2011... (ALL of it!)

Sorry, I seem to have managed to not tell you anything at all about 2011!Last year flew by so I thought I better post something on the blog and then we can start afresh with 2012!! So, month by month, here are some of the years highlights and lowerlights(!) of 2011... Some months feel a bit light on things we did, but I have been relying on our Google Calendar to remind me what we did! Even so, this is a long one, so you might want to grab a cuppa!

Jan
We said goodbye to Shakil and the boys :-(
I went on a girls weekend away on the same weekend as my mummy arrived in Sydney! We spent the weekend in a house with a pool and a winery next door - whats not to love?!



Feb
A month spent with my mum! She cooked for us and spent a month making more friends in Balmain than we have managed in over two years!We had Julia's "Alternative baby shower". The venue booked for Afternoon Tea cancelled on us an hour and a half before we were due to arrive, so we cobbled together a little get together at Chez Child-Mitford and all was perfect.

March
Sham started his VMWare course which meant it was a nice quiet month for us socially...

April
We went on our first "interstate holiday"... a weekend in Melbourne with the highlight being some really really good seats at the Usher concert!

May
Ajay made his annual trip over to Sydney this year and this time brought Kay and Aaron with him! We had a lovely weekend with the three of them...

For Sham's birthday, I took him to a Michael Jackson tribute show. We had amazing seats and it was so much fun dancing in our seats!



June
Sham got some qualifications! He completed a recognised VMWare course... I don't really understand it to be honest, but he assures me that it makes him more employable. This turned out to be more important than we ever thought it would be as I was made redundant from my job. I am sponsored by my company so without finding another way, there was a chance that we were heading back to London having lived this dream for two and a half years! More about what happened with this later.

July
I came back to London for a flying visit so that I could be at the lovely Jo and Pete's beautiful wedding!



It was the very first time I had ever flown anywhere on my own... but I had no one sitting next to me for both legs of the flight there so I managed to rest loads!
I had a great trip that was over too quickly, although I did find myself missing Sham more than I thought I would! It was lovely to meet some of the new babies that have arrived since we have last been back- although I didn't get to meet them all :-(

Aug
We celebrated our anniversary and Christmas on the same day! Due to everyones busy diaries, we ended up celebrating Xmas in July, in August! Julia and Grant hosted a spectacular Xmas spread and the only disappointing thing was that the weather was unseasonally warm.



Sept
When we realised that there was a chance that we could be going back to London, I thought that it would be a real shame to have lived here for this long and have seen very little of the country. So I busily started booking some short breaks!The first of these weekends away was to Bryon Bay - a hippy town at the very north of NSW.It was an hour or so flight time but it was a world away from Sydney!The highlight of the weekend apart from the gorgeous weather and beaches has got to be the random musical version of a flash mob that just started up outside the market!Here is a picture of Shamir at the Byron Bay light house.



Oct
October was a particularly busy month for us. We had found a way to stay in the country - thanks to Sham's AMAZING bosses, we were going to be sponsored for permanent residency. We spent a lot of Oct getting together a lot of documents, filling out forms etc. We celebrated baby Fraser's first birthday. Check out the little man!



Nov
We had another short break in Nov! This time to the Gold Coast. It was a nice weekend of eating out and walking on the beach.



I had booked the hotel on a Groupon type deal and was a bit worried it would be rubbish, but it turned out to be a lovely apartment!



This year for my birthday we had a lovely HOT afternoon at lawn bowls... I must apologize again to my team for how bad I was... Let's just say, thank god it was my birthday- so no one could be cross with me!! Here is the winning team.



I am not sure when I got old, but I know that I have because of my excitment over being bought a tree for my birthday! Let me explain:
Some friends recently told us about a "fruit salad tree". Its a tree with several fruits grafted on - so one tree gives you 3-4 different fruits! I wanted one! and for my birthday, the girls got me a lemon/lime/orange tree! It doesn't look like much yet, but I will put some pics up when it does. Thanks ladies for a great present - and thanks Hels for the pot of poo!!



