Ms Van-Barnett goes to Vegas

Part One - The van

Many of you will recall the Volkswagon Bug I owned while I was at college and those of you who didn't know me then will surely have heard me bang on about the time I strapped a semester's worth of painting canvases to the roof racks only to have them blow off on the F3's Mooney Mooney Creek Bridge, destroyed and lying over the freeway. Close listeners of the story will recall that I traversed the bridge, clinging to the side to gather up my work only to have someone stop and try to give me a lift back to the bug, a sorry choice to be made between getting into the car of the presumed Balangalow State murderer (who was as yet uncaptured at the time) and falling to my death over the bridge with traffic hurtling past me at 120 kph. Where am I going with this? Well ever since that milestone turning point type day in my life I have hankered after a car that was HUGE and could fit a million things in it. At the time I was fiercely jealous of Jussy's combi van and have had a very secret love of van's ever since. That's right people....I love vans.

Well, as usual the man of my dreams has made all of my dreams come true by compensating for the glaring impracticality of a family of four owning a mustang with practically little more parcel shelf for a back seat (which of course I LOVE) and buying me a van........hang on, he gets a sports car and I get a soccor Mom mobile........oh Jesus, he's done it to me again! Will discuss THAT with him this evening! Here is a picture of my beloved Dodge Caravan. God, i even love the name. dodge

isn't she lovely. (sing that to the tune of Stevie Wonder's isn't she lovely)

Part Two - The van fits relatives in it and leaves Bear Valley.....

The van (or bus as I prefer to call it) had her maiden long trip type voyage this weekend. We have Davy's parents staying with us at the moment and Davy, Paul and I took a trip to Vegas (and even though we only had three in the car we really could have had seven if we wanted I assure you). OMG people!!!!! I love Vegas. It really is one of my favourite places on the planet and no one is more surprised than me, well, maybe Davy who kept saying 'I can't believe you like it here!". Definitely in the top 5. Let's see, Sydney, Paris, Barcelona, Vegas, Maitland (and really you can practically see all those places in Vegas anyway making them somewhat obsolete!) I did have a fancy smancy video to show off with which highlighted the voyage to Vegas but obviously I am completely inept and can't make the bloody thing download. I have been trying for a week and the bloody thing keeps closing on me and having nervy turns so I will just have to do it the old fashioned way....with photos and my fabulous descriptive writing style...... Here is a photo of us leaving Bear Vally.

It was quite snowy.

Part Three - What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas

Here is photo taken on the drive to Vegas. By the way, the van drove beautifully and was so comfy. I took a snooze in the back. I bought my pillow and blankie. The drive was quite deserty and long but strangely, the desert was quite green as it is spring although you'd never bloody know it in this freezing town.

I can't tell you what happened in Vegas as it has to stay in Vegas blah blah but I can tell you that in one night we experienced Ancient Greece, Italy, France, saw Rio and then the next morning the sphinx and pyramids. Vegas is such a mix of energy, cheese and glamour. All my favourite things! Here is a photo of cheezy, glamorous nightlife. It's easy to spot our hotel as it has a whopping big Eiffel tower out front! I mean, why would you go to Paris people?

Later......Part Four - what happens next.........
well, not much really. Mary and Paul have left us to enjoy the sun in Hawaii, (bloody hell they have a life I tell you!) leaving us only with a strange, vacant void and no one in the back room /guest quarters. While they were here we had trips to Santa Monica, Davy and I took advantage of our live in nannies and saw Paul Kelly play in a restaurant in Hollywood and some of the luckier members of the family took in a couple of days skiing at Mammoth (by this i mean it wasn't me and there is some resentment there I assure you. Note to self, squeeze it into a tiny ball).

Life here continues to go on. It's still freezing and even though it's technically 'spring' and things are green and lovely we still got snow on Sunday morning. I'm starting to long for the summer. "Spring Break' is over and the kids go back to school so my normal routine kicks in. Although somewhat more fabulously as now I have been accepted as a fully fledged van driving American MOM. (I'm quite popular now with the other Moms as I AM ONE OF THEM............AAAGGGHHH. only joking, really, i love them!(And some of them read this so I must be careful and obviously i don't mean you!). There may have to be slight changes to my routine however.....I still crack myself up every morning by asking the kids to show me their bus passes before they board my 'bus'. Sabine has started giving me 'the look'. Apparently I am too daggy for words, and George admonished me severely saying my van was NOT a bus and citing as evidence the (alleged) facts that buses are clearly yellow and seat considerably more than seven people. Bah Humbug! Miss you people!!! Oh and by the way don't admonish me if I've spelt desert wrongly. I get so confused between the place and the thing wot comes after ya tucker.

