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angharad_gamAnd believe it or not, Santa has delivered...
I've been meaning to update for a while, but lazing about on holiday keeps getting in the way. There are a few things to write about, but let's start with the house...
New House!
The weekend before Christmas we went to look at a house that had been on the market for a while at a fairly ridiculous price, but recently been reduced. We liked it, but didn't think it was worth even the reduced price, given the price of other houses in the suburb etc etc, so we made a fairly low offer. Afterwards we discovered that the current owners only bought the house three years ago, and for a massively inflated price, so we didn't think we had much of a chance. We were therefore greatly surprised when the agent rang us back on Saturday and said they'd accepted our offer. Apparently they are moving interstate and just want to have the thing sorted before they go. So yay for us.
We signed the contract today, so now we have to rush about and arrange finance and do all those other things you have to do when you are buying a house, which invariably seem to involve large fees and lots of paperwork.
It's a great house - it has almost all the features we were looking for, including a large and very lovely kitchen, and is one suburb further west of where we are now. This means Erin will be close enough to walk to school if she wants, but it is still near enough that it won't be much a commute for the boys to their current school. If any of you are interested I can email you the address and you can look up pictures on realestate.com.au
Christmas
We had a nice and fairly quiet (insofar as anything is ever quiet when my children are in the room) Christmas at Andy's brother's place. He is currently having his backyard landscaped into a Japanese style garden. All the plants are still quite small at the moment, but when the bamboo and other things grow up a bit more it will be very cool.
Here are pics of the desserts I made:
The tiramisu chocolate tart - this was very nice, but incredibly rich, especially since I used 70% cocoa chocolate in the bottom layer. There's half a kilo of mascarpone and half a cup of Tia Maria in it, and eating it is like a coffee and chocolate explosion in your mouth. But you only eat a tiny sliver at a time.
The Christmas bombe came out so nice I will make a separate post with the recipe I think. It was just perfect for the day we had - cool and refreshing and a lovely combination of flavours:
The limping Liam
A few weeks before Christmas Liam began complaining about a pain in his leg. At first we thought he had pulled a muscle, or maybe it was growing pains, but it seemed to come and go in an odd pattern and the way he described it was more like a joint pain than a muscular or bone pain (which latter is the way growing pains often seem to be). Then we noticed that even when he wasn't complaining about the pain he was standing in a very lopsided way and walking with a weird, waggling limp, where his hip would swing out to the side. So we took him to the doctor and he was whisked off for x-rays and ultrasounds, including one on Christmas Eve. Liam is a worrier as is, and he was quite disturbed by all this and very upset by the thought that he might have to have an operation. All that was detected, so far as we can tell, was some swelling around his left hip. Apparently this could have been a side effect of the chicken pox he had in October (vaccination people! it is awesome!), and since then he has come back to being a straight Liam once again.
2014
The first half of 2014 was already shaping up to be rather hectic, and now we have thrown moving house in there. The schedule so far looks like this:
Jan long weekend: visit from the parents
Jan 28th: Erin starts high school
Jan 31st: Deadline for some fairly unpleasant work paperwork. Also new house settles, which probably means
First week of Feb: Moving house
Third week of Feb: We have already been told to set this week aside for a trip to Canberra. It is also crazy birthday week - worst timing for an offsite ever, guys!
31st March - We are refitting the office at work and moving from 3 floors in our current building to 2 (same number of staff, naturally). This is the last day we will have our 3rd floor (which yours truly sits on, naturally) so there will likely be substantial disruption at work before and after this date
5th April - I have agreed to cook for the Baronial Transvestiture
Mid May - an internal work conference which may require some travel
First week in July - I am presenting a paper at the Australian Statistical Conference in Sydney.
I was thinking of trying to get to Rowany Festival this year, but looking at this timetable I think I will leave it.
Phew! I think that will do for now.
I've been meaning to update for a while, but lazing about on holiday keeps getting in the way. There are a few things to write about, but let's start with the house...
