Dougie Visits Us!

(Kitty) It's been over a month since he left, but here are a few photos of John and Doug and me having fun together. Doug, you may know, is one of our dearest friends. We've been calling him our adopted little brother for close to fifteen years now. It's his house we go to on all the holidays and his family is our adopted family.



Doug came to visit the week of my final classes, which ended up being not as stressful as I anticipated because he brought homework with him, too. A couple of afternoons we both just sat on the couch and did homework together.


But we all also did a lot of sight-seeing! One of the most fun parts was the first night when we went to the Rabbitohs rugby game. The Rabbitohs are owned by Russell Crowe, and he was there that night too. Made it even a little more fun - aside from the fact that our team won by a huge margin.

We went up to the Blue Mountains, spent a great couple nights taking pictures of a special photography event in the downtown area, and took Doug to a whole bunch of great restaurants.


We did a ton of stuff, but what I remember most is that the three of us spent a lot of great time together just as we did when we all lived in the same area. And every day was just as relaxed and fun as every other day we've had in the last fifteen years. So I think we all thought it was an awesome two weeks!


I have to admit, I like the way these two pictures look together - Doug and Greg laughing at the Rabbitoh's mascot, while John looks scared. LOL! Camera ham! (I love it!)

Kitty is Learning to Cook!

(Kitty) It's true! I know you can't believe it if you've known me for a long time. I'm dedicated to pre-made frozen foods and the very few "cooked" meals I have mastered in the last few decades. But when Doug came to visit last month, he and I watched Master Chef Australia the whole time he was here. I got hooked! AND they actually "teach" you how to cook! In the Friday shows, the professional cooks give a "Master Class" to the contestants and tell you how much of what to use and what to do with it, so you can really just follow their steps and do it!

Plus the local grocery store, Cole's, is a Master Chef sponsor so they have a rack of recipe cards with recipes the contestants have made. AND all the recipes are also on the web site (click here). This past weekend I decided to make John french style pancakes for breakfast (recipe here). I made them as thin as I could, then served them with a variety of ingredients to put on top, then roll up. I had one with lemon and sugar, rolled up, then with a dollop of double cream on the side. I had another with chocolate syrup, then rolled up. John had two with Nutella, one with maple syrup, oh, and I had one with apricot jam. (There were so many that we had them on both Saturday and Sunday mornings.) They were wonderful! My first success!

Updates on Life

(Kitty) I'm going to try to get more updates posted here on what we're up to, even if they are silly little updates like this one. I'm trying to take some pictures of every day things in case any of the every day things looks interesting to you. And I'm going to keep this up as often as possible. But let me warn you - school starts in 13 days! So I'm going to have to do this as short and sweet as possible. (That's one of the things I do like about Facebook - I can put a post up in less than a minute!)

So here is the first picture I took to show you something silly about our life here. You know we don't have a car, so everything we buy needs to be hand-carried to our home and up two flights of stairs - which, because of the way stairs work in buildings, really seems like four flights! That means I have to make decisions when grocery shopping based on weight - which do I need most this week, orange juice or laundry detergent? They're too heavy to carry both.
A few friends have suggested a cart/trolley - which I've always heard called a granny cart. I kept putting it off because of the stigma and because I thought it would make my arms stronger to carry the groceries a few blocks. Let me tell you - it may make my arms a tiny bit stronger, but it pulls the heck out of your shoulders! So last week John and I decided to just get one and be done with it.

Here it is, filled with three bags of groceries that I could never have carried home by myself. This week I went out again and bought four bags of groceries, but without choosing one heavy item over another. I simply bought everything on my shopping list. It was tough to get it up and down the bus stairs, and I had to unload it two bags at a time when I got home because I couldn't get it up the stairs BUT I was able to make ONE trip to the grocery store in a week instead of two. YAY!

Artistic Weekend!

(Kitty) My Romance Writers of Australia group is getting together this weekend for a writer's retreat! Yay! I'm so excited! I leave in about 45 minutes, hauling an overnight bag and a computer bag on the bus, through the grocery store, then onto a train and walking it down the two blocks to her house. Whew! One of the women is sending her husband and kids to the in-laws and then the rest of us are descending on her house. Of the eight of us, about half are sleeping over, so it's going to be a great time! LOTS of writing is going to get done! I can't wait!

Knowing I would be away, John planned a Photography Weekend with his friends. John wants to play with his new camera (his anniversary present from me - thanks Dwight and Bonnie for helping me pick it out!) so a whole bunch of people are meeting down near the Opera House with their cameras. Some even decided to plan a picnic on one of the days! So John gets to have a great weekend, too!

I wonder if that means we'll both be having so much fun that we won't miss each other...?

NAAHHHH!!!! LOL!