small steps

We are making slow progress on our flat. Life seems so busy at the moment. We haven't got a blind in the bathroom so I hung up my flag instead. It fits quite well and does the job!

We built a little tent in our back patio to hold our bikes. I got mine back from the shop yesterday and I hope to start riding to work again this week. I don't know if I still remember how to cycle! I stopped riding at the beginning of December and the bike was at the shop for the whole time we were away in Canada and until now.

We have enjoyed having a few people over to the house since it has been tidy enough to have space. It's so lovely having friends around our table, eating, laughing, and drinking tea.

anniversary

Ant and I are thrilled to be celebrating our five year anniversary! Wow--it's flown by we don't even feel as though it's been hard work.


Ant's my hero--making me laugh every day and supporting me in everything I do. I also really appreciate all the little things he does for me, such as:

heavy lifting
hooking up electronics
researching big purchases and our recent move
financial planning
feeding me tea

Here's to many more happy years together!

confessions of a messy house

Here are some photos from our new flat in London. I am ashamed of the mess in our place at the moment. We don't have the right furniture to start putting all this stuff away. So we are climbing over boxes to get into rooms and cupboards. The bedroom is overrun with boxes and I have to climb over them to get into the far side of the bed. My clothes are stacked up on a suitcase next to the wall.


About half of our books are stacked up in the front hallway until we get some bookshelves. The stairs go down to our bathroom, living room, and kitchen at the back of the flat.


All our houseplants are enjoying being in the bathtub. It's nice and damp in there. We have a separate shower (you can see the glass in the foreground). Also, note the filing cabinet next to the toilet! It's empty since I didn't want any papers to get damp. There's not a lot of space elsewhere in the house.


Looking into the living room and kitchen (above). No satellite TV yet, so the bunny ears ariel is out.


The kitchen is a bit smaller than our previous place, but I have successfully cooked a few dinners in there. Matt bought a new four-slice toaster; you can see it on the right counter.


This shot (above) of our living room is taken from the kitchen area. I have now moved the Christmas tree outside (it's a potted one). It should last through the year on our (very) small patio garden out back.

New Year's Eve

Ant, Mum, Dad, Jeff, and I went over to Grammie and Grandad's for our end of the year celebrations. Everyone felt quite mellow so it was a quiet evening of cards, reading, and eating.


I was practicing with my new camera while the others were playing cards. Ant loves 45s and he looks forward to the family games all year.


Mum and Jeff were looking at Grandad's new reference book and saw that on the alphabets page, the Chinese characters were the text of John 3:16. Jeff pointed out a few words since each character represents one word. It must be so hard to learn Chinese! The characters are pronounced differently for Mandarin and Cantonese.


At about eleven o'clock we had a snack of crisps, nachos, and cakes. Grammie served these fruit cake bars and Hello Dolly squares (below). "I wonder why they are called Hello Dolly squares." I asked. Without missing a beat, Grandad quipped, "They can't even talk back!"