Feb's first post..............

First post for the year and it's all the way in Febuary!! I have good reason for this and it is that we weren't here for any of January. Myself and the kids had a big break back in my hometown of Melbourne. We had such a good time catching up with my family and all our friends. Many a day was spent talking and finding out how everybodies life have changed over the past 2 years. Yes it had been that long since we had been home obviously I have spoken to people in that time but you don't seem to get all the info that way. Anyway all are good and Melbourne put on it's usual extremes of weather. I was either bloody hot or too bloody cold!!

While there we also had time to fit in many shopping trips...........so much to see and buy! Typo was discovered and many cute bits & pieces found an example is the above printed ribbon. We are now unpacked and if it wasn't for all the stuff we need to find new homes for I wouldn't have thought we had been on holidays at all. It all seems like a distant memory.

Now for what is happening here!! Kids are slowly getting themselves ready for the return of school next week and I  am trying to get my head around being back in this space and working out what to do with it. Last year lacked a little something to say the least, I either need to get a bit more commited to it or give it away but I am afraid that is a post for another day as a nice cold drink is calling my name!!

L'oeuf du coq........

An afternoon at the library, a little reading picked up by the kids for the rest of the holidays and my entry done for the "Blythe Physical Challenge" group.

Les vacances..........

We are putting the last things in our suitcases as tonight we head off on our adventure. Our one month adventure. First stop is Kyoto maybe we will see some Geisha, then it's Amsterdam, then it' Paris, Toulouse & Tokyo on the way home. It is going to be cold everywhere we go but oh is it going to be fun. See you in a month hopefully with lots of stories to tell!

Tea time.................again!!!

The kids are on a weeks break(again) and it seems that all I have done is sit around and drink tea with other mothers. Nice as it is I do want to do other stuff but I think that will be put off until next Monday. For the next few days I still need to put up with children running around screaming with delight or screaming at one another.

Bring on Monday!

Friday again!...................

I have found it very hard to get to this little space this week. School holidays are upon us again, 2 weeks this time and we have been busy with friends, having dinners, watching the Va'a sprint championships that are happening at our local beach, waiting hours at the post office( this is a story for a whole post on it's own) and then trying very hard to fit in some general relaxation time. The later hasn't worked very well but we shall get that next week as we plan on heading way up north to go camping.

The very cute teeni tiny Blythe figurines you see are ebay purchases that I received this week. These teeni tiny gals caused the extended time sitting at the post office. I must remind myself next time I am looking at something cute on the internet 

'that yes 99cents is cheap but the amount of money and effort that is put in to the getting this cute thing doesn't always add up to time well spent'. 

Do other people do such silly purchases? Anyway they are very cute and they are going to be added to my new collection of Blythe related paraphernalia.

Easter is done and dusted for another year, there was much fine weather, lots of chocolate, fun activities and general hanging out done in the last four days. It was good! We still have the rest of the week off here before school returns so I hope the weather keeps up so we can do lots of outside stuff. When we need to be indoors I know we still have  lots of chocolate to consume and keep us happy. So all in all it should be a good week, will fill you in on details when they arise.

Home again..................

Home.........what a lovely place it is and all four of us a finally back here. No more living out of suitcases, no more being a hinderance in somebody elses space and no more having to deal with traffic lights. Oh after nearly 8 weeks of driving around very busy places I was very happy to be back where I only come across one set of lights in my usual days driving. I can hear you saying if this is the worst of her holidays she hasn't got anything to complain about and that is very true we had a wonderful break away. Lots of catching up with family and friends, lots of fine food and lots of great activities. We ate food that we love but we can't get here, the kids and I enjoyed going to the movies and hanging out in our local park. I visited, but only briefly the fab lanes in the city and got to see a few of the cute little shops that have sprung all around town. I did make a special trip to Meet me at mikes and Patchwork on central park. They are the things that I really miss, not having regular access to places like this but hey I have come back to Noumea and everything I love about this place has jumped right out at me. The consistently beautiful weather( even though today is raining), seeing the beach everyday and how could I forget the regular visits to the fabulous boulangerie/patisserie..............mmmmmmmm.

In my week back I have tried to catch-up with what has been happening in blogland over the past couple of months but my attempts to read all posts have been thwarted through lack of time. I am back into the swing of the normal routine and kids still have two weeks of vacances left so as we all know that doesn't leave much time for frivilous activites but I am trying my best to read them in any spare moment I have. I also have an updated computer system but all is in French so working out how to navigate myself around takes a while too as I look up words in the francais/anglais dictionaire. I know it is all for the greater good of learning the language and to help me out even more I see that my favourite French gal living in Oz is writing her posts in both languages now. C'est fantastique!

