Some bits and bobs to round out March: Poppa came to LR’s school and taught science class, LR and RJ played dress-ups, a new form of velociraptor was discovered, and LR and RJ went flying!
LR soars through the air!
Just four days before his actual birthday, RJ held his amazing pirate birthday party. He very specifically planned everything, from the location down to exactly what would be on the cake. Thanks to his meticulous plans (and a bit of assistance from his entourage), everything went according to plan. Major events were sword making, a treasure hunt, taking over a pirate ship, firing cannons and eating (an RJ favorite).
Toothpaste?! Bah! Real pirates use rum!
Sorry to everyone for falling behind on the updates! It’s been a bit of a perfect storm with moving, cleaning and selling our old house, RJ’s birthday party, and the actual perfect storm that rolled through last week and destroyed the city.
The good news is that the house has sold, which is a huge relief. Mad props to Mum who has spent day and night cleaning, tidying, scrubbing, gardening, dusting, disinfecting, digging, planting, licking, painting, herding, preening, fluffing, tending, washing and generally preparing the house for the hordes of potential buyers that we expected to come through. In typical was-it-all-really-worth-it-I-can’t-believe-we-just-wasted-two-weeks style, the house sold on the first day it was shown, to one of the first four couples who came to see it.
This is incredibly annoying. It’s as if we had prepared an amazing five-course meal, selected the perfect wines to go with it and they’ve wandered in, picked at the salad and left. They didn’t even see it during the daytime! I feel like we need to call them up and point out all the fantastic stuff that we’ve done to the place in the past month. After all, if we’re not going to be able to enjoy it, I want to make damn sure that someone out there appreciates it.
And yet, after all that, we are incredibly relieved and thankful to these wonderful people who have, with a few simple scribbles with their pen, saved us from the horrible world of stress, endless negotiation and financial anxiety associated with not being able to sell.
Thank you mystery people. We’re glad you like our house. We’re going to miss it a lot.
P.S. You had better be nice to our neighbours.
Drive faster, Paw!!
Mum here!
Check out the video…You won’t believe it’s calm, weatherless Perth! We came through a doozy! The good news is that we’re all fine, despite being at the local rubbish tip/dump when the storm hit (flat plain, surrounded by metal, on the back of a metal truck) with lightning flashing all around.
The old house doesn’t have any damage at all that I could see; although all of our neighbours have smashed windows and water damage. Grammy and Poppa’s house is NOT waterproof, but our new house looks fine from the outside.
L gets a few days off of school, because the roof of the outdoor area is destroyed. And the hospital (where my office is) still hasn’t restored full power. My office has two inches of water in it and a collapsed ceiling.
The good news is that we don’t have to repair the old house before it goes on the market this weekend!!!!
And yes, the kids had a great time darting outside to grab hailstones and other fun stuff during the brief moments of calm in the weather. We’ve got golfball sized hailstones filling the freezer (some people around here were pummeled by baseball-sized monsters!).
Read more about it at the Herald Sun!
Or just watch some video:
(in the car, on the way to school)
RJ: Minty eyeballs… It’s a terrible sickness.
Dad: It does sound terrible.
RJ: Our cousins have it. P, M and their whole family, Aunty B and Uncle T.
Dad: What!? Where did they catch it from?
RJ: From Dora at Dora’s house. Dora went in the Poisonous Jungle and got sick. Then they caught it from her.
Dad: Is there a cure? Can they get medicine or something?
RJ: The only way to get better from minty eyeballs is to drink the nectar from a flower that grows from the tallest tree in the Tiger Snake Jungle.
Dad: We’d better plan a mission to find it.
RJ: There’s no way. There are too many tiger snakes…
RJ: They’re going to die, I presume.
(while discussing RJ’s girlfriend problems over breakfast)
Dad: So maybe you just need a hockey mask? It’s a mask that you can see through with metal bars. It will block anything big from getting through and hitting your face.
RJ: Yeah! I need one that uses laser beams and blasts things that try to go through.
LR: They aren’t real, RJ. You just have to get one with bars.
RJ: They ARE real. They’re made by mad scientists and they are VERY useful.
We made an offer on a house… The owners accepted… Settlement is in 40 days… PANIC!
In the meantime, here it is. Purdy lil’ thang, aint it!
Hmmm... Those rose bushes may have to go...
The kids love the look of it even more than we do. They’ve decided to call it, “The Cow House.”
Is it time to moooove in yet?
(during a family lunch with everyone sitting at the dinner table)
Poppa: So does anyone want to get up and fetch me a glass of water?
(no volunteers)
Poppa: (gets up and walks into the kitchen) I guess I’ll get it myself.
LR: (with mock dismay) How come Poppa has to do all of the work around here?
(at the dinner table)
Dad: So what happened at your school today, RJ?
RJ: I took my whip scorpion into school and showed it to everybody.
Dad: Great! Did you teach the class all about them?
RJ: Yep! But it was terrible. No one asked any questions! … except for Harry.
Dad: What did he ask?
RJ: He asked if whip scorpions lived in England and I told him, “NO! They only live in Perth. There are lots of them and live in the roof of your house.”
We’re expecting the phone calls from the other parents to start any day now…
Your child is having nightmares about giant insects living in your roof?
What a surprise!”
