Normal Service…

…Will hopefully be resumed towards the end of this week!

Boxes

Dear Mum,

Have you tried clicking on the pictures I attach to these posts, it should take you to a higher resolution version, which you ought to be able to download. If you click once on the higher res’ one it should show full sized, which ought to be pretty big!

We didn’t get up as early as we wanted today, I think we were tired after yesterday. But after a few minutes of stretching and yawning we had breakfast then got in the car and drove to our new house. The day consisted of cleaning and unpacking stuff. I will take some photos but Deanne said I have to wait until we have it looking respectable so you’ll probably have to wait until we’re online in the new place before you get to see it.

We took a walk to the local shop, which we realised wasn’t all that local after a twenty minute walk there and then back again. We just wanted to grab a large bottle of Diet Coke and some Barbecue Shapes (crisps) to keep us going, however by the time we got back it was past 12 so we ate the crisps then had out Vegemite sandwiches, that I’d made before we left in the morning.

In the afternoon we took a break and headed to the local Bunnings Warehouse, which is the Aussie equivalent of B&Q. We bought some plugs, four way power adapters and a few other bits and pieces we need to get settled in properly. They had a café so we had a quick drink and shared a cookie, then Josh climbed and slid on the little play centre next to the café (inside the shop!!!) for a while before we shopped and paid.

At the end of the afternoon we were knackered, came home and had heated up pasta sauce (from a bottle) and spaghetti, because we were too tired to do anything else. While Deanne was making it (she offered) I attached an Australian plug to one of our English five way adapters, which means we don’t need to change all the plugs on the TV, video, etc. just the one on the power dongle. It was a bit of a fight, but I guess that’s what you get for buying the cheapest plugs! This means that when we get there in the morning we actually get to see if the TV/recorder will pick up the signal here.

Tomorrow we’re actually (probably) going to move in. We have packed a bunch of things into a couple of boxes, but will come back for the rest at some point soon. We’ll leave a few of Joshua’s things here for Joshy/Nana days.

Love

Dan

New House

Dear Mum,

Today was the big day. We set off to pick up our keys from the estate agents, who had kindly allowed us to get them a little early, and arrived at the house at almost exactly the same time as the big truck with a container full of our worldly goods on it.

At first the two blokes, called Mick and Nick, just removed all the stuff and put it in the rooms Deanne told them to. I was cleaning the kitchen. However after a couple of hours they had got all the stuff in and took a quick break, then they started putting our furniture back together for us. They started in Joshua’s room and went through room to room until they were finished, then they took off.

Bob took me to the shops and bought us some lunch, when I got home we sat at OUR table and ate the small pizzas (Dee and I) and the cheddarmite twist (who knew, cheddar cheese and Vegemite in one twisty package!). It was very strange to be using our own stuff again, so much so that I took the below picture of Joshua while we took a swift magnetic fishing game break in the afternoon.

We haven’t actually moved in yet, we’re probably going to do that on Saturday night after getting the house completely ship-shape and Bristol fashion over the next couple of days. I’ve sorted out our phone line, which should be active on Monday, then our internet should follow two to four days later. I might have to visit Julie’s to apply for jobs, etc. but on the bright side my rubbish phone actually seems to work pretty well there, so I can at least call the agencies to beg them for employment.

By the way, your not-pasta sauce sounds quite a lot like the chilli-pasta I once made. Tasted fine, but our mouths couldn’t quite cope with the chilli flavour along with the pasta texture.

Love

Dan

Our Lovely Table…And Our Son!

Australovenator, Etc.

Dear Mum,

Tomorrow is the big day. We pick up our keys early-ish and hopefully the truck with all our stuff turns up at nine o’clock. We are suitably excited.

Almost as excited as Joshua was today at seeing all the dinosaurs. There was, of course a muttaburrasaurus. Also a bunch of other ones we hadn’t heard of like australovenator and minmi (which we only found out about when Joshua bought his new I’m A Dinosaur video the other week).

We shopped first thing, just for some cheese but we relaxed a little after that. We had an early lunch at just before 11 then set off on the bus and the train. We got there just after 12:30, which was when the afternoon session opened, however the queue was already very long. The person who sold us the tickets said an hour and a half, but we only actually waited about three quarters of an hour, which was quite long enough standing in the hot sun.

