Our mattress got delivered on Friday morning, which was the only thing we still needed before we could move into our house. And so, as of Friday morning, we are now living at Everton Hills – and we’re loving it!

Admittedly, we haven’t spent a whole lot of time here through the day – we still seem to be doing a lot of shopping, chores, and general running around – but we’re enjoying having a home again. We even have a phone and (most importantly) internet connected! The Naked DSL plans from iiNet are awesome – free calls to all of Australia!

Though we have a mattress, we don’t have much of anything else yet. We’ve put an order in for a couch, coffee table, buffet, and an entertainment unit, but we have no idea when any of it will turn up. Fingers crossed it comes before Piccolo does!

Today we’re having the pest control people come out to spray our house, as we have a suspicion that it hasn’t been done in a while. Yes, it’s the cockroaches that gave it away. Eeewwww….

But, all in all, we can see things starting to come together. We’ve made great progress on our kitchen renovations, and hopefully by the end of this week we’ll have some contracts signed off. Our new kitchen is going to absolutely rock!

It’s all starting to come together!

As mentioned before, it’s almost impossible to live in Brisbane and not have yourself a car. For our first week, we relied on our lovely parents being our taxies, and the fact that they didn’t complain suggests to me that they thoroughly enjoyed the throwback to our teenage years. Things got a little easier in our second week, when Ian very kindly handed over the keys to his gorgeous Audi A4 Avant. It’s such a beautiful car to drive, and being a diesel, it costs nearly nothing to run!

The only drawback of having Ian’s car is that every car that we looked at just paled in comparison – even the Rukus, which we really loved, looked a bit plain compared to the A4! But after visiting the Audi dealership to find out if we could afford one for ourselves, we had to put our “realistic” pants on and scale our tastes back a bit.

Thankfully though, this story has a happy ending – we met up with a lovely family at New Farm who were selling their very well spec’ed 2006 RAV 4 Cruiser L, asking a price that we were happy to pay. We gave it a drive and thought it was a winner; RACQ gave it an inspection and confirmed it was a winner. So, as of about 6:00 PM on Tuesday night, we are the proud owners of a RAV 4!

It has loads of boot space for a pram, and there should be ample room for a baby capsule in the back seat, too. Most importantly, it has a sunroof – which I’ve always wanted on a car! Yes, it feels a bit “grown up”, but I think it’s just a little bit cool, too.

His name is yet to be determined, but tentative indications are that he’ll be called “Alby”.

We’re slowly getting through all our boxes, but we’ve got a long way to go.

It’s unbelievable how much kitchen stuff we’ve found so far – in fact, one of the bedroom floors is entirely covered, just in kitchen goods. There’s some very cool looking appliances there, like a hand blender, rice cooker, etc. – all things which we’ve really missed having over the last six years! It’s going to be awesome fun trying everything out!

We’ve made some decent progress this week, and we’re a little bit (emphasis on “little”) closer to having our house sorted out, ready for us to move in. Basically, there’s two big ticket items that we don’t have yet, which are holding us back from moving in.

The first of these is a mattress, but after spending around two hours on Tuesday night lying on a countless number of beds, we finally settled on one. We didn’t buy it straight away though; instead, we came back to Myer again the next day and tried the mattress in isolation. We both almost feel instantly asleep, so we knew we were onto a winner (plus, it was reduced by $1,500!). So I’m pleased to say the mattress has been ordered, and will be delivered next Friday.

The second big ticket item is a little tougher – a car. It’s near impossible to live in Queensland without one, and unfortunately, choosing one is not an easy task. We thought we were onto a winner with the Toyota Rukus, as we both absolutely loved it, and it was in our price range! We took it for a test drive, and were very happy with the results. However, we have two tests which any potential car has to pass before we can purchase it. Test number 1: Does the car fit into the garage?

Success! Onto test number two: Does a pram fit into the boot? We don’t own a pram yet, but we think we know which one we’ll be buying. Conveniently, Lou and Steve (who – even more conveniently – live just around the corner from our new place) own a very similar model, so their pram became our testing standard. Unfortunately, the Rukus failed dismally.

This was pretty much the only configuration we could use which still allowed the boot to close, and it was not a very sturdy way of stacking a pram in a boot. So, it’s back to the drawing board! We have a few more cars on the short-list, but we don’t like any of them as much as the Rukus. *sigh*

We’ve also been talking to various kitchen designers, as we feel the house is in need of a new kitchen. Perhaps we’re being a little bit critical, but this is how it stands at present:

It’s very… blue! Glen came around this morning and told us which walls we could (potentially) knock out, and how difficult it would be – so that’s given a few more options on what we could do. Looks like its back to the drawing board for the kitchen, as well!

