House, hotels, homeschool and Holden Commodore

Ocean Grove Beach, January 3, 2015

Hello again! We found out yesterday that we've been approved/selected (whatever it is) for the rental house in Ocean Grove, Victoria. We are so excited! It's a fully furnished 4 bedroom, 2 bathroom place with fenced in yard, garage, beautiful trees, etc. We have plenty of space for visitors and each kid will have their own room when we don't have visitors. It's in what is considered "old" Ocean Grove and the street is quiet. We met the owners when we viewed it and they said there are many kids on the street. Start booking your tickets to come visit now! Plus, Ocean Grove Beach is about a mile from the house. Walking distance if we want!

Ice cream at the lolly shop

We drove in to Ocean Grove to sign paperwork for the house yesterday. While there we hit up the local ice cream shop for a quick treat. Ocean Grove is a pretty small community, but it has many neat shops and feels very clean and friendly. There is a really nice looking library just a few blocks from the house, so I suspect the kids and I will be stopping in frequently. It is about a 25 minute commute for Barry to get to work, but we figured being close to the beach was worth the trade-off of driving!

We can't move into the house until Tuesday, January 20th, so unfortunately we have to live out of our suitcases for a couple of weeks. We are staying at a nice 2-bedroom apartment (lacking a full kitchen) on the bay in Geelong for this week. We've got a home rented next week on an acre and boasts 40 fruit trees. In the meantime, we are busy having picnics on the hotel room floor for some meals. The kids think this is such fun!

Picnic on the hotel room floor

We started school yesterday as well. The kids are getting used to pretending Mom's a teacher, and we are getting in a groove to accomplish schoolwork each day. It's hard with the nice weather to take it seriously, but we had a better day today than yesterday. We managed to get most work done this morning, including taking a break to make this tower out of Connectagons.

Art class?!?

We also took a break to walk along the bay and stop at a park to play for a while. Gorgeous weather again today-80 degrees or so. Supposed to be a HOT one again tomorrow, then the rain is coming.

Lydia, park along the bay, January 6, 2015

The most exciting and terrifying part of the day was picking up our "new" 2002 Holden Commodore station wagon. I haven't been driving the rental car, as we would have had to pay extra to have 2 drivers. Therefore, my first experience of driving in Australia (on the left side of the road and with the wheel on the other side of the car) was when I drove our car off the lot. We had to drive the rental car back into the Melbourne airport area to drop it off, so I followed Barry in our new beast. All went well and we made it back to Geelong in one piece. We'll post some other pics of the car once we snap them.

White knuckling it

We rounded out the night by stopping for pizza and then the older two kids went swimming in the hotel pool. Feeling more settled in all the time. We are looking forward to moving into the house in Ocean Grove for many reasons, but we'll spend the next two weeks enjoying our rentals as well.

Cheers,
Sarah