45 Bennett - the demo cont.

Week 2 and the house is in pieces...Here are some pictures for the cabana. This is where Mark and I keep telling all of our overseas friends and family they will be able to stay when they come to visit. Also one pic of the front of the house, after hearing from the builder today that our walls were full cockroaches and cockroach poo, I could not have been more overjoyed to see all the walls gone! - kel

Demolition

The work on the house is officially in full swing! Walls are coming down, a hole is being dug for the pool and I am finally convinced we might someday actually move in! Last week Mark took a day off work to help our builder with the demolition, here are some pics of the house and Mark playing carpenter for the day (boys will be boys!) First photo is Mark dismantling the old water heater, second photo is Mark removing some of the old ceiling joists. More updates soon! -kel

Bangalore India

This week I’ve been in Bangalore India for a Quarterly Business review. The weather hasn’t been too hot and for the most part I’ve been stuck in meetings (aka death by powerpoint). In the past I have experience staring and pointing on my trips to India, this time the staring and pointing has been particularly noticeable as my big pregnant belly seems to also be a point of interest. Looking forward to getting home to Mark and Australia…here are a few pictures from my trip. -kel

At last the work has begun!

Our house plans finally made it through the council system and we have full approval! This is great news and something we waited 6 moths for! This weekend Mark and his dad began the demo, in the next two weeks a huge excavator will be there to tear the house in 2! Mark escaped the weekend with one small crow-bar to the head wound, trust me the house looks much worse than Mark!

More before and after pics coming soon, here is a pic of Mark starting on the kitchen work, don’t you just love the wallpaper! -kel

19+ weeks and counting

Yesterday was our 19 week ultrasound, everything looks great. The baby is healthy and no problems were detected. Here is a picture from the ultrasound.

Manly

A lot to take in at the moment with a new baby on the way and the house still a dream with no DA - a kebab at the beach and a few hours to chill and take in a beautiful Sydney winter day at Manly - a perfect Saturday afternoon.

Midnight Snack

Pregnant food cravings, I thought they were somewhat mythical, until recently…I am growing more and more frustrated (literally) as I am craving all of the food that I can’t send Mark out to get in the middle of the night…let’s just say it’s a long flight to Seattle just for a snack. Mark and I now regularly talk about foods we wish we were eating in Seattle, the conversations sound like we are stranded on a deserted island with nothing to eat but coconuts, not driving through a city of 3 million people with more food choices than you can imagine…Here is my top 10 list of foods I can’t wait to have in August on my last US visit before the baby arrives…these aren’t my favorite Seattle foods, just the ones I am craving like crazy… -kel
Paseo – Midnight Cuban Sandwich
Malenas – 2 Chicken Tacos Meal (with extra salsa)
Red Mill – Chicken Club Sandwich w/Onion Rings
Cactus – Navaho Fry Bread with Honey
Cactus – Carne Asada Tacos
Petes – Tall Iced Single Shot Decaf Vanilla Late with a Blackberry Lemon Scone
Pagallici’s – Pepperoni Pizza
Mediterranean Kitchen – Chicken meal w/Pita
Nordies Coffee Bar – Venti Orange Cream Fizz
Kid Valley – Onion Rings with extra Tarter Sauce

Baby Husky Fan Arriving November 26

Just for the record, as I know many of you have been wondering, the baby will be a Husky supporter and life long fan. Mark is attempting through sly tactics, to have Cougar baby gear sent to Australia in an empty effort at influencing our baby toward becoming a Coug fan. He is so worried about the Husky fan to be, that he even suggested this year’s Mark vs. Kelly Apple Cup bet should result in the winner choosing the baby’s allegiance. However in the time honored tradition of the Huskies (passing loyalty though the best team and the team of the University a parent actually attended), our baby will be a Dwag fan through and through. -kel

We are crazy, crazy people

Windy Winter Weekend: South 2 Sussex

Kelly's first trip to the NSW South Coast - a fine long weekend away with our pals Sam, Christy and Jemima at Sussex Inlet.

The driving this time of year is traffic free and at times beautiful - rugged coastlines, rough seas and rolling green hills. We made food stops at Berry in either direction and if you follow in our footsteps eat at Stone Sourdough Bakery and avoid the main drag.

Heavy rain greeted us in Sussex on Friday afternoon and although it stopped for the weekend the clouds never really broke - perfect weather for long walks, lot's of great food (courtesy of Kel and Christy), beer drinking and cards. We took a side trip to Ulladulla and drive along G-G-G-G-G-Government Drive to the beach.

