Closing time

As we get ready to depart in just 2 days, a short blog to bid farewell and keep you updated is due. Just to keep us on our toes, 10 days ago Celia managed to pull a container of near-boiling water onto her lap in her highchair. A cold shower, a short ambulance ride to the Mater Hospital and a few silver nitrate patches have done her a world of good. She's well and truly on the mend and it slowed her down for about oh, one day all told. She is soooo fiesty. Trying to do anything with her that involves her being still is like trying to hold down a juvenile kangaroo, so try to imagine dressing changes...not much fun. Tim said it well the other morning when he commented 'Dear Abby, my daughter is stronger than I am...' I have had to take her to the hospital burns unit for 2 checkup appointments since and she's been pushing her weight around the other burn victims in the waiting room. She totally flattened an 11 month old boy who was just minding his own business and didn't happen to notice her race-crawling towards him. As a bonus, she's been seeing the same surgeon that worked on Edie...Good because we know he's excellent and kind of embarassing because he's had to fix both of our kids...Either way, let's just hope that this is the last hospital visit before we leave.


Ceeley and our friend (and pastor) Michele. Michele is a great person to have around when I'm feeling like a bad mom (there have been a few moments over the years)...She has 3 boys, and always has a story to top mine. We are really going to miss her and her family. As for Celia, the bandages really make it look pretty bad, hey? It's not nearly as frightening underneath, thankfully.

One person that we've been hanging around with a lot since he moved here is Brian Fry. He's an American, a stable isotope guru, one of the 350 most cited scientists going, and happens to be one of the nicest guys on the planet. Edie in particular is quite smitten, as you can see from our photos she and Brian have lots of fun together. We are really going to miss him.




Edie and Brian, great pals working the hoola hoops.

One friend we've already had to say goodbye to is this guy.



What! A toaster? Yes. A toaster. A toaster from the 70's that has toasted our bread to perfection ever since we brought it home from the Salvos nearly 4 years ago. How many appliances over 30 years old do you have kicking around still working? Anyway, we sent it home with Chelsea and Burt, our Canadian friends living in Sydney who came up to say goodbye and to help pack up last weekend. We hope it treats them as well as it treated us- 10 out of 10 Mr. Goldair!


She's a very willing helper, she is.


She's also a very good director.

A few more pictures to end off our time down under. To our Aussie mates we say good on ya, you're a beaut. To our Canadian friends and family we say we'll be home shortly, leave the porch light on.


VEGEMITE TOAST!


This one has trouble written all over her.

Signing off from down under. Love to all.

Totally forgot this picture...

Best costume of the night hands down. Not only is the costume awesome (Nicki, aka, Wednesday Addams, is a creative genius), Remi and the Hulk have a few things in common, like freakish strength.

You might think to yourself, "now that seems like a pretty good costume that isn't your standard witch or goblin", to which I would reply "they are ex-pats, check out the witch in the back, you guessed it, she's an Aussie."

Hallowhat?

Ya, so it turns out that halloween isn't really a big deal down here. We've know this for a while, but are still surprised that people wouldn't take advantage of the excuse to dress up in anything they want and get candy for it. Silly really.

It is getting more popular though. Last year our friend Anjali hosted a great party on our street for the kids (Edie's famous robot outfit), this year our friends Allie and Dickie hosted one, and another great Halloween party it was. A few weeks ago while rummaging through our things to get ready for Canada I came across some scrap fabric that inspired me to dress our children as watermelons for Halloween. The costumes took a bit of work but they turned out great, and I designed and created they myself which feels pretty good. In fact, I designed them so that they will even be able to accomodate for growing kids, meaning that this stroke of creativity should get us through to high school. Awesome.


Ya, Tim and I were farmers, another popular costume from childhood due to the fact that it required very little costume prep-work, hobos and bums also being quite popular. And don't let our faces fool you, we were having a great time.


Lots of room to grow in this one.


Her eyes say it all- my parents have dressed me up as a piece of fruit and are trying to hock me.


Tim decided to ditch the sign after narrowly avoiding poking someone with his watermelon stand. I followed suit shortly, but I think that I'm looking quite relaxed with my stand, it was like having a counter to lean on in front of me all of the time- genius!

One thing we did learn about Halloween down under is that Aussies are generally still in the 'Halloween should be scary' mode, which is what I thought when I was 5 (after 5 I just wanted to be a punk rocker most years, ahhh the 80's). Now I dress my kids in watermelon suits, scary schmary...it's the dressing up and candy factor that makes it fun. So it turns out that we were the only folks not dressed up as witches or...well, witches mainly, with a devil and a skeleton or two kicking around.

The party started at 4pm and the kids entertained themselves by digging candy out of the sandpit graveyard and then cycling between eating the candy and crashing temporarily. By 6pm it was time for Celia to get to bed so we put her down in one of the spare rooms. The other kids, still hyped up on lollies, crashed in front of the TV watching scoobie doo, which we found hilarous. Tim and I decided then to head down to Dickie's bar and pretend that we didn't have kids. After about 10 minutes of relaxing someone let us know that there was a baby screaming her head off in one of the rooms, all signs pointed to Ceeley. So, at 7:00 Tim and I carried the girls back down the street accepting that our 10 minutes of peace at the bar was a good enough reason for having made the effort to get to the Halloween party- that and seeing a whole bunch of friends that we're going to miss so much when we leave.

It's not too long now before we do leave. The calendar is packed and our house is not, but we're slowly and surely getting our ducks in a row.

Ceeley is on the move and loving the incorporation of things like vegemite toast into her diet. She's also picking up on waving, which delights all of us (yes, there is a whole lot of waving going on in this house now, C's first lesson in how to make mom and dad look like idiots). Miss E is doing all that she can to prevent Ceeley from having fun, with the exception of tackling her every now and then. Life is pretty interesting these days. I can no longer assume that the chaos that erupts on a regular basis in this house is caused by Edie, Miss Celia is getting her hand in the mix now too. Also awesome.

Love to all, we'll be seeing you soon!

Laura