Happiness

Life is good. Yes, we live beside the busiest road in Australia in a house that is not our own. A house that needs a bigger bathroom and less leaks in the roof when it rains, but it's a lovely big house with a huge garden and lots of space for us all. You might have guessed it has been raining a lot of late. I find myself muttering under my breath a lot when it rains here because it's not supposed to. The weather is one of the reasons we moved here. To live the outdoors life, in a city by the sea. Not much point being here if it's going to rain. And yes, I know it's good for the farmers, we've been in drought for 5 years blah blah blah. But I want to go to the beach and the park and the zoo. Anyway, it's going to be sunny again tomorrow. Rick arrives on Monday from London via NZ. We are very excited about his 9 day visit and have many excursions, a weekend away and some dinners in and out planned. Scarlett is excited about spending time with her Godfather. Rick sends her postcards from every trip he makes, no matter how small, and we have saved them all for her. Florence is less excited, but then he isn't her Godfather. I have found myself bursting into tears at simple domestic scenes we are enjoying. This morning in the family room at the back of our house, Flo was kicking on her baby gym, Scarlett and I were playing catch with the 'indoor-only ball' and Rob was reading the paper on the couch and I looked at my family all together and was welling up. I have become ginormous sentimental sook.

A few days away

Feeling a bit house bound of late, getting Flo into her routine, we decided to change the scene with a last minute trip to Gerroa, one of our favourite destinations from Sydney. Less than two hours south of the city it's a gorgeous village with one shop and one cafe that sits at the northern end of Seven Mile Beach , a spectacular arch of surf, stretching down the coast for, ahem, seven miles. The house we rented was gorgeous, with the most amazing views along the beach. It's so easy to entertain Scarlett at the beach. All she needs is a football and somewhere to dig a big hole. We liked our 3 day break at the house so much, we've booked it again for the weekend of my birthday with Rick who arrives from England at the end of April for a holiday with his Goddaughter Scarlett. Florence is now a month old and putting on weight and feeding well. Her big eyes have opened up more now and we are starting to see the family resemblances and differences between her and Scarlett. I think she has my mum's Welsh nose, while she seems to have Rob's eyes. Here are a few pix of us messing about at the beach and in the bath, and some shots of the house - check out that view.

A visit from the Russells

Our old family friends,the Russells, hit Sydney this weekend. Despite the age gap between her and 12-year-old Matthew, Scarlett fell helplessly in love and thought everything he did was divine. While Matthew and Ben camped on our lawn in a tent, Mark and Laura and us caught up on old times, reminiscing about our times together in London, before children. Long gone the days of multiple fag packets, cigarettes between courses, late night board games and early hour runs to the garage for more fags. However, we remained quite certain we preferred life now. Scarlett was a stunningly behaved child and Flo, mostly, snoozed throughout.

A very Happy Easter

What a top easter. It begun on Good Friday with a birthday party for one-year old Bronte Cummins at Zoe and Paul's house complete with Easter egg hunt. Our freakish offspring being the only child among the hoard who doesn't like chocolate used her time with her collection of egg booty licking it before spitting it out on the lawn. On easter Saturday we had Kendall and Brett, the godfathers, and Lara and Adam for lunch with their new baby Toby, born three days before Florence. It was my first opportunity to exercise my long dormant 'long boozy lunch' gland and, may I say, I used my time well. It was a glorious day with Scarlett bonding even more with Godfather Brett, at one point even inviting him to wipe her bottom after a poo, high praise indeed when you're three. On Easter Sunday we walked up the road to the local church for the Easter Sunday service. We were checking out the church as a possible site for Florence's christening and found and extremely friendly and family-oriented bunch. In stark contrast to my Catholic church upbringing, where the priest was often a terrifying, booze-laden, crazy-eyed weirdo, here we found an extremely friendly vicar who likes jazz and made jokes during his sermon. Happy easter one and all.

Top weekend

We started the weekend with a visit to Wylie's baths on Friday afternoon to catch with our old mate Saska on her last afternoon in Sydney before flying back to London. Saska lived in Sydney for 10 years before heading home to England the year before last. Her leaving celebrations, dubbed the festival of Saska lasted some days and even made it into the paper. She was back in Sydney for her pre-40th birthday celebrations and the second festival of Saska was on again. We hosted a dinner and went to her 40th birthday dinner as part of the 3 week festival. our afternoon at Wylie's was quite the mother's meeting - us with Florence (Scarlett at nursery) Sue sans her son Wilf (also in nursery), Melissa with baby Lotus, Tracy pregnant with her first and Saska, being honorary bottle feeder of the Duthie offspring, keen as ever to give Flo her bottle. After an afternoon swimming in the ocean pool and basking in the sun, we headed round the corner to Barzura for champagne and rose before Saska had to leave. That night the Duthies headed out to dinner en masse. Florence slept in her pram throughout despite it being a very busy noisy restaurant, but then they sleep through anything at this age. Scarlett was a model diner, only drawing on the table cloth a bit and not throwing any of her pizza at the waiter. Saturday was a scorcher devoted to kicking a ball in the back garden, riding bikes, stocking up on food and heading to the pool. In the evening we packed up the pram and the esky and walked up the road to the local church where a brilliant jazz trio played among the gravestones. About 100 or so people gathered at sunset to listen with picnics and we dined on double smoked ham, pecorino, ciabatta, red wine and champagne, again while Flo slept throughout. It was quite magical. Then at 7.30pm we headed home in the dark to observe Earth Hour until 8.30pm where pretty much the whole city turned off its lights for an hour to bring attention to global warming. Even the harbour bridge and opera house had their spotlights turned off and most of the skyscrapers turned off unnecessary lights making a dramatic difference to the usual city skyline view at night. We lit candles and kept the telly off to do our bit too.