I’ve been to the hospital twice this week. Once for my J who fell at school and we thought he might have a wrist fracture. Thank goodness, the scans came back negative and the doc’s say it’s just a soft tissue injury. The second visit was for my girls who have head colds and we wanted to rule out COVID, which we did. They are just down from the change of seasons and getting back to school. While it’s not fun to go to the hospital and wait, because that is inevitable at the ER, I have enormous gratitude for our skilled nurses and doctors and our free healthcare.

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Now it’s time for a bit of Australian language knowledge. When asked for your birthdate, the correct response would be to say the date like so: the 5th of the 12th, 1975.

Today someone at the doctor’s office asked me “How are you travelling?” It took me a delayed moment to realise she was asking “How are you?”

We have a membership for the Melbourne Zoo and have visted twice in the last week. We are just 15 minutes away so we enjoy just popping over there for an hour or two and taking our time in one section of the park. We were lucky to have some close up time with Australian Pelicans, another favourite of mine here. It appears I am enamoured with feathered friends in Oz – galah, crested pigeons and now pelicans. The pelicans have got to be my top favourite though. I love how odd and cool they look and also they are gigantic. The way they soar through the sky makes you stop and stare – at least I do anyway. 😂 I see them around town a lot as we are near to water. We also saw them often (daily) while living in Sydney, so not just something you find in zoos here. How cool is that?

We went for a short hike at Newport Lakes Reserve and decided to check for geocaches in the area to make our walk a bit more exciting. The first one we discovered was hidden under some ground cover and wasn’t too difficult to spot. There was, however, a bonus surprise lurking nearby.

We threw together a last minute St Patrick’s Day celebration in our house. I’m really terrible at holiday traditions but strangely, in the past it used to be something I excelled at. Nowadays, I am lucky to even remember there is something other than our routine going on. A quick soda bread, potato leek soup and all the green clothing we could muster – we now realise we are a family who doesn’t wear or own anything green. 😂

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We have a small local beach near to us called Williamstown Beach. We try to go at least once per week just to put our feet in the glorious cool water. I love that we live someplace where we have access to beautiful golden sandy beaches a short drive from home.

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