On the bright side there was a pretty big brachiosaur outside which Joshua enjoyed watching when it moved it’s head and tail and screeched. When we got in there were a host of moving dinosaurs, all pretty big. The spinosaurus was probably the most impressive one, along with it’s youngster, although Josh liked the deinosuchus, which was a massive alligator thing, having a fight with a styracosaurus.

When we had finished there was a “play-laeontology” tent outside where there were some big puzzles and also the chance to dig for fossils, which is what the picture is of below. I thought you might like to imagine it was historical relics, rather than fossils he is digging for 😉

With our house move tomorrow the posts might become a little sporadic as our internet may not be up and running for a bit. However the package we’ve bought includes international calls to the UK so we’ll give you a bell as soon as we’re online…so to speak.

Love

Dan

Joshua The Palaeontologist

 

Bank

Dear Mum,

If you send me the address for the Hotmail account I’ll see if I can get it set up to send these posts to! Hope Paul and his enormous family are all okay. Joshua definitely seems to have some natural history genes, but not sure if they have skipped a generation on my side or come straight from Deanne (more likely)!

This morning Joshua and I had some chores to do. First and foremost was taking his library books and DVD back, which we did first thing. He got three more books and another Pooh DVD out and has already watched the DVD all the way through once, then part way through in French (his decision, not mine) and had two of the three stories, one before we collected Deanne this afternoon, one at bedtime.

We also went to the bank to pay in some money Bob gave us, because the man can’t seem to stop giving us money. Not that we’re ungrateful but I hope he isn’t making himself short of cash for our sakes. There was an indoor farm at Bull Creek shopping centre so we had a quick look at the animals, then went to the pharmacy so I could buy some more blood test sticks.

After lunch we had to go to the bank again to get a cheque made out so we could go buy Deanne’s new car. We picked her up from work and went straight to Fremantle so she could collect it, so now we’re a two-car-family and almost have a house (roll on Thursday).

Tomorrow I’m going to take Joshua to the Dinosaur Discovery exhibition at the Museum of WA, it has lots of animatronic prehistoric Australian reptiles and should be a good way to amuse Joshua for the afternoon.

Love

Dan

Joshua Doing A Dinosaur Roar

Orang Utans

Dear Mum,
We got up a bit late this morning, around eight, had breakfast then packed snacks and lunch and set out for the zoo.
The new orang utan enclosure is pretty cool, there is a walkway up in the air, so you are much closer to our relatives than you could previously get.
We also went around everything else. Josh still seems most infatuated with the cassowaries and the meerkats (especially the babies). It’s really good being able to get in whenever you like, we’ll miss it when we can’t do it anymore and might have to get some season tickets.
We came home at one-ish and tried to get Joshua down for a sleep, but it didn’t happen. In the end we all ended up playing, with a number of his birthday presents.
The picture is not from the zoo, as I forgot to take my phone. We have some pics on the camera but haven’t got them off yet. However what you do get is a picture of the boy covered in cushions on the sofa!
He also played a fame where he was “in bed”, covered in cushions on the floor. He got me to be his alarm clock, ticking then tocking, when the alarm (me again) went he jumped up, ran to one corner of the room for breakfast, then the other side of the room to brush his teeth. It was very funny to watch.
Deanne is back at work tomorrow so it’s Joshy/Daddy day. We have to take his library books back and go to the bank to pay some money in, which is nice.
Love
Dan

Egg Hunt

Dear Mum,
Well it’s Easter and all three of us have eaten our own weight in chocolate. Since tea time I’ve had 8.6 extra units of insulin, and at one unit per 10 grams of carbohydrates, that’s a lot of chocolate (and I suspect I’ve underestimated, at that).
I was allowed a bit of a lay in this morning while Deanne played with Joshua, Julie and Rick have gone down to Albany for the week so it’s just us. I was, however, woken up because Josh was being naughty and somehow the vacuum cleaner fell to bits and I had to fix it. More tricky than it sounds with someone else’s Hoover.
In the afternoon we went to Bob’s house. I spent a good deal of time installing stuff and updating things on his laptop, Joshua and Deanne played in the garden and watched a bit of TV. But then Ronda and Stuart (Bobs brother) came round too and so we all chatted for a bit before it was time to come home.
When we got back Dee placed some chocolate-y things around the back garden, then Joshy did an Easter egg hunt. That’s what the picture is of.
Tomorrow we’re going to the zoo to check out the new orang utan enclosure.
Love
Dan

