life with rox

First big outing to the farmer's market (food break)

Trying to get comfy

Skype-ing with family

Home visits from the midwife

I'm typing with one hand... Bub is sleeping on the other one. More baby pix on flickr -- trying to limit the number of close-up baby pix on the blog because it's public and we don't want Roxy all over the Internet.

update is coming

We've been knee-deep in Roxy ever since we got home a week ago, which is why we haven't put up more pictures or been too communicative with things...

She's been wonderful - sleeping a lot (although she's starting to 'wake up' from her newborn-ness), eating a lot and being super cute a lot.

Nate was back at work every day this week and now that we have Internet at home, he can do a lot of work from here. A couple more days of work for him and then the Christmas break. Good timing!

Nate's mom has been here since last Thursday. Roxy made her appearance just hours before Doreen's plane touched down. It's been really, really wonderful having her here -- we wouldn't be eating nearly as well without her; Charlie's surviving on PB&J and carrots while we feast on lamb stew and fresh fruit salad. :)

More pix to come. I promise.

Heeeeeere's Roxy!

Cute-a-baby Roxy! I think this is Day 2 or 3.

Gotta go. She's crying!

Baby Hardy is here!

Very happy to announce the early arrival of Roxanne Emerson Hardy.

Born December 11 at 1:24 am. 3.6 kg, 52 cm long.

Just about to spend our first night at home with her. Pictures will soon follow.

(We also have internet at home now! Hooray! Just in time!)

December 16th

Just got an e-mail from the movers and they are scheduled to deliver our things on December 16th - just over two months from when we last saw our things in Davis. They were taken from us on Oct. 10, put on a boat and shipped out on Oct. 31, scheduled to arrive Nov. 25, rescheduled to arrive Dec. 1 and now waiting to go through customs at the Port of Brisbane.

December 16th is also the baby's due date.

We are scheduled for a tour of the hospital birthing ward for the afternoon of December 16th.

I'm guessing a few more things will happen on December 16th, such as:

• Our Internet connection at home will finally get set up
  
• My water will break just as I open the door to greet the movers (just like in the movies!)
  
• The Brisbane Public Transportation workers will strike and it will take Nate an hour and a half to walk to work (and then an hour and a half to walk back after I call him to tell him that my water broke)
• It will be the hottest/most humid day of the spring, until...
• A huge storm will hit, knocking out our electricity and flooding the roadways, making it impossible for our doula to get to us.

That seems to be the ways things are working for us here - everything all at once.

Thanksgiving, wildlife, signs of Christmas and baby update

Thanksgiving feast

We celebrated Thanksgiving on Friday with Nate's boss (an Aussie), his American wife and their kids. We had turkey, roasted veggies, stuffing and cranberry sauce. We made a rum raisin apple pie. Nate made the crust - we couldn't find vegetable shortening in the supermarket, so we had to make do with a block of lard - and I made the filling and put it all together. It was my first pie with a pastry crust and we ate it with vanilla ice cream.

Apple pie, ice cream, cheesecake, bottles of wine (emptied by the end of the night).

We are getting used to living in a house without screens and with large gaps between the floorboards and under the doors. We've got geckos living behind the fridge, plenty of bumbling beetles that come in for a visit and end up on their backs, unable to right themselves, and ringtail possums walking across the roof (possums haven't come in yet, but I saw one saunter across the carport roof about three feet from the open kitchen window).

The possums here are much cuter than their American opossum cousin:

(photos from Wikipedia possum page)

I had a big heebie-jeepie encounter the other night. After dinner, I saw a small beast scurry across the kitchen floor and towards the trash can. I figured it was just a (very fast-moving) cockroach. I turned on the light with Nate's cockroach-smashing sandal in hand and this is what I saw:

A lot bigger than it looks.

Yikes! Check out those chelicerae!

We grabbed our copy of the Wildlife of Greater Brisbane (thanks Pete and Penny!) and flipped through to identify this new visitor. It wasn't too hard to find it - it's the first species listed in the spider chapter because it's pretty common in households. It was a Brown huntsman spider. We are a spider-friendly household, so after shining a flashlight and bugging it for a while, we left it alone and minutes later, it scurried out the front door, just as it had entered.

We learned that the bite, although painful, isn't too venomous, but that if you squish it, the explosion could lead to a couple days of blindness. I can't imagine squishing something that size anyway!

