Sunday, May 31, 2009
Sewing up a storm...
Scout like Luca is an amazingly happy little baby. She is all smiles all the time and has made the last few months nothing but fun! Since she sleeps through the night and for a good part of every day I've had plenty of time to do a number of sewing projects. Below is a slide show of some of the things I've made, mostly for Scout but a few other things here and there as well. As you will see, I went just a little bit crazy on the girly dress making! -kel
Sunday, May 24, 2009
Scout's Baptism
Once again we were amazingly lucky, after a week of solid rain, the sky's parted just in time for Scout's baptism followed by a big party at our house to celebrate. Scout slept right through the ceremony at church and through most of the party at home. She was all smiles when she was awake and loved being passed around from person to person. Luca too had a blast, using the opportunity of a house full of people to head straight for all of the "no go zones". He spent more than half of the party dropping rocks into a bucket of water with the other kids. After the forth shirt change he decided to stay out of the water. It's autumn in Sydney, although a lovely sunny day, it just wasn't warm enough to be wearing a wet shirt. Endless cake, triangle sandwiches, beer and wine were consumed, smiles and laughter filled the house, one of the best parties we've had! After everyone left last night Mark and I did talk about how lovely the day was and how much we missed all of our other friends and family who weren't here to join us on this perfect day. Missing you all so much today. -kelly
Scout being baptised by Father John HannonSt. Mary's Church Manly
Franc, Daniel, Diana and Sabrina Renzi (Scout's godparents & their children)
Mark, Scout, Luca, Kelly, Margaret and Graham Ferguson
St. Mary's Church Manly
Pink cupcakes and white flowers filled the house
Luca and friend Joska having a blast in the bucket of water.
Scout asleep through it all in the silk dress I made just for her.Wednesday, May 13, 2009
Mothers Day
We celebrated Mothers Day at one of my favorite pubs, the Three Weeds. Fantastic food, great atmosphere and the most amazing company Mark, Luca and Scout. Now if I just could have had Luca and Scout sit still for a photo! -kel
Saturday, May 09, 2009
Friday, May 01, 2009
West Oz – Pt IV: Margaret’s & Yallingup
The last part of our adventure. After an uneventful drive from Esperance to Albany and an overnight stay (apart from the speeding ticket I have decided I like Albany a lot). We headed north toward Margaret River and Yallingup – renowned wine territory and in size at least much more like the coastal holiday destinations we have been in Australia before.
Many more towns to pass through on this part of the drive, a great coastal stop in Denmark (again, amazing coastline and beach) but the memorable part of this day was the short cut we took that resulted in 40kms of backcountry unsealed roads with a logging truck on our tail and grave doubts in our mind the whole way that we would get to the end of the road and it would be a dead end – it wasn’t a dead end, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and we arrived at where we were staying and it was one of the coolest places I have stayed at – check out the link (Smiths Beach) and look at the “gallery” section.
Each of the days that we were here we visited a few wineries in the morning (and brought a case each day – some awesome shiraz and cab savs from this area), spent the afternoon at the beach and the pool where we were staying had a quick visit to the local providore followed by Kelly making an awesome dinner and enjoying a bottle of the wine we had brought that day. The drives between wineries were fun with fields of what from a distance look like sheep but turned out to be kangaroos and another being deer (a venison farm).
We had a few days in Perth to end the holiday, we explored around a bit more and found some neighbourhoods that we really liked, went to the beach, Luca went to Zoo with Em and Corey, we celebrated Emmy’s 11th birthday and finally we were ready to go home.
Many more towns to pass through on this part of the drive, a great coastal stop in Denmark (again, amazing coastline and beach) but the memorable part of this day was the short cut we took that resulted in 40kms of backcountry unsealed roads with a logging truck on our tail and grave doubts in our mind the whole way that we would get to the end of the road and it would be a dead end – it wasn’t a dead end, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger and we arrived at where we were staying and it was one of the coolest places I have stayed at – check out the link (Smiths Beach) and look at the “gallery” section.
