A home at last!

When we came to Canberra we knew it would be difficult to find somewhere to live; we'd heard the stories of people lining up for inspections, offering cash to real estate agents to snag the property etc. We also knew the rents were expensive. Despite all this knowledge it still came as a shock when a week after our arrival in Canberra we were no closer to finding somewhere to call home. Then early this week, we spotted an old ad for a place that sounded just right. We assumed that it must have already been taken but luckily rang up about it anyway. We were delighted to find it was still available and even more delighted when we saw it later and it was neat and clean and came with a nice backyard. We had seen a couple of other properties during the week for the same price which had been like hovels - rubbish on the floor, food on the kitchen counter - and this was for an open inspection!! Needless to say, we signed the lease straight away and will move in officially early next week. Hurrah!

Luckily for us, our friends Tam and Andy (and their daughter Amelie) had offered to put us up, or put up with us, until we found something suitable. Without their kind offer, who knows where we would have been staying for the last couple of weeks. Even more of a bonus has been the fact that Amelie and Audrey have got on really well. Audrey absolutely adores Amelie and follows her around like a puppy. And Amelie has been great about sharing all her toys with Audrey (although she has drawn a line at sharing her milk and water cups - understandable really).

Audrey will be upset at having to leave Amelie for our new home but we'll be living not too far away so I'm sure there will be many play dates and visits in the future.

Audrey's First Birthday!

We can hardly believe that a year has gone by since Audrey was born! Here are some pictures from the birthday party we had for her on Sunday...With thanks to Andy for the great photos, and Tam (for the 'fat bum' biscuits we gorged on!)

Emma, Dirk, Darryl, Paula and Louisa

We spent our last weekend in Adelaide with Amy's friends Emma and Dirk before heading off to the Bush-Capital.

They live in a lovely part of Adelaide in a very cool house complete with enormous drinks cabinet and swimming pool. It was great to catch up with them as well as Paula and Darryl who are soon to start planning their own place.

Audrey managed to destroy a glass vase and palm emerging unscathed but leaving a very nice vase in a few hundred pieces (again: very sorry about that Em!).

The next day we caught up with Louisa and shared a nice lunch together. We then returned to Amy's folks in Nuriootpa, loaded our car up (it was packed) and headed on our long journey East to Canberra.

Dirk and Emma

Louisa, Amy and Audrey

Adelaide with Ivor, Wendy, Catherine and Emily

We've been staying in Adelaide for the last week and a half.

It's been really nice to catch up with Amy's parents, and also her sister and niece who are visiting the Barossa from their home in Darwin.

The weather has been pretty poor (I thought it was supposed to be sunny in Australia!) so far it's rained almost every day :(

We've been out and about visiting the Whispering Wall (a dam) an alpaca farm and had a trip into the main shops in Adelaide yesterday. We also visited Amy's grandparents which was nice for everyone.

Yesterday we had a chance to catch up with Amy's old work colleague Denise and shared a very scrummy Malaysian meal.

Audrey has done pretty well (despite having to adapt to wearing jumpers rather the shorts and t-shirts she had become accustomed to in Warsaw!) She's had a couple of days/nights where she's been a bit out of sorts - mostly I think due to tiredness. She's also got her 8th tooth coming through any day soon!

Emily, Catherine, Wendy Amy and (of course) Audrey

Amy's nan

Audrey shows Emily how to play Chopin
See Denise, I said you'd be on the blog :)

New Wolves On-Line Shop!!

Featuring none-other than Miss Audrey Grace Hickman in her first modelling asignment! - have a look by clicking here

Jo, Caroline, David and Charlie in Singapore

Singapore is a strange place.

It's hard really to define what makes it so odd, and I guess the fact that we only had 3 days there to judge it undoubtedly makes our assessment a bit dicey, but during our time we...

Drank in a cafe where board games were banned.

Got asked to leave a restaurant for drinking beer which wasn't Halal.

Went to an island which had fake rocks and water pools and played a constant stream of piped music from the tops of palm trees (the trees also had plastic birds in them).

Watched a pirate show in 4D(!!) which featured violently shaking chairs that also squirted water.

Couldn't buy chewing gum (it's illegal)

That's not to mention the shops which were packed (even at 11pm at night) with people buying Gucci, Prada etc. I'm sure there are other darker and probably poorer sides to the island, but we didn't get to them in our time there.

It was so nice though to catch up with Amy's friends Jo, Caroline and David and their son Charlie. In the middle of such a weird and crazy country it was nice to spend time with some familiar faces.

Here are some pics of our stay

A sad farewell to Warsaw/en-route to Singapore

We bid a sad farewell to Warsaw and headed by Singapore Airlines to Adelaide.

We were lucky enough to be travelling business class and (although I hate to boast) our seats from Zurich to Singapore can only be described as expansive. Donning our complementary slippers we sat back to enjoy our champagne and nibbles - we even had two windows to gaze out of - it is most definitely the way to travel (even better if it's at someone elses expense!). Even Audrey enjoyed it - her last trip Down Under had been in economy, and this time around she found she could crawl around our 'pod' with ease and stretch out when our seat became converted into a bed. She even got given a rather strange pink looking doll by the crew!


We arrived in Singapore refreshed and over-fed.