Happy Bloody Valentine's Day

I love Australians. I love their skepticism and their reluctance to jump whole heartedly into silly Hallmark Holidays. Don't get me wrong, I like a bunch of flowers as much as the next girl but all things Velentine's here are strange and unnerving. For instance, Valentine's Day here hugely involves kids. I know. It's creepy. Valentine's Day should be about making children, it's not something you celebrate with them. Let me give some examples.......both George and Sabine have big parties at school today. They had to bring cards for everyone in their class (which meant Mummy had to do craft card making activities with them). They had to bring biscuits ( I just WILL NOT call them cookies) or little treats to give out (which meant Mummy had to bake Love Heart shaped items iced with fetching shades of pink and then wrap in cellophane, see picture). Then lots of parents buy gifts for their children. Creepy. Children got Leggo and Valentine's Balloon bouquets. You'd never catch an Aussie going so OTT! Is there any holiday that these people don't celebrate? And is there any holiday that doesn't involve the overconsumption of candy? The constant celebrations though does have a strange inverse effect. It kind of dilutes the big holidays. By the time you have Halloween, Thanksgiving, Valentines, 4th July etc, Christams just isn't a big as a deal as it is at home.



The snow has all melted now. We had a lot of snow (the mustang got bogged in the snowy driveway (so there was Davy and I in the dark -2 degrees celcius digging it out and rocking it back and forward!) but davy did acomplish getting it to the driveway in the first place by nailing it up the steep snow covered hill that is our street sidways with the traction control off. Just when we finally get a proper week of school with no snow days, wouldn't you know it, Friday and Monday are 'school holidays' which means that school children and teachers get the day off but not the general population. If I ever do get a visa I truely don't know how I'll work. In between snow days and these constant holidays I'd never get there! These two holidays are both for Presidents Day. Count em people, two Presidents Days. I think one is for George Washington and the other day is for all the others. They just get lumped together. Here is a video of the fun we had on the last snow day when even Davy couldn't get to work, (They closed the highway)


In other news Sabine has lost her two front teeth and her two bottom and the adult teeth are not coming through so well. Seems her mouth is too small (she didn't get that from me!) and all the teeth are just stacked up there in her gums, literally on top of each other. She went to the orthodontist yesterday and it seems that the poor child will have to have some sort of apparatas in her mouth for much of her childhood. The nurse did reassuringly tell me that the Dr hadn't mentioned 'head gear'. Thank heavens for small mercys! They'll start work on her after some more of her teeth come down. She's excited to get braces though (in a couple of years) and I do kinda get that. When I was young I secretly wanted braces......Soemone had told me that you can pick up the radio through the metal on your teeth. I guess that Aussie skepticism hadn't kicked in yet!

So when my children asked me this morning whether I would be buying them Valetine's gifts and making them pretty cards etc my response was clear. NO. We're bloody Australians and we don't buy into rubbish like that. "why not mum?" Well dear because we're too clever. We're too busy saying sorry and signing Kyoto and helping the good people of East Timor to worry about balloons and leggo. Besides, I can't afford it, I have to save up for braces. xxoo
.

I Miss Home But Then Agin.........

This Blog (or the High Tech Post as my friend Richard calls it) was intended to be a way of friends and family catching up with our adventures and pictures of the kids etc but, it has become a little more. For David and I it has become a kind of online travel journal and it's great to look back on it and read over what we've done and how we've gone and all the stuff that goes along with this strange and amazing adventure.

Australia Day was celebrated here with the baking of Lamingtons. It's strange what you miss! I almost never ate Lamingtons at home when they were everywhere but there you go. If you haven't had a Lamington in a while I urge you to go out this morning and buy one. They are so good! Anyhoo, I took some Lamingtons into Sabine's class and her gorgeous teacher, Mrs Kruger, asked me to give a little talk about Australia Day and what it means. Only too happy to oblige, (i love giving little talks as most of you know!) I enthralled the First Grade with stories of Captain Arthur Phillip and the unfurling of the Union Jack and tales of scurvy and leaving your family forever for stealing a loaf of bread etc. The Lamingtons were a huge hit even if the coconut wasn't right (no dessicated coconut here, only sweetened).