Each of the days that we were here we visited a few wineries in the morning (and brought a case each day – some awesome shiraz and cab savs from this area), spent the afternoon at the beach and the pool where we were staying had a quick visit to the local providore followed by Kelly making an awesome dinner and enjoying a bottle of the wine we had brought that day. The drives between wineries were fun with fields of what from a distance look like sheep but turned out to be kangaroos and another being deer (a venison farm).
We had a few days in Perth to end the holiday, we explored around a bit more and found some neighbourhoods that we really liked, went to the beach, Luca went to Zoo with Em and Corey, we celebrated Emmy’s 11th birthday and finally we were ready to go home.
West Oz – Pt III: Esperance
Leaving Albany we had planned on getting a few things for the road but we had also forgotten Australia shuts down on Good Friday – nothing open accept a gas station (luckily!). On the way out of Albany I also fell into a speeding trap and I am eagerly awaiting a ticket in the mail – unsigned speed camera in a 90km area about four hundred metres from the start of 110km speed zone – get me out of Albany.
The drive from Albany to Esperance is 500km and there are two small towns (two gas stations, no fast food chain, and a pub type towns) to pass through – and I don’t mean that you travel on a freeway and bypass the towns, there is no freeway and no bypass. Luckily the vegetation changes a lot as you go and it is really beautiful in many places. Getting back to the point I was about to make – before we left Seattle Kelly and I were enjoying a meat pie in Burien (outside of Seattle) and there was a large map of Australia on the wall, we decided to do the “spin around five times and put your finger on the map thing” and one of the places we hit was this dinky little town called Ravensthorpe – well Ravensthorpe is one of the two towns that we passed through so we had some personal excitement for the drive.
We made Esperance late in the afternoon and my sister and her family were already there having driven from Perth the day before. After getting settled our first trip was to this old wooden pier that in its day was used to transport iron ore to ships out in the bay but now supports about 500 fisher people. There is a very smart (and very fat) sea lion that basically lives at the pier eating the scraps when fish are cleaned after being caught. Luca enjoyed seeing the sea lion and he also helped his cousin Emilly catch a fish – he was so excited about the fish flapping around on the hook that he kissed it (see pic below).
Esperance sells itself as having the best beaches in Australia – it may have the best beaches in the world. The coastline down here is crazy beautiful (my pictures do not do it justice). We had a fun time swimming at a beach with dolphins, visiting an petting zoo, Luca got to ride a miniature train, I ventured to the pub to watch some footy – but basically we just hung out a lot with my sister and her family. It was also an adventure packing all four of us in a small hotel room. From his cot next to our bed, Luca made regularly commentary through the night – mostly telling me to stop moving so much.
The drive from Albany to Esperance is 500km and there are two small towns (two gas stations, no fast food chain, and a pub type towns) to pass through – and I don’t mean that you travel on a freeway and bypass the towns, there is no freeway and no bypass. Luckily the vegetation changes a lot as you go and it is really beautiful in many places. Getting back to the point I was about to make – before we left Seattle Kelly and I were enjoying a meat pie in Burien (outside of Seattle) and there was a large map of Australia on the wall, we decided to do the “spin around five times and put your finger on the map thing” and one of the places we hit was this dinky little town called Ravensthorpe – well Ravensthorpe is one of the two towns that we passed through so we had some personal excitement for the drive.
We made Esperance late in the afternoon and my sister and her family were already there having driven from Perth the day before. After getting settled our first trip was to this old wooden pier that in its day was used to transport iron ore to ships out in the bay but now supports about 500 fisher people. There is a very smart (and very fat) sea lion that basically lives at the pier eating the scraps when fish are cleaned after being caught. Luca enjoyed seeing the sea lion and he also helped his cousin Emilly catch a fish – he was so excited about the fish flapping around on the hook that he kissed it (see pic below).
Esperance sells itself as having the best beaches in Australia – it may have the best beaches in the world. The coastline down here is crazy beautiful (my pictures do not do it justice). We had a fun time swimming at a beach with dolphins, visiting an petting zoo, Luca got to ride a miniature train, I ventured to the pub to watch some footy – but basically we just hung out a lot with my sister and her family. It was also an adventure packing all four of us in a small hotel room. From his cot next to our bed, Luca made regularly commentary through the night – mostly telling me to stop moving so much.
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