10 More Weeks Til Christmas

Little Bambi at 2 years and 4 months

We had a weekend filled with catching up with my friends - from work (actually). 

On Friday, an ex-workmate invited us for a playdate at the park for Little Bambi and her son. I felt bad because while I had work that day, I could only get to the park at 6pm. So it was a pretty late playdate. We finished at the park at 7pm, and rushed home for a shower and dinner. It was still pretty fun.

Saturday we did the usual routine. All three of us headed to Chaddy at 8.20am. I went to the gym for the 8.30am RPM class, while Grumpy and Little Bambi went to McDonalds for breakfast and they did a Coles run together. In the evening, we invited some friends over for dinner, including Little-Miss-Sailing, a new friend I made at work. Little-Miss-Sailing is from the Hong Kong office and I thought it would be nice for her to come over instead of spending her weekends by herself. 

This morning, we drove all the way to Eltham to meet another ex-workmate (from my previous previous work) Little-Miss-Frenchie (she really is French) and her 4 month old baby at the farmer's market. While the market was not great, there was a nice big park which Little Bambi could play in. 

Grumpy and I have not been feeling 110% over the last week because of hayfever and a chest infection. I am getting better though, so lets hope next week will be a lot better! 

10 more weeks til Christmas! 8 more weeks til my mum arrives!

Picnic at the Tan

Little Bambi has been doing imaginary plays a lot lately. She pretends she is in a boat, in a train, in a plane, and most recently she has been playing pretend picnic!

Here is Little Bambi playing picnic in her
bedroom by herself, with all her toys.

And so... Grumpy and I decided to take her out for a REAL picnic, considering it is beautiful weather this weekend. He won a picnic basket from work about a year ago. I bought a picnic rug from last year's Christmas sale. So I am glad we are finally putting our picnic utensils into good use.

I googled 'Best picnic spots in Melbourne', and read up on local parks, places like Mt Dandenong etc. In the end, we decided on the Tan (the only place we were most familiar with, and also because we knew we would not be disappointed).

We packed our picnic basket the night before. And this morning, after my 8.30am RPM class in Chaddy, I stopped by at Aldi - picked up some cheese, crackers, dip and chocolate biscuits (for dessert). 

Here are some pictures from today.

Little Bambi munching on celery sticks with onion dip.

Trust Grumpy to bring the alcohol..

The vintage looking picnic basket Grumpy won from work. 

Cheers!

All three of us, captured in this photo.

Soaking up the sun.

Family portrait at the Tan

It was nice that Dopey and his girlfriend joined us too at our picnic. We laid on the grass, Little Bambi ran around on her bare feet, food was yummy, we played music from the iPad and Spotify, the temperature was still a bit cool by my standards (20 degrees celcius). Overall, the picnic today was absolutely perfect. 

Face Painting

The good news is that Grumpy has finished watching LOST! FINALLY! The bad news is that even though we both started out watching it together, I kind got lost myself with LOST, because it is so effing confusing and so, I have not been giving it my 110% attention and decided to sleep early that night (while he was watching the finale). 

I would like to watch the new season of Downton Abbey! I love Downton!

Last week was quite busy. I caught up with two old workmates. One of them was my old boss, whom I never used to like at the start, but after a while we both kinda just got along really well! I miss her so much! I really do, I love how open and honest we are with each other! My new boss is a guy, and its just not the same. He is nice and all, but we have yet to overcome the awkwardness of a professional working relationship.

Yesterday, at the last minute, I organised lunch at a german restaurant to celebrate Oktoberfest. There was face painting for kids, and so I asked the girl to paint Little Bambi as a cat. This has got to be one of the worst face paintings ever, but oh well, the girl that did it came personally to our table and offered it, which was a nice thing to do. When I said to Little Bambi 'Lets take a selfie', she saw her face and wanted to wipe it off immediately!

Okay, thats it for a Monday night!

XX
Jules

Part-Time Working Mother

When we returned from a four week holiday in Malaysia, I assumed I had used up all my annual leave for the year. Until a few weeks ago, my manager said I still had about 5 days of annual leave which I need to clear up before the bank's year end (which is 30 September). 

Therefore, for the month of September, I took every Friday off. And last week, being the final week in September, I had Thursday and Friday off. It was awesome!!! Now I know what it feels like being a part-time working mother! Working full-time while juggling a two year old can be quite exhausting!

As an added bonus, I squeezed in Volunteer Day today, so I only return to work tomorrow. I chose to volunteer at the Christian Blind Mission, writing Christmas cards for their donors. I love writing Christmas cards! My scheduled time was 10am until 3pm. I dropped Little Bambi off to creche at about 9.30am before I started at CBM. When I was done at 3pm, I stopped by at Coles and the chemist, and then picked her up by 4pm. We got home, ate ice cream and then walked the dog together. Oh yes, and not forgetting the fact that I made it to the gym at 6.05am this morning for a session of RPM Hi-Performance!

