too much news!

This'll be a chunky post - loads of big news.

First up (and this is by far the most important news) - Skye's pregnant! I'm going to be a Dad! everything's going to change! We're both incredibly happy about it, and we were amazingly fortunate to fall pregnant so easily - the only reason it's not a honeymoon baby is that we didn't have a honeymoon! We just realised this morning that one our first wedding anniversary we'll have a 3 month old baby - how nuts is that! The baby's due on the 1st August, which is a good thing as it'll mean that Skye's late pregnancy will be through the winter months here. Apparently that would make the baby a Leo, whatever that may mean :) After a fairly anxious first 8 weeks, we've had it relatively smooth. Skye had all-day morning sickness from the moment we realised she was pregnant up until about 3 months (she described it as feeling hungover, all day, every day - so ironic....) Since then she's had new energy and is now starting to show. We're just now starting to feel the first kicks. I've had to leave this news out of the blog for months as we've tried to tell as many people personally as possible, but it's about time the baby made an appearance in this journal! Although there's an incredible amount of positive in this news, it seems that in life there's always a flip side to the coin, a ying to the yang. In this case, the flip side is that we won't be able to get to the UK this July for Roy and Carol's wedding, at which I was due to be best man. We had both been looking forward to making the trip and catching up with everyone, as we've missed all our friends and family in the UK terribly - but we'll just have to postpone that trip and fork out for a third ticket :)

The images from the 8 week scan, and the 12 week scan are on fatcat here.

Next big news - we're buying a house! Its been a mad rollercoaster of house hunting, making offers, analysing our income and outgoings, negotiating the price, dealing with solicitors and mortgage brokers. As I write this we still haven't closed the deal, but we've encountered and overcome a few hurdles already so I'm quietly confident. The house is very nice, fully and tastefully renovated, lovely big deck on the back, garden front and back, quiet street, big shed for the car and and workshop, 3 bedrooms - all good. The location is also excellent - Wavell Heights is a suburb not far from Wooloowin, about 7kms out of the CBD and spread across a couple of hills to catch good breezes. There's a nice spread of parkland in the area, which includes a cycleway - the end of the cycleway goes right behind the garden of the house, and the back fence of the garden has a gate onto the cycleway. While that raises a couple of questions about security, that'll also be really handy for going for a walk through the park. The only real downside to the house is that it's lowset, so we don't have masses of space under the house for storage. Oh, and our beautiful big fridge won't fit in the kitchen :)

We're going to have to get used to having less disposable income - although I've negotiated an increased daily rate at work, we'll be down to one income and will be carrying the added weight of a mortgage. I'm going to do my part by making sure I've got plenty of homebrew in the fridge instead of paying full price for beer!

Finally, a quick update on living in Queensland. It's been pretty hot this summer, though I'm told it's been much less hot than previous years. Summer has officially ended now, but this last week has been the hottest yet with daytime temperatures on Sunday rising to 37 degrees. Even though I'm enjoying the heat, at that level with the humidity as well, there's nothing for it but to get in the car, turn on the AC, and head to the coast!

I'm still really enjoying my Australian lifestyle of surfing at the weekends, barbecuing whenever we fancy, regularly seeing exotic wildlife like koalas, turtles and dolphins at the weekends, and geckos and parrots around the house any day of the week. In spite of that, we both really miss our friends and family in the UK, and think of them often. (there's that ying/yang thing again....)