Luca has nerdy parents...

Yes, Mark and I have been described as "techies" by our families, we did get very excited over the weekend when we purchased a wireless router, we have 6 computers between the two of us and we have our own blog. Yesterday, however, we hit an all time techie high, we registered Luca (our 16 week old son) for email addresses at yahoo, hotmail and gmail. We did this so he could get a good address. Honestly, we have his long term emailing best interests at heart...we didn't want him to have some funky address when he goes to sign up for accounts in 10 years; we worried luca.ferguson@hotmail.com could be taken. Never fear though he's got: luca.ferguson@hotmail.com luca.ferguson@gmail.com and luca.ferguson@yahoo.com.au. Feel free to send him email any time, might be a while before he responds...gotta learn to type first...-kel

Romania Day 2

Yesterday afternoon we a took a short tour of Bucharest. We toured the 3 main cultural centers of Bucharest, including the Peoples Building (2nd largest administrative building in the world), the medieval center and the religious heart of the city (a beautiful old Orthodox Church). Bucharest is built around a river, with huge boulevards and lots of large buildings. The most amazing thing about the tour was the youth of the architecture, most of the buildings were stone and looked very old, drab and brown, many even looked like they were falling apart. Most of the buildings were built in the last 30 years. When they were built they were simply designed in an older style to create the appearance of old buildings. Historically buildings in Bucharest were made of wood, as a result there were catastrophic fires on a regular basis wiping out huge sections of the city.

Our tour guide was very funny, poor English and extremely odd phrases. She was very informative and I did learn a great deal about the revolution (in 1989) that ended socialism in Romania.
Shockingly we had another all meat dinner, and to clarify I mean all meat. On the large family style plate we could dish up from, we had our choice of bear, turkey, lamb, liver, turkey (or maybe it was chicken), boar, pork and to be honest a few more I am not really sure of. As most of my friends and family know, I am not a big meat eater, let alone sketchy meat cooked in potentially unhygienic standards…bottom line, Romania has been a great step on the road to my pre-baby figure! -kel

Romania

An all meat dinner and smoking inside the office building. Romania is an interesting place, I haven’t seen much of the country yet but today we are taking tour of the city. More pics to come. Bucharest at sunrise this morning.

26 hours in London

Yesterday I had 26 hours in London with my boss. In the morning he drug me around to some of the historical sights, in the afternoon I drug him into some shops then we spent about 7 hours in an old English pub getting fairly sloshed with a few other Aussies who used to work in the MSFT Sydney office. It was pouring down rain, but good fun. Here is a picture of me at Buckingham Palace. I am missing Mark and Luca tons, very strange to be away from them. They seem to be doing well without me, thank goodness for webcams and email! -kel

Oh the joys of living in Australia

Tomorrow I officially end my maternity leave and head back to work. I am off to Romania for a meeting for work and will leave Mark and Luca here in Australia. As I am getting packed to go I am reminded of the top 11 reason I love living in Australia:
1. A foot long lizard recently walked into our back door for a neighborly visit.
2. As we drove home from a fish and chips dinner a small 3 inch lizard clung to the hood of our car. When I got out of the car, I said "welcome to the neighborhood"
3. We have a pool.
4. Words used as work on a regular basis include, here within, whilst, wanker and bloody.
5. Wine, wine and more wine, it's cheap and it's yummy and I seem to take after my mom and aunties and drink quite a bit!
6. There is an amazing view around every corner.
7. I've done so many trips to the "tip" (Aussie for dump) whilst (see #4 I am trying to fit in) building the house, I've actually made friends with the people that work there, last week the woman showed me pictures of her sons wedding and I showed her pictures of Luca.
8. Mothers group. This is a group of woman in my general area who all had babies around the same time as I. We meet at the beach every week for coffee and chat. Instant friends and total fun!
9. Nordstrom now ships to Australia, what more could a girl ask for?
10. The beach is so close to our house that in the morning I can actually smell the salt water.
11. As Auntie Tiffany has pointed out, Luca will have an Aussie accent.
-kel