Usually Little Bambi is at creche from 7am until 5.30pm - which is such a longgggg day. We get home by 5.45pm and there's hardly any time to do anything apart from taking a shower and getting ready for dinner. 

At dinner today, I told Grumpy that the '10am-3pm' time really suits us, because at least Little Bambi is not at creche for too long a day, and we have more time to do fun things like eat ice cream! 

He looked at me and said "So do you want to do volunteer work everyday????"

Old Episodes of Lost

It has been nearly three months since my last post.

The reason for my lack of post is because Grumpy has decided to watch old episodes of Lost again, and while he roped me in to watching it with him, I have lost access to my Mac Book Pro at night. Each night after Little Bambi falls asleep, we hide in our bedroom on a cold winter's night, two mugs of hot green tea in hand and heaps of chocolate and junk food to share.. while watching a bunch of people run around an island fighting for survival.

Little Bambi has been doing really well. She has been in really good form this time round, compared to last year. She is getting on very well with her friends in childcare, always looking forward to spend the day with them. She is cheeky, as always.

My birthday this year, 32 years old.. Yikes.. it was extremely low key, which I did not mind at all. I told no one at my new work about my birthday. But I did take the day off. 

Work has been good as well. I am so very blessed that I landed myself in a good working environment, with nice and friendly people. The team is quite professional too, although it is mainly male dominated. I am really enjoying my role as well, it is a huge learning curve for me, so lots to take in.. and while I should really be reading up on financial news at night, instead I am watching an old TV show from ten years ago (ie Lost)! However, after going through two redundancies, a dozen restructures and the usual office politics in financial services, I know one can never be too confident or comfortable in a role.

I have been trying to improve my fitness level as well. I currently join my workmates at boot camp during our lunch breaks on Tuesday. And on top of that, I have been taking RPM classes at the gym. I bought my first cycling shorts yesterday, and am thinking of getting proper cycling shoes too. 

I have to run now, but looking forward to blog more in the coming weeks.

First Day At Work

8.01am
Sydney-Boy: Do you start your new job today??

8.24am
Little-Miss-Whats-For-Lunch: Good luck on your first day Jules! All the best!! Lunch sometime this week when you are settled!

9.44am
Grumpy: How is your 1st day?

10.44am
My 'new' ex-boss: Hows it going?

10.51am
Dopey's-Better-Half: How's your first day at work so far?

11.17am
Mum: Girl how are you? Liking your new place?

2.33pm
Little-Miss-Drink-A-Lot: First day of work? How's it going?

All the Whatsapp and text messages that were coming through today on my first day at work. I realise how blessed and lucky I am, to be surrounded by all these people who care about me.

Huge Relief x2

We are finally back in Melbourne again after spending three weeks in Malaysia for holidays. Overall, I had an enjoyable holiday. Even though it was three weeks, which seems like a long time, it still felt a bit rushed. We caught up with family and friends, which was a lot of fun.

I go back to work on Monday, which I am not looking forward to… BOO!!

A quick update on my work situation, I have secured a new role within the same bank, but its a completely different role! Its in Group Risk - which is so different from the past 6 years of my working life working in projects. I start right at the bottom, but I am prepared for this change. I received a phone call late on Tuesday evening to say I got the job, and was leaving for KL on Thursday morning. It was such a hugeeee relief… I wanted nothing else before my holidays, but to know that when I come back, I will have a job!

But back to my holidays, we did a short getaway in Penang. Penang is such a beautiful place. Clean and so well maintained! And after that we spent most of our time staying with my parents or Grumpy's parents. Little Bambi enjoyed being surrounded by her grandparents and the rest of the family.

I will have to say, when we landed back in Melbourne yesterday, I was thanking my lucky stars that Little Bambi was able to enjoy her holidays without any peanut allergy dramas! It truly was a huge relief! We found that some of the popular brands of cooking oil in Malaysia were a mixture of palm oil and peanut oil. A BIG NO-NO for Little Bambi. We were constantly asking restaurant staff, if their food contained peanut oil or peanuts, and most of them replied "NO NO! NO PEANUT!" so fast and confident that I just did not trust them. It felt like they did not even take the time to consider the ingredients in the food, etc..

We celebrated Little Bambi's second birthday in KL. We hosted a party for about 60 family members at a chinese restaurant. Party was a huge success.

Grumpy and I did our first getaway on our own without Little Bambi, but just for one night in KL city. We stayed at Traders Hotel in KL, which was a very nice hotel - and most importantly, the location was just perfect for us. My family members kept teasing us that we were on a honeymoon, haha, but just for one night! It was very good for the soul - nice to be able for Grumpy and myself to be alone and  enjoy each others company without any interruption.

Anyways, more photos to come, but here's one of Little Bambi and I in Penang.

Kiss Cam!