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Wednesday, April 6. 2011Family
I could probably wait forever for the time to process photos to add a well-structured blog post, but life is hectic and rapidly becoming moreso, so let's write something down instead of nothing!
Phoebe's now at preschool two days a week and loving it. This prompted us to drop her day sleep because they don't encourage that at preschool, so she's a very very tired girl once she comes home from her fun day. There's always a new painting, craft, and germ to bring home and share with everyone else in the household. Great fun for all the family :) Two other days a week are spent burning off energy at gymnastics and swimming, where she's making rapid progress through the grades and now almost doesn't need the assistance of a bubble. She's in her big girl's bed now, and very much learning about the world and how to interact with other people. When she is rested enough, she can play by herself for a long time. We've had some great family times together recently, and even Daddy-Phoebe days to give Liz a break. A stand-out event was her being featured in our local paper after Clean Up Australia Day, which she loved even if she doesn't look it in the photo! Preschool has of course given Liz a chance to spend more time with William, and he sleeps far better in the absence of the noise machine that is his big sister. He's growing up so fast - at eight months he's now climbing up alongside furniture and slowly shuffling himself along. He's such a calm, happy little man that it's heartbreaking to see him suffering through nasty colds and coughs like he is at the moment. Still, there's always a big smile not far behind, showing off his comical first front top tooth. Phoebe's adapted well to William being around, and there have been a few recent conversations along the lines of me saying "it's time to go home now Phoebe", and in a very sad, worried voice, her asking "is William coming too?". She loves having him in her life, as we all do. Both kids are always a pleasure for me to come home to, and I believe Liz even enjoys almost all of her time with them, despite the pressures of a toddler, sick infant, and the majority of the house work. I very much appreciate this, especially since I'm working much longer hours due to a recent promotion at work. She's aiming to go back to work in June, but just how we manage that hasn't yet been discussed. There's other big things in life to work out too, but that's another post. Monday, December 6. 2010Some Days Need a Blog Post
What. A. Day.
It started out looking fairly simple. Just ring the estate agent and tell them we accept the offer on our Penshurst property that we'd had the weekend to think about, once they got back to us after trying to squeeze a bit more money, then tell the mortgage broker to go ahead with the building loan application based on the discussion we just had with the builders to provide a new quote now that we knew the Penshurst property was going to be sold. Simple enough, right? Of course we needed to sign some paperwork and rather than drive to an agent in Sydney we opted to Express Post it back from the local post office once they had witnessed a signature. Easy enough, quick trip with noisy kiddies but all ok. Drive back home, noting that the recent amazing rains had caused localised puddles and rivers in the middle of fields to gush to life. The world is very real out here. For those who haven't visited, the rental property we are in is half way up a valley with only one access road. The stream that cut out the valley millions of years ago is typically barely a trickle, but at times it floods enough that the causeway had an adjacent bridge built many years ago. We call it the old bridge, bet you can't guess why. It's currently shut for what appears to be an almost complete rebuild. Can you see where this is going? It turns out that on our fifteen minute trip to the post office we were likely the last ones to cross the causeway before the waters completely overwhelmed it, such that upon our return we were faced with this: Chatting with the local farmer who has lived in the valley all his life, the advice was to leave and return a few hours later. So, what to do but to head to our favourite coffee shop R. Coffee for a sit and a think. Then the supermarket to stock up. Then to return to the flood zone only to realise we weren't driving across any time soon. By this time the council had showed up and ended up assisting us to walk across the unfinished, wet concrete / mud / huge gaps bridge with two kiddies, some supplies, and the intention to walk to our house about 1km further up the road. By then some locals with less regard for their well being decided to drive straight through with enough success to encourage me to walk back across the bridge and drive it anyway (family-free). So we made it, and returning late this evening for a look the waters have receeded. Any further rain and no doubt it will all be back again. Along with copies of the forms we posted, we also managed to access with some family help Liz's payslips at her work and a letter from the office about her maternity leave, all also required for mortgage application. These were variously scanned and emailed. And everything had to go to the solicitor too of course. It's fun to do seemingly never-ending things together as a family. A bit of action and adventure thrown in help somewhat too. So yes, we appear to have hopefully sold our house and be building starting in the new year with luck. Just a few more items to knock over first but they're looking hopeful now. For the record, universe, I'm quite happy to have less things at once from now on. Brain melted. Back to work tomorrow for a break.
Posted by Alison Gould
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09:54
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Monday, June 21. 2010Back to Picton we go
We've just spent our first night in a new house. No, not our new house we intend to build, just a different rental property.
