Category: Diary

This time last week we were all sitting in the car, driving back home from a weekend in the country, a weekend that saw my mum get married. It’s been a busy week so it’s only now that I get to sit and say congratulations mum and Peter.

We went up on Friday night and stayed at my sister’s. Poor Helen, having six Malloys land on her door step, but she coped admirably. She even coped with us having a minor kerfuffle when our phones rang on Friday night, notifying us the alarm was ringing back home. Thankfully Zita was able to check and everything was all right.

Saturday was hot and humid in Shepparton but the weather held (just) for the ceremony. I never thought we’d see a shorter wedding ceremony than ours but I think mum and Peter may have made it. After the ceremony it was off across the river to Mooroopna for a beautiful lunch and catch up with family members that extended in to the evening as Helly hosted a barbecue.

Sunday came and we finally gave Helen back her house. We stopped in to see the newly wed’s new home and had the honour of being their first guests. We also ate them out of their only supplies so we’ll have to stock the pantry for them when we next go up.

So now mum is Mrs Malloy Vibert and she and Peter are happily setting up their new house. I bet they have their boxes unpacked before ours are completed. With mum changing her name that leaves Rae with the honour of being the only Mrs Malloy left in this branch of the family tree, the long history of Mrs Malloy’s now rests on the shoulders of Albert and Henry.

I didn’t take that many photos of the day, and missed a golden opportunity to get the four kids together, in one place and looking respectable but it was much more about family than photos. Still, here are a few for the curious, or you can see Mum and Peter’s wedding set on Flickr.

Congratulations again mum and Peter,, we hope you have a long and happy time together

We’ve done it, we’ve reached the end of building our house. We now have a completed deck, which like all good projects was right on budget but we couldn’t be happier. It’s turned out even better than we hoped for and once we get the garden done around it our backyard will be perfect, well, for us anyway.

It’s approximately 34 square meters of outdoor space for the kids to play on, for outside dinners, a work room on a mild day and perhaps most importantly for the annual Grand Final bbq. Andrew, the builder, assures us we can have 50 people on it and we won’t feel it move. Given the care he took in building it I wouldn’t be surprised if it coped with 100.

We were going to oil it today but the conditions weren’t right, it was blowing a gale this morning with dust flying everywhere and it’s still 33 degrees out at 7:00pm, not the best temperature to be trying to get oil on. That will come tomorrow now, second coat maybe Monday and then we can have our first dinner on the deck. I can see many, many more in the years ahead.

This time next week I’ll be jumping out of my seat with excitement – it will be the first round of the 2009 AFL season, and you know what means…

Footy Tipping!!

It’s time Miss Trish was dethroned, two years in a row is enough and now it’s time for someone else to take home the Tony Malloy Memorial Footy Tipping Trophy, right Trish? Come that one day in September will it be you standing on our (hopefully completed) deck, holding the trophy aloft and wondering where the hell you can stuff it until Grand Final day 2010?

So, come, join. Simply head to http://www.footytips.com.au/jc.cfm?c=5492 to join Tony’s Tipping. Don’t know anything about footy? Live in a foreign country? You’ll probably do better than most of us ‘experts’.

Join up, fame, glory and the world’s ugliest trophy await.

 

It’s been just over three months since we moved so the first round of quarterly bills has arrived. We’re pleasantly surprised that even with a much larger house the bills are comparable to what we have paid in the past, phew. It’s even better when you factor in the price rises for gas and electricity.

The one bill that surprised us was the water bill. We had the evaporative air conditioner going pretty much flat chat for a few weeks at the height of summer so were a little scared at what it would be, and how much we would have used. Well, we had nothing to worry about. Our average daily water use is 505 litres – not bad for a family our size and well below the 155 litres per person per day government target, even if you only take in to account the four elder people. Now the hottest weather has passed that should hopefully drop further.

Andrew, the world’s greatest deck builder, has made great progress. We came home yesterday to see everything looks in place for the actual decking bit of the deck to start being laid today. Woo Hoo!

Today was the worse day I have had in years, the absolute pits. Everything that could go wrong did. I made mistakes, I let someone down, I broke a very expensive thing. I’m glad it’s almost over, bed and a new dawn can’t come quickly enough.

It’s a bit exciting, Andrew comes on Tuesday morning to start building our deck. As I’ve mentioned before part of making it affordable was we had to dig out the dirt underneath to the depth of 30cm to allow for air circulation so the wood won’t rot.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time.

We got stuck in to it, Rob helping last weekend to get us well and truly started, and now we think we’ve finished. It’s hard to tell from the photo but we’ve dug out an awful lot of dirt – it was level with the top of slab you can see under the brick work. We’ll have to wait and see if it’s okay when Andrew turns up, and if it’s not, well, he may be earning more money than he thought!

The Tigers were playing a practice match against the Saints (my mum’s team) in Shepparton, my home town, on Friday night so it was an opportunity too good to resist for my Tiger boy and I. We packed the car, left the young ones in the good care of Nana Zita and headed up the highway. It was great to have time just with Bert, although I could have done without the two hour of Wiggles tunes to keep him occupied.

The game, as much as it could be with 12 of our top players, was okay but being there with mum and two of my brothers in law was great. Dale brought along his two Tiger boys too so the three young boys had a blast eating lollies, waving inflatable hands and yelling our “Go Tigers” every time the Saints scored. Bert’s highlight was sleeping overnight at Aunty Hellen’s, he is idolising cousin Tom right now and to get to sleep at his place and play with him, well, that was so much better than staying with Dad at Nana’s.

 

We came back on Saturday with a stop for lunch at Seymour and another stop to stave off impending travel sickness for the boy. What amazing curative powers an ice cream has. The gods were smiling on us when we made it home  – Nana Zita came over again to baby sit so Rae and I could have a belated anniversary night out. We took ourselves off to Gold Class to see Watchmen (I loved it, Rae, not so much). We went the whole hog thanks to vouchers and had a three course dinner during the film and a couple of drinks. It really is the only way to go the movies.

Oh my, Oddfellow Peppermints on sale at IGA for $1.99!

I bought all five packets they had on the shelf.

Three in the space of a week, that can’t be good.

Today it was the toaster. Push down toast and outside the safety switch goes pop. Hmmmm. Repeat to make sure and yep, bye bye toaster.

Two days ago it was the bread maker. I was changing a nappy when I heard this almighty crash. I asked Bert what happened and he yelled out “It’s the thing we cook with.”. When I made it out to the kitchen I found one dead bread maker, it had managed to shake itself across the bench and dive on to the floor. That’s one determined bread maker.

But perhaps the greatest loss was last week, or maybe it was the week before, I’m so traumatised I can’t remember. My espresso machine decided it didn’t want to pump out any more water. I called the coffee machine hospital and they said for that model it would be more economical to buy a new machine. Great theory if you have the money to do it. So now I’m reduced to plunging during the day and, for the sake of my wallet, being thankful there is no longer a cafe in walking distance. If I save, save, save I may one day have a new machine and once more I will be able to be happy.

Sigh. They say bad things come in lots of three. I hope that saying isn’t broken too.