Dirty clothes, three fridges, and meat pies

Has it been a week already since I last posted? Where do I even start? I guess I should update more often so I don't get so behind. I guess I will just start where I left off last week.

Laundry Wednesday
The week we moved in was absolutely crazy and we were exhausted by the end of it (I think you got that from my last post). Okay so we share the washer and dryer on our floor with 3 other apartments and we have assigned times to do our laundry. For some reason our apartment has the least amount of time to do the wash- Sunday morning and Wednesday morning while the other apartments have at least a full day and a half if not more. Obviously we can't do laundry on Sunday morning since we go to church so that leaves Wednesday from 7 -12 in the morning.

Well from all the moving around we had acquired quite a bit of dirty laundry and I was SO excited for Wednesday morning to come so I could get our clothes washed and dried (we had been going for over a month without a dryer remember). I was pretty discouraged around this time because I didn't feel quite at home yet and our fridge wasn't working. I seriously set my alarm for 7 Wednesday morning and woke up extremely happy to clean our clothes. Well each apartment has a power point (outlet) to plug in the washer and they are all locked. So we got the key for ours and it turned out the lock was totally busted but Todd worked on it and about 20 minutes later he got the lock off. Phew! So we put in all our dirty underwear and waited for the washer to finish the cycle. When it did, we put our clothes in the dryer but we could not figure out how to turn it on! There was no "on" button and we tried everything we could think of but it did not start. We asked a neighbor but apparently she has her own washer and dryer in her apartment (maybe we can use her days in the future??) and she couldn't figure it out but she gave us the number of an older lady who is like the secretary of the apartment building.

We called her and sure enough she said the dryer was broken! Just our luck. Nothing seemed to be coming easy to us at this point. I hope we weren't the ones that broke it. However she was the sweetest lady ever and she offered to dry our clothes in her dryer. She did and she even folded all of our clothes before she happily returned them to us. We had all of our underwear/garments in the load and we wondered what she thought of that?! Sadly, we were not able to do all the laundry I had hoped for so I am looking forward once again to Laundry Wednesday (tomorrow). Hopefully all goes well so we can smell better this week.

Three Fridges
Well at the end of last week we had one fridge that wasn't working. We have now had three different fridges in our kitchen in the last week. Todd was able to call the guy we got the fridge from and he came and exchanged it with another older fridge he had and it works great now. Thank goodness the man was honest and made things right. We don't care that it is old and makes a really loud creaking noise when you open it...it works! We also found a queen bed online for free but we needed a truck to move it and after calling around to some ward members we realized nobody really had trucks so we had to scratch that plan. So I got back on gumtree (Sydney's craigslist) and found this guy who was selling a bunch of stuff because he was moving. He lived very close to us so he and Todd were able to move everything without a car. We ended up getting a bed, a couch with no legs, two tvs, a tv stand, dishes, silverware, toaster, and a brand new bar fridge that we are going to resell. The guy is actually moving back to England and along with his dishes he had teacups so we now have teacups. So, things are gradually coming together, and we are very happy about that.

Food
Since we're talking about food now, I think I'll take over, so this is Todd writing now. We've discovered a lot of new places in Mosman, our new suburb. Since it took so long to get a fridge, we've had to do some exploring for fresh food. Fortunately, there is a Pizza Hut less than a block away, so that has saved us a few times already! Only 5 bucks for a decently sized pizza- that's pretty good! We found the grocery store (Franklins) not too far away. The fruits and vegetables we buy at another store next door.

We have a made some good friends in the ward, Beth and Robbie. They are some awesome Aussies! We always have a good time trying to get each other's accent down. Well, one day Robbie busted out a can of tuna and ate it straight from the can. Todd was surprised and asked what on earth he was doing, and he said it made a really good snack. Soooo, next time we went out to the store, we bought some lemon-pepper flavored tuna and we loved it! We've also fallen in love with a typical Aussie meal: meat pies. Those are delicious.

Other News
As for some other things going on: Jett is crawling around and on top of everything. He has become a pro of lifting himself up and standing while holding on to things. Sometimes we will find him in his crib, sitting up and playing with a toy. Very cute.

Christianne is taking over the house and making it cozy and nice. She makes sure Jett is alright, and loves planning out adventures. She is also starting to get back to her headbands and figuring out how to sell them in Sydney.

I had my first couple of papers due this week. The hardest part is making sure words are spelled the right way: "colour" instead of "color" and "analyse" instead of "analyze." It's tricky! I also got a calling in the ward as ward executive secretary. It will be quite some work to do, but it will be fun to get a closer look at how the church works in Australia. Finally, now that we're all settled in, I'm looking for a good part-time job.

Balmoral Beach
The best part of where we live is that we are just a few minutes of a walk down to a nice beach. It is great! I have a feeling we will spend quite a few of our free afternoons there. Balmoral Beach is within Sydney Harbour, so the waves are quite small, which makes it great for kids and families to play in the water.

Here, Jett had his first experience with sand. He was a little worried about it at first, but now he loves it! We just let him go for it and get all dirty. You won't hear a peep from him and he could play for hours and hours. We douse him in sunscreen and keep him in the shade.

Mommy and Jett at Balmoral. The area around the beach is scenic and I'd love to go out and explore it a bit.

If you call Christianne's phone, you might get Jett instead. He is growing up fast.

One downside to going to the beach is just that- you have to go down! Awaba Street is a steep road down to get to the beach, which means it steep going up, too. It makes for a good, quick workout.

One thing about having not a lot of furniture right now is that Jett is free to crawl around and check out anything he wants. In this pic, he heard some birds, so he headed over to the window with his stuffed dugong to see what was going on.

At the beach again with the family. If you have food, be prepared to share it with Jett!

"The beach? Let's go!!"

Now that's one cute couple.

Having fun in the sand!

Mom and Jett watching TV. We just plugged it in the wall and turns out the TV picks up a few channels.

Something tells me we're supposed to be here. : )