Bonding...

So we are now living in close quarters... how close? Take a look.
A big thank you to our very special friends who are letting us stay here.
This is Ben on his loft bed (playing Wii). Izzy's cot is underneath, as is her play kitchen (that is the play area). The bottom right corner of the picture where you see the dark green and red stripe... that's the end of our bed.
Directly on the other side of Ben's loft bed is the lounge, although we now have a curtain separating the sleeping area from the tv/lounge area.

Can't get enough of pink & green...

Weekend in Canberra

The weekend before Easter we went to Canberra. Here are the many faces of Ben & Izzy...

We are exausted... and have moved out

What a weekend Easter was. Five days of non-stop moving - moving into the granny flat, moving the rest of our possessions into our storage shed, moving furniture that doesn't fit in the granny flat into Peter's parents' garage, then pulling everything out of our old house that we want to keep.

The old house basically looks like a shell of a house now. We sold our kitchen appliances, have pulled out the cupboards to keep for the laundry in the new house (we only built the kitchen 4 years ago), relocated our garden shed and moved all our "outdoor stuff" into it.

Some photos of the demolition we did (the REAL demolition starts on Monday) - can't wait to watch!

I've still got a trampoline!

The demolition of the kitchen begins...
The kitchen now sits in the loungeroom waiting to go to storage

where's the sink gone?

half gone

boxes waiting to go to storage

drawing on walls was now permitted!

boxes waiting to be packed

Getting ready for the demolition

Our house will soon be gone. Our DA was approved by the Council on 5 April, and we move out this weekend. The last month or so has been spent packing and sorting. Most of our belongings are going into a storage garage, and just the necessities coming to the granny flat we will be living in for the year or so it takes to build our new home.

So, Easter weekend will be spent moving, and demolition begins on Monday 2 May (12 more days!).

What a milestone!

Another milestone in Izzy's life.

Izzy lived in China for 505 days. All but her first 10 days of life were with her foster mother. Tuesday marked 505 days since we collected Izzy back in October 2009. Today is 508 days and we can now say Izzy has live with us, her family, for longer than anywhere else in her short life. Some pictures belowing showing how she has grown over the last 16 months.

Christmas time, 2010

Izzy's 2nd Birthday

Izzy's Christening

January 2010... walking girl!

home with big brother

Meeting Izzy's foster mum in Leping

Izzy meeting mum for the first time

Izzy and her foster sister, Le Ping La, at her foster mum's home

Hanging out

The beginning of our new home

So much has been going on here, we are in the final stages of getting ready to move out of our house, knock it down and build our new house. Some pictures here of the progress so far.

We've moved a lot of our plants from the front garden out to the back. Large trees have been chopped down, most of our stuff has gone into storage and we are living with the basic necessities. The council is due to give the go ahead - hopefully :-) - at the end of March. Then we'll move out and demolition will start.

So this is our house before...and then the trees were removed... our front garden before it was moved...and what is outside our front door now...

So what will our new house look like? This is the display house which our house is based on. Same colours on the bricks, render, windows etc, ours will be a mirror image of this (garage on right hand side).

Kindy Girl

Week three of kindy has passed and all is going extremely well. Izzy loves going and there are many kids in the centre who have old siblings at Ben's school, so she'll have some friends who end up at school with her.

Nappies are now a thing of the past during they day and we are definitely an "undies" girl now and take ourself to the toilet when we need to go.