March

Rosie returned from her 6-day camp and seemed to have had a very good time. She wanted to head straight down the road from school to one of her favourite after-school haunts, Nando's chickenery.

A few days later she came home from school with her new French Horn which she's been practising a few times a week. She's enjoying it so far. We're renting an instrument from school and they've very kindly arranged for Rosie to have two instruments, one she can leave at home for practice and another that can stay at school for her lessons and music classes so she doesn't have to carry backwards and forwards along with the big backpack, laptop and sometimes sports bag!

With Jessye's birthday approaching we started getting her Howqua birthday box together. We're encouraged to send a small box of stuff for decorating the house such as balloons etc and of course, presents. Unfortunately, because of Labour Day and our long weekend, we were a bit late with posting it and the Post Shop guys couldn't guarantee getting it there by the appointed day so Peter decided he'd have to drive it there himself. We looked into couriers but they could only do it for $500! As it turned out, Jessye was on an overnight camp on her birthday so we got our annual allowed phone call from her the day after. She was full of chat about the latest drama involving the suspension of one of the girls from her house for various misdemeanours - it's a long story. Anyway, the remaining housemates have survived the trauma and are happy about her suspension but a bit guilty about being happy too. Jessye says the house is much tidier now - apparently Jessye is queen of the cleaning up in her house, even doing dishes when it's not her turn!

On Sunday 11th March Will had a housewarming party for the parents and family of the housemates in his new place. They've moved to a very nice unit in East Melbourne. Their mates' housewarming party was wisely scheduled for another day.

Sophie put in her birthday request a couple of weeks ago - dinner at Donovan's, the lovely restaurant right on St Kilda beach where the girls and I had lunched last March 21st. Rosie handed out the presents before school then we regrouped for dinner later. It was a beautiful evening on the beach.