Amanda's Musings

Well, we are officially moved in. Moving day was last Monday and what a day it was!! We have such great friends who really did look after us. There were 10 adults (including Michael) and 6 kids helping to move, clean or unpack at the other end and me in the middle directing traffic or making a drink here and there. Three people supplied morning tea, lunch and dinner and my wonderful parents in-law babysat Keziah for us. Then two more ladies came today and helped me clean the old house. When we do get past the cleaning of our old house I am going to sit down and try to think of how to thank all these wonderful people. A couple of people do need a special mention though.

Firstly my oldest friend Karen. Karen has been here at this (old) house for days on end, weeding out the garden beds out the front of our house. She has also helped me clean my oven and other yucky parts of the kitchen and then continued to work like crazy at the new place last Monday unpacking about 70% of our kitchen boxes for us!! Her kids have all also come along and helped and I have been blown away by them! Karen’s hubby Joel arrived here at 8am on Monday morning with his trailer to help shift and they all didn’t leave until very late in the afternoon. Thank you Hammens!! Here they are:

Joel loading up the first trailer load early!

Two of Karen’s four kids cleaning Kezi’s high chair

Karen in front of the garden beds

Next special mention is our very old friend Brad (as in we have known him for a very long time). Brad loads up trucks for a living and arrived here at 7.30am on Monday, ready to help Michael go and get our hire truck. He then stayed until lunchtime and I’ve never seen such a well packed truck!! Thank you Brad, you are appreciated. Here he is loading our truck:

Thank you so much to everyone – I don’t want to mention all the names right now but we could not have done all this without you.

Our new house is looking similar to what anyone’s house looks like when you first shift in. Boxes everywhere, nothing where it will stay, piles of stuff, empty boxes and lots and lots of that shredded paper floating around (remember weeks ago when I was shredding like crazy!!).

Michael did a great job on the painting too, Kezi’s room looks beautiful and the living area/kitchen looks so much more open and lighter.

Now, we just need to finish cleaning the old place, do the gardens and we can move into the next phase.

What’s the next phase? Simple:

Unpack
Pick up my parents from the airport on Saturday
Have the baby : )

Its never ending!

So, on Friday we were handed the keys to our new house. When I say we I mean Michael as it was too late in the day for me and Kez to go out (she still sleeps in the afternoon). He put on his painting clothes, loaded up the car, picked up the keys and then went straight there for painting!

We basically have/had Friday, Saturday and Sunday (with church Sun morning) to paint the house before the moving in of everything on Monday (tomorrow here as its already Sunday in Perth). Yesterday I spent the day there with him painting. I sat either on the floor or on an office chair with wheels most of the time. Last night both of us were exhausted, I was fast asleep somewhere between 9pm and 9.30pm, only just lasting that long!

Living Area, sans furniture of course and pre-painting.

I took some pics of the painting (above) but also of some of the native flora and fauna (well, if you count chickens!) around our new house. I’ll take a proper shot of the front later. So, here’s the shots, I love the native Aussie garden we have going there:

I can’t remember what this tree is, someone enlighten me!

Beautiful bark of the white gum (so much painting inspiration here).

Gum Tree

Red Gums

Mandarin Tree Fruiting

Our new chookies! We’ve called them Pippin and Frodo.

Honkey Nuts

Very wet Wattle

Another type of gum tree

And finally, the front of our house.