One year in Australia!!

Tomorrow officially marks our one year anniversary in Australia. I honestly cannot beleive that we have been here for a year already, although in many ways it feels like we have been here a lot longer then that. It has been an incredible year. We have seen and done amazing things, met some wonderful new friends and learned quite a bit about the vast cultural differences between English speaking counties; Australia, Canada, England and the USA. I actually think I know more now about what it means to be "Canadian" then I did before I got here, if that makes any sense at all.
In honour of our anniversary here is my top 10 of the past year...these are really in no particular order.

1 - Sandboarding
2- Watching beautiful sunsets over the Indian Ocean
3- Going to see Michael Buble at one of the local wineries
4 - Finding many of the "kid friendly" wineries in Margaret River (seriously they actually have a list of all the kid friendly places with playgrounds or toys to keep the kids amused)
5 - Floating on a giant "thong" (flip flop) in the ocean at Cottesloe beach with 3,000 other people in an attempt to beat out the gang at Bondi in Sydney (they won...but it was still pretty cool)
6 -Exploring Sydney with my parents (even though it rained the ENTIRE time, we still had a great time)
7 - Watching Bryan remember how to surf - this is going to have to be on my to do list next year
8 - Listening to Brayden begin to speak with an Australian accent with his mates at school
9 - Participating in the 8km Trek the Trail bike ride with the kids through the John Forrest National Park and then eating lunch with the Kangaroos
10 - Concerts in the park, picnics at the beach, Worlds Greatest Foodcourt Fridays with the Charrois family, bouncy castles every weekend = lots of fun family activities

All in all we have had a great first year. I am looking forward to see what the coming year will hold now that we are settled into this new life. However, rest assured we have not forgotten our Canadian roots, and as a wonderful poetic reminder of that fact we are actually going to be spending tomorrow evening (our one year anniversary in Australia) at the hockey arena as both Brayden and Bryan have games! Once again proving you can take the Maybee's out of Canada but you will never take Canada out of the Maybees!!

Our First Australian Christmas

We made it through our first Australian Christmas and I have to say that I am pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I was having a hard time getting into the spirit initially but the weekend ended up being really nice. The festivities started with the live nativity in downtown Perth which was really awesome complete with real camels carrying the wise men. Brayden particularly enjoyed it and it was amazing for me to watch him see the Christmas story come to life before his eyes and be able to really understand the true meaning of Christmas.

Christmas Eve morning started off with a skype visit with Greg, Amanda and the kids and we had an early presents opening time with them. Although we couldn't be together it was still really nice to watch them open our gifts to them and vice versa. Gotta love skype. Then we hit beach for a couple of hours followed by a Christmas Eve party at our place with many of our new friends down here. Christmas Eve was spent assembling a 8ft trampoline for Santa which I am happy to say only took a couple of hours. (we had heard horror stories about how long it takes)

Christmas Day was just lovely although very HOT. It was our first Christmas morning with just the 4 of us and it was actually really nice. I have never had a Christmas morning without either grandparents, brother, sister...etc...and I expected it to be lonely and really be missing home, but I have to say spending the morning with just my 3 boys was nice. Of course now that the kids are both old enough to get it there was excitement and tearing of paper... was great family time. Then we got to skype with Mom, Dad, Lys, Grandma C, Matt, Jen and Ewan! The boys had fun showing all of their new presents to the Mittlers and it was great that they were still able to be a part of our morning. We then went over to a friends house for Christmas dinner (lunch) and thankfully they have a pool because it was close to 40c. We ate in the air conditioned house and spent the afternoon having cold drinks in the pool.

Boxing Day we hit the golf course as Brayden was eager to try out his new clubs we got him for Christmas. We brought some plastic clubs and a ball for Dylan and all four of us went out there for a round. It was another hot day but as luck would have it there is a local pool right next to the golf course and so we spent the afternoon playing in the water to cool down. That night we figured we needed to complete the holidays with seafood on the BBQ for dinner and it was delicious. So all in all I think we have this Australian Christmas thing figured out. We do however still want the kids to remember snow and winter so the evening was spent watching the Mighty Ducks movie. Yes I realize this is an American movie set in Minnesota, but they are playing hockey, there is snow and the main character kid is Joshua Jackson who is Canadian so hey..it works.

