Gosh

Hi everyone,

While it's hard to relay all of the good and bad reasons that we've not posted in a while...whatever. Man! How many different ways can I start a blog with the same message- Sorry! We'd love it if sitting down to write about our lives came more easily, but it just isn't in real life. But you know, we wish we could keep in better touch regarding our adventures, we really do miss our folks and friends back home like mad. It's actually kind of crazy that this is our primary mode of communication, don't you think? Regardless...We've had a few adventures since our last post, and I'll tell you about a few of them.

First off, we're in Springtime here in Australia. It's gorgeous! Actually, I didn't mind winter at all here this year, not because it was any warmer, but more likely because I actually sucked it up and bought 2 sweaters that brought me through many a chilly spell. Up until this year I was in denial about the need for warm clothes here, but my purchases really made this winter pretty comfortable and enjoyable. Amazing. However, I do have a bone to pick with being environmentally conscious and surviving winter in Australia. Last Fall, our landlords took advantage of a government scheme (one of many, we certainly do have a scheming government) which subsidized homeowners for the installation of solar panels for hot water systems. Not only would it save you money, solar energy is the way of the future, blah blah blah. Now, one would think that in sunny Queensland, the abundance of sun would provide more energy for solar storage than one could ever need. This may be true in some cases (especially inland), and I'm aware of people that have gone totally off of the grid with the installation of solar panels to provide all of their household electicity who save oodles of cash in electricity savings (some even make money by selling electricity back into the grid), and have experienced no inconvenience at all. But brother, I tell you, we had many a cold shower this winter. So, the problem. It's not always sunny in the winter. It may be warm, but it's often cloudy or raining. Which means no water gets heated by our 'abundant' solar energy. Our system does have a booster, which in theory will provide hot water in the absence of sun, but it takes (I'll say, on average) 1-2 hours to give us anything near hot, and you can't use the booster in 'peak' time (peak time is an arbitrary time of day chosen by the electricity provider where due to high usage, energy becomes more expensive to use and, they may just decide that you can't use it...for real). At times, we seriously ended up boiling water on the stove to give us enough warm water to bathe Edie in. I think the problem here is that if you're going to go solar, heating your water is probably the last thing that you should count on solar energy for. If you just heated your water with propane gas and relied on solar panels for everything else, you'd be laughing (which our friends who have made the switch are). I'm guessing that solar panels for heating water are the cheaper alternative in 'going green', and like most cheap things, you get what you pay for. In our case, our landlords also switched their hot water heating over to solar panels last fall, so at least we experienced the thrill of going green via a cold shower in the freezing winter in good company (in separate showers).

Back in July, on another environmental mission, we helped our friends plant trees on their new property which they'd recently purchased. Apparently the council in that area is keen on revegetating land that was once used for horse paddocks, and so provide grants to new homeowners to undertake revegetating with native plants. Great deal, hey? Of course, we provided very cheap labour (a good down home bacon and egg breaky was all it took), and we also had a blast. Miss Edie is such a funny little girl. We knew that she'd love this kind of thing, and she had a great time as we expected. Basically, if you give her a job, she's as pleased as punch to be doing whatever you ask of her. In this instance, she was our 'tree runner'. There were trays of big trees and little trees which we alternated around the property, and she'd bring over which ever size we'd request while Tim would dig the hole and I would plant the tree. It was great fun. We kind of hope we can do it again.

So our friends Rachel and Paul (who currently live in Portland, ME) arrived for a visit August 23rd, and left a week ago. We miss them a lot. They actually arrived at a crazy time for us. About a week preceeding their visit Miss Edie was sick with a cold, and by the Monday that they'd arrived, we felt the need to get her to our doctor for various reasons, but the major one being that her belly was just growing and growing. So basically, I picked up Rach and Paul at 7:20am from the airport, and by 10am had Miss Edie at the doctors office. From there they sent us to the hospital, and the next week and a half, we spent in hospital with Edie. During that week and a half, it was discovered that she's got Hirschprung's Disease, a congenital disease more common in boys than girls, and typically detected in the first week following birth, where there's a part of the lower intestine (a very short part in Edie) where there are no nerve cells present to move things along. The doctor's don't know how she's made it so long without serious hospitalization, but we're glad she has. And we're more than ecstatic to have worked out a plan with doctors to correct the problem within the next year. She had an operation to help things along in the mean time (an ostomy was put in place), and she's a very happy little girl these days. She's recovered like a champ and continues to surprise and impress us with her resilience. All told, when we got out of hospital, we had 3 days remaining with Rachel and Paul, which were fun-filled and packed. They did a great job of entertaining themselves and discovering while we were tied up at hospital, and in the end it was just so great to have them here despite the crazy time. Only one of us (Tim or I) were allowed to stay with Edie overnight in hospital, so on our home shifts we were just so thrilled to have such great company at home to get our minds off of our troubles. They also visited us in hospital as well, but it was really just having them around in general that made things so much easier. So we miss them a lot. And of course, in times like these we miss our families and friends back home so much. But in reality, we're in a pretty good situation where our doctors have known Edie since birth and the hospital we deal with is second to none in terms of treatment and care for both Edie and us. We can't say enough about how 'easy' this hard time has been because of this. We, as always, are very well taken care of.

And in other news, Tim and I are expecting another baby. Yahoo! And I can safely say, that in the 14 weeks that I've been pregnant so far, the demands that the new one is placing on me are far less than the demands of our first. Yahoo! So, all told, we've got a big year coming up. Our new wee one is due March 20, and Miss Edie is expecting to be fixed up sometime following that...We'll know more regarding a real timeline for Miss E after a specialist appointment on Wednesday of this week.

And so those are some of the things that have been happening. I wish there were a way to convey the little things that make us so happy on a daily basis, but I'd be writing for ages. Thanks to those who've been in the loop who've been praying for us and thinking of us, and to those who weren't, don't worry if you think you've missed out on an opportunity, there's a long road ahead.

We miss you,

Laura (on behalf of Team Jardine)

PS. Tim will be posting new pictures in the next day or two. Enjoy!

Spring 2010