Ok this is the longest post I have written for some time and am feeling a tad overwhelmed by it. I will come back with some tales from my trip and a few pics of some very fab thigns I got for xmas.......oh it seems so long ago!

.......................

Sunday night draws to a close once again and we approach another Monday. This one the kids are back at school....Yippee!!! I can get back to my morning walks and a bit of quiet time for a few hours a day. We finished up our fairly quiet break with a trip to see 'The Magic Circus of Samoa'. It was fun and very entertaining with all sorts of crazy acts. I think the funniest part of this show is that it isn't very big and everybody involved in the performance is also running around doing all the other jobs. We saw the magician selling cd's, the girl from the flying trapeze selling popcorn in full make-up and the strong Samoan male dancers were changing the sets.........................Oh the life of a traveling circus show!

Monday again...........

Do you know there is only 7 more Mondays until Christmas. Just a random thought for you to throw around in your head. I mention it because Mondays just seem to be coming around like the speed of light. The weeks starts and all of a sudden here is it again. This brings me to another thing that seems to be coming around way to fast and that is school holidays here in New Caledonia. We have started a weeks break today again. We have no plans a bit of catching, up a bit of study as the kids have evaluations when they go back, a bit of general relaxing. We did start our holiday with a lovely day trip yesterday you can read about it here if you would like. Will fill you in on more exciting event throughout the week if they occur!

Rain = cubby houses...............

We are in the middle of our first week of school holidays and have woken up to a sky heavy with rain. So in our first conversations of 'what are we going to do today' the ideas of cubby houses came up. So Juliette started straight away pulling sheets and other necessary items out of the cupboard. Pyjamas hadn't even come off but that is the good thing about holidays isn't it you don't have to get out of your pj's if you don't want to. It looks like the place is set up as a full day retreat. There is books to read, paper to draw on and toys to be played with. What more could you want. We love pyjama days around here......how about you?

Tiki's,flamingo's and more.........

We are home from the land of Tiki's and what a good adventure we had. We shopped to our hearts content, lazed on more beaches, took the kids to some new movies, ate some good fish, saw another volcano and all in all had a nice time. Coming from Noumea it always takes us a little while to get into the swing of a busy place. We have to get used to lots of people being around and lots to stop and look at and this makes things take a bit longer but that's ok because we are on holidays.

We visited two zoo's while we were away. One in Hilo which was a rainforest zoo. It had beautiful gardens and lots of colourful birds then we went to Honolulus zoo. It was ok but not great but we did get to see these fabulous flamingos. They are fascinating creatures all legs and necks. Django and I stood watching them for far too long time. We were fascinated with what they could do with said necks and heads.

I won't go on today but feed you in slow dribbles about stuff we got up to. One of the things the kids did love doing was sitting at the counter of a very old diner. We went in mostly because of the look of the place. The kids wanted milkshakes and boy did they get them. They were big and tasty and the kids are still talking about them. We ended up going back to have pancakes there later on the same day just because they wanted to sit back at the counter. The pancakes were equally as good as the milkshakes.

Guess who is going off to her a new home today. I hope she arrives safe and sound all cooped up in a postpak. We are also off on a big adventure in a not so squishy aeroplane. See you all in a couple of weeks.

Hawaii lovers................

Hawaii lovers

Originally uploaded by {JooJoo}

We are heading off to Hawaii on Wednesday for a bit more volcano watching and some big city livin'. My dear husband has to go for work so the kids and I thought we might as well tag along. Now the purpose of this post wasn't to make you all jealous but for you to help me. Is there anybody out there reading this that lives in Honolulu and can direct me in the right direction of the right fabric stores? Fabric stores that have a whole range of fabrics and a fab selection of new gadgets for me to drool over and spend all my money on. I have been doing a wee bit of internet searching and that has come up with lots of address but I'm not going to have a whole lot of time to go visiting all. We have about 5 days in Honolulu and as well as visiting these stores there are a few other thing on the adgenda like mega Toys'r'us for the kids. They are so looking forward to going but not looking forward to the 10 hour flight. Hasn't been done before so I'm thinking of all the little entertaining things that can be done. There you go everybody there is another thing you can help me out with. Kids entertainment.

Ok get those thinking caps on. Only two days to go!!

A walk in a very interesting garden..........

Before heading to Port Villa we had found out there was the garden of two well known artists of the Pacific open to the public. Michoutouchkine & Pilioko Foundation Art Gallery. We had some idea it was going to be a collection of art that they had collected over their some 25 years of living in Vanuatu but little did we know.