We’re off to do some furniture shopping now – fingers crossed we’ll find a couch we love, and that it’ll be half of its original price!

Before Tuesday afternoon, we had never met Julian’s sister Helen – yet when we did, it felt like we’d known her for ages. Probably because we’ve been facebook stalking her for at least two years now. That, and the fact that we lived with Julian (and Shelley, of course) for fifteen glorious months – and when you live with friends, you kind-of adpot their family into yours, even if it means memorising the names, places of residence, which ones have been shot, which ones may have rabies after being bitten by a monkey, etc – for about 20 people on either side.

We took Helen to one of our favourite coffee shops in the city – Brother Espresso, giving due credit to Jason for the original discovery of the store (at least in our direct line of contacts). We had never eaten there previously, but happily, we were all well impressed with our lunchtime delights – not to mention our coffee (though we should have ordered the coffee after lunch, to stop it from going cold while we were eating).

Oh the hours, how they whiled away! Helen was extremely entertaining to talk to (I must admit, she reminded me a lot of Julian, but that’s not a bad thing – we like Julian). To be fair though, I also was extremely entertaining – as you can see here, there were many occasions where the girls erupted into fits of raucous laughter in reaction to my hilarious antics.

Helen is only in Australia until mid September – it’s some sort of undercover, classified mission thing – but we’re hoping we can catch up with her again before she leaves! Only two more Lewis children to meet (Dan and Katherine, we’re talking about you here) and we’ll have the entire clan covered!

View the Helen in the city album on Picasa or Facebook.

We’ve been spending a bit more time with three very special little people since coming back to Australia – our nieces and nephews! Our oldest nephew – Owen – was born shortly after we left the country five and a bit years ago. We had met him since in our subsequent visits back to Australia – but he’s (obviously) much bigger now!

Secondly is young Reuben, who was just a baby when we were last back! Now he’s walking around like a proper little dude! He loves his food (don’t we all?) and has a wicked laugh, too!

Finally is the littlest Harvey (and our first Niece!) – Ella. She’s all of six months old, and so far she’s been fairly welcoming – well, at least she hasn’t cried too much when we’ve held her!

We’re looking forward to seeing them a lot more now that we’re back in Australia!

Oh man, there’s been so many birthdays at the moment, and I’ve been terrible in getting a “Happy Birthday” message out to people on time! I’m so sorry to everyone whose birthday I missed; we haven’t had enough time to sit down and give attention to where it’s due, but I’m trying to catch up now!

First on the list is Lou, whose birthday was Friday. She and Steve invited Team BaM and us around on Saturday night for a “birthday BBQ” at her place; little did we know that she had actually planned a bit of a welcome home party for us instead! Boy was I surprised when Ian (and kids) and Mel walked in; then Micah and Sarah, and then Mel and Ben. It was awesome!

Second on the list is young Nick, whose birthday it was on Saturday (followed by his sister Victoria’s on Sunday!). We were very sad to have missed out on Nickfest 2010, and I’ve no idea what the festivities entailed – though I’ll bet it was something awesome. Consequently, I have no photos from the day; so here’s a file photo instead!

Young Amy Durham shares Nick’s birthday as well, so it’s a party on both sides of the world on the 14th of August! We haven’t seen young Amo since our visit to Castle Durham during last year’s visit to Australia! But we’re looking forward to seeing her (and all the Durhams!) again, and you’d better believe there’ll be copious amounts of coffee to consume!

And finally, it was Grandma Harvey’s birthday on Sunday – and ringing the bell at 90 rounds, she’s older than all the others combined! To celebrate, a huge clan of her friends and extended family gathered for lunch at Kedron Wavell Services Club.

The dauphinoise potatos were especially awesome.

It’s been a bit of a whirlwind three days since we arrived home on Tuesday morning. We had a lovely welcoming party at the airport with lots of family and friends coming to greet us; it was especially awesome to have Michelle, Louisa, and Kristy all in the same place at the same time, so we could get the triple belly photo!

Our first coffee in the country was from Vagelis on Racecourse Road, and it was great! It’s nice to be back in a country where most places that have an espresso machine actually know how to use it!

