooding in Leeds, Sheffield etc - hope you're all okay. When we were driving through Newcastle you could see where the water had been in their recent floods, we got a picture of this tree that had been uprooted - Mother Nature is a powerful woman!

Rain Rain Go Away

So another weekend of rain! No football game, no running, just lots of wet weather. And lots more forecast. The good news is that the dams might be up to 50% capacity after all this!

It even looks like it could rain on my birthday! (first reminder...)

So we had a non picture weekend but managed to keep busy. I had some Friday night drinks with Marilyn in North Sydney and Chalk was out with the football boys on Saturday doing a pub crawl from the city to Kings Cross. Sunday we just chilled and watched the TV1 Groovy Movie - Sliding Doors, drank hot chocolate and ate some cake!

Nellie has also been feeling the cold, when I got home yesterday she'd taken measures to warm herself up! Isn't she just the cutest koala!

Cooking - it's all Greek to me!

Sarah & Jayne put their newly acquired Greek cooking talents to the test by cooking us all a dinner on Monday night.

Some of the food we enjoyed

The food was delicious, James had even gone to the trouble of lighting a real fire for us all so the lounge was really cosy (if not a little smokey!) and when some Greek music came on we posed for a photo (cheesy!)

L to R: Chalky, Jayne, Bek, Sarah, James & Karl

The real fun started after dinner when we played Cranium. Chalky & I were Cranium virgins but quickly picked up the technique. We were the first to land on a green square and had to do a performance. It should have been fairly straight forward except all the people on the cards are Australian so not knowing who they were, why they were famous, what they sounded like, what they did or looked like made for lots of laughs!

It took us quite a while to move off that green square, meanwhile Sarah & James' competitiveness shone through, the photo below was after James gave up trying to describe see-saw to Sarah (who was trying to think of pogo stick) or was it when he was blind drawing a can of worms???

Karls top performance was captured on video (I'll try to post it later) when he had to get Jayne to say Cold Chisel (an Aussie band).

Since it was a school night and we weren't making the fastest progress around the board we declared one card the winner and the team who guessed it won. Well we pulled it off, you may look at this clue and wonder how I knew Chalk was blind drawing cupid but I did! So Jayne & Karl were ahead on the board and claimed moral victory Chalk & I enjoyed our win and James was just relieved that the games were over.

Sarah finished the night spoiling us all with brownies, ice-cream, strawberries and chocolate sauce. Divine!

Long Weekend - Queen's Birthday

We're celebrating the Queen's Birthday this weekend and I guess to set the mood we got some English weather. It rained non-stop on Thursday and Friday and there was flash flooding in some areas of Sydney but worst hit was Newcastle where roads collapsed, a container boat ran aground on a beach and unfortunately some people died. So to save on road traffic we decided to not venture very far at all...we had planned to spend Sunday night at the Lake with Ben & Kylie enjoying a Sunday Dinner and a few games but we've postponed that activity.

Chalky was pleased with the rain only because it meant that he didn't miss the 2 football games to injury - instead they were washed out and everyone missed out on playing!

I bought some cakes to celebrate Kylie's birthday but since we didn't make it to their house we've been enjoying them while we watch films, read books and playing darts!

We watched the groovy movie on Foxtel - As Good as it Gets and also All the President's Men - an old one but a great movie about Watergate. I started as a force to be reckoned with in the darts but my form didn't continue and Chalky won - my victory for the weekend was on a bet about who was the close talker in a Seinfeld episode.

Enjoying Sunday dinner - Roast Beef complete with Yorkshires!

Tonight we're off to see Karl, Jayne, Sarah & James for a Greek night so that's going to be a great finish to our weekend and also it's finally stopped raining!

Manly Food & Wine Festival and other Weekend activities

The lack of Saturday afternoon (Sat AM UK TIME) phone time to Joan can only mean one thing - not much football action to report about. Chalk played only 10mins in the second half and pulled his hamstring the team went on to lose 5-1, coincidence?

We celebrated Duncan's Birthday with a meal at Libertines in Kings Cross and then to Iguana Bar for some drinks and dancing. I left at this stage as I have developed Chalky's chesty cough that he's finally kicked. I greeted him home at 5am where I had to pay the balance of his taxi fare as he had no money left and then had to let him in the front door as the lock and key had become a mystery to him.

This weekend was the food and wine festival at Manly so we arranged to go with Sarah, Karl & Jayne (James was doing an exam). We surveyed the food stalls and all got something to eat and something to drink and then staked a claim on a beach spot and enjoyed the winter afternoon. Chalky came to life after his burger and 2 cans of coke, meanwhile we all kept tasting wine and our favourite was a merlot from Mudgee. The tasting was $5 per glass and your glass was fixed around your neck with the glass in a neoprene brace - very cool but also very dangerous because if you walked too quickly you were very quickly wearing that glass of wine.

Anyway - all that explaining would have been much easier had I remembered to take the camera so instead you will have to suffice with this generic photo of the scene from the website.

Hope you have all enjoyed your weekends, we've got a long weekend next weekend and Chalky's got 2 football games.