The one we moved into in December when our previous house in Picton was sold was a significant compromise. Given only two weeks to find a place and move out, we didn't have a lot of choice. But we were told at the time that the owners (one of who lives on site) were planning on selling it at the end of this year. So, this move was to preempt that while the newest little bubba is still inside, but also to get around the issues we had with the place. The landlords were almost completely unresponsive, only wanting to do the bare minimum, and reneging on promises they made to fix the place up. Paying for 5 acres but only feeling we had the use of the house and immediate surrounds due to the landlady living (illegally) on site was another. Lack of garages or any external storage when we have two cars, a trailer, a ride-on mower and a caravan to store was starting to be a big hassle too. So, we took the hit of pain and moved. We're back in Picton (well, north-west of it really) on 5 acres again, but this time with the landlords safely away in Sydney somewhere. The move was about as painful as you can imagine. Actually no, it would have been worse without the help of our parents - thanks to Margaret, Mum, and Dad (Happy Birthday!) The owners had locked more locks than they gave us keys for, and then when we finally did get in the the place looked like a bombsite. It took three cleaners all day yesterday to make it acceptable. Not a good start. But the setting is gorgeous - tucked in a valley. It's so picturesque that today AAMI are shooting a commercial there. Not sure if it's one of those dodgy driver ones, but if so then the approach road is certainly a good setting. Hopefully this will have been an overall good move, and the last we make before we move onto our land.
Posted by Alison Gould
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20:44
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Wednesday, June 2. 2010A Debt-Laden Australia?
One of the headline points that Tony Abbott has been spruiking in recent times amongst the rabble that is our collection of elected representatives is how Labour are getting us so debt-ridden that our future is destroyed and we are all doomed.
I don't claim to have found this by myself but have lost the source. Wikipedia lists countries by public debt. Basically countries at the top of the table owe way more than they are able to pay off easily and hence are at strong risk of what we've seen happen to Greece (#8) and Iceland (#11) in recent times. Australia is one of the the lowest-ranked developed nations at #107 and hence a long long way away from the predicted Liberal debt doomsday. We are very slightly more likely to be swamped by debt than China, the world's manufacturing powerhouse. Here's some selected entries from that table:
Saturday, March 13. 2010Land UpdateWe're spending a reasonably amount of time just mowing our block of land, and the associated bills with no real benefit are driving us to focus on saving to move on there! The first structure went up some time ago - I built a compost bin! Compost is rather difficult to move between properties, so our previous two have been left with a nice supply thanks to all our kitchen waste. There wasn't much point doing that again, so a bit of research and time later, and our land was no longer 5 empty acres. We've cleared some of the fallen trees and turned it into firewood, discovering our local wildlife in the process. Not long after we purchased the block, there was of course the question of how to tend so much grass. The answer was served up courtesy of an eBay-ed large commercial ride-on mower (diesel to run on 100% biodiesel, of course!) which we collected from the Hunter Valley thanks to the impressive grunt of the VW and a trailer we decided to buy to do the move ourselves. Both of these have proved great investments, even with a bit of repair work we needed to do to the mower. Starting this coming week our fencing starts to go up. The neighbor we are sharing the fence with unfortunately started the relationship off on a less-than-optimal note by reneging on a deal we had, however this is hopefully behind us now. The neighbor on the other side is a far different story - it turns out I used to work with him back at Strathfield Car Radios 13 years ago! One of those real small-world stories, and enough to completely overpower the let-down of the other neighbour. He fenced his block with the help of his father who lives around the corner, running an olive farm. This means he can borrow farming equipment as needed, although yesterday he had broken his slasher. The fact that he was slashing at given he has sheep on there shows just how much the recent rain has made the grass grow. Our block has sure taken some mowing in recent times! For the fencing we have to clear out a section of odd fenced garden that is mostly in our property but goes into the block next door which we want to separate ourselves from with the fence, this is tomorrow's task. The back fence is somewhat intact so we've asked the fencer to keep what he can to help keep our costs down, and I spent some time clearing away the blackberries and other overgrowth from the farm behind us with another new piece of gardening equipment we're going to need - a petrol whipper-snipper (using our electric one when the nearest power point we own is 3-4km away was proving a little difficult). We have decided for reasons of cost not to fence the front for now, instead waiting for a final decision on where our driveway is to go (there's a drainage ditch which if we are careful we can drive across but this won't work in the long-term for delivery trucks, etc.) Once that is done, we're pretty much done with the first phase of our project - get land and boundaries established. After that, the next phase begins - Services - where we get power, sewerage, water, hot water and phone available on the block in preparation for the following phase. This will be when we put up the barn with kitchenette, bathroom, heating, etc., then back in the caravan we purchased as cheap bedrooms and kitchen that we can sell later (currently sitting outside our rental property), and move onto our land! Current hopeful plan has us there in spring, after the new baby comes along. We could be there far earlier but have to pace our spending according to our earnings. I have a flickr set called Build on Razorback where I'm putting pictures of the process, and am also working on a more specific website to showcase our crazy plans as they evolve.