We’ve got a “to do” list that seems to get new tasks added to it faster than we can check them off, but we’ve been doing our best to keep it manageable. So far we’ve swapped my UK driver’s licence back to a Queensland one (which is much easier than going the other way around), re-enrolled in Medicare, been furniture shopping (still loads of this to do!), got new mobile numbers (e-mail me if you want them!), and started the process of changing Kristy’s name over to “Thomas”.

We got another tick today with two hospital appointments at RBH for the baby, and we were delighted with how helpful the staff were. Kudos to the Australian medical system, and especially our midwife “Meg” who, when asked, “When should we come into hospital after labour has begun?”, replied with, “Well, it all depends how you’re crackin’ on, really”. “Cracking on” then came up a number of times in conversation after that. Gold.

We also saw our new home for the first time on Tuesday afternoon, and we love it! The puppies were even there to greet us! I was pleasantly surprised to find that the rooms are a bit bigger than I had imagined, and the yard is miles bigger than I had imagined! Mom and Dad have done an amazing job bringing the place up to scratch, with loads of yard work, painting, tidying, and fixing happening in the months before we moved. We’ll have to come up with something amazing to pay them back – suggestions welcome!

Most of our stuff which has been living underneath our collective parents’ houses for the last 6 years has also been transported over to our new house. It’s going to take us quite a while to work through all the boxes!

It’s been funny to find some of the things that at least one of us must have thought that we’d want to keep. After opening about seven boxes, I think we’ve opted to keep about two of them, donate about three, and at least two of them are rubbish. I don’t know if our poor taste is to blame for keeping so much junk; though as Kristy’s Dad pointed out, since we left in such a hurry, sorting through everything probably wasn’t near the top of our priority list.

And, even though there’s a lot of junk in there, it’s been exciting to rediscover the cool possessions which we had forgotten about! It’s kind-of like an early Christmas – boy, do we own some awesome coffee mugs!

More photos of the house to come, but in the mean time, here’s some photos from our holiday in Cornwall, and our three days in Hong Kong. Enjoy!

View the Cornwall album on Picasa or on Facebook.

View the Hong Kong album on Picasa or on Facebook.

The last thing I remember our dear friends Ben and Michelle doing before they left London, was sitting in our lounge room, waiting until it was time to go to the airport for their flight. Ben was investing the time wisely on the PS3.

It seems fitting then, that the last thing that we’ve done in London, was sit in our dear friend’s Nick and Suzie’s lounge room, whilst I wisely invested my time playing Nick’s PS3.

People often ask us, “What’s better – New York or London?” – to which there is no real answer – both cities are amazing, and each one has features about it which make it “better” than the other. In the end though, it all comes down to personal taste.

For me, if I was after a 1 year escape from reality, I would head to The Big Apple. But overall, for a life: I would take London.

It’s been an amazing three-and-a-bit years, and I want to say a huge thanks to everyone that’s been part of it.

Farewell London, it’s been a pleasure!

For our final four days in the UK, and our final road trip in Gazpacho, we left London on Monday morning and headed out to Cornwall – the south-western most county of England. We’re staying here until Thursday, when we’ll zoom back to London to drop off the car to it’s new owner, before making our way to Heathrow for our final departure!

The drive out here is long – in the region of five hours – so we took a number of breaks along the way. When we saw signs to Cheddar, we knew that Sister Susan would never forgive us if we didn’t stop to pay homage to the birthplace of her beloved cheese, so we made a quick detour to check out it.

The area’s main drawcard is in fact not a bunch of cheesey attractions (see what I did there?), but instead the gorge, and the caves where it’s thought that the cheese was originally made. But at £17.50 a pop for a tour of the caves (“The ticket is valid for 10 years!” says the ticket lady), and with two-and-a-half more hours of driving ahead of us, we gave them a skip.

We finally arrived in Newquay at around 5 PM. Kristy had read about a funky cafe called Cafe Irie which apparently made a delicious afternoon tea, and even though it was a bit late in the day for it, we decided to give it a whirl anyway. Funky, it most certainly was!

Their food was excellent; Kristy especially can verify this, as she received two servings of pancakes instead of the two pancakes that she thought she had ordered. That’ll pay her for being indecisive with her toppings! Funniest of all though, the waitress didn’t even bat an eyelid at how much food it was – she must have thought Kristy was taking the whole “eating for two” thing very literally!

This turned out to be more than enough food to see us through the evening, so after a very quick walk around the town, we checked in to our hotel and had ourselves an early night.