Signs of Christmas are everywhere. Santa Claus is featured in every other TV commercial and there are fake trees popping up all over.

Brisbane's Christmas tree

The far more festive Poinciana trees are blooming all over town. I think they fit the season and climate much better than a plastic pine tree.

One of many blooming Poinciana trees in and around Brissie

Baby Update!
We had a ultrasound last week (required by the hospital) and the tech told us that bub is pretty big already - not fat, but with above average sized head and femurs (femora). She estimated that bub weighs about 3.5 kg (the same size as the turkey we ate for Thanksgiving). Bub certainly feels pretty big to me. I've got those long legs firmly planted in my ribs and that above-average head sitting right on my bladder. Really, really looking forward to finally meeting bub!

I'm starting to feel (and look?!) more and more like this:

Brisbane public transportation signage

Pregnant goat from the business end (as drawn by my grandmother)

We met our neighbors yesterday and found out that the mother/wife in the family is a former midwife at the hospital I will be attending. What are the odds?!

Here I am just this morning with two weeks to go:

Thank goodness for big t-shirts. The maternity shirts don't quite cover the belly anymore!

Nate (two weeks to go until daddyhood) showing off his sympathy belly - yeah right!

Qantas 2-for-1 sale!

Extended for just 2 more days! We've put our airfares to Australia & New Zealand on sale in ALL travel cabins: Economy, Premium Economy (where available), Business and First.

This great 2-for-1 offer applies to selected International airfares for travel commencing between 1 February and 30 April 2009. Each passenger pays all applicable taxes.

Hurry, offer must end at 11:59pm Pacific Time (PT) this Wednesday, 19 November 2008!

A sample of the great deals available for selected dates between
16 February and 30 April 2009. Other travel dates available for an additional cost.

	Person 1 (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)	Person 2 (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)	Total for 2 People (includes round trip Economy airfare and surcharges)
Los Angeles to:
Sydney	from $1,838*	from $0*	from $1,838*
Brisbane	from $1,930*	from $0*	from $1,930*
Auckland	from $1,758*	from $0*	from $1,758*
San Francisco to:
Sydney	from $1,838*	from $0*	from $1,838*
Darwin	from $2,262*	from $0*	from $2,262*
New York to:
Sydney	from $2,238*	from $0*	from $2,238*
Perth	from $2,604*	from $0*	from $2,604*
Honolulu to:
Sydney	from $1,658*	from $0*	from $1,658*
Adelaide	from $1,898*	from $0*	from $1,898*

"biggest storm in 20 years" and a new nephew

After suffering through a sweltering morning yesterday (30+ degrees + humidity = hotter than it sounds), a big storm came through late in the afternoon.

We sat under the carport and watched the sky turn dark gray, then watched a fantastic lightning show and listened to the huge thunder claps! Little did we know that as we snuggled under the carport, the suburbs to the west of the city (we're south of the city) were getting totally pummeled!

I heard that 100,000 homes were without power, one man was killed (he was taking pictures of the rain in a storm drain and was caught off-guard (!) by a flash flood), and there were something like 3,000 lightning strikes.

Here's an article about it from the national news. We didn't get any hail and our power didn't go out. As soon as it started raining, the kids next door ran outside and started playing on their big trampoline and their dad started washing his car (he was soaping it up to let Mother Nature rinse it off).

Anyhow, we survived the big storm with our power and our home intact. Unfortunately, Nate's coworker wasn't so lucky - she lives west of the city and has lots of downed trees and her home is still without power.

In other big news... on Thursday, my brother and sister-in-law welcomed their new son into the world. Ethan William.
Nate thinks he looks like my dad:
I guess I can see the resemblance... :)

long-awaited photos

Alright, so I promised photos weeks (almost) ago. Some photos from the past few weeks...

Ainsley and Nate

Our beetle-loving friend Ainsley has relocated from Berkeley to Canberra. She was in town for a visit to the Queensland Museum and points north, so we met up with her for a night of Mussels from Brussels and Belgian beer. (She broke her foot earlier that week in a bike accident and was a good sport to hobble around the Brisbane CBD in search of a good place to eat.)

Manly's version of Ecto 1

For Halloween, we took the train out to Manly, a seaside town that was holding a Halloween festival (complete with firebreathers and belly dancers). We ate at a yummy fish and chips place (Nate continued on his mission to rid the world of barramundi) and saw countless pint-sized Spidermans (Spidermen?).