I hope everyone had as great of a Christmas as we did. I will post pics as soon as they are downloaded from the camera.

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas...NOT

I have been trying very hard to get into the Christmas spirit this year. House is decorated, tree is up, took the kids to see Santa and we have been listening to lots Christmas music in the car and watching classics like Frosty and Rudolph...but I still am not feeling it. The weather is hot, the malls are air conditioned, kids are out of school on summer holidays and because it stays light later into the evening you don't get to see many Christmas lights on houses...not that there are many to see anyway. I really do not miss the snow and cold but it is the one time of year when I find it tolerable. There is just something about seeing Christmas lights reflecting off the snow...building snowmen with the kids on the front lawn...going for a hay ride and then having hot chocolate and warming up in front of the fireplace. We have many Christmas activities this week so hopefully those will help...Gingerbread house making with the Canadian Club, live Nativity downtown with real animals, neighbourhood Christmas BBQ and then we are hosting a Christmas Eve party. We are also planning a nice Christmas dinner with our friends and then a swim in their pool followed by hitting the beach to watch the sunset. We might as well embrace the change right? Lets just say the song "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas" has a whole new meaning to me this year.

Time for a catch up

Ok, I admit it - I am very slack at this blogging thing. I had big plans to update it at least every month and bring you all the latest and greatest of the Maybee family adventures here in Australia. But as you are well aware....this has not happened. Lets try to bring you up to speed as to what we have been up to lately.

We have been to Sydney on vacation with my parents. Lots of run, but TONS of rain. Seriously it rained the entire time we were there except one bright and sunny day, which happened to be on

my birthday.

My parents are presently here and we have had a blast showing them around our new city, swimming in the ocean, having lunch with some Kangaroos (prior to this my Dad didn't beleive there were Kanga's in Australia because after a month here, he still had not seen any so I rectified the situation by taking him to John Forrest Tavern which always has wild Kangaroos lounging around. )

Brayden is playing tee-ball, hockey and taking surf life lessons at the beach. He is turning into quite the athlete and even won the magic moment trophy at tee-ball this week for his impressive fielding skills at first base that got 2 outs!! He has inherited the Maybee love for hockey and literally counts down the sleeps until he gets to play again. His skating has improved so much that it is hard to beleive that 4 short weeks ago this was the same kid who refused to go on the ice because everyone else could skate better.

Dylan is taking swimming lessons and loving it. He and I are enjoying our weekly routines of playgroups, swimming lessons, trips to the park, music class and grocery shopping. We checked out a couple of pre-schools this week which he may be going to one or two days next year while I work.

For those of you who have not heard, I am now also a Lecturer with Curtin University. Starting in the new year I will be teaching the online HR course in the MBA program. Online is perfect for me as it is a nice way to start teaching, and it will allow me to still be home with Dylan the majority of the time. Its an interesting career move for me so we'll see what becomes of it.

Bryan is getting ready for his PhD defence back in Canada this week. He has been working very hard the past couple of months both with his courses and his thesis so he is looking forward to a nice break over the Christmas holidays. We are likely going to do some traveling around the west coast.

I think that is the update in a nutshell...hopefully 3 more months won't pass before I write again.

Pictures of our new house

Playroom - you can see the guest bedroom at the top right
Kitchen
Boys room
Dining Room
Living Room

Front

New Home

OUR STUFF IS HERE!!! After almost four months of living out of two suitcases each we finally have our furniture back. It was like Christmas morning here as we excitedly opened up box after box to see what it contained. We were pleasantly surprised to see many of the boys toys here given we thought most of them had been left behind in Toronto and were coming on the second shipment in a month or so. There are still a few things missing a left to come of course. They made sure to get our bikes on the first shipment because they figured in Australia we would want to use them frequently - and they were right. However, they did not ensure our bike helmets got on and as such the only one who has a helmet is Brayden and that is because we bought one for him when we arrived...sigh. So it looks like the rest of us will have to wait a few more weeks to go for a ride.

The house is coming together nicely and all of our things fit which was a bit of a concern. The kitchen actually doesn't look too bad now that all of our things are in and the bathroom has been decorated with all of our lighthouse stuff so it has improved greatly. (for those of you who know Bryan and I well you know we both have a thing for lighthouses - likely because we met in Halifax and made many trips out to Peggy's Cove).