Although passe for Kelly these days we said g'day to six large grey kangaroos chilling in the front yard of a house just down the street from where we stayed.

Much thanks to Barry & Helen Taylor for use of their town house!

And then there were 3 …

Mark and I are very happy to announce, we are expecting a baby. Current due date is November 26, my dad’s birthday and the start of the Aussie Summer. I am feeling pretty good and getting larger by the second, funky cravings here and there and potentially some funky hormone swings as well. Here is a pic from one of the ultrasounds. We are both super excited, crossing our fingers the house is finished before the baby arrives! We promise to keep up with the blogging a bit better, we know we've been slack lately, but we have been a little pre-occupied with visions of parenthood! -kel

Balmain Tigers vs. Manly Sea Eagles

Yesterday Mark and his dad took me to my first Rugby League game. Not to be confused with Rugby Union, and yes there are actually two different types of Rugby in Australia, I am sure this strikes you as odd as it did me, there are only 20 million people in Australia, how can they possibly have more than one type of Rugby? Simple answer virtually every Aussies love sports! On a Friday night at the Ferguson house hold, it’s a constant jumping of channels on the TV between Rugby Leauge, Rugby Union, Aussie Rules Football and Cricket!

The stadium was packed with 20,000 fans, the game was great, both teams kept the action going and I am actually starting to understand the rules! Seating was on a hill, in the grass, the spectators were highly entertaining, I would speculate that almost 85% of the crowd had on jerseys or other gear supporting their team. In typical Aussie fashion, songs were song, lots of beer was drunk, the sun was out and all had a great time! Mark’s dad used to play for the Tigers, his last season was 1963. He reminisced with us about what the field and the grounds used to look like and helped me confirm that now that I am officially a Ferguson, Balmain is my team! (Oh yeah the Tigers won 24-18)

Wedding Photos

Here are a few more pictures from the Wedding. Mark and I are working on creating a space where you can all view them all, in the mean time here are a few of my favorite! –kel

Seoul Food

A Saturday in Seoul...headed up to Dongdaemun and ran across a massive "fashion market" ... hundred's of small stalls with fabric, fasteners, ribbon... everything you need to make clothes... me being there without Kel is sort of like a vegetarian in Smith & Wollenski. Dongdaemon has all sorts of wholesale markets, a huge flea market (plenty of cool t-shirts but all are too small for me) and there are also lots of crazy alleyways with all sorts of stuff being sold, cooking in the street (see the fish in photo) and guys on scooters taking short cuts without slowing down.

A short ride on the subway and I was in Myeongdong - this area is super packed on a Saturday, many of the leading brand stores you'd find in a mall in Bellevue or Bondi Junction are here plus a ton of street stalls that seemed to be selling fried stuff (?) or knock-offs. The weather was actually pretty good which really suits this area with all stores on small pedestrian streets (no cover), there were stages with rock bands and one that was surrounded by hundreds of teenage girls who were going crazy for some Korean soap star.

One week until Kel get's back to Sydney, I can't wait for that but wish she was with me today.

Bye and all the best, Mark

Melbourne - The Colonel & WMD

I love visiting Melbourne and was long overdue for a visit (about 8 years) and Kelly has never been so it was with great anticipation that we headed down for a long weekend. We jumped the flying Kangaroo rented a car and we were in Brunswick St. Fitzroy just before mid-day. Brunswick St. has a ton of good cafes (in fact Melbourne definitely has the European cafe culture down) so we went for a walk and found one we liked. As well as cafes there are blocks of book, clothing and home ware type shops in Fitzroy and all are a little bit funky, definitely not your usual mall fare.

After a couple hours in Fitzroy we headed toward the bay and our hotel in St Kilda. Kelly got the recommendation for this hotel from a magazine called Family Circle, yet it was as far away from a Family Circle type environment as you could find. It was one of those super cool boutique jobs, with a bar and restaurant downstairs, all the hallway lighting was red and directly over our bed was a huge photo of Colonel Sanders with the normal KFC replaced by WMD – a comment about the pervasiveness of American culture in Australia I think (?). The place was small, clean, close to trams but really loud at night – the Hotel Tolarno gets 2 ½ stars from 5.

Friday night we caught up with Franc & Di Renzi. Franc is a friend of mine from college and for me a trip to Melbourne would never be the same without catching Franc and Di… many, many good times with them in Melbourne. Having local friends paid off – we went to a bar that was not only down some rubbish strewn alley but was actually built into the cavity between two multi-storey office buildings – it was very cool … if you ever visit Melbourne don’t ask me where it is because I couldn’t explain it to you even if I wasn’t sworn to secrecy! We went to the Melbourne version of Longrain (there is a Sydney version) for dinner – great food.

Saturday the party did get started right – breakfast in Acland St, St Kilda. Acland St has about ten great pastry shops - vanilla slices of exceptional quality (I want to control the hyperbole here because we are talking vanilla slices, not hamburgers or meat pies which could then be described as “to die for”).

After loading up on the food we headed for the shopping …and possibly the people watching … capital of Australia, Chapel St. South Yarra. We spent a solid four hours there and I was happy with the relatively minor damage to the bank account… I think Kelly treated this more as a reconisance trip for the next visit.

Saturday night we went over to Richmond for dinner at Franc and Di’s place and met their daughter Sabrina. Kelly and Sabrina got on like a house on fire and along with swapping more “dirt” on me with Franc and Di this made Kelly's night.

The food wasn't done yet - Sunday morning we drove to Carlton to have breakfast at a Melbourne institution, Brunetti's. The place is a crazy Italian cafe that was packed - 12,000 cups of coffee is the record day. We ate breakfast and left with bags full of cannoli.

A stroll along the Yarra and then back to Sydney.

- Mark

P.S. http://www.brunetti.com.au ***** from Kelly, just don't try and get there during a fun run for the childrens hospital.

10 foods it's hard to live without...

On more than one trip to the grocery store I have found myself staring at a shelf in pure and total confusion. One recipe has turned out disastrous due to differences in ingredients and I have asked complete strangers in more than one grocery isle for help in identifying such items as jello, graham crackers, flank steak and marshmallows. In the sprit of top 10 lists, here are the top 10 foods I am finding it hard to live without.
1. Corn Tortilla Shells
2. Marshmallows – they have them here but they are very different and all minty-ish flavored.
3. Graham Crackers
4. Wriggles Double Mint Gum
5. Butterscotch Chips – a key ingredient to Nordy Bars (If I can’t shop at Nordstrom at least I could have eaten their famous brownies)
6. Black beans
7. Super fine white sugar
8. Spoon sized Frosted Mini Wheats
9. Flank Steak – Apparently cows in Australia don’t have flanks.
10. Crisco – essential ingredient in pies and biscuits!

On the flip side, the fruit, yogurt and ice cream in Australia are much better than anything I’ve ever had in the US. We are off to Melbourne this weekend, where I will be stopping by the USA food store, to stock up on the above! - kel

Hunter Valley

Last weekend we traveled to the Napa of Australia the Hunter Valley. One of my friends Julie celebrated her 30th birthday by organizing 16 friends to meet in the Hunter for a weekend of wine tasting and birthday celebration.



At 10 AM on Saturday morning we boarded a mini-bus to tour the Valley, stopping at 4 wineries, Scarborough, Tulloch, Peterson’s Champagne House and Audrey Wilkins, with a stop for lunch at the Belltree Café (fantastic food). Mark and I did our fair share of tasting, purchased almost 3 cases of wine (most from Tulloch and Audrey Wilkins) and did a little sightseeing.


Mark took particular pleasure at the wine museum at Audrey Wilkins that showcased a number of “Bung Hole Borers”. For those of you not familiar with the phrase "bung hole", just check out an episode of Bevis and Butthead. The party was great fun. Julie is from Texas and works for Dell in Australia, a number of the other guest were also from Texas, at times with the y’alls and country music playing it certainly felt more like I was in Texas than Australia, however once the Kangaroo’s hopped by it was back to Australian reality!

On Sunday we were able to visit with my mom, stepdad, cousin and family friend who were all visiting the Hunter Valley as part of their trip to Australia for the Wedding, it was fantastic timing and great to catch up with them post-wedding maddess! -kel

It rained, it poured, then we got married…

It rained, then it poured, then we got married…The wedding was amazing, the entire day turned out just beautifully (after the rain stopped). The wedding was held at Gunner’s Barracks in Mosman, overlooking the Sydney Harbor. Our guests enjoyed dinner, dancing, quite a few speeches, cake and plenty of alcohol. The night flew by in a blur, Mark and I did manage to speak to almost all of the guests and got in plenty of dancing. Some couples take dancing lessons before the wedding, those of you familiar with Mark’s “moves” would have been very proud when he pulled out the James Brown splits! Other highlights of the wedding included the poem my sister read during the ceremony, Mark’s fingers shaking like crazy as we read our vows, all of the speeches, the toast to Mark’s parents who celebrated their 43rd wedding anniversary on our wedding day, so many friends and family traveling around the world to celebrate with us, John Frize one of Mark’s childhood friends singing “Sweet Caroline” during the reception and going out to the Ivanhoe (a local pub in Manly) after the reception. The entire night with our family and friends was fantastic, the wedding was perfect!

