At the end of the day, Mum and Dad went home and we started making our first dinner in our new home – nothing flash, but still nice.  It was quite strange sitting down to a meal with just the 2 of us and Ella, but I’m sure we’ll get used to it soon.  We still have some unpacking to do, but it shouldn’t take too long to finish over the next couple of days.  The biggest task is Ella’s things – sorting through all her clothes to work out which things still fit and deciding which of her millions of toys is she actually likely to play with (our lounge room currently looks like a toy shop).

All in all it’s been a good day with mixed emotions.  Although we haven’t been on our own since just before Christmas, we have thoroughly enjoyed living with Mum and Dad.  Ella has loved spending time with Nanna during the day and then playing with Poppa when he got home from work.  We very quickly worked out our little routines, including Ella sitting on Nanna’s nap every night to watch her bedtime song on one of the children’s shows on TV.  We will miss being with Mum and Dad all the time, but as we’re only 20 minutes away I’m sure we’ll still see lots of them.

Now is the time for the thank yous.  Adrian has already mentioned in previous posts the different people who helped with the painting.  But what we haven’t said is how lucky we are to have had so much help from Mum and particularly Dad.  If it wasn’t for Dad, we wouldn’t be this far along in the moving process.  Dad took a week off work when Adrian did to paint and has been coming down with someone at night too to get odd jobs done here and there.  We really appreciate it and hope to be able to repay him one day (maybe with a nice retirement home, hehe).

Will take some ‘after’ photos in the next couple of days.  Can’t wait to show you all what our house looks like and start inviting people to see it

We also took all the boxes that were stored at Sandy and Richard’s place down and unpacked most of the kitchen stuff. It was great fun to go back through all our engagement and wedding presents re-discovering things that we’d forgotten about.

On Thursday a new solar hot water system will be installed replacing the small, leaking electric one and our fridge will be delivered then too. We’ve also been looking at carpet options to re-carpet the lounge which hopefully we can decide on and get installed fairly soon.

So it’s all systems go – we’re really just waiting to hear when our shipment from the UK will come through customs so that we have a cot and change table for Ella, plus the futon so we have something to sit on until our awesome new couch arrives in June. Now that all the painting tools have been packed up a bit we can really start to see the place looking like a home which is very exciting. We’re really happy about how well it has come up and are so grateful for all the help we’ve had to get the place ready.

Grandpa and Daddy had this week off to get as much of the painting done as possible, but are back at work this week, so we'll be reconvening next weekend to hopefully finish everything off. Meanwhile, furniture is being delivered tomorrow and we're looking at carpet options for the lounge room on Tuesday to finish off the transformation. The final problem is that the hot water system needs replacing and we're still working out what the best option for it is. So still a fair bit of work to do but it's all coming together really well – thanks to everyone for all their help so far.

We did what we normally do at parties – ate lots and talked even more! Mum’s good friend Michelle came and took lots of photos for us (which Adrian has put on the blog). Ella got an extra treat with her Aunty Kerry and Shay coming to the party – they are down from Townsville for Shay’s Birthday present/holiday. We all had a lovely day and for those who weren’t able to join us Adrian’s put together a little video:

Download Video: Download Video,

Then Saturday we drove up to Taylor’s Beach so we could see Grandma’s newly redone house. It was damaged in the cyclone last year and is finally all fixed up after much arguing with builders and insurance companies and it looks great. Ella enjoyed splashing around in the little pools in the sand at low tide.

Easter Sunday was spent in Ingham, with the kids starting the day with an easter egg hunt and Ella even tried her first easter egg. The rest of the weekend was split between Kerry and Lisa’s (Adrian’s sisters) places in Townsville just relaxing and watching the kids play. We’ve got some photos of the weekend up now (and we’ll send big versions back up north with Kerry).

Yesterday was Ella’s first birthday and she had a busy one. Visiting Fran and Sarina in the morning, Eenie in the afternoon and then getting visits from Katharine and Steve, Oom Pa Pa and Michelle and Janet’s Godparents Brian and Mary-Jean. She’s already collected loads of presents – the lounge room was overflowing with them.

Finally today was settlement day for our new house! Everything went smoothly and we picked up the keys around 5pm and Richard and Sandy came with us as we showed Ella around the place. She seemed very excited as she explored each room. The plan is to repaint inside next week, hopefully get some new carpet put in the lounge as its fairly tatty and then we have a load of furniture being delivered on the 30th. The address is 18 Lanfranco St, Rochedale South and at least for a little while longer it’s still up on realestate.com.au. We’ll get some decent photos up of it in the “before” state in the next few days then hopefully some much more impressive ones in the “after” shots.