Brrr, It’s A Bit Nippy

Dear Mum,
Actually it’s not cold but I’ll get to the title in a bit.
This morning we relaxed a bit as it had been a hard day yesterday, Joshua watched a few things on TV, including some Channel 22 and Pooh Bear (again). We had toasted cheese sandwiches for lunch and then Bob arrived.
We drove to an industrial estate type place, although to be more accurate I guess it was more of a shopping estate and visited Harvey Norman and The Good Guys, both of whom sell white goods.
It took us a good hour or so but eventually we decided on a fridge (brrr, it’s a bit nippy!!!) and a washing machine, which should both be delivered on Thursday after we get into the house. I’ll send you pictures when they’re up and running.
Talking of pictures I didn’t take any today but thought you might like this one, which was taken just after yesterday’s when Joshua had jumped off Deanne’s knee.
Tomorrow we’re going to Bob’s to sort out some software on his computer, etc.
Love
Dan

Day Out

Dear Mum,

It was a bank holiday today. We got up and got ready, then got in the car and drove down to Mandurah (pronounced mandra, more or less). We detoured to check out where the dolphin boat went from and then went to Janice’s house to say hello to everyone.

Joshua and Charlie (the dog) were both very excited about each others’ presence, in very different ways. Charlie was just generally very happy to see new people and so was running around and sniffing everyone, whereas Josh kept trying to run away from Charlie, which just increased the canines need to get close to him. They continued in this way for most of the visit!

Our boat trip was booked for 12 so we headed out and got there almost exactly on time. The ride lasted for about an hour and a half and we were taken all round Mandurah, which has parts a bit like Venice and other bits a bit like Sandbanks in Dorset. The sort of place you could imagine retiring to with fantastic (expensive) houses along the edges of the water, massive boats moored all over the place and lots of coffee shops. You can see some of the houses in the picture of the two dolphins below.

Deanne took some pictures on our proper camera but these ones are just from my phone and probably not super-successful. The second one is Deanne and Joshua on the boat. Josh sat on our knees for most of the trip and was pretty well behaved.

When we got back to Jan’s it was lunch time and we all ate far too much food and chatted. Of particular note (although I may be biased) was the chocolate cake Deanne had made especially for the occasion. But it was all really nice.

On the way home Joshy slept for a while in his car seat. After getting back we finally removed his dinosaur from the water, it’s a Minmi paravertebra, which is a kind of Australian ankylosaur. We’re going to take it with us tomorrow to Bob’s so he can take a look, as he was incredibly interested in what was going to happen after we put it in the water.

Love

Dan

Dolphin Fin Win

Family Happily Dolphin Watching

Headless Chicken

Dear Mum,

Today I did a number of things, most of which, frankly, weren’t very exciting.

I still didn’t hear from the woman who interviewed me last week so I left a voicemail message on her phone as I tried calling three or four times and there was no response. I also dropped her an email later in the day, just to ask for feedback.

I went to the shops to try and find some chocolate coated ginger for Olive, for Easter, which was more difficult than I expected. The first place I visited had enormous boxes of the stuff for $15, but they would have lasted her about a year and a half, so I walked all the way through the shopping centre, until I found another health food place where you could buy it by the bag.

I tried looking fridges up on-line, however that isn’t that easy either, for one thing we don’t know how big the hole it’s meant to go in is, and for another there is such a huge range of them that picking any particular one without seeing it, in the flesh, so to speak, would be a bit like ordering clothes out of a catalogue, in that they would probably be too tight around the collar and flare out in all the wrong places…okay so maybe that analogy isn’t the best but you see what I mean.

This evening I popped to the shops a couple of times for various bits and pieces so Deanne could make a cake, for tomorrow. We’re going to Mandurah for Janice’s Easter party, however Deanne, Joshua and I are also going on a boat trip to see some dolphins, Julie bought us it as a present, so hopefully I’ll have pictures of some marine mammals for you after that. Rather than tonight’s picture which is of our new room-mate. We’ve named him Harry, partly because that is the name of the gecko from Death In Paradise, and partly ’cause of Joshua’s friend in England.

Love

Dan

Harry The Gecko