A New Job

Dear Mum,

It’s the school holidays this week so Josh is staying at Nana’s house tonight instead of tomorrow. Yesterday was a bank holiday so Deanne and I did some washing and ironing, I built Josh’s new drawers, Bob came over for a bit and we also watched Episode V (as Joshua calls it), or The Empire Strikes Back as it’s more generally known. He really enjoyed it and so did I. It’s my favourite one!

Today I dropped him off at Julie’s, on the way to work. I spent most of today redoing the website for the company. I’m trying to get everything ready for when I leave, as I start my new job on the 13th of October. I confirmed the start day with Penny’s Dad today. Not sure how I feel about the whole thing but I’m sure it’ll work out okay.

While I was getting ready Josh did some cutting out, colouring and sticking, which is what the picture is below.

Love

Dan

Arty Boy

A New Hope

Dear Mum,
We bought a new bed for Joshua today! We were planning on getting him a single with a roll out bed underneath, so his friends could stay over ( when they’re a bit older), but Josh got so excited about it that we decided that it’s probably the only chance he’ll get to have one – we bought him a bunk bed! It should arrive on Thursday.
We also shopped a bit, presents for two forthcoming kids parties, and food, then went to Julie’s for a chat and a doughnut.
We went to find the bed after lunch then when we got home, settled down to watch The first of the six Star Wars movies, Episode IV, A New Hope, which I got on Blu Ray for my birthday. I really enjoyed it and I think Joshua and Deanne did too. Five more to go! Deanne took the picture while we were watching it.
Might try Skyping tomorrow, if we are free.
Love
Dan

Ben And Jerry’s

Dear Mum,

I’ve had an interesting few days! I took Josh to kindy on Monday, which is where I took the photo of his fish picture below. Then I went to have a medical, which I passed with flying colours apparently. When I got home Deanne and I went to Garden City and I started spending my birthday money, of which I seem to have quite a lot. I bought three t-shirts and a pair of shorts, and still have over a hundred dollars left.

Yesterday morning I went to a Ben and Jerry’s ice cream shop at Hillarys Boat Harbour, to fit a tiny computer to their big TV screens to show… I don’t know, pictures of ice creams or something!?!?! In the afternoon I did some fiddling about with the company website then went out to mess about with a couple of computers at the Labor party offices.

Today I was out returning a client’s computer and picking up a backup drive for storage. Not really a super exciting day, but there was plenty of stuff to keep me busy.

Josh is at Nana’s tonight so Deanne and I have been catching up on some TV and paperwork, although Dee still isn’t up to much because of her back. More of Rich’s work tomorrow.

Love

Dan

10 Fish In A Fishbowl

How Old

Dear Mum,
Had a great party today. Deanne made lots of great food including my favourite, which is her caramel slice. Got a wonderful birthday cake which was a bit like an inferno, what with having 40 candles on top of it!
Everyone seemed surprised when they found out how old I’ll be tomorrow, which is nice. The picture was taken towards the end of the festivities as everyone was leaving.
Once again Joshua was really well behaved, he did some art after we’d eaten and got lots of compliments for his penmanship.
He’s at school tomorrow but Deanne is off work so we can go into Garden City, after my medical, for a bit of a shop and some cake. Will try and Skype after we collect the boy from kindy.
Love
Dan

The Slow Boat To Freo

Dear Mum,
We were out of the house by 08:20 today, drove to the train station, got off at Esplanade and walked to the jetty nearby. My lovely wife had organised a trip to Fremantle for the day and we got in a boat which took us all the way down the river, seeing the sights, and incredibly expensive houses along the way.
After arriving we had a short walk to a nice restaurant on the waterfront. Josh had fish and chips, Deanne and I shared some grilled halloumi cheese and a sweet potato pizza.
We went to the beach afterwards and Josh got to run back and forth in the surf. He loved it.
Got the boat back and arrived home at about six. It was a really great day and we all had a lovely time. A fantastic way to spend (two days before) my birthday Deanne is lovely. Tomorrow is the family gathering at our house so should be interesting.
The picture was taken on the boat back to the city, Joshua was eating as seemed to be his main focus today!
Love
Dan

Some Pictures

Dear Mum,

I went for an ophthalmology appointment this morning, had drops in my eyes to dilate my pupils. Thankfully no problems, eyes are still okay, although I still think I’ll need to go see an optician as I can’t seem to read small text on stuff anymore. Sadly the hospital didn’t check that!

I dropped some paperwork off at the estate agents after I got home and the eye drops had worn off, then took some empty boxes to Julie’s as she needs them for something at the weekend.

Did some of Richard’s work in the afternoon then went to pick Josh up. He had a good day at daycare and had drawn a lovely picture of the two of us making a treehouse. No idea what had put this into his head but I thought it was such a good picture that I had to write you a post tonight to show it off to you.