Once we are all set up I will take pictures and post a virtual tour of our new home.

Happy Canada Day!!

Canada Day

This is my first ever Canada Day outside of Canada. In honour of the day I figured I would do up a little list of some of things I miss about Canada. (For those of you who follow both of our blogs I 100% acknowledge that I am totally stealing this idea from Katrina as she did something similar to this when she first moved to Taiwan!!)

Obviously what I miss most about Canada are my wonderful family and friends - this goes without saying and so I did not put it on my list because it clearly over-rides everything else. Ok, here we go - and these are in no particular order.

The cottage

Because it is Canada Day which I would typically spend up at the cottage (both Jack Lake and Wollaston) I am very much missing not being there this year. I miss watching the early morning mist rise of the lake.; The call of the Loon; waterskiing and boat rides; campfires and spider dogs; and spending time with family and friends.

Autumn

We got here right at the end of "fall" beginning of winter and although there were some trees with coloured leaves it is not the same as the brilliant oranges, reds and yellows that we get with a Canadian fall. Autumn used to be one of my favourite seasons for this reason and I do miss that I am not going to get to see that for a few years.

Coffee - specifically being able to go through a Tim Horton's drive-thru, ordering my standard medium regular and needing no more than a loonie and perhaps a quarter or two. Let me break this one down for you as there are several parts to it.

First - the drive thru part. There are a handful of drive-thru coffee places here but they are few and far between. It just isn't the same type of coffee culture here that you have in Canada where you basically can't go more than 10 minutes without finding a Tim Horton's. Not to mention you have to wait a long time to get your coffee if you do find a drive thru because it takes so long to make - none of this waiting freshly brewed pot stuff (see number two)

Second - Medium regular - coffee with one cream and one sugar. They do not have regular drip coffee down here - all coffee is made with those fancy coffee machines they have at starbucks with the steamers etc. Your basic coffee options are a long black or a flat white (coffee with steamed milk). We do have a drip coffee machine at home but both of us enjoy our coffee with cream and you cannot buy coffee cream down here. It has been suggested that I try buying whipping cream, and skim milk and mix then together to make my own half and half but that seems like a lot of effort for a cup of coffee. And so I have gotten used to drinking flat whites when out, and coffee with milk at home but it just isn't the same as my Timmys!!!

Third - a normal size coffee down here will run you somewhere between $3.50 and $4.50. Often this depends on whether you want it to stay or take away. I don't know about you, but if I am spending $4.00 on a coffee it better be a Grande Vanilla Latte not a regular coffee with steamed milk.

Familiarity of restaurant chains

I am going to qualify this one because you all know that I love trying out new foods and new restaurants and I enjoy encouraging my children to do the same. However, it is tough when you are in a new city, and do not know where the family friendly restaurants are. It takes a while to search them out and while we have found a few that are amazing (sandboxes, play structures or toy boxes in the restaurant) we have also had nights where we had to drive to several places to find one that fit our needs. On these nights it would have been very comforting to see the familiar sign for Swiss Chalet, Boston Pizza, Red Lobster etc, where you know the environment and food is going to be the same no matter what franchise you are in. That being said, the exploring aspect is also fun and on nights where the kids are game to try something new, we have enjoyed some great different foods and found some wonderful new places.

Costco - We do have Kmart, the Big W (basically a regular walmart) and Target. But I do miss being able to go to one store and get groceries and household items, and clothing, and my contacts etc. There isn't really any bulk shopping down here that I have found. I quite enjoyed my former stash of non-perishables and my meat in the deep freeze. It kept me from having to go grocery shopping every week which when you have small children can be an entire event.

Triscuits, Goldfish, Red Rose Tea and Activia Yogurt - There are alternatives to most things, but none that I have found to the list above. Of course there are other brands of yogurt and tea but sometimes you just want to be a creature of habit and enjoy your favourite brand.

So those are just a few little things that I miss about Canada. There are many differences down here but also many similarities and on the whole, if I had to be living anywhere other then Canada I am glad that I am here. The people are friendly, the weather is amazing and the lifestyle is relaxed and family focused.

So on that note Happy Canada Day everyone!! Brayden was very excited to bring his Canadian flag to school today for "news" and tell his mates all about Canada. We are spending the evening with another Canadian family who has just arrived in Perth so it will be a nice evening.