Now they tell us! The magpie isn't quite so comical in real life when it's screeching and diving at your head.

Photos of our apartment!

The front door. Our apartment is 1/3 of a converted Queenslander house, so the entrance is at the back of the property. Up the steps, not through the wooden gate. It's a highset house, so it's supposed to keep cool in summer. We'll just see about that...
The kitchen
The lounge (taken from the kitchen). Yes, the fridge is in the lounge. Not much room in the kitchen for it!
The bathroom (mermaid shower curtain purchased on sale at Target.) just off from the lounge. It has a funny galley door that slides open.
Guest bedroom/office and adjoining sunroom. It's full of packaging material at the moment. Nothing else to put in there until our things arrive!
Our bedroom with the crib sort of set up.Sunroom that adjoins our bedroom with fan and diaper changing area (let's hope this kid doesn't arrive too soon - we're not quite ready).
Our neighborhood
Me, with 4 1/2 weeks to go until the due date. Black is slimming, no? (Sorry for the half-smile. I was half asleep.)
The belly (and chest!) from my point of view. No feet in sight.

We're getting settled in the apartment, still getting used to the neighborhood and the quirks that come with living in a converted house. Nate's got a tough commute until his bike arrives with the rest of our things (about an hour if he times it right with the bus) and the futon we're sleeping on isn't quite as comfortable as our dear mattress.

Things are scheduled to arrive on November 25, with a couple of days or weeks to get through customs. Anyone want to start wagering on which arrives first? Baby or our stuff? Just our luck, they'll show up on the same day.

So we have a permanent address. If you want it, just e-mail me or Nate. We don't have internet set up yet, so I'm still trekking to the State Library to use their free wireless.

all moved in

Sorry for the delay. Last week was so busy getting everything all set up. Nate's got the camera today, so I can't upload any pictures - you'll just have to wait a bit longer to see where we will call home for the next 12 months.

Settling into our apartment is such a great feeling. Nate cooked our first real meal last night and it's so nice to feel settled someplace. Setting up the apartment with furniture and other necessities is difficult without a car. I can only carry so much by myself with my big preggo belly on the bus, so having Nate accompany me on shopping trips this weekend really helped. Most shops close around 5:30 or so, so shopping after he got home from work wasn't an option.

Our Internet at home isn't set up yet (should be a couple more weeks), so I'm still going to the State Library of Queensland to do most of my computing. Most of the people using the internet here are foreigners - the outlets are overloaded with plug adapters!

Baby Update. Just about five weeks to go. My belly's getting so big and I'm feeling quite exhausted! Baby's kicking and moving and hiccuping a lot, but "bub's head is down" (according to my midwife) and everything seems to be going smoothly. Haven't gotten much sleep since we arrived a month ago and I guess I can count on not getting any sleep for the next few months (years?) or so, right?

We have an apartment

We will be moving into a permanent apartment (actually, 1/3 of a triplex) this weekend! I'll get pictures up once we get the keys. This weekend will be busy - refridgerators are not included with rental units, so we need to buy one and figure out how to get it there.

Nate's on a field trip today. Collecting out at Mt. Glorious out of town. I stayed at home and watched the Phillies finish off the Rays.

Qantas Sale on Tickets

Qantas is having a big sale on tickets from the States.

Round trip ticket prices:
LA to Brisbane for $760
JFK to Brisbane for $960
Newark to Brisbane for $1050

Check out their site for more details.

Some pictures from our first few days in Brisbane.

Taken from the plane. The sun rising over the Pacific as we approach Australia.
After all of the warnings we got about choosing our words carefully (see the bottom of the entry), we saw this street sign while looking for an apartment!
The jacarandas are in full bloom all around the city and are absolutely gorgeous! This is on the University of Queensland campus.

The gash on Nate's scalp from the dive-bombing magpie! We have since learned that these attacks are common during nesting season and have even seen warning signs up around town!

Carrie and Jon's house on the hill and right on the edge of Brisbane Forest Park.

The view of the city (it's way out there) from their porch and a cage of guinea pigs out front.

We got caught in a rainstorm on the way home from the supermarket yesterday. We got home pretty soaked, but the rainbow sure was pretty.

Safe and sound on our balcony. The baby has been making quite a ruckus lately. Lots of big kicks into my ribs. Just about 8 weeks to go until Baby Hardy makes his (or her) debut!

