‘I was a mess!’

When loving parents Alicia and Sonny miss a major family milestone this week on The Block, they both break down in tears.

“We are those parents that would cancel going to work and a day’s pay in order to not miss our kid’s sports carnival,” dental practice manager Alicia, 42, tells TV WEEK. “I want to be a present parent – so for both of us to not be there for our son Koa’s birthday was horrible.”
Alicia aches for home and some positive feedback. (Credit: Nine)
As the weight of missing his son’s birthday compounds with the fallout from the drama with Han and Can and the negative Living and Dining room feedback the week prior, and fresh pressures of Rumpus Room Week, Sonny’s emotions get the better of him.

“I was blubbering on a drive,” plumber Sonny, 44, reveals. “If anyone spoke to me, I started crying – I was just a mess. That was my hardest day on The Block.”

It wasn’t any easier for Alicia, who also was pushed over the edge when missing her three kids.

“I had a full breakdown,” Alicia says. “Those two days were rough; I just needed time to breathe.”

“As hard as it was it was being away from them, they were also our driving force,” Sonny adds. “They are the reason we are there.”
Sonny and Alicia feel worn down by negative comments from the judges. (Credit: Nine)
The week prior, The Block’s most expensive challenge prize ever – a titanium caravan valued at $260,000, triggered an all-out war on site. And, for Sonny and Alicia, it became personal.

After weeks of giving generously to their competitors, Alicia says the moment she discovered that House Two’s Han and Can had “copied” an idea felt like “a massive betrayal”.

“This was our superpower,” Sonny said of the idea that was going to set their house apart for the Hepburn Spa challenge. “We put our heart and soul into that challenge, so to see them take it… It was disappointing.”

“Sonny worked his butt off to make it happen,” adds Alicia. “Him being the only plumber was meant to be our big advantage.”

Fuming about the situation, the married couple approach Han and Can. The tension escalates when one House Two teammate flatly denies the accusation, while the other later offers an apology.

The confusion only deepens when Han and Can offer to give Sonny and Alicia the caravan prize if they win.

“At the time, it felt like an admission of guilt,” Alicia admits. “Why offer it if you didn’t do it?”
Will this week’s set back cost the Gold Coast couple a room?
The parents of three kids, daughter Aria, 12, and sons Boston, 11, and Koa, eight, said it wasn’t the first time they’d experienced a setback in life. They opened up about how, years ago, their small business nearly went under when someone ripped them off.

“They didn’t pay me a substantial amount of money and that put a massive hole in our cash flow,” Sonny recalls. “We were lucky my sister could put us up at her place for a bit.”

“We had to rely heavily on our parents,” Alicia adds. “We had three young kids and it was not much fun. We were playing Survivor before
it was on TV!”
Alicia has reached her breaking point.
As long-time fans of The Block, Alicia and Sonny fully expected the beginning of their Block journey to be full of excitement, but the drama hit from the outset.

“The Gold Coast [airport] shut down because the cyclone hit. We were one of the last flights out,” Alicia says.
Sonny, Koa, Boston, Aria and Alicia are a tight-knit fam!
The couple’s children were forced to flee the family home along with Alicia’s parents. They scattered to different friends’ houses to seek shelter as gale-force winds and wild weather circled their home and the power was cut off. So they started their Block journey with their minds stuck in overdrive.

“There was no off switch that first week,” Sonny says. “No one could go back for a week, and we were fully expecting someone to go home and discover a tree through our house.”
(Credit: Nine)
The pair have claimed to be no “epic renovators,” but the building process isn’t completely abnormal to the happily married couple who have built their current family home and previously renovated a granny flat.

“We wanted to have a crack at The Block as we’ve watched it from day one. We love the show! Alicia started watching season one with her mum,” they said..

After so many years together, facing the positives and the negatives – while taking care of three kids – the pair weren’t “too nervous” about filming.
(Credit: Nine)
“We were 100% ourselves the entire way through and always spoke our mind. We are proud of the way we always said our bit and moved on,” they told us.

“Hopefully we are well received. Although we are not naive to the fact that not everyone will like us. We’ll just choose to ignore, and keep on going. We know who we are and so do all those that we hold close.”

Alicia added: “Sonny and I aren’t afraid of confrontation. We try to always stay factual and keep calm.
(Credit: Nine)
“We are very good at voicing our opinions.”

With a decade of marriage under their belt, Sonny and Alicia hope in ten years from now their children will be “successful young kids who have navigated their way through high school and are finding their way in the world.”

“We hope to have a successful business still running and happily married watching our kids grow up.”