the new house

Hello all! Sorry it's been several days since we have posted anything. It has been a really busy week around here. After signing the lease on our house last Tuesday Charlie and I slept on the floor of our new place for the first two nights. Needless to say, we were definitely happy to have our furniture delivered on Thursday. Since then we have been unpacking and organizing. I think we have been to Bunnings (the Autralian Home Depot) about 8 times... I have already been twice today. Just about all of our stuff is unpacked and placed throughout the house, but we definitely have a couple empty rooms since the place is so much larger than our condo in Norfolk.

We are very excited to have a backyard! Charlie has been out there most of the day assembling his new BBQ (a very important feature around here). While working outside today we found our first Redback spiders... I am definitely not excited about it. We knew that they are very common around here, but I had hoped that somehow we wouldn't have them. Ha, wishful thinking. Anyway, for those of you who are unfamiliar with them, they look similar to Black Widows, but their venom is closer to a brown Recluse... tons of nerve damage, etc. Nice, eh? Well, hopefully they will be gone in the next few days... I have sprayed 6 month spider spray all around the perimeter of the yard and the house. We shall see.

I have included a picture of the house... the front yard is extremely plain right now, I really would like to do some landscaping soon so that it has a nicer look (and hopefully it will help cover-up the house too). I would love it if those of you with green thumbs would give me some ideas on how to improve it.

We are hoping to get all of the major unpacking and decorating completed by the end of this week so we can leave for a few days. Charlie is off through January 12th, so we are planning on taking a long road trip down to Victoria and South Australia. We are planning to stop in Melbourne, Adelaide, Barossa Valley wine country and drive the Great Ocean Road. It should be tons of fun! The trip will probably take us 11 days to complete so we'll be gone through Christmas!

I guess that's enough of an update for now :-) We love and miss everyone!! It really hasn't felt like the holidays without you(the 80 degree weather doesn't help much either)!

Here are some pics of the house, etc... I will take moree of the interior this week

Hamilton South House