Posted by Alison Gould
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04:49
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Tuesday, December 29. 2009Merry Christmas
Here's a belated Christmas post with some updates on our life.
Phoebe had a great time on Christmas day, exploring Santa's presents, and those from her parents, grandparents, and other great friends. Having our family together for the day was great - Phoebe really loves being around people she knows. Favourite presents vary from day to day, but between boxes of Duplo, wooden train set, a play house, and piles of In the Night Garden books and a talking doll, there's plenty of entertainment. The sale of our land has gone through - pics shortly - and as such we are now planning how to move on there and start building as soon as possible. Our current rental property being only five minutes away has turned out to be basically the only positive of it - the previous tenants' seven puppies appear to have left a legacy of an impressively robust flea population. These things are sent to challenge us. Since we now own the land and are planning to get into temporary accommodation there quickly, we've decided not to do much unpacking here (hence the boxes in the picture). Exactly what form this accommodation will take is still up for discussion, but we may yet become trailer trash :) Lots of recent pics up in the usual location.
Posted by Alison Gould
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20:36
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Wednesday, November 25. 2009Happy Second Birthday Phoebe!
So our little girl is two today. Wow.
Recent progress means that she is now largely sleeping through the night, perhaps with just a wake for a drink or nappy change. What a difference from the Phoebe of old! She has also largely opted to toilet train herself in the last two weeks, such that for the last few days she only wears nappies at night time or when going out. Around the house she's happy to wander off and find the potty and look after herself! Her speech is amazing, understanding so much that we say, stringing long sentences together, and comprehending more and more complex topics daily. A real little knowledge sponge, and so much more than either of us expected from a two year old. Right now the cute little thing is in front of me playing with her new kitchen - birthday present from Liz and I. All the little girls we know seem to have managed to get these for their second birthdays but in defense of our originality we bought this one months ago! We're celebrating with family today and friends on Saturday at the zoo, all of which I'm sure she'll love. We love you so much little Phoebe, and look forward to watching you continue to grow over the years. Friday, November 20. 2009Rental Chaos
First, the bad news. The house we have been renting for a year in Picton has been sold underneath us. Although they had brought people occasionally through it, it was never actually on the market.
We were given 14 days notice to be out. In that time, we were expected to find a new rental property in the current tight rental market, apply with references, wait until other tenants had left, pack up everything we own, and move it from one house to another. Never mind jobs or a super-active toddler! That 14 days notice period expired yesterday, and we're still here. Despite me attempting to negotiate the owners were not interested, so I had to file a complaint with the tribunal just to buy some time to find another place. We had decided a little while ago that we were really wanted to build our own place. This is an amazing house, but not really to our tastes. So we couldn't complain about it being sold but were perplexed that we weren't even contacted for a counter-offer - the first we knew of the sale was the property manager ringing to organise a pest and building inspection for the purchasers! It's been two weeks of stress, packing, rental inspections and heartache, but we have finally secured a new rental property on Razorback, a little closer to Sydney. We have also secured one other more expensive one near Tahmoor and are waiting to inspect and apply for a far cheaper one in Picton next week. Maybe we're atypical renters in this part of the world, or perhaps it's the 14-year-olds typically working in Property Management, but we are completely over being treated like scum wasting their time as we try to secure somewhere to actually live. We'll move somewhere in the first week of December, probably the day before we go and defend our tribunal claim that 14 days was insufficient. They could have just given us the customary 30 days and that would have lined up nicely. Instead, they relied on a tiny contract clause to treat us in an inhumane manner. So a big sarcastic thankyou to the majority of solicitors, property managers, and landlords we've dealt with over the last two weeks. Thursday, November 12. 2009Movember '09
Warning - due to extreme lack of time (further posts on this topic to follow eventually), a generic cut-and-paste blog post is to be found below!
