2008 - Yearly Roundup

Merry Christmas!

Well, I started this 2008 Year in Brief before Christmas and I’m sure it’s no surprise to most of you that I’m finishing it after the New Year!   It was a busy year for all the Barlows, none the least our new addition, Julia.  We've had Julia now for a year and she's really had a wonderful impact on our lives!  She won all our hearts, despite making it very difficult at times with her rambunctious behaviour and her penchant for chewing things.  Over the course of the year she managed to eat (not just chew), two of Grant’s football socks (which came back up two days later!), a mobile phone, a calculator, cockroach bait, hose fittings, numerous toys, and too many objects for me to remember.  She also pulled Spike's laptop off the table and cracked it and ate through a game machine camera cable.   If you're wondering why we still have her and how we can still love her as much as we do, you need to see the movie I watched the other day with Zoe called 'Marley and Me'.  They are very similar dogs, though surprisingly 'Marley makes Jules look good'.  Zoe wants to get her a dog jacket and print that on the back of it.  I want to get a t-shirt to wear when I'm out walking with her which says 'Yes, she's bad, but she's no Marley!'    It was difficult for us to go away anywhere for holidays with her, but we did manage to get away for a weekend or two (mostly for soccer tournaments around the district for Grant's team).  We did take Jules to a dog friendly caravan park on the coast at the beginning of the year and even introduced her to the beach.  She loved the sand, but not the water, so over the summer we took her to a river and now that the local creek is running, we (mostly Spike) take her for walks down there and she loves to run and jump in the shallow water.  As you can tell by the huge paragraph I've just written about her, she is a BIG part of our lives now.

Zoe's Futsal Team

The other amazing thing that happened in 2008 was that Zoe finished her first year in high school!  I know all parents say this, but jee the year went by so fast!  She's grown and matured and managed to emerge unscathed and by the end of the year not only did well at school, but LOVED it!  She can't wait to go back in a couple of weeks time.  Whew.  It was touch and go for a while at the beginning of the year, but she surprised us with how well she ended up coping and eventually thriving. She's now 156 cm tall and only 7cm shorter than me!  She loves playing the trumpet in the school band and her sporting love is Futsal (and soccer in the winter).  She'd make a great Judo player, but it's hard to fit everything in.  She was going along to Jujutsu with Spike and was doing well, she's got great core strength and loves to throw herself around.  We're hoping this year that her soccer training will be on a different day so that she can start again with Spike.

Miles Franklin Futsal rep team.

Grant's year can be summed up by one word...sport.  I think between both the kids (and Spike and I) we had 1 day during the 7 that we didn't have any games or training on.  Grant continued to play well in both indoor and outdoor soccer, but also played softball early in 2008 in the act championships and picked up cricket for the first time at the end of 2008.  It quickly became another one of his loves.  He also surprised us with how quickly and well he learnt how to play the recorder.  His ambition is to play percussion in the school band next year so we enrolled him in recorder to give him some experience in playing and reading music.  Eventually he would like to attend the same school that Zoe attends as they've got an amazing music program there.  They also have a sporting excellence program too and we're hoping he'll get into that.  Zoe travelled to the south coast for a band tour and played many performances at different events throughout the year at school, as well as the ACT Eisteddfod.  So Grant sees the amazing things her school does and wants to be involved in them too.

Anyway, it's not all about the kids! so here are a couple of quick bits of information about this year for Spike and I....

Spike

Won the University teaching award for excellence in teaching...about time!

Started playing soccer again after 30 or so years....and loves it!  Now can't wait to play and train each week and was going through withdrawals during the summer break.

Bought a new car in August.  Hyundai i30 (environmentally friendly car) which runs

on diesel and is incredibly economical.  Great to use to get to work and back but we also use it for quick  trips down the coast and to see our parents, cause it so much more economical than the Subaru.

Coached Zoe's futsal team

Continued with Jujutsu, but since it clashed with soccer training, he missed many trainings and isn't sure what to do this year

and appeared on the cult gaming show in Australia for his research into games. (Good Game)

Maria

Continued with Tai Chi and finally learnt all 24 movements!  Yay! Only took 18 months! Only to forget heaps of the form over the summer break.

Completed a pastel portrait course at the school of art during the first half of the year and loved it!

Continued with work at the local school

and spent many hours driving kids to and from sporting events.

We had many short trips away this year, some for relaxation but often it was for a soccer tournament somewhere.  Grant was chosen to play in the 2nd division soccer team this year which required not only travel around Canberra each weekend, but the team registered for many soccer tournaments around Canberra and the district.  We had tournaments away in Cowra (my home town, to the delight of my Mum who got to watch Grant play), Young, and an enjoyable weekend at Narooma.  His team also played in the Kanga Cup in Canberra and did very well.  

Beach Bums!

Other family trips away include, introducing Julia to the ocean at Kioloa.  We stayed at a dog friendly caravan park with Arthur in his caravan and introduced her to the beach.   Of course the waves terrified her but Zoe managed to coax her in!  We also gave Julia a different perspective on water by introducing her to a river.  We spent New year's at Uriarra crossing and she really started to enjoy swimming then.  We had several visitors to Canberra, our good friends Iana nd Belinda from Brisbane, Matsui-san a colleague of Spike's from NTT and we visited Cowra for Jason’s 18th birthday party.  Oh and of course we held our annual Halloween party in October! Whew! Talk about busy!

Zoe helping Jules into the deep end! :-)

Over the Christmas and New Year holidays, we had my Mum visit for a couple of days on Christmas day and Boxing day which was just wonderful.  Then we went to Wollongong to visit Spike's Mum and Dad for the New Year and then enjoyed a quick visit by my brother Tony and his family.   So, as well as doing lots of cooking (and eating) over Christmas, we we're kept busy but not too busy, which made this Christmas one of the best for me.  We baked over 12 christmas cakes (1/2 size) as gifts for family and friends.  Well, when I say we, Spike does the baking and I do the decorating.  I did however bake 3 of my own this year to try out a new recipe and just enjoyed a piece of the one we kept for ourselves this morning with coffee.  Yum!  We, as a family, also baked some shortbread, some fruit mince pies and made an amazing Gingerbread House which we had fun not only baking and decorating, but devouring over Christmas.  Didn't last long, but it was very yum!

The Barlow Gingerbread House

The big news for 2009 is that Spike has been asked to attend an air show in India for a week, so we decided I would go with him for the experience.  We'll spend one week travelling and seeing some sights together in Northern India and one week in Bangalore where the air show is. We'll be leaving the kids in the capable hands of Spike's mum who will come to Canberra and spend two weeks here spoiling them for us.  We leave on the 1st of February just before the new school year starts, so it will be good to have Nan here for support.  Neither Spike nor I have been very interested in travelling to India before this, but these kinds of opportunities don't present themselves very often, so we're taking advantage of it.  If we love India as much as everyone we know who has been there does, we expect that one day we'll take the kids with us and do a longer trip in the future.