More Flat Stanley

Today Flat Stanley went to school with Gemma. He was introduced to the whole class and made to feel very welcome! Gemma also read out his letter to the class.

Flat Stanley

We got a visitor from the US in the post today. Flat Stanley arrived from Virginia. Gemma was very excited. She will be taking him to a few places over the next few days, but tonight he saw the lounge room and the front yard, with the BIG tree that we have.

Rain at last

It's been 8 weeks since we landed in Adelaide and since then just 0.6mm of rain has been recorded officially. A couple of times we've had just enough to make the cars dirty but nothing to make the ground wet. Until this afternoon. Finally wet roads, wet ground, and maybe enough to put some water into the rainwater tank. Here's some video I've just shot in our front and back yards. You can hear some of the native birds that are excited too about the weather. Not a heavy downpour, but it's a start.

Marchfest

Marchfest (instead of Oktober fest - get it), is a family fair held by the kid's school each year in March as a fund raiser. It's got a German/Austrian theme so everyone dresses appropriately (I wore my Bayern Munich soccer jersey).

The school seniors do micro credit and sell their services as part of the day. The boys were into coloured hair.

These boys had some goofy animals for sale.

And Alyssa and Co. sold pens decorated (they were in high demand).

There was also some dancing and each of the kid's classes were involved in dances (think heel-toe or chicken dance). I took video, and will try and blog it eventually.

Rain

It rained today. Not enough to get the ground wet, and from this first photo you couldn't even tell.

But these close ups of the car show that it rained just enough to make a mess of the car!

Family Service

Alyssa's class was involved in a family service today, along with the kids from the school's Early Learning Center. The younger kids were more interested in just about anything else than singing, but Alyssa's class made up for it nicely.

Hot, Dry and Dusty

We've now been back in Adelaide 5 weeks. To a large extent we've plugged back into life here at school, church, Liz's work and the house (I return to work tomorrow so that will be a major change). We've got a house full of furniture and our stuff both from before and from the USA and places we visited while away. But there are a few noticeable changes.

Adelaide is brown. Like Arizona is brown. Due to the increased heat in summer and water restrictions, there are very few lawns left that are green. I'm doing my best to bring part of our front lawn back to life, but it will be a slow process. To date, Adelaide has had 1mm (that's 1/25th of an inch) of rain for the calendar year (normally it's over an inch by now). What this all means is that it is an incredibly dusty place. We recently opened the windows in the house one night during the hot spell to cool everything down and are still cleaning the dust and dirt off everything! I bought a car last week and it has taken less than a week for it to be covered in dust and dirt even though we store it undercover. And of course there are restrictions in how it can be washed!

The kids are all back into music lessons and Sam is playing B Grade cricket with his school (a separate post will appear). We're back at church as well, but we're yet to commit to anything as of yet.

Adelaide itself has changed very little in the two years we were away. The trams now block the rest of King William Street and part of North Terrace.

After regularly travelling large distances, we are yet to leave the Adelaide environs since arriving back. We may venture as far as Kangaroo Island for a holiday later this year, but our plan is for a very quiet year. We'll see how that pans out.