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!

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”.

Baby Ted was born on the 17th of August, tipping the scales at a very healthy 3.75 kg. The whole family is back at home now, and from all reports, they’re adjusting quite well to having one extra member living under the roof.

Happy Birthday Ben! Congratulations to you and ‘Chellsie! And welcome to the world, Ted!

View more photos in the Ted photo gallery on Picasa.

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!

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!

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.

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!

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.

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.

Now admittedly, this was taken near Times Square, but it could realistically have easily been pretty much any random Hong Kong street, at any time of the day. There are people everywhere, and for the most part, they’re very… assertive. I say “assertive” here instead of “rude”, because even though they tend to bustle and shove you around – and they could certainly learn a thing or two about queueing from the English – I think they’re actually quite polite at heart. For example, people absolutely leapt up on the subway system to offer Kristy a seat the moment she boarded, which was a stark contrast to the tube in London.

This trip was a bit different to my last trip to Hong Kong – last time I was here by myself, and only for one day! This time, we had a three night stop-over to do a better job of breaking up the long haul back to Brisbane home. One thing that didn’t change though was that we once again met up with John and his family – including baby Susanna who is only 1.5 months old!

Similarly, John’s brother Quentin met us for a delicious Dim Sum lunch. I’m very pleased to report that Dim Sum (“Yum Cha”) is pretty much the same here in Hong Kong as what it is in Australia!

Finally, the other constant for both trips was I found it incredibly difficult to find anything “local” for breakfast. On advice from some locals, we sought out some congee one morning, but we couldn’t find any places that served it before 11:30 AM! One other day we once again resorted to Maccas, and once again I somehow ended up with two sausage and egg muffin meals instead of the muffins by themselves. Still, bonus OJ – no complaints!

The weather looked threatening since the moment we got here; thankfully though, the storms held off for most of our trip – except for Saturday night when we got a huge thunderstorm, but we were safely back at the hotel before it hit. We were exceptionally lucky with the weather on Saturday morning, when John took us on the “I can’t believe the angle this thing runs at” tram car up to The Peak, where we had exceptional views over Hong Kong and Kowloon.

We really were blazing the tourist trail, doing both the tram up to The Peak, as well as the cable car to Ngong Ping to see the giant Budda. He’s big. Real big. High five!

We were a little discouraged when we got to the base station this morning and found a giant queue, but it turns out you can pay an extra HKD$50 (or so) and get “upgraded” to a Crystal Cabin (i.e. clear-bottomed) cable car. It’s totally worth the money, simply because there’s practically no queue on the Crystal Cabins – it’s like the Ngong Ping version of a Fast Pass! The clear bottom on the cable car doesn’t really add much value otherwise, though I guess it’s a bit of a novelty.

I didn’t find the shopping quite as compelling on this trip, though this is probably due to a number of factors. Firstly, it’s hot. Really, really hot. I don’t know how it compares to Brisbane heat these days (forgiving the summer/winter difference) but the humidity makes the prospect of wading through crowds, fairly unattractive. Secondly, our baggage was already overweight when we left the UK; thankfully the girl at the “I’m upgrading you to Premium Economy” desk (thanks again Dave!) waved the £30 extra charge for us, though it made us fairly reluctant to buy anything extra in HK.

As it turns out though, we’re now sitting in the Qantas club lounge in Hong Kong airport, because we’ve once again been upgraded – this time to Business class! Admittedly, I requested this upgrade on Frequent Flyer points, but this is the first time I’ve actually landed it as well! Anyway – this means that we each get 10kg extra luggage allowance, but since we only found out that our upgrade had been approved on the day of the flight, it didn’t leave much time for shopping, so we’re flying out with (roughly) what we came in with. Still, the shopping here is certainly plentiful, and I’m thinking that perhaps we should plan another trip to tidy up our wardrobes sometime next year! Not sure how I’m going to fit that one into the budget, though…

Anyway – they’ve just called our flight, so I guess it’s time to board! Photos to come once we’re home in Brisbane. Hear that? “Home”. In Brisbane. What a trip.