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Welcome to Wednesday!
I’ve been wanting to start writing my own stories for months now and I’m finally getting this done. This part of the blog (My Stories) is about what I get up to. I’m hoping to do a post here weekly on Wednesdays. The Our Stories section of the blog is my interviews with amazing women who share a personal story with us (it’s totally worth taking a look at those).
I’m backdating my story to December 2018 for a quick recap today – I can’t cover absolutely everything I did. It was quite a crazy and interesting time what with selling everything we owned and moving out of the house, so I’m sharing some of it with you.
I will cover January 2019 in the next post, where I will tell you all about Monique and the terrible, horrible, no-good day. Will also share some pics and videos of our travels. Fun times!
A lot of time in December was spent doing the paperwork for our move to Australia from South Africa. One of the many visa forms (Form 80) took about 10 hours to complete. I’m not kidding. They want to know everything, from your family tree and past physical addresses, to your employment history since birth. If you weren’t working as a two-year-old, you need to explain why and what you were doing.
I also had to renew my British passport very quickly, as it was expiring in March and you need a passport that’s valid for at least 6 months before traveling overseas. Luckily, it was super-easy. I filled in the forms online and couriered everything to England. I got the renewed passport back about 2 weeks later, delivered right to my front door. That was one load off my chest.
I decided to suprise Martin with a trip to The Carousel casino for a live show. I told him which night to keep open, but I wouldn’t tell him for what. He said he’d go on a surprise date as long as he wasn’t being dragged to a ballet. That was funny. I insisted it was a ballet all the way to the theatre, but the huge posters on the walls finally gave it away.
We played some slots after the show and I had a lucky streak. Then we stayed over at an Air BnB so we didn’t have to drive all the way back to Pretoria late at night. Surprise date nights are fun!
I spent a lot of time with family, friends and the pets in December, before we hit the road in January. For those of you who don’t know me and haven’t met my pets before, here are all the fur kids:
That’s Phoenix, Jasmine, Toffee and Vegas.
I wasn’t leaving for my holiday before being spoilt by Marinda, who did an amazing job on my hair. We’ve been talking about it since I met her and I finally made the trip. Totally worth it!
She took me from a plain old brunette to a spicy brunette with a hint of sunshine. Do you like it? I wish I could make those curls myself at home, but I never get it looking like I just stepped out of a salon.
Martin moved in with me in April of 2018. Then we started renovations on the house for four months. Not long after that, we found out he had been sponsored to go and work in Australia. 2018 was a Busy year (with a capital B)!
He still had all of his furniture in the garage, while the house was mostly full of my stuff with more in the garage. Yes, I had a lot of stuff and it had to go quickly before we emigrated.
We decided not to ship a container with everything to Australia as it’s expensive and you never know if your furniture will fit in the new house. (Although we are still living in Air BnBs and house sitting at the moment.)
Soooo, we started selling everything. We made a long Excel list of everything in the house, down to the teaspoons. We sent it out to friends and family, and then we answered questions, sent photos and arranged for pick-ups/drop-offs non-stop after that. We sold most of the bigger furniture items and many smaller items ourselves.
The rest of the stuff was sold one Saturday morning by Wonder Woman Nel, who can sell a household worth of goods in 60 minutes.
Here’s what the house was looking like towards the end, just before we left.
And the last few goodies in the garage, all gone.
We did make time in between all the packing and form-filling to go to IMAX to watch The Crimes of Grindewald. I love anything by JK Rowling. Seriously, she’s my creative genius hero.
We also made it to the The Guns n Roses concert to sing along to Sweet Child of Mine and Knocking on Heaven’s Door.
Martin bought a small drone to play with (he forgot he’d ordered it and was quite excited when it randomly arrived). He and Phoenix got a lot of fun out of it – until it got stuck in the tree! I can’t remember how Martin got it down, but he did. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
What would Christmas time be without seeing the lights at the Jacaranda Children’s Home? It’s a charity event that collects money for the orphanage, with thousands and thousands of lights that sparkle. They light up the streets and there are all kinds of pretty things to look at in the gardens. I was lucky enough to spot some sparkly giraffes.
If you’re in SA and ever want to order anything for your pets – I highly recommend epetstore.co.za. Their prices are great and they send you handwritten love letters with every order. The pets often get a free treat, too. We got dog ice cream this round, which Phoenix loved of course! (He got another special paid-for treat in January, but all will be revealed in the next recap post ?)
We decided to go check out Menlyn Casino. We had dinner on the rooftop, in a restaurant called Forti Bar & Grill. The view was amazing up until it started pouring down with rain. I had the spatchcock chicken and roast veg.
And I did end up winning some money at the casino again. I was having a very lucky streak ?
The next day I met Caraleigh, one of my good friends from varsity, to go for a hike at Rademeyers Nature Reserve. I love it there. There are big open spaces and hidden little pathways. You might run into a tortoise, buck with their babies, some ostriches… But the best is the zebra that’s always staring at himself in a window every time I go there. It’s the funniest thing!
I can’t work out if he’s looking through the window at something inside or staring at himself in all his stripey beauty. What do you think?
Here’s a video of the buck with their baby and the window-shopping zebra. Can you believe this reserve is in the middle of the suburbs?
And here are some zebras that aren’t too worried about how they look 🙂
I also made a special trip to the Prestige cinema with my mom to watch Bohemian Rhapsody. Great movie! Especially when you literally get to put your feet up and eat cake while you watch it.
By the end of December we had no plates as they’d been sold, so it was avo on toast on paper plates for us. At least we didn’t have to wash dishes for a while!
And that was December 2018! I hope you enjoyed it.
What did you get up to in December? Anything interesting?
