The kitchen is in the home stretch now. Last week we had some amazing breakthroughs. Running water. The oven was installed, the new cooktop was installed. The air conditioning units were installed and working. The floor is looking really good. The kitchen basically looks amazing and is now working. We're very happy. It's a shame that we finally have everything in, installed and working and we had to leave it for two weeks to go on holiday! But it'll all be there when we get back. It was so nice to be able to put away the extension cord from the hall to the lounge, that cord had kept the lounge powered for the three months of work. It was nice to be able to cook, to be able to load up the new dishwasher. Beth enjoyed sitting up at the new chairs on the new kitchen island and eating...

Our house is so, so nearly ready to be lived in again. Not that we've not been living in it of course, just that it'll no longer be a mission. The floors were finished on Thursday, so we had to stay at Peter and Mary's on Thursday night while it cured. But the good thing is we moved the bath back into the bathroom yesterday. I only stuffed up plumbing it back in a couple of times, the first when I'd just connected up one tap to figure out if the pipe was hot to cold. Well I forgot the bath was a mixer type, so the water went into one pipe and came flying out the other pipe. All over the bathroom. Get out a towel, Timothy. Start cleaning up the mess. Once I finally got it all plumbed up we tested it out and of course, my 50/50...

I took Beth to meet Father Christmas last night. Not that she hasn't met him last year, but she was too young then to have any idea what was going on. This time it was at the best place in the world to meet Father Christmas, the local New World. Well, the place was packed with millions of people, half of there it seems to grab the "free gifts" they were giving out, which were just things like little drinks and lollipops. One lady had her group of kids collecting as much free stuff as they could. Anyway, so we lined up to sit next to Father Christmas (he was hanging out in the cafe) but when it was Beth's turn she got very scared and didn't really want to see him. So I sat next to her while she sat next to Father Christmas, but she was still just...

Been a really busy few days. We’ve spent most of the last week at Peter and Mary’s because the floor sander has been at home doing the floors. They’re looking really good, though there’s a few bits that could some more attention and a couple of places where he’s stained the floor and it looks really bad. We spoke to him though and he’s going to fix it for us. The place stinks too which is a bit of a pain, on Sunday night Beth just wouldn't go to sleep, I thought it might be something to do with the smell, but she just had an upset tummy I think. Once that situation cleaned itself up she happily went to sleep.
Living at Peter and Mary’s wasn’t as hard as i thought it would be either, they’ve been on holiday the whole time so Beth seemed happy enough to sleep...

It was the Jervoistown lunch on Sunday, 12pm sharp at the Napier RSA. We all managed to get dressed up and turn up on time which is an amazing feat in itself. But our luck ended there, we thought that Theo might sleep in his pram because he was due a sleep and we thought that Beth would be super happy and awake because she'd slept into 9am! However the reason for sleeping into 9am was starting to become apparent, she was unwell. She didn't really want to sit at table with 20 other people, or eat anything. So I was juggling Beth, Sarah was juggling Theo and in between we were trying to talk to our neighbours etc. But it didn't really work, Beth kept losing it totally and Theo was crying. It didn't help that it seemed like it was 35 degrees in the room, it was stifling...

We had an early Christmas Party with Wendy, Rex, Amy, Kaden and Mattie on Saturday night. We had a great time, Beth loved it. She got so many new little toys to play with, she just thought it was Christmas. Which is was, sort of, so that was nice. She got a little tea set, a pair of Barbie high heels, a Peppa Pig blanket and a big yellow bouncy ball to play with outside. Theo also scored some lovely gifts including a little glow worm that lights up and plays music when you squeeze him and a big teddy. Both of which Beth accepts are Theo's, but demands to play with as if they're hers. That's a 2 yo for you though.
Was great to see everyone from Dannevirke, we had a really nice meal and a great time. We even went down and looked at Holly and...

Well, don't actually. Because it's awesome. Yes our new pressure system is finally online, consisting of a large tank in the garden that fills up directly from the bore, then feeding into a pump which keeps pressure on the pipes. So every tap we have now has pressure. The upstairs shower has gone from a miserable experience (I'd only ever had about 5 showers in it it was so piss poor) to being the better of the two showers. The downstairs shower was obviously designed for low-pressure, so now it can't really handle the intense pressure it's being fed and just runs hot.
It's great to be able to water the garden properly, having a sprinker that works etc. Now the toilets don't take 3 minutes to fill up after a flush, now the bath can be filled up in 3 minutes instead of 15. It's so much better. The...

We have hot water again. It's magical. Still no pressure from the pump though, so it's just bore water pressure. But I had a shower yesterday morning and it was fine, so that was nice. Progress otherwise is going well, we have some gib on the walls now, the insulation is in, the hot water cylinder is in (obviously) and most of the wiring appears to be done. The huge big sliding door is in which I think I mentioned in my last update. Oh we have water again upstairs, bonus, we can use the upstairs toilet again.

It was the Melbourne Cup yesterday. I picked a number out of thin air and got Sarah to put $5 on it for me. I picked number 8, Max Dynamite, which came in second. So I won $17 or so, well done me. Wish I'd put some on the winner though, a...

What a mental long weekend it's been. I'd love to say it was fun fun fun but it wasn't really. Not having a proper house is very frustrating. Saturday we took Beth and Theo to the pools. Beth of course loves the water and was quite happy to go swimming, though mostly she just wanted to climb up the little toy waterslide, splash in the water, then do that again. 50 times. I did take her on the big waterslide but she really didn't like that (it's ~30 seconds long in a tunnel, moving at high speed swishing left and right.) "Not go in the tunnel again Daddy" was the reply to that event. Theo had his first big swim in a pool, he didn't seem to phased by the whole thing, looking mostly bemused really. The pools were packed, so many people there compared to the tiny few that...