Santa Paws & Fruit pictures

A lot has been happening lately and we're just starting to slow down which feels amazing.

Neil, Anita & Aliza arrived safe and sound, stayed in Sydney for a week while it poured everyday, then left for Brisbane/Ipswich to find a home. We're leaving tomorrow morning to join them for Christmas. Aliza is super fun and I enjoy being around her very much.

Colin graduated and is now done school forever! We went to his grad ball last Sunday and it was exciting to commemorate his achievements but also alleviating to celebrate the end of our commitment in Australia. We're still happy to stay longer but it'll be on our own terms. Visa pending, heh.

We spent this last week moving into an apartment with our friend Erin and it was crazy the amount we've accumulated. We seriously need to downsize this year or it'll be a nightmare packing a few suitcases at the end. The move out of our house was difficult because a) living in a house is awesome, and b) we had to get rid of all the furniture. Due to a miscommunication with the people who were moving in, Colin and I spent the entire day today sitting in front of our old place with a couple of garage sale signs posted around the neighborhood and furniture all over the lawn. We managed to get rid of a couple things over the course of 7 hours for very little monetary gain, then borrowed a friends trailer to drop the rest off at a salvation army, who were closed. They didn't have a sign saying that we couldn't leave it at their door, so I hope that was cool. We tried dropping it off at this neat place called Reverse Garbage but they were full of what we had to offer. It was a long day of selling/hauling crappy furniture.

And last but not least, here is a picture of our (old) roommate Drew with a lost dog that he found on Friday. Drew spent a long time walking him around on a leash he had made out of shoelaces hoping that the dog would find his own way home. That didn't work so we drove him and the dog to a vet hoping that he was microchipped. It took us half an hour to find the vet and they told us to take him to the RSPCA which was too far away, so we took him to a different vet who said they'd take care of him. They asked Drew if he had put the jumper on the dog or if the dog had previously been wearing it. Fantastic!

E.

Oh and I took some pictures today of all the fruit trees in our old backyard:

Orange tree

Lemon Tree

Kiwi plant (non-producing)

Pineapple plant! (just discovered recently)

Mango Tree (non-producing)

days

Time is flying by, Neil, Anita & Aliza arrive in 6 days, Colin's finished school in 12, and we move in 20. Christmas is in 28 and the new year in just 34.

Colin didn't end up running his half marathon this weekend because of an injury. I know he was disappointed.

I don't have much to say, just wanted to let you know we didn't fall off the map.

E.

Summer time

Normalcy is slowly starting to return to our little home after a sad week. Colin finished his last exam Thursday and we celebrated Friday night at our favorite Thai place with our friend, and future roommate, Erin. Saturday we had a picnic at Coogee beach with Jenna & Willy and ran into a bunch of Colin's classmates, then we spent the afternoon lying in the sand with them. I was amazed that my first beach trip of the summer resulted in very minor sunburns; just a tiny bit on each shoulder. Colin went for a run later that night with his friend Jason. They're training for a half marathon on November 27th (happy birthday, Pete).

Today was an awful day heat wise. It was 30 with no wind and incredibly humid. After church we went grocery shopping to escape the outside air and it resulted in us buying a lot of goods from the frozen foods section. We skyped a bit and then made an incredible dinner. We ate baked stuffed potatoes, green beans, and pork roast. I made scones for dessert with raspberries and whipped cream. It was the first dinner I've made in months and I forgot how much work food can be. If you want the best pork loin roast in the world, use this super simple recipe:

http://allrecipes.com/Recipe/maple-baked-pork-loin-roast/detail.aspx

It wasn't genius using the oven for two hours on such a hot day, but I didn't start cooking until 5 so it wasn't too bad.

Colin's final practicum starts Monday and runs for the next 5 weeks. He's been placed at Canterbury Hospital which is a 10ish km bike ride from our house. Neil, Anita & Aliza arrive here in 27 days and we're so excited to see them! I had forgot how painful summer here can be, hopefully I can acclimatize in the next month so I can seem tough.

E.

Announcement

We are being audited.

I was soooooo looking forward to getting our tax return back because, as you know, we are poor people. Yesterday we received a delightful letter from the Australian Taxation Office telling us that our highly anticipated $$ won't arrive for a minimum of 12 weeks while they review our return. Seriously!!?? We have the easiest tax filing gig ever. We write down how much I make, the fact I have a dependent husband, and then they pay us. What's to audit?

