Friday 30 May 2014

moving.

Tomorrow is our moving day, finally!! I wish moving was more fun, instead I mostly feel anxious and bored because I hate packing. I've done it a few times in my day. Our poor Molly girl is a little beside herself as well, she has no idea if we are moving down the street or to the other side of the planet.

Today is thankfully my last packing day, but of course that means my sweet Clem is having a no naps, Mom must hold and cuddle me all day sort of day. 

So I am holding her while she sleeps and writing this post on my phone.

The only one in the house who is loving this packing business is Mimi. She loooooves a good box for sitting, so every time I turn around she's found a new one. Silly kitty.





I estimate we won't have internet at the new place for a bit, so we'll be back when that happens. Have a good weekend!! 

Monday 26 May 2014

Pizza Eatin' Girl

The other day I was eating this flatbread pizza and Clem started giving me the "Hmmm, I would like to try that NOW" look.  If I don't respond fast enough, that look is followed by adorable and insistent grunts.


She loved it and immediately held on, lest I try to take it back.



Further attempts at extracting the pizza were useless.  This is now Clementine's pizza, silly Mom.



So I moved her to the high chair and that was that.  She mooshed it into her face for a good while and satisfactorily dropped it in the ground when she was done.  Molly is very pleased about the recent uptick in floor treats.

Thursday 22 May 2014

Mr. Bunnard Edwards

You may have noticed, we take a lot of walks.  Molly demands a walk every day and on top of that we walk to the shops and to the park and to the train and to anywhere we are not too lazy to go on our feets.  As such, we get to know our neighborhood pretty well.  

One of my favorite features of the neighborhood is this little guy.  This apartment bloc on our street has giant windows and we see him lording over the neighborhood from his second story window every day.  

I really have no idea what he is like or who his parents are (she??  omg what if he is a she!), but Alec and I have wild and sometimes silly imaginations.  We invented the name Mr. Bunnard Edwards for him because when you shorten it, it becomes Bun E.  ... get it?

Life is too short not to make up silly stories about your neighborhood rabbit!




Monday 19 May 2014

This Old House

We signed a lease on a new house this week!  This is a huge milestone for us.  There are many things we've loved about our current house, but with winter coming and a new baby in the house, we wanted something cleaner and more insulated.

So in two weeks we'll get the keys.  Before I start packing up all our treasures (and I love my treasures), I wanted to document all the little scenes.  We've done a lot of growing in this house, it represents a lot of independence here for us in Australia.

I hope you're ready for a lot of plants and color!

I am going to list where I got some of the memorable items for future memory.  These items are treasured possessions collected from travels all over the world.

Masks bought in Bali, sign bought at a bus station in Mokpo, and glitter skeleton was a gift.



My old license plate.


I love plants and I love color.  Alec bought me that big cactus for Christmas this year, the plant in the bottom left was a birthday present from his Grandmother Isabel a few years ago.  We brought these talavera pieces back from Phoenix on our most recent trip.


Succulent cuttings from all over and more talavera.  Also pictures of my littlest bros.


I found this in an Op Shop (Australian for Thrift Store).  Pro tip: Check the linens section, sure the sheets are mostly gross, but sometimes you can find sweet tapestry things or cool fabric.



Just in case anyone is starting to think this is the most glamorous house ever.. a picture of our bathroom sink.  Take notice that there are two taps, one for hot and one for cold.  This means that when you want to wash your face in the winter, you have to get cold water in your hand and quickly put it under the hot tap without freezing or burning yourself.  This is a lot to take on at 5:30 AM when you are getting ready for work.



Our bathroom shelf.  The bathroom is extremely tiny and mirrored on all sides, which is slightly terrifying when you are paranoid and need to wash your face at night.



Alec was like, "Um, are you seriously going to publish a picture of our toilet?"  I am because I think it might be interesting, plus LOOK AT THAT TILE.  Our toilet lives in a skinny room with its own door next to the shower room.



Our dining table.  I painted it pink!  I love my pink table!  We dragged that branch home from our local park, the painting came from my neighbor's rubbish pile when they moved out, my Mom brought that talavera last time she visited, and those cacti were also pilfered from someones rubbish.  People throw away a lot of really neat things.



A wide angle of the TV area.  


I bought this little kachina for Alec from a vendor from New Mexico.  
It's called the Early Morning Singer.



Clementine humoring her Mother while I finish my pictures.


So here is a little taste of where we live.  I put a lot of time and effort into making our house look nice and I am super extremely looking forward to arranging our things in a new space.

Sunday 18 May 2014

Wholeness

I read this quote on a blog recently and I thought I'd share it.  It resonated strongly with me and I hope you can take something from it too.