Dec
December brought the Christmas silly season with work parties (including one for Sham's work that involved a weekend in Brisbane for us!), team lunches and gang lunches. On the 19th, we lit a candle to remember our Ba. She must have been looking down on us because on the 19th of December, we got the amazing news that we finally had our Australian residency!! everyone's messages of congratulations were overwhelming- thanks guys!

I could now leave my job by negotiating a shorter notice period on my redundancy. I will miss the friends I have made at CMC and I will certainly miss the view from my desk, but it was definitely time to leave!



Christmas day started the same as every year- on the beach! We then spent the evening with some friends as we ate and drank!



Jo's list made me giggle as she had every minute accounted for - it was worth it though... Xmas dinner was FAB!



Thanks again Jo and Paul!!

On the day after boxing day we headed to the Blue Mountains for our final short break of the year! This was a special one as we were joining my aunt and uncle Baru and Nitin! We headed back to Sydney as they carried on their tour. On December 30th they arrived in Sydney.... also that day, our gorgeous niece Aria arrived into the world!We saw in 2012 in one of the most spectacular ways possible- on a cruise-ship on Sydney's harbour watching the fireworks! Thank you Baru and Nitin!



And that, dear friends, was our 2011... I am sure I have missed out some stuff, but I was mostly relying on our Google calendar and our photos as my memory is not what it used to be in my old age! Sorry if I have missed out anything important! Happy new year to you all and Don't be strangers in 2012 guys! By for now
Kunj x

December 2010... only a third of 2011 gone!

Sorry sorry sorry! Life has been pretty busy recently and I have just realised that although I wrote this AGES ago, I hadn't added in all the picture and published it!
Here is how we ended 2010 - and I promise to write an update for 2011 very soon!

Happy reading

Kunj x

Decembers festivities started with my work Xmas party. The venue was a boat on the Harbour and the theme was 'Under the Sea'! Some people went ALL out on their outfits, but I was one of the lazier ones that didn't bother...
It was a fun night which must have cost the company a bob or two!






This picture is officially my favourite pic of the night - it makes me giggle EVERY time I see it!!



As we said goodbye to mum and dad, we thought our next set of visitors were going to be Shams brother and the boys... but then we had some surprise visitors!
Hanisha is my cousin's cousin, but as kids we spent a lot of time at my aunty's together so it was really nice to spend some real time with her and her husband Amit as adults (although the term 'adults' is questionable when you consider how much we laughed that week!)






It was the well rehearsed routine of evenings playing tour guides - we managed to convince them to stay an extra night so that they were here for Friday drinks...



the evening ended with us being locked out of the house and Sham having to climb up onto our upstairs balcony (for once, I wasn't in trouble for leaving the balcony door unlocked!)





The gang had our Pre-Christmas lunch in a pub in Surry Hills. It was Xmas day as it should be...




except it was SOOOOO hot that a roast was optimistic! The star of the show was Baby Fraser!



The next week saw the arrival of Sham's brother and his friends Ashif and Brij (and later Amit who spent Christmas in New Zealand, then came to Sydney for New Years).

We had a nice day at Centennial Park with a picnic, bbq, a cricket set and a frisbee that ended up in a tree!




The rest of December was various semi touristy things with the boys - we did the going to work and then meeting them in the evenings which although tiring, was great fun. They went to Melbourne for 5 days on a road trip and then flew back to Sydney.
We had a few days where it was actually too hot to go out - so we stayed at home with the fan on and entertained ourselves the old school way - with board games! check out Brij's sunburn!



Christmas morning started with everyone opening the presents that had piled up under the tree.





We then spent the day on the beach at Curl Curl followed by a pizza BBQ at our place:









Between Xmas and New Years, Sham, Sali and Helen had a surf lesson at Manly.





Unsurprisingly, Sham was better at surfing on dry land! Honestly though, it looked really hard!!


I love that the point and shoot camera Sham bought me for my birthday also does HD videos. It came in useful while the guys were having the surf lesson!
For the purpose of this video, its important to remember that Sham is on a pink board and Hels is on the green one!



The last thing to do in December was to see 2011 in with a bang!

We got to a view point called Barangaroo around 5pm - plenty of time to have a few beers and get ourselves into place for what was the BEST fireworks ever!






Check out the "photographers"



Joking aside though, they got some great shots!