Hi, I am growing a moustache this year for Movember. I have decided to put down my razor for one month (November) and help raise awareness and funds for men’s health – specifically prostate cancer and depression in men. What many people don’t appreciate is that close to 3,000 men die of prostate cancer each year in Australia and one in eight men will experience depression in their lifetime - many of whom don’t seek help. Facts like these have convinced me I should get involved and I am hoping that you will support me. To sponsor my Mo, you can either: • Click this link and donate online using your credit card or PayPal account • Write a cheque payable to ‘Movember Foundation’, referencing my Registration Number 74440 and mailing it to: Movember Foundation, PO Box 292, Prahran, VIC, 3181 Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible. Movember is now in its sixth year and, to date, has achieved some pretty amazing results by working alongside The Prostate Cancer Foundation (PCFA) and beyondblue: the national depression initiative. Check out further details at: http://au.movemberfoundation.com/research-and-programs. If you are interested in following the progress of my Mo, click here. Also, http://au.movember.com has heaps of useful information. Thank you Monday, August 24. 2009Reunited, Land, Fires, Family
I'm absolutely overjoyed to have my girls back home again! They returned safely Friday morning (no thanks to Malaysian Airlines' website with wrong times on it, nor the airline in general with indifferent service and poor treatment). The trip was a great success, with them visiting friends and family in many parts of England. Photos to follow once I've seen them first :)
It's been a rather busy weekend since then, starting with me getting to know Phoebe again. I'm so happy that she seems much more attached to me now, perhaps absence makes even the young hearts grow fonder. It certainly has done for me, for both of them. While they were away, I went shopping for land to build a house on. Where we are living now is a truly fantastic house, in a great position, but I'm glad we tried out the place before buying because, in ways we almost can't articulate, it's not really "us". It's too ostentatious, not energy or water efficient enough, has a tennis court that disagrees with my knees, and which is also part of the problem of the backyard. One acre is big enough to grow food and/or graze animals, but not really when a good deal of that is taken up with a tennis court. So, we've all but decided that we want to build. I originally was on the lookout for land right in town at Picton, but have branched out across Razorback, which has the benefit of being closer to work, friends and family, and also being cheaper for the same size block. Not to mention that there are much larger blocks available, such as our current favourite that we're researching after I took Liz there and she concurred - 12.5 bushland acres close to a great little Primary School. Phoebe had a great time chasing animals and spotting ducks on the dam, so I'm sure she'll love it there too. It is however in a bushfire-prone area, but I have new-found confidence that we'll be able to design to cope (and plan to get out) in that worst-case scenario, after yesterday putting out a fire in a neighbour's backyard. They were burning off something or other, and the high winds carried some ashes across into their garden. Nobody home, nor anyone in the house between them and us, so I went in, called the fireies for backup and found that their garden hose just reached long enough to drench the area. If I hadn't have had the day off work, and Liz wasn't home either, then the outcome could have been much worse. Fireies arrived just in time to say "nice work mate, that'll do it" and left a calling card for the owner to get in touch with them. Burning-off is crazy at the best of times, but with gale-force winds predicted, and so much dryness around, it's pure idiocy. Luckily Liz had the car packed and Phoebe ready to go for a worst-case scenario. Which we both hope to never see. Unfortunately that car almost remains packed, with one of my grandmothers suffering a heart-attack up in Nambucca. I'm on the train to work now but might be off for a quick drive up the coast later today or this week, depending on how that progresses. She's stable but heavily impacted last I heard. So a very eventful weekend, let's see what this week has in store.
Posted by Alison Gould
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21:05
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Wednesday, February 11. 2009esCarGo(t)
After some consideration and much research, we took a trip last weekend up to Dubbo again - this time with just one purpose.
Despite knowing that we can live without it, we decided to get ourselves a second car. I looked around at many options and narrowed down various criteria until I found what we really wanted - a Peugeot 406 diesel wagon. Being French, and having enough room to lug your house around with you, it was promptly named esCarGo(t). Being bigger, slower and older than Albert the VW Polo diesel we already have and love, the dual-purpose name for snail is quite appropriate too! The thing is crazily efficient for such a spacious, luxurious car - despite having 7 seats, auto wipers and lights, wood-grain trim, computer, four airbags, etc... - after the 460km drive home from Dubbo the computer still says it's got 1100km to go before it needs fuel again! In fact the HDi engine in this thing is rather impressive: "You may recall a Peugeot 406 Diesel set a world record in 2002, driven by John who is a multiple fuel economy world record holder, when it travelled from Melbourne to Rockhampton on a single tank of fuel. The car covered a staggering 2348 km's in real day-to-day driving condtitions on less than 70 litres of Diesel." I'll do the maths for you - that's 2.98 L/100km. Ours is a little bigger than that one, but has the same engine. And room for so much baby stuff that we're planning road-trip North next month - one of the reasons behind the purchase. Monday, January 26. 2009A real Aussie BBQ
Our old house has natural gas, but now, out in a country town, a little way out of town, we don't even have sewerage let alone gas to the house.