On the day of our visit Pilioko was in residence and he was very happy to show us around and tell us alot about his life. He has completely decorated every spare wall, bench surface, concrete space and veranda. He has even made a small shrine to his long lost cat. It was so colourful and beautiful and inspiring.
His actual working area is open and looks out onto one of the lagoons. Talk about daily inspiration. This man does these huge beautiful longstitch embroideries and thats what I was hoping he had in his artwork for sale. He did but it was way out of my price range to buy so we settled on two smaller paintings. One the kids chose and one I got to choose. Currently at the framers so I will put pictures up when they are back.
If anybody is heading of to Port Vila I would highly rcommend a trip to their place. I think the artist/collector/ crafter would be greatly pleased by it. It's not on the usual tourists trail so it is a quiet and pleasing place to visit. I really only discovered these guys when they had a exhibition here earlier on in the year and we are so glad we took the time to go and have a look.

Life's a beach........

Looking onto Erakor lagoon-Efate

Some of the beachs we visited while on Efate and Tanna. I have to admit it isn't hard to take plenty of these kinds of shots when you visit little islands.

Moso Island

Django's first attempt at snorkeling. It was brilliant for the kids as there was loads of interesting fish to see just of shore around the rock behind him.

Moso Island again

Tanna

View down the beach from our bungalow on Tanna. Volcanic sand beachs get as hot as anything on a sunny day. Let me tell you.

The return.......

Port Resolution-Tanna

We are back and we had a fab time in Vanuatu and I have alot to tell. Thought I might do it over a few posts though. Less overload that way but in this here post I will tell you the Ni-Vanuatu's are a very kind, happy and giving race of people. Landscape of the two islands we visited were varied and interesting. The food we ate was scrumptious and showing the kids some things they had never seen before like an exploding volcano was priceless. We also spent a whole lot of time riding the local buses watching how day to day life works. So much different to here, not that I thought it would be the same but I do sometimes go away with things in my mind.

So I will leave you with this and go and continue trying to rid our clothes of volcano ash and chlorine from the kids bathers( too much time spent in resort pools). Will call back in tomorrow with more.

On my desk.........

I really haven't been here on my little blog that much in the past month and that is not going to change in the next ten days. As you can see on my desk this week is an e-ticket, my sarong and a travel book. We are off to Vanuatu for a break. Our little house over the past couple of months has been so full of other people having holidays we thought it is time for us to do the same. So without further ado I'm going to finish packing my bag and go catch a plane.

Lukim yu! (see you later)

I'm back.......

I'm back! Finally. Well I have been back in Noumea for nearly a week now but have not had a chance to greet you all. I have been a bit tied up with getting life back to some kind of normality. After nearly three weeks of late nights and full days the kids and I all had a bit different routine to what we normally used to here. We had a fabulous time though back in Melbourne. Lots of catching up with family and friends, lots of eating of favourite foods we can't always find here, a bit of shopping in major fabric stores(which I have missed terribly) and lots of purchases. Oh I had lots of fun looking in aisle after aisle of stuff. Buttons, ribbons, nic-nacs,materials. You name it they have it.

I am going to ease back into this blogging thing slowly as I have found that after being away for so long I have lost some motivation to do it and I have lots to show and tell and don't know where to start. So I begin with showing some of the stash of stuff that journeyed back with us.

Jet setting.......

We are currently jetting our way back to Melbourne after being away for our first 18 months. How exciting it is going back to see family and friends. Back to haunt the old places and to visit some new ones. These fellows are going to be delivered to Meet me at mikes for the softies for Mirabel cause. I am so looking forward to checking out the shop too. Reading so much about it from afar for so long.
Oh it's just to exciting for words!

More camping....

We have been off camping for a few days. A little mini-break before the kids go back to school. Yes it is finally here....over two months of holidays have passed and aren't we all ready for the return, even the kids are eager to go back and they are aware that they still don't understand very much of the language. I think boredom has set in.

Anyway while I was away I had some time to sit under a tree and continue to crochet this scarf. I have no need for this said item in our climate but I was eager to do some crochet and a friend, that I have made here, is leaving to go back to Canada and I have seized the opportunity and I also wanted to try this style of crochet called 'Tunisian crochet'. This particular stitch needed a much bigger hook and thinner wool but this was the largest hook and nicest wool I could find in our very lean haberdashery stores here. It has done the job and I quite like how it has turned out but I will tell you one thing crocheting/knitting is really a cold weather craft maybe next we will move to a climate that I can do more of it!