I’ve also included the form he was given at school the other day for being really well behaved, along with some kindy colouring he brought home from Nana’s house on Wednesday.

Love

Dan

Good News

Joshua, Daddy And The Treehouse

Zig Zag Zebra Landscape

Zig Zag Zebra Portrait

We’re Back

Dear Mum,

First of all – happy birthday, I hope you’ve had a great day. I did call the old guy but you were out digging!

The broadband is back up and running so a quick note to say the move went fine and after four days we’ve unpacked a good deal of our stuff, although there is still a lot to do.

Thankfully I have the rest of the week off work as I worked the first three days of this week, upgrading a bunch of computers (just over a hundred) in the David Jones store in the centre of Perth, had to get up at about five thirty to get to the boss’s house to get into town for seven-ish A couple of tiring days.

I’ll try and Skype you tomorrow.

The picture was taken late morning on Saturday, just as we arrived at the new house and before we’d all hurt ourselves moving hundreds of boxes!

Love

Dan

Moving Day

O Is For Octopus

Just a quickie tonight ’cause I’m tired from running round the lake today!

Spent most of the day looking through scientific papers and writing down grid references, say hi to Rich, Ana and Jasmine, by the way.

Went for the aforesaid run at about lunchtime, got back, had lunch and then did some more work. After that I went to pick Josh up from Julie’s house. The poor thing has a bit of a cold and so was a bit cry-ey over dinner and bath-time, even though he had some Calpol. In the car on the way home he said he had an itchy throat, poor little boy.. I’ll check on him before I go to sleep to make sure he’s okay and doesn’t have a temperature.

Made Fajitas for tea, quite nice but I need to put a bit more of the spice mix in next time, we got it in a spice jar, like the ones you get for e.g. herbs back in the UK, so it needs some fine tuning.

I may possibly have a few days off the ‘blog, as we have a lot to do around the house in preparation for the move in a week’s time, but I’ll write when I get a chance.

Will try and speak to you, Dad, Rich, Ana and Jasmine over the weekend.

The picture is the lollipop Josh made at kindy this week for the letter O, we were very impressed by his colouring in!

Love

Dan

O Is For Octopus

Tea At Nana’s

Dear Mum,

Snuggles went out first thing this morning but hadn’t come back by the time I went out to drop Joshua off at Nana’s house, which meant I had to drive back to let him in before I could go to work. I called out the back door (which is where I took the picture) and the laundry door, but he was nowhere to be seen. So I decided he could stay out for the day and opened the front door to get in my car. He was sat outside the flyscreen miaowing and wanting to be in, so I gave him a stroke on the head and went to work.

Most of the morning I was logged onto a server trying to get their internal website to work. However it proved too much for me and I had to pass it over to Jason to look at. In the afternoon I went to somebody’s house to look at a hard drive that was failing, but it turned out to be beyond repair so I had to take it back to the office to try and copy the data onto another one.

Got home at spot on half five and changed, then Deanne picked me up and we went to Julie’s for tea, a roast dinner, very nice, followed by a sticky date pudding with ice cream and then some chocolate cake. Think I may need a run tomorrow! Olive was there too and Joshua, obviously. The poor little thing (Josh, not Olive) was tired out and I think he’s feeling a bit peaky. He was quite clingy and wanted to sit on my knee and cuddle me between courses, we were a bit worried he would want to come home with us after seven weeks of no Nana, but he went for his bath and got in to bed without any worries. We all got a kiss and a cuddle, then he went off to sleep.

Tomorrow is a free day so I’m going to work on Richard’s project, need to pick Joshy up in the afternoon so Julie can go out to bowling in the evening.

Love

Dan

Spider Web

Techie Stuff

Dear Mum,

Work today was pretty good, I went to a site and actually had to take a PC to pieces to find out what was wrong with it. Turned out the power switch had come loose so it wouldn’t start up. I fixed it, went back to the office then got on with some website editing for the business.

However the best bit of today was when I got a call from Deanne to say that her boss had called her into his office, where he had offered her a slightly different role to fill in for someone who’s left. It means she’ll get to stay at the zoo just a little bit longer, and hopefully long enough to find a slightly more permanent (and more part time!) position.

I got home to a lovely pasta bake that Deanne had made, an interesting recipe that included a tin of tomato soup and torn up pieces of bread. Tasty.

We’re getting on with the packing and the house is slowly receding into multiple boxes, hopefully everything’ll be ready by moving day.

I also wrapped a present for a certain someone, which I’ll be posting in the next few days. I took a photo so you know what to look for when it arrives and don’t accidentally open it before the big day.

Tomorrow I’m dropping Josh off at Julie’s then she’s taking him to school and picking him up, then he’s staying over at hers, we’ve been invited over for tea, so it should be a nice relaxing evening for us.

Love

Dan

Mum’s Present