Australia Day of course brought up the thoughts of home that I usually try to keep buried and squeezed up into a little ball. (Taking your advice there Penny) There is a constant buzz in the background for me of missing family and friends and also, that Australianess that I can't quite articulate. But then again.......there are so many moments here when we look around ourselves and marvel at where we are and that also has been a big feature of this week. We have had so much snow that school has been cancelled for four days out of six and looking outside the windows is magical.

This is a picture looking down our street. The local town, where Sabine goes to school and the shops are is about 15 minutes away and is at a lower elevation but it was also covered in snow and the mountains around are glistening white. The top temperature this week has been minus 2 degrees Celsius. What a contrast to our usual Australia Day!

After making Lamingtons with sweetened angel flake coconut I logged on to buy some dessicated coconut and some of the Australian classics that we've all been missing, Tim Tams and Milo, Golden Syrup and Cherry Ripes. (Blue tac too if you can believe that) and it got me to thinkin' that when I leave here there will be lots of things I will miss about America. (We've settled in here so much that we don't even hear the American accent anymore. Sabine apparently has a strong American accent now but I can't hear it.) Anyhoo, here is a list of things I love (and will surely miss) about America.......

Project Runway (ok, I know you can get that in Aus on Fox but I'm so cable TV'd out I just don't think I'd go there again)
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups

Regis
Left hand turns against the lights after stopping at every intersection. It's a road rule.

J Crew

Crazy bumper stickers about Jesus being one's homeboy

The Daily Show with John Stewart (Presidential Race based Comedy)

Zero Cherry Coke

Drive through everything

snow

hats, gloves, scarves

Driving the Mustang. It is so choice.

Insinkerators

My beautiful friend Elaina

So anyway, hope everyone is well. It's so beautiful here that I've included another picture of some deer that was taken in our little village.

The Happiest Place on Earth etc

The happiest place on Earth certainly is very crowded. I guess everyone wants to be happy. We had to wait in a lot of long lines. The longest wait was the new 'finding Nemo' submarine ride which is set in the Barrier Reef and so the voice over was an Australian accent which was noice. The wait to experience that marvel was about one hour. (Incidentally the ride consisted of looking out of the submarine windows at model coral that was obviously meant to recreate the Barrier Reef but people were taking pictures of it out the tiny windows. What's up with that? It's not the real reef people! It's cement!)

Anyhoo, around here when you go to Disney the first question you get after is 'was it busy?' to which I replied 'yes'. The second question is 'how long did you wait for Nemo?' Well, as it turns out, apparently one hour is not busy at all and people routinely wait for three hours for every ride and so only get to do like three or four rides a day. Happiest place on earth my arse! But the Mitchell's had a fabulously happy day. It was grand! George's favourite was Space Mountain. Here is a picture that they took when we were on the roller coaster and then charged outrageously for it. Check George out! Space Mountain is a roller coaster that is completely in the dark, and I mean completely. You can't see anything at all and it goes WAY too fast in my opinion. I was holding on to Sabine for dear life. She's so tiny and i felt like she would just be ripped away and fall out and I'd never see her again. We did not like it at all thank you very much and the whole time were saying to each other 'god, is it nearly over' and 'i don't think we should go on this again Mummy' and 'certainly not. Is it nearly finished do you think?' etc etc. In the photo I'm smiling but it's only to suppress the gag reflex.

Much to the surprise of both Davy and I we ended up staying quite late. (We both thought we'd be over it by lunchtime but it really was fun.) Everything was decorated for Christmas and it was really very cool. Here is Cinderella's castle

So of course we've also had our strange, cold Christmas. We didn't have a white Christmas but we did have a white boxing day which led Davy to sing 'I'm dreaming of a white Boxing Day' although technically they don't have boxing day here. Christmas Eve is a holiday and it's back to work on Boxing Day. Craaaazzzy! We had a very nice day, all be it different from usual. It was kind of nice not to have to go anywhere but it really didn't feel like Christmas. I mean it was cold for one thing. What's up with that? We did have a fabulous fresh Christmas tree (they are so nice here) and lots of pressies. The guitar was a hit, as were all the construction things. Guess what? Here's a picture......No, not really, I can't find a good one. Instead here's a very short movie of the old girl in the snow..........It's very short because Blogger takes a long time to upload videos and i just can't be arsed waiting.

