We'll be out of touch for a week celebrating my 40th birthday on Lord Howe Island. If you need me, I'll be lolling, walking, swimming, cycling, fishing, reading, sleeping, eating, drinking and receiving facials and massages somewhere in this picture.

BOUGHT!

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We are over the moon because today we bought 12 Alfred Street, Lilyfield. We only saw it on Tuesday and were sure it was totally out of our price range. It has a beautiful bullnose verandah at the front, 4 beds, 3 bathrooms (including a separate self-contained studio in the garden), a formal living room and a huge open-plan kitchen/living/ dining room that opens with bifold doors out to a lovely walled garden.

At the auction there was only one other bidder apart from us and they didn't bid at all, so it was us against the vendor. Just as I placed our bid, Florence chose that moment to projectile vomit

over me repeatedly so I lost track of the second bid. When no one else bid - it was ours!. At last we have a venue for my 40th birthday party!!!

SOLD!!

We sold our much loved house in Leichhardt on Saturday. It was soooo tense. We spent the morning trying to put it out of our minds by having a long bike ride with the girls around the bays. When we arrived at the auction at 2.30pm on Saturday the street was already filling up with people but we only had one registered bidder. We hid out at number 19 where our friend's and old neighours Rob and Freya live with Martin and Drew and Dave and George and waited for the auctioneer. He advised that the woman who had registered didn't know she was the only serious bidder and Julie our agent agreed to walk among the crowd chatting to people to give the illusion of there being more bidders. At the last minute a second person registered to bid so we knew we had a bidding war to come. As soon as the auctioneer started, the woman started bidding, then the bloke bid, then she bid again and then it all stopped. The auctioneer was racing ahead with all the 'going once, going twice' nonsense when our agent walked up to the woman who had the bid and said 'will you bid more and it's yours?'. She said "ok then" and that was that! It was all over in about 5 minutes. We all piled back into Rob and Freya's for the rest of the afternoon and evening celebrating with sausages and champagne, not before putting in an offer on another house. We will hear back today whether the offer has been accepted or not.

In other news, we had a great dinner on Friday night with Rob's family's oldest friends Jan and Bryan. Their son Mark is Florence's NZ Godfather. Jan is 80 and Bryan is not far off, but you wouldn't know it, they are such great fun. Here are a couple of shot of our rock star daughter and at the pool, jumping in the deep end.

We love Horton

This week I took Scarlett to see her first film at the cinema. Rob had tried once before with Ratatouille, but strangely the old lady who appears at the beginning of the film with the shotgun scared her. As Horton Hears a Who is a G rather than PG certification, we were assured there would be no shotguns. Dr Seuss books are very popular in our house, and this adaptation of the book was a cracker. Scarlett insisted we sat in the back row for the best view, somewhere I haven't sat in a cinema since I was about 16. We had great fun talking through the trailers, eating snakes and throwing popcorn at people. It brought back many happy memories. A snuggle during the scary bit with the mean kangaroo fixed any desire Scarlett might have had to leave.