Beau and Emilia playing

Emilia and Beau love legos!  Lego Friends are kept in Emilia's room and the City Legos are in the living room.  Although sometimes they do play with the made pieces together.

O Christmas Tree

When Chris and I bought our first house, the previous owner left her Christmas Tree in the attic.  It was a huge 9 foot tree that we put in our front window for 7 Christmases.  We had the highest ceilings in our little one story and we ended up putting the tree on another base that raised it another foot or so.  But this tree was not pre lit with lights.  We had to put it together every year, branch by color-coded branch.  Lights were strung row by row until the top.

When we moved to our next house, we didn't have a great place for the tree.  It was almost as tall as our 10-ft ceilings once the snowman was at the top.  Every year we looked for a pre-lit tree but every year we talked ourselves out of it.  Finally last year, we took the plunge.  A beautiful pre-lit slim line tree came home with us after some back and forth and finally the encouragement from my great and talented friend Amanda.  Of course we all know by know what happened after Christmas last year… We moved to Australia…  And Australia has different power so it didn't cross our minds to take it.  I have a beautiful, new grey and white linen tree skirt in storage that has never been used!

So this year we bought a 4-ft tree and decided on a whole new theme.  Instead of my red, silver and chartreuse balls with snowman ornaments, we would go aqua and silver with Australian animals.
We put it up last weekend since they don't celebrate Thanksgiving and it's spring so everything is all whack-a-doodle about Christmas in the summer.

The Sydney Opera House and Kookaberra

Koala, Crocodile and Platypus 

Penguin and White Kangaroo 

Echidna and Brown Kangaroo 

On the far right, you can see Beau's airplane with Santa

House Tour

I took some pictures of the house before Emilia's birthday party.  This is a one story, 3 bedroom, 2 bathroom house.  Hallway from the front door lead through the house past Emilia's room on the left, master on the right, Beau's on the left, laundry and 2nd bathroom on the right and then end in the living room/kitchen/dining/study/game room.  Our shipment arrived 3 weeks ago so without further adieu...

The front of the house... White picket fence on a tree lined street with sidewalks.

To the right of the front door is a window in Emilia's room

To the left is the master bedroom

 Emilia's room

 No closet so this wardrobe holds all her hanging clothes and shoes.

Lego friends are at the bottom.

 Heading across the hall to the master bedroom.

On the left hand wall is the walk-in closet and then a door to the master bath.  Double sinks and walk in shower (in the reflection).  There is a large full length mirror in between the toilet and shower.  There are functional windows across the top of the medicine cabinets.

Wardrobe that acts as a hall closet holding coats and swimsuits.

Looking across to Emilia's room

Down the hall to Beau's room.

Hallway

 2nd Bathroom.  Laundry and sink are before this bathroom with tons of high storage.

Hallway to the living room.  Our wall of pictures that used to go up the stairs.

Living room.

3 walls of doors that open (only 2 are open).

 The kitchen

The study and gameroom.  Emilia thinks I have too many animals on the floor.  Cow rug in here, 2 sheepskins in Emilia's room and a kangaroo in Beau's room.

Patio and yard.  The single car garage is accessed through the back door and then a door to the garage on the right. 

Rain, wind and trees

We just had a major thunderstorm come through and another wave is expected later tonight. One of the 2 dead trees behind our house fell over the pool. Luckily only the plastic bucket holding pool toys was damaged. It was an inch from our roof.



The dead trees.








It pushed the edging



Tree twisted under the roof.


The best part of the rain is playing in puddles!

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