We have more snow forecast for tomorrow and we're hoping there'll be enough to use our new snow tube and slide down the hill in the backyard. (note to self, is 911 here, not 000). We're planning on hitting the slopes (how cool am I?) in about a fortnight. Davy, as most of you know is a top fabo skier. The kid's and I will be learning........oh dear. Have high hopes for gorgeous type ski instructor though.....ha ha wish me luck! ( on the ski instructor, not the skiing, no amount of luck will help me there, we all know about my lack of graceful balance in shoes on the street, God help me on skis and worse, chair lifts, aaahhhhhh). Will post from hospital bed while in traction.......xxxooo

Let it Snow... Let it Snow... Let it Snow...

It was very cold here last week with temperatures topping a massive 4 degrees Celsius and then on Friday night it started to snow. We woke up on Saturday morning to Sabine running into our bedroom saying 'it snowed, it snowed!' and when we woke up the whole village was covered in white. This is a photo of our deck.

We had a fantastic weekend of snow angels and snow men and hot cocoa by the fire. Davy and the kids built a snowman but try as we might he just won't come to life like frosty did. Here's "snowy", our snowman.

There is still a lot of snow around and it looks just beautiful. We all feel very lucky to be here and hopefully we'll have a white Christmas. (Weird) It doesn't really feel like Christmas time....There'll be no champagne and nibbles on that deck!

Poor Davy gets pelted with snowballs whenever he is outside with the kids. I can see that getting old very quickly.

We're off to Disneyland in the next week or so, so that's the coming true of two big wishes....as a child I was desperate to go to Disneyland (as we all were I think) and as an grown up I've wanted to live somewhere where it snowed so I guess the message here is be careful what you wish for, it might just come true. (I've only been here 6 months and I'm already turning into a cheesy American!) later y'all xxx

whaddup bitches ( a lesson in culture)

Have taken following notes re American culture


Number of pumpkins carved into jack o lanterns with the leatherman - 2
Number of pumpkins carved with spooky bat scene - 1 (see picture)
Number of pumpkins whose insides were gross, wet and disgusting - 3
Number of candies given to our children during trick or treat - 2350000 (feels like)
Number of tricks - 1
Number of calories consumed by Bianca in the form of candy in two days of Halloween - 6598222 (feels like)
Number of people seen shopping or going about normal daily business in full costume - 2 (geisha and vampire)


Number of Mitchells dressed up as a policeman with handcuffs etc - 1 (davy)
Number of Mitchells dressed as the Cat in the Hat - 1 (george)
Number of witchy Mitchells - 1 (sabine)

Number of "Real Men Love Jesus" bumper stickers spotted - 3
Number of "Real Women Love Jesus" bumper stickers spotted - 0
Number of bumper stickers suggesting Bush is a good president - 3
Number of bumper Stickers suggesting one should vote for Hillary - 0
Number of bumper stickers suggesting Bush is the "Worst Ever" - 1
Number of Bumper stickers describing what Arnie does to himself in his own time - 1

Number of Kevin Costner sightings - 0
Number of Posh or Becks sightings - 0
Number of Celebrity sightings - 0

Side note; Language barrier
She's a ho fo sho translates to She is undoubtedly a prostitute of some description
So Cal is short for Southern California as in 'OMG that is so socal'
OMG is short for Oh My God as in OMG where the #$@! is Kevin Costner!

No Bull....there is an actual fake bull

As our beautiful friend Chris Harle pointed out we've seen fire and we've seen rain. Natural disasters do seem to be following us around but truly the Californian fires are a way away. We're all very safe and Arnie is nowhere in sight. Sooo glad we decided against purchasing a Malibu mansion though. phew......


We're all settled into our fabulous new house which is very large and accommodating for guests so why not blow a couple of thousand and come on over. The move sucked a little, but moves generally do. Here's a picture of the kids in the UHaul




In other news, marriage my friends is about compromise, give and take and in my case staying at home while your husband hangs out in a suite at the L.A. Hilton on Emmys night, supposedly for a "geotech conference" and i use the term "geotech conference" lightly as there did not seem to be much geoteching going on people. Begrudgingly, here's a picture of the terrible conditions endured......











Obviously at a "geotech conference" one has to ride a mechanical bull. Here is a picture or, as I like to call it, evidence..



The bull did leave some unsightly and I'm told reasonably painful bruises so some comfort can be sought in that.....




Comfort can also be found from the wonderful Tim Veness, who travelled over for the "geotech conference" and brought with him a most welcome thing...a big bottle of coopers. Thanks Tim. Here's a picture of Tim in front of the big Universal Studios ball thingy which is obviously an important mecca for geotech types.


So that's where we're up to. Stay tuned.....next week is Halloween. Pumpkins have been carved, costumes have been purchased, it's all happening people.....