“I actually attack the concept of happiness. The idea that - I don’t mind people being happy - but the idea that everything we do is part of the pursuit of happiness seems to me a really dangerous idea and has led to a contemporary disease in Western society, which is fear of sadness. It’s a really odd thing that we’re now seeing people saying “write down 3 things that made you happy today before you go to sleep”, and “cheer up” and “happiness is our birthright” and so on. We’re kind of teaching our kids that happiness is the default position - it’s rubbish. Wholeness is what we ought to be striving for and part of that is sadness, disappointment, frustration, failure; all of those things which make us who we are. Happiness and victory and fulfillment are nice little things that also happen to us, but they don’t teach us much. Everyone says we grow through pain and then as soon as they experience pain they say “Quick! Move on! Cheer up!” I’d like just for a year to have a moratorium on the word “happiness” and to replace it with the word “wholeness”. Ask yourself “is this contributing to my wholeness?” and if you’re having a bad day, it is.”

-Hugh Mackay

Ps. The blog I found it on is here if you are interested.  

I don't think the photo is entirely related, but its one of my favorites and surely I need a photo in every post.

Friday 16 May 2014

"In the Country"

This week (now excuse me while I get all Aussie on you) we "took a holiday in the country."  It was Malia's birthday and she neeever takes a break, so we were more than happy to oblige when she wanted to celebrate by renting this lovely house and relaxing for a week.  

This seems to be a thing that people do here, renting a house "in the country" and relaxing.  I was sort of like, well what will we *do* while we are there, there's no beach! etc.  The answer is as follows, you sit around with your friends on the porch in the sunshine and make jokes and laugh and bond and have an all around lovely time.  

Our porch overlooked a nice yard and beyond that was open parkland so we had no shortage of natural entertainment.  We were also blessed with freak warm and sunny days, so nice to soak that up before what will surely be a long and crappy winter.

This is pretty photo heavy, but I couldn't pick less favorites than these.  They are all great!



As you can see, Molly and Benji needed no directions on how to enjoy their holiday.






Aunties are just the best and the goofiest.







We had a sort of "infestation" of ladybugs on the porch.  They were really everywhere, but luckily there were just enough of them that it was still fun.


Omg there was even a miniature pony and a horse next door.  They did cute things like eat grass and walk around and were very entertaining.


Look who's watching me watch the horses!



A hilarious progression of images.  Benji reeeeeally loves to lick and Jess is working desperately to break him of this.  He loves to lick Clem's face because cheekies and Clem loves it right back.  We will continue to try our best not to let on that this is hilarious and hopefully someday he will grow out of it.  


We recently purchased this Jolly Jumper and it's a huge hit with the little lady.  (Also, do you see how I put these three images together, it took me about an hour to learn to do this in some photo editing software.  Seems like a small thing but I am pretty proud of it!  Thanks for the help Alec).



Aaaaand an Oreo for Clementine, because it's her holiday too.

Friday 2 May 2014

Road Trippin: Day 2, Jerome

A little update on our non-photographed life!  Many of you know, Alec got a new job pretty quickly after we arrived home.  He is now a Technical Recruiter, so he'll be helping people find jobs in the tech world.  He gets to meet with nerds all day and talk to them about nerd things, totally perfect for him.

He's been at it for three weeks and went to Sydney this past week for extra training.  That means me and Clementine were going solo, a first for us.  Malia, Alec's sister, stayed with us and it felt like a big sleep-over.  We had a great time hanging out, but I think Clemmy missed her Dad and suddenly was waking up once or twice in the night.  Yikes.  This is highly unusual because she's usually an excellent sleeper.  Keep your fingers crossed that tonight gets better, because he's home!  Yay!

So that's that.  Back to our regularly scheduled programming.
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After Montezuma's monuments, we drove to Flagstaff with the intention of visiting Lowell Observatory.  We stayed at Little America.


The princess enjoying some television viewing from her pillow throne.

Majorly unfortunately, it was overcast and there wasn't anything to see from the Observatory.  I was glad we went to Flagstaff anyway, I haven't been back since I left and it was a little therapeutic to revisit the streets I used to stumble around.  It felt small in the way visiting one's school cafeteria does (has anyone ever experienced this, it felt so big as a kid!).

After some breakfast we drove to Jerome.  It's a remote old mining town high up on the side of a mountain.  I should point out that it would also be an excellent retreat in the case of the zombie apocalypse, take note Arizonans!






We had fun in Jerome, but I'm not sure there was much to see other than the excellent views and some history.  I think only about 500 people actually live there, with as many tourists.



This is an old jail which slid down the hill about 275 feet, through the street and to the other side.



We had fun walking around just the same.







It's steep.



Views of Oak Creek Canyon off in the distance.



I sat down on this bench and said "Take a picture of me!!" not knowing I was totally being photobombed.



Bennet asked to carry Clemetine in the carrier and he did a great job.  You can see how proud of himself he was, what a good uncle :)  I hope he won't be embarrassed if I mention that she had a diaper leak and his shirt was soaked.  He took it in stride and I think thought it was a funny story.  
The only clean shirt left in the car was one of Alec's black metal shirts and I know he didn't mind wearing that at all!



Teeheeee funny expression from Clementine.