Lame.

E.

Crash Boom Bang

Today was Colin's last day of class! He starts exams in 1 1/2 weeks and then his final practicum runs from November 7th until December 9th. He's so close to completing everything that it feels sort of surreal.

We're definitely planning on renewing our visa's and staying longer, probably until August 2012. Colin will apply for a skilled graduate visa and we'll go from there. Our roommates are leaving at the end of December for a 2 or 3 month trip then moving back to Canada/USA and we don't want to stay in this house anymore nor look for new roommates. The property is great but the owners haven't been speedy with repairs and it's been frustrating. Our friend Erin has a room for rent and she lives 5 minutes from our current place, so that's our plan for 2012.

It sucked being away from family & turkey for Thanksgiving. Last year we celebrated it but this year we were unorganized and lacked gusto. When I was driving home on Monday all of the cars started crashing in front of me and my little wagon managed to stop just in time, so I was thankful for that. I think the first car must have been cut off and hit the brakes, but sydney-siders drive too close and it resulted in a 4 car collision. The rest of the drive home was spent in a daze just thanking God.

I have an extra day off this week due to a funeral that my boss is attending. I think I'll bake a pie to honor the day off. The boys will be home, probably studying, so I'll stay out of the way.

I wish I had a dog to play with.

E.

Queensland

Our drive up north was pretty fun. We stayed with friends the first night who live in a place called Macksville. They have 4 kids under 9 and had some in laws visiting who have 4 kids under 6! It was a wild and fun house to be in. The 6-year-old niece of our friends was born with a severe case of osteogenesis imperfecta and was such an incredible kid/family to meet. If Colin and I were to have a child with brittle bones, it would be so tempting to wrap her up in bubble wrap and never let her leave the house, but they’re amazing people and let her live normally.

After parting Macksville we continued north to a campground in Mebbin National Park and spent the night. It was a crazy and windey road to get there but well worth it, it was so beautiful and we had the whole place to ourselves.

The following morning we drove to the Gold Coast and walked around surfers paradise for a bit. Colin went on a ride called The Vomatron because he promised my brother that we’d go on it if we saw one. We wanted to make it to Brisbane though so we kept going north. We passed by all of these amazing theme and water parks but it was already late afternoon, so we thought we’d maybe go back the following day.

Once we got to Brisbane we drove around and checked out the sites a bit but there was really nothing we had planned on seeing there, so we drove to Ipswich, which is where Neil & Anita will hopefully be living next year if he gets into that particular campus. We couldn’t find a campground in the area and it was getting late, so we just stayed in a hotel and ate pizza.

The following day we looked into what theme park we wanted to go to but realized they were SO expensive that we just couldn’t justify it that day. We went back to surfers paradise to go swimming but once we got there all these clouds rolled in and it got incredibly windy so we got back in the car and started our descent south. We had planned on camping that night but the site we drove to was an hour+ out of the way and was closed. It had also been pouring on us for a couple of hours so instead we decided to just keep driving, and called our friend’s in Macksville to see if we could stay with them again. They are incredibly hospitable and so we stayed there Saturday night.

We made it back into Sydney on Sunday in order to avoid long weekend traffic and then spent today catching up on laundry, groceries etc.

E.

Road trip tomorrow

Sorry we've been crappy bloggers lately. It's currently 10:30pm, we just finished eating dinner, and I just put zucchini bread in the oven. There were so many bad time management decisions tonight. When I got home from work we thought it would be fun to go swimming, then after swimming we realized that we needed groceries for dinner, and Colin had made dough for pizza earlier so after cooking the meat, chopping the veges, making the sauce...all of a sudden it's 10:30.

Colin's off school this week, and I have a long weekend coming up, so I took Thursday & Friday off and we're driving up the coast starting tomorrow morning. We have 6 days to do whatever we want and we'd like to check out Brisbane, a) because we've never been there before and, b) Colin's brother, Neil, his wife Anita, and our niece, Aliza are all moving there in December. We haven't spent much time north of Sydney and there are so many sweet places between us and Brisbane that we'd like to check out.

Hopefully we'll have some fun pictures to post from our trip when we return.

E.