New House!
The weekend before Christmas we went to look at a house that had been on the market for a while at a fairly ridiculous price, but recently been reduced. We liked it, but didn't think it was worth even the reduced price, given the price of other houses in the suburb etc etc, so we made a fairly low offer. Afterwards we discovered that the current owners only bought the house three years ago, and for a massively inflated price, so we didn't think we had much of a chance. We were therefore greatly surprised when the agent rang us back on Saturday and said they'd accepted our offer. Apparently they are moving interstate and just want to have the thing sorted before they go. So yay for us.
We signed the contract today, so now we have to rush about and arrange finance and do all those other things you have to do when you are buying a house, which invariably seem to involve large fees and lots of paperwork.
It's a great house - it has almost all the features we were looking for, including a large and very lovely kitchen, and is one suburb further west of where we are now. This means Erin will be close enough to walk to school if she wants, but it is still near enough that it won't be much a commute for the boys to their current school. If any of you are interested I can email you the address and you can look up pictures on realestate.com.au
Christmas
We had a nice and fairly quiet (insofar as anything is ever quiet when my children are in the room) Christmas at Andy's brother's place. He is currently having his backyard landscaped into a Japanese style garden. All the plants are still quite small at the moment, but when the bamboo and other things grow up a bit more it will be very cool.
Here are pics of the desserts I made:
The tiramisu chocolate tart - this was very nice, but incredibly rich, especially since I used 70% cocoa chocolate in the bottom layer. There's half a kilo of mascarpone and half a cup of Tia Maria in it, and eating it is like a coffee and chocolate explosion in your mouth. But you only eat a tiny sliver at a time.
The Christmas bombe came out so nice I will make a separate post with the recipe I think. It was just perfect for the day we had - cool and refreshing and a lovely combination of flavours:
The limping Liam
A few weeks before Christmas Liam began complaining about a pain in his leg. At first we thought he had pulled a muscle, or maybe it was growing pains, but it seemed to come and go in an odd pattern and the way he described it was more like a joint pain than a muscular or bone pain (which latter is the way growing pains often seem to be). Then we noticed that even when he wasn't complaining about the pain he was standing in a very lopsided way and walking with a weird, waggling limp, where his hip would swing out to the side. So we took him to the doctor and he was whisked off for x-rays and ultrasounds, including one on Christmas Eve. Liam is a worrier as is, and he was quite disturbed by all this and very upset by the thought that he might have to have an operation. All that was detected, so far as we can tell, was some swelling around his left hip. Apparently this could have been a side effect of the chicken pox he had in October (vaccination people! it is awesome!), and since then he has come back to being a straight Liam once again.
2014
The first half of 2014 was already shaping up to be rather hectic, and now we have thrown moving house in there. The schedule so far looks like this:
Jan long weekend: visit from the parents
Jan 28th: Erin starts high school
Jan 31st: Deadline for some fairly unpleasant work paperwork. Also new house settles, which probably means
First week of Feb: Moving house
Third week of Feb: We have already been told to set this week aside for a trip to Canberra. It is also crazy birthday week - worst timing for an offsite ever, guys!
31st March - We are refitting the office at work and moving from 3 floors in our current building to 2 (same number of staff, naturally). This is the last day we will have our 3rd floor (which yours truly sits on, naturally) so there will likely be substantial disruption at work before and after this date
5th April - I have agreed to cook for the Baronial Transvestiture
Mid May - an internal work conference which may require some travel
First week in July - I am presenting a paper at the Australian Statistical Conference in Sydney.
I was thinking of trying to get to Rowany Festival this year, but looking at this timetable I think I will leave it.
Phew! I think that will do for now.
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Date: 2013-12-30 11:42 am (UTC)Yay for new house !
Date: 2013-12-31 04:19 am (UTC)If any of you are interested I can email you the address and you can look up pictures on realestate.com.au
Well, I'm curious :)
(also - Mmmmmm, tiramisu :) )