So when we bought a BBQ a couple of years back, we paid up a bit to get one which could be piped into the house, then paid a bit more to get the existing piping extended to the BBQ area. When we moved, we brought our shiny expensive BBQ with us, but couldn't connect it to anything! A further problem was the lack of a built-in stand, so after months of waiting we finally got the proper cart thing the other day, and I spent a few hours putting the impressive piece of engineering together. A quick run to Bunnings later, I had the adapter cable to run the thing on bottled gas instead of town gas, and yesterday evening, just in time for Australia Day, the moment of truth arrived - most of a summer without a BBQ was coming to a glorious end! And what glory it is - the natural gas conversion on the bbq widens the gas outlets to about 2.5 times the size they normally are for bottled gas. The net effect of this is that having the bbq on bottled gas turned up even half way causes glorious jets of flame to shoot through the grill. Full-power will char-grill your steak in about a minute, and empty your bottle shortly thereafter. So, we have an overclocked BBQ, violating several safety regulations but capable of heating the hotplate in 1 minute instead of 10. Happy Australia Day! PS: Phoebe is walking everywhere now, there's no stopping her! Wednesday, November 19. 2008Our New House
(Continued from So Why Picton?)
Once we'd decided Picton may be worth a try, we set to viewing some houses. There's quite a variety in the town, from 1860s weatherboard places with lots of charm, central, even cheap, but not really what we are looking for in a family home. There's empty blocks to build on, which is a very strong possibility, but we're yet to find the right block - most new land releases are too far from town, and the ones that are close enough to walk are unfortunately not served by footpaths - just busy roads designed for nothing but cars. Even cycling would be dangerous in the 60-80-100km/h zones. One thing we did want to be able to (before we'd even decided to move out of Sydney) was to be able to walk to some decent shops. Penshurst is reasonable, but a good town centre is important, and it needs to be walking or cycling distance to reduce our car dependence, especially since we're so far away from the city. The place we're in for now is called Jarvisfield Estate. Don't worry, the word estate has negative connotations for me too, but this is nothing like what I had expected. It's an established little suburb 20 minutes walk to the north of town, 8 minutes ride to the station, no through traffic, and all one acre blocks (there's a neighbouring estate - the Botanical Gardens Estate - which is all quarter acre blocks). There's a really nice walking path around the river that borders the area, forming a natural barrier to further development along with the hills we have a great view of from our front door: The house itself is absolutely amazing. Built by the people who now live next door (they used to own both blocks but sold one off) who are in Real Estate, we're yet to find a short-cut taken. There's four bedrooms, four bathrooms (that's just stupid!), a huge kitchen, dining room, family room, and the "big" room which is the massive octagonal living room you really can't describe in words that I'm currently sitting in. Outside on the basically flat acre, there's beautifully landscaped gardens, a four-car remote garage, a huge pergola for outdoor living, a tennis court with lighting, full irrigation, water tanks (smaller than we'd like though), and a biocycle, which breaks down all the wastewater from the house into watering for the extensive gardens automatically. In short, it's a house way more than or anyone really needs, but within our price range, both for renting which we are doing now, and possible purchase if the Picton Experiment turns out to be a winner. We intend to keep looking around probably after Christmas at other places here, but this is going to be hard to move away from now. All pictures here. Wednesday, November 5. 2008Movember
Due to extreme busyness you're going to have to cop the same boilerplate you've already seen elsewhere, sorry! Liz is not too impressed, but nonetheless:
During Movember (the month formerly known as November) I'm growing a Mo. That's right I'm bringing the Mo back because I'm passionate about tackling men's health issues and being proactive in the fight against men's depression and prostate cancer. To donate to my Mo you can either:
Remember, all donations over $2 are tax deductible. The money raised by Movember is used to raise awareness of men's health issues and donated to the Prostate Cancer Foundation of Australia and beyondblue - the national depression initiative. The PCFA and beyondblue will use the funds to fund research and increase support networks for those men who suffer from prostate cancer and depression. Did you know: Depression affects 1 in 6 men....most don't seek help. Untreated depression is a leading risk factor for suicide. Last year in Australia 18,700 men were diagnosed with prostate cancer and more than 2,900 died of prostate cancer - equivalent to the number of women who will die from breast cancer annually. Thanks for your support, Tim. Wednesday, October 29. 2008Away
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