Tuckers Downunder

Here’s a current picture of our kitchen, no not the outdoor one mentioned below, the real one.

Good news is that deconstruction finished quickly and Rob Lowe and the boys were quickly into construction mode. Kitchen arrives Wednesday, and it will be installed by Friday – leaving only the worktop, splashback, electrics and gas to go!

Seems like only a week ago that we were up at the tranquil Peppers Port Douglas resort,  

but now look at us…

The builders are in and our Kitchen is out (side, literally) – worse still, we have resorted to have a 9 man tent in the garden for day-time sanctuary.

Still concious that I have not been updating our blog as often as I have in the past (and views have suffered as a result!), I have added a Twitter feed as a way of adding easy updates to the site.

For anyone not familiar with Twitter, the service has been around for a while and is used by many millions of folks around the world to post quick thoughts about anything, everything or nothing, and these are called Tweets… Anyway, if I don’t get too slack to add Tweets, you’ll get the idea.

ok ok, I have been super slack. Not a single post since Ivy’s birthday. Been very busy at work, and at home; we’ve been preparing for some building work we’ll be getting done this week, and next week, the week after and the week after that… it will be torturous!

Last weekend Diana and I went to Port Douglas, three hours flying time North, just about at the tip of Eastern Australia in tropical Queensland. Kids stayed with Diana’s Aunt and Uncle, and we were grateful for the break – it was short, but after two peaceful dinners, two   peaceful breakfasts and a bit of a lie in, we didn’t care – roll on  the next time we get a chance to offload the week monkeys for a couple of nights in a tropical paradise!.

Speaking of the monkeys, here are a few pics:

Thanks to all who came to our place today to wish Ivy a happy first birthday… Beautiful weather and a good turnout of great friends.

How exciting for little Ivy, she’s one today… she spent the day with the Nanny, and got to open her presents when Diana and I got home at 5:30pm… In truth, Scarlett opened everything, but Ivy didn’t care. Pictures below. One thing I am thinking as I’m adding these pictures, is that Diana always keeps birthday cards, and poor Ivy doesn’t even have a card from us, but it doesn’t matter, because this web page will be here for her to see whenever she wants to look at it, that’s how incredible the Internet is!

Better pictures will come on Saturday when we have a party for her here at home, maybe even a video clip or two!

I was riding around Centennial Park on Sunday morning, the girls in tow, sun shining bright, warm breeze blowing, and it struck me how much better I felt not having to pack up for an afternoon flight. Being home is great, really great. I did look skyward a few times at a passing Qantas 747 with mild envy at those LA bound execs, my envy was always short lived – it’s easy to think the greener grass is in First Class, climbing to 30,000 feet, but then the associated sacrifices come into focus, a quick look back at Scarlett reading a book to Ivy in the trailer as we pedal through the park and I am ecstatic to be home.

Clearly being home comes at a cost too, our tendency is to pile more and more in, more renovations, more work, more study, more more more… Probably more satisfying but no less stressful.

Ivy’s birthday is on Thursday, 1 already, crazy how fast she is growing up, glad to say that her personality hasn’t begun to shift to that of a stroppy toddler, it will come of course, but for now I still want to bottle her up and keep her as she is for ever… Scarlett is also fantastic, stroppy as all hell, but lovely more often than not, still my angel.

Here are some snaps from last weekend, when we made to the beach…

Fifteen minutes before we HAD to leave the house to catch our 9:15am flight to sunny Cairns, we decided that Ivy was indeed too ill to join Scarlett at Diana’s Aunt and Uncle’s place.. In fact, she was so off sorts that we didn’t even feel comfortable taking her with us. Poor wee Ivy.

Two trips to the GP later and a whole lot more Panadol that’s we’re comfortable giving her and she’s still unwell, suffering a throat infection, fevers on and off and a rash pretty much all over her wee body. All in all I’m glad we didn’t go, we would definitely have had to come straight back given how off colour she is.

Prognosis is that she will be off her food for another day or two, that the throat infection will clear, and the rash will disappear along with the fevers in the next few hours. Fingers crossed.

Prognosis for us? We’ll stay home, it’ll be 10 or so degrees cooler and someone else will enjoy the accommodation for us In fact, it looks like two hot young things already are! Oi, we paid for that, get your hand out of our pool!

Went out to see Mariana, Saeed and the kids on Saturday. While Diana, Scarlett and Sarah went to see Dora in concert I helped Saeed move some 1,000 breeze blocks (Spelling?)… Got my first blisters in a few years!

Anyways, turns out that they just bought a new car, a Ferrari F430 Spyder… Also turns out that it was too rainy to take me out for a spin! Double tragedy, the blisters and the rain that is…