We are hoping to have photos up soon, once we’ve got them we’ll post them here for you all to enjoy. -kel

Festival of the Fergo's Part I

I'll give credit where credit is due and acknowledge that I stole the title of the blog from my friend (& our wedding photographer) Sam Grimmer who has named the three events Kelly and I are hosting this week the "Festival of the Fergo's". Part I is the wedding rehearsal dinner that doesn't involve a rehearsal.

Rehearsal's are not the norm in Australia and our celebrant being as inflexible as he is with nearly everything (yes, there is more than a hint of dissatisifaction on our part), wouldn't entertain the idea. We decided to have a dinner in any case as a way for us to spend time with our international-interstate guests in what has been a hectic week. It was also a way of introducing the northern beaches to the people who have decided to camp in the city.

Kelly being a fan of the pizza has had us try out a number of different pizzeria's since we arrived in Australia and by far her favorite is a place called Tropical Italy in Manly... so we decided to have the rehearsal dinner there... great decision! They had erected a special canopy in the courtyard in case the weather turned bad and were generally on top of every request we had, the pizza was awesome (as usual) and more than one person doubled down on the gelato. The McWilliams wine flowed freely (thanks Dave) and everyone had a great time, especially my six year old nephew Corey who took the photos for the night. (The first photo is of my soon to be sister in-law Tiffany & the second is of our mum's).

At the end of the evening I sat enjoying a Makers Mark pondering my last 18 hrs as a single bloke!

Cheers.

The fun has begun!

With only two weeks away to hosting our first party at our new house, we thought it might be a good idea to rip out the incredibly ancient carpet that had the fruitful odor of cat pee before our closest family and friends arrived for a post wedding brunch. Ripping out the carpet seemed simple enough but then came the great question, how will we get the old carpet to the tip (Aussie for the dump). This required us picking up our new truck Mark had purchased a few months ago from a friend.

Why hadn’t we picked up the truck before this weekend? Mark doesn’t know how to drive a manual, but I do. So off we went to the Wolley’s to pick up the truck, where I had to drive away while Mark drove away in the BMW. This was great fun for me, as most of you know, this was serious blow to the Aussie manhood born and bred into Mark. His woman had to come with him to drive the new truck! What was even better was later when we were at the hardware store when I drove up, Mark was in the passengers seat! I have come to realize most Aussie men are guys guys, very burley, very rugged most have dirt under there nails, you get the picture, you don’t let your fiancé drive you to the hardware store if you are a real Aussie.

Small side note here – Just for you uncle Joe and the Pitt family, while packing and moving to Australia I found a note I wrote and signed when I was 10 years old, to Uncle Joe stating I would never drive the pooper scooper (the pooper scooper was this extremely ugly, old, truck that my dad owned, rusty and peeling paint, that when you started covered the entire car in a cloud of smoke that you had to drive out of, think Batman in a white Datsun Truck minus the glam and cool gatgets) I remember at Christmas the year I wrote this note that I hated the car so much I told Uncle Joe that I would rather walk when I was 16 than ever ever drive the truck. I remember Uncle Joe laughing at my stubbornness and telling me to write that down. I did drive that truck, and I don’t know what I promised Uncle Joe I would do if I did when I was 10, but I owe him big time, I drove that truck more than 100 times I am certain. Yesterday while driving around in our new truck it dawned on me that our new truck had just the same feel, that someday it could be my kids pooper scooper if I put it through enough wear and tear!

We ripped out all of the carpet, dug out one of the many flower beds in the house, loaded the truck up for a trip to the tip and completed our very first step of the remodel! Now all we have is about 1000 more hours in the yard, council approvals, lots of workmen, half the house torn apart and rebuilt and we’re ready to move in! One way or the other, I am determined to spend next Christmas in the house, at this point we might be camping in the backyard! Oh and look for my next blog all about teaching Mark how to drive a manual! This is going to be great fun! - kel