Some pictures from our last few days in Davis.

Our room in Tara's apartment. Nate burns calories while waiting for the Bruce the Mover to show up. Note his new glasses.

The truck the moving company sent to load up our 5 cubic meters of stuff.

Bocce Ball Bon Voyage Party at the winery!

Girls' Night at Woodstock's (crashed by two boys who couldn't keep themselves away from us). Me, Tara, Nate, Eddie, Lisa and Fran.

Our super snuggle kitties the last day in their crib before moving in with my sister Becky.

About to get on the plane in San Francisco!

we're here!

Sorry it's been so long with an update. Things moved pretty quickly once we got visa approval. Let me see if I can sum up the past couple of weeks...

We moved out of our apartment and in with Tara. She was so wonderful to give up her bedroom for a week! Thanks Tara!

After the movers showed up on Friday the 10th, we stayed with Eddie and Lisa (and their rascally kitties) for two nights. The movers took our mattress, so we needed to crash on their futon.

Then we went to my sister Becky's in Palo Alto for Sunday night to watch football and hang out with our kitties one last time. My parents came up from Kingsburg on Monday to have a bon voyage lunch and give us a few more hugs.

We got on the plane Monday night and landed in Oz Wednesday morning. Nate's boss Shaun was there to pick us up at the Brisbane Airport. After a quick stop off at Nate's new office (to drop off about 200 microscope slides), Shaun dropped us off at our temporary digs.

Our temp. apartment is within walking distance of an enormous mall (the public library is a floor above a gym) where we got cell phones, set up a bank account and went grocery shopping at Woolworths (not at all like the U.S. Woolworths). That first night there was a fantastic storm. We turned down the lights and watched the lightning from the balcony.

Thursday through Saturday we spent getting acquainted with our new city! We rode around on the public train for a while, trying to figure out the best place to get our apartment. We looked at a couple of places, but neither of them seemed quite right, so the search continues.

[While walking through a park on Saturday, Nate was dive-bombed by a magpie! It left a gash on his scalp and we quickened our pace to get out of there. I thought the bird was going for Nate's shiny new glasses, but we learned that it's mating season and that's just what the magpies do! We'll be sure to carry a tennis racket the next time we go for any park walks...]

Yesterday (Sunday) we were invited up for lunch and a bush walk by a new colleague of Nate's - Carrie. She lives up in the hills west of town in a spectacular little house with an amazing view of the city. She and her partner, Jon, have two kitties ('hairy beasts' as Carrie referred to them), a pen full of 'chooks' (chickens) and three or four pens full of guinea pigs (they sell them to the vet store in town). I held a couple of two week old babies and we heard the whole tribe oinking and squeaking ('cuy! cuy!') at dinnertime.

It was great to take a day off from walking around the city to walk around the bush. Carrie and Jon are great and were so gracious to host us. Carrie is a British expat and Jon has lived in this area for nearly his whole life. They answered a lot of our questions and offered advice and suggestions about places to live and visit and contacts for doctors and hospitals for the impending arrival of the baby.

We finished up the night by driving up to Mt. Coot-tha for ice cream and to watch the sun set. A perfect end to a perfect day.

Nate went into work this morning and I trekked over to the public library (not the one in the mall - the nice big new one in Brisbane CBD) to use the free internet.

Australia is kind of like bizarro America. Things look pretty similar, but they're not quite the same. Burger King is called Hungry Jack's and a value meal costs $7. They are constantly showing reruns of Two and a Half Men and the only American news we get is Fox News.

That's all for now. Got to get on finding a place to live so we can set up our little nest. I promise to update more frequently (and with pictures). Thanks for all of the calls and visits in our last couple of weeks in the States!

plane tickets purchased!

We booked our tickets this morning. It's a go, people! We are leaving the country the evening of October 13th, less than two weeks from now.

moving date scheduled!

Just heard from the movers! They are coming to pick up our things on October 10!!!

We will buy our plane tickets tonight or tomorrow -- probably leaving on Monday the 13th because our bed will be on its way to Brisbane. Nate's boss here has organized a going away party for the 11th (bocce ball and picnicking at a nice winery) and I guess we'll probably stay with my sister Becky that next night so she can take us to the airport.

Nate's employers are arranging temporary living arrangements for us when we get there! Yes! One less thing to worry about!

(In case you were wