Moving!

Dear Gran,
We haven't written for a while as we have no internet at the new house yet. Why? Because the telecommunications company with the slogan "I've been everywhere, man" hasn't been able to provide us with the same internet service to an address 1km away from our old place!

It is a long time ago now but we did visit Joan and Alan when Julie indicated. We helped round up some cattle there (Ruth helped from inside the backpack) but Preston stayed under house arrest. It seems Preston's role on the farm is purely, um, ornamental.
Here is little one at our old home looking like she's ready for the big move (but in reality still being several weeks away from being able to crawl)

And here she is playing a duet with Cherie at the new house. Cherie has a knack of planning her holidays with us when we are moving home i.e. she plans them months before we even know that we're moving.

The new place has an interesting architectural feature in the orange bottle glass doors. They are very attractive in the afternoon light but mainly seem designed to screen views of the backyard and make the dining area dark.

Here we are on back deck with fledgling vegie patch beyond.

Here is our inaugral lunch on the deck with Neil, Ian, Heather, Leslie and Sue.

And here you can see little one's two teeth.

And since this photo was taken, she really is moving everywhere, man.
much love,

Brendan

September photos

Dear Gran,

here are some more Melbourne photos, from September:



Us, at your house! We had a lovely time visiting you. I haven't yet found out how we can play Scrabble over the Internet.




We visited a playground with Councillor Annabel and Tullio:


Annabel has now had her baby--- a lovely red-headed boy they have named Vincent.






Back at home:

Brendan is in charge of giving Ruth her bath every night before bed. She really enjoys the routine. She invents new games to play in the bath. The latest one is putting the bath toys in Brendan's mouth and on his head. This evening she poured the cup full of water over him. He was busy talking to me at the time, so that will teach him to pay attention.

In the photo above, I was sitting below the level of the lip of the bath (we put it on the change table), and she was peering at me through the plastic, and then springing up to look over the edge at me.



The new news: Ruth has grown two teeth in as many weeks. Maybe it's teething, maybe it's coincidental (hah hah!) but she has also been sleeping really badly, and waking up crying every hour or so. She seems to be improving the last two nights, though.

She isn't crawling yet. She sits up, is very good at turning herself around, and can kind of wiggle herself along, mostly backwards. She sometimes backs herself into a corner and has trouble getting out. Most of the other babies in her baby group are getting along at a great speed, so she gets a little bit overrun.

And, we move in to the new house on Saturday. Phone number should remain the same.

Hope you are well,

much love,

Julie.

Photos from Dinner Plain

Dear Gran,

how far behind we've gotten with this! We're now recovered from all the lurgies we've had. To begin the catching up, here are some photos from the Dinner Plain trip.

Firstly, the skiing: we only had one day of it, and as you can see in the photo above there was only a shallow cover. Ruth slept contentedly in the backpack for most of the time, but woke up to play at lunchtime.


Lunchtime after a walk. You can (kind of) see the snow on hotham in the background.


More lunchtimes--- this time out on the deck at the lodge.

Mum and Ruth.


Ruth touches her first lizard, which runs away.

I will add some photos from the Melbourne trip later on.

We saw Joan and Alan on the weekend--- they were in good form. I think we'll go and visit them in Goulburn (how do you spell that?) on the weekend.

Much love to you,

Julie.