In the meantime a quick update on the adventures of Ella … Katharine and I took her to have her latest immunisations today so while we were there we had her weighed and measured. She is now 9.64kg (70th percentile) and 75.5cm (80th percentile) so she’s gone form being perfectly average to fairly tall. She’s grown 5.5cm since our last visit to the doctor 4 weeks ago. At this rate she’ll be 6 foot by the time she’s 2 years and 7 months ….. thankfully they don’t continue growing at this rapid rate

Other than growing well, she’s also thoroughly enjoying walking, particularly outside with her Poppa. She has a beautiful personality, waving goodbye when you leave, calling out to the kids in the neighbourhood when she can see them playing etc. But her favourite game is still playing peek-a-boo around the wall in the hallway.

I believe Adrian’s put some more photos up and hopefully we can get some more video up soon too.

Lots of love to you all xoxo

On Saturday 5th Feb we said goodbye to Mum and Dad after a wonderful 8 weeks together over Christmas and the following day we moved in to Wanda and Alan’s place. The shipping company came and packed up our things on Monday, we had the flat cleaned on Tuesday, carpets done on Wednesday and Thursday was our final check-out inspection. In amongst all that we caught up with all our friends to say goodbye. We then spent the weekend relaxing with Wanda and Alan, making sure to fit in some quality time with them. We even went for one last English walk in the countryside, in the snow! (photos to come)

After lots of difficult goodbyes and a very special 10 days with Wanda and Alan (where Ella learnt all sorts of new tricks including climbing the stairs) we boarded our one way flight back to Australia, arriving in Brisbane on Friday 17th Feb.

This week we have spent a bit of time getting things sorted with the bank, phones etc. We had a lovely weekend for Mum’s 60th Birthday last weekend and this weekend was just as good. We had all Mum’s girlfriends here yesterday for afternoon tea and then today, after seeing Adrian’s Nan, we spent the evening in awe of Ella taking her first steps. Yes, you read right – Ella walked!!!!

At first it was just a few steps, but after a little while she was taking up to 10 steps from person to person, all the while giggling and smiling at herself. Watch the video below and see for yourself

Download Video: Download Video,

We then did the only sensible thing to do when in Bruge …. wander! We decided we should top off our experience with a Belgian waffle so found a nice little cafe we had seen previously. By this point Ella had fallen asleep in her pram so we decided to take the opportunity to sit down and enjoy our waffles properly. We both had hot chocolate sauce and strawberries and Adrian had cream too. The lady who served us was really nice and helped us translate the page of waffle options. Then when we were finished she gave us a homemade eggnog each to try. It was nice, but not really my thing, so I had a few sips and left the rest.

As we had already seen everything we wanted to, we decided to head back to the car and make our way to the eurotunnel, hoping to get an earlier train. We managed to get on the 2.20pm train without paying any extra, which gave us just enough time to give Ella her lunch and have lunch ourselves. When we got off the other end we drove straight home and were back in Maidenhead at about 3.30pm.

After unpacking and putting on a load of washing I went and picked Laura up from the station and we got a few things from Waitrose (including something easy for dinner so none of us had to cook).

Our last European adventure is now over But we had a fabulous weekend and thoroughly enjoyed our little getaway. It is the first family holiday we’ve had with just the 3 of us and we enjoyed every minute of it. The hotel was perfect as we had plenty of space and with it being so close to the Markt we were able to come and go as we pleased. It was so nice to see Ella enjoying herself – she has this new little thing we call a ‘boogie’ where she wiggles her body from her bum up like a little dance (don’t know how else to explain it). She took great delight in making new friends everywhere we went and was such a good girl the whole trip. All in all a great trip

After a brief look at some of the shops, we walked back to the hotel and got the pram out of the car. We took a nice scenic walk through the canals to the Half-Moon Brewery, then found one of many chocolate shops that had nice take-away hot chocolates. We kept walking to the Minnewater (lake of love), where it is said that if you throw a coin into the lake you will find your true love. Since Adrian and I already have each other, we gave Ella a coin and helped her to throw it in. From there we continued our walk to the main train station where we found a nice little place for all 3 of us to have lunch.

The reason we had gone to the station was because they had an ice sculpture exhibition on the square in front of the station. This year the theme was Disney, so we paid our money and put any available piece of clothing on to prepare for the sub-zero temperature. The sculptures were amazing but it didn’t take Ella long to get grumpy (and I was freezing) so we had a quick look at everything and then made our way to the exit.

We walked back to the hotel so that Ella could have some play time and her afternoon tea, and then went back out again to buy some beer. Adrian bought two packs of local beers – one pack for himself and one pack for Dad. It was too hard to carry around, so back to the hotel we went. We then went and had a look at some more shops and Ella fell asleep in the pram again so we kept wandering, going down streets we hadn’t explored yet. We decided it would be easier to feed Ella in the hotel room, so we did that and then carried her to our restaurant choice for tonight, on the corner of the Markt. Tonight we both had Waterzooi Chicken (chicken in a creamy soup) and asked the waiter for some bread for Ella to munch on (she happily devoured mine last night and was a good tactic for keeping her occupied).

Adrian has put up some photos from yesterday and is currently sorting through the ones from today. It turns out I’m not chief photographer this trip – he took photos today while I carried/pushed Ella.