Hello Autumn

Dear family and friends,

As the seasons turn and we start to see the fabulous colours and enjoy the smells of autumn in the Adelaide Hills, we are enjoying the last few weeks of that very special light and great outside temperatures in the low 20's. We're going to the Stirling Autumn Garden Festival on Sunday which is a fantastic day of markets, readings on the Stirling library lawns, a fairy gnome parade for the kids, a photo exhibition of the local area and lots of other things to do with the food and wine of the Hills. So of course we'll be going!! I couldn't possibly be at home when I know that there is a fairy gnome parade going on 2kms down the road.

Summer passed us by a bit here in Adelaide. We were lucky though that while we missed out on a normal South Australian summer we were not ravaged by natural disasters like other parts of the country. We watched in horror as water swept through massive tracts of Queensland, destroying areas bigger than the UK in days. It will take years to rebuild. Parts of WA suffered fires and of course most recently we have felt for our pacific neighbours in Christchurch, NZ and Japan.

In the Patrick household it has not been the easiest few months, but in comparison, we appreciate our life is also not that hard!

A combination of a few things have put some strain on our family but we are emerging from that and back being our usual happy and optimistic folk.

In the past couple of months I have been very busy at work. We have invited a Rotary foreign exchange student called Charlotte into our home when her 3rd set of host parents dropped out, we are still moving slowly through the process to become registered respite foster carers for disadvantaged kids and been planning our much longed for and anticipated holiday to the UK and France in July.

Every day Amelia's abilities and language development, her thought processes and character astound us. She is learning so much at pre-school. Her friendship with Jared has developed into a strong friendship and they have had sleepovers at each other's house. Her night away from us was rare (she's only stayed over at James and Zoe's house once before) and while she missed us in the night, she had a great time and came back having thoroughly enjoyed her sleepover. We are starting to have some very interesting conversations with Amelia. She's very observant. Recently she has said that she will never use cigarettes and that she sees people using cigarettes in their cars on the way to childcare and she doesn't know their names or she wants to know how Zoe's baby will get out. So we're honest and we tell her the answers to both, that cigarettes will kill you and where babies come out! She comments that the hairdresser's we go to is open late when it's still open on the way back from the city and random things that like. Usually very amusing.

The childcare she goes to has established some great activities for the children, one of which is the maintenance of a community garden where the children grow tomatoes, sunflowers, strawberries and corn. They encourage parents to go along so Iain and I have both been with the kids, we walk to the garden which is about 10 minutes from the childcare so the children cross roads and when they get to the garden they weed and plant and the teacher talks about roots and how to choose strawberry runners to plant to make new plants. They then walk around the garden and see the compost and the worm farm, the other sections that are maintained by others where vegies of all kinds grow, Courgette (Zucchini), Peppers (Capsicum), Watermelon, Corn, herbs, chillis and lots more.

They also had a visit to the spiegeltent at the Garden of Unearthly Delights which is part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival. They met performers and watched a rehearsal. We took the kids to the spiegeltent to see the Kids Comedy Circus and Show which they loved.

Cameron, well what can I say about him. His personality is very different to Amelia's more balanced approach to life. Cameron is a blonde angel who is an affectionate, cheeky, stubborn risk taker. His energy is exuberant and usually uncontrollable, which is fine unless of course he has a thick black permanent marker pen in his chubby little hand.

I had a fantastic weekend in 'mad march'when everything is going on in Adelaide. Katina came over on the Adelaide Cup long weekend. We had a night seeing La Gateau Chocolate, a hilarious large black Nigerian opera singing tranvestite at the garden of unearthly delights. Iain and I spent a day at the races and then went to see the one man Lord of the rings show (which Iain being obsessed with the book and the movies got 100% more of the jokes than I did) but we knew it was all for Iain not me because it was the only show he got to see so fair enough. Katina and I spent the day at Womadelaide on the Sunday seeing Indian flautists, Afro Celtic music and other weird and wonderful world music. A great day. Unfortunately, after all that exertion I just didn't feel I could make it to the ABC Gardening Show so I gave that a miss and we gave Adelaide Cup a miss too again this year. Maybe when the kids are older...

Workwise - I have spent 6 months planning, developing, influencing, negotiating, driving cultural change around the launch of a new brand called Bendigo Wealth which is Bendigo and Adelaide Bank wealth management arm. It's been fun, challenging, frustrating, satisfying and hard work all at the same time. We launched it last week and so I am enjoying (dare I say) a couple of weeks of easy street before the the next project.

It's been a good year professionally, I was awarded CPM status which means I have been recognised as a Chartered Professional Marketer, I'm now sitting on the Financial and Professional Services Special Interest group for the Australian Marketing Institute and am mentoring an emerging marketer as part of the AMI mentoring program again this year. I'm proud of Iain, he has joined the board of Epilepsy SA in addition to his work with Northern Volunteering and is still doing what he can for Rotary.

We both completed a senior first aid course recently where we learnt a lot and also a child safe enviroment course (this is part of the requirements to be become registered foster carers). How much we learnt, my goodness. Not just on the first aid course which was excellent but also how to recognise the signs of physical, emotional and sexual abuse in children and how to report it. What a depth of information we now have at our fingertips and have the skills and tools to have difficult but necessary conversations with our children to keep them safe. Sad but necessary.

We are all looking forward to an extra long Easter break this year with Anzac day and Easter falling on consecutive days. The Easter bunny has already dropped off the eggs for the Patrick household! We've also purchased the hunting eggs for the Easter Egg hunt which we're going to friend's in Stirling for this year. Should be great fun.

We are excited about the arrival of baby Cursley, James and Zoe's baby in June. We're hoping that we'll get to meet the little one before we head off to the UK at the end of June.

They have been busy getting themselves sorted out with the things they need including a bigger car and the obvious things like pram, car seat, baby sling, bassinet etc.

We are also so excited about the delivery of his and hers iPad 2's next week. Our 5th anniversary present to each other. Yep 5 years this May. Goodness we've been busy in this time. But it doesn't seem like that long ago. I guess that's a sign of the times that we're giving each other technology for our wedding anniversary. Very useful and fun technology though I might add.

I'm also looking forward to sitting with Amelia and watching the Royal Wedding because she will see a ordinary person become a princess and for Amelia it will be magical.

Once this May is over I'll need to start thinking about and planning for Iain's BIG birthday next year in 2012. He probably won't appreciate me mentioning the number but I will enjoy giving him a birthday he will love whatever we decide to do.

And finally, yes I have discovered Glee (I know I am probably one of the few in the world that hasn't been caught up in the mass movement that it is) but a guy at work burnt me a copy and, yes it's great. Not managed to include Zumba that other worldwide movement just yet, just can't fit it into the week but maybe next year!


Well that's it for now. Hope you are all happy and healthy and enjoying the change of season in whichever hemisphere you happen to be.

I've posted to the links to publicly available Facebook albums below so you can see a selection of photos from the last few months.

Much love and hugs.

Caroline, Iain, Amelia and Cameron xxx

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=609396&id=794955156&l=766b434671

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=624621&id=794955156&l=2f191ee80d

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=635543&id=794955156&l=1d20828f16

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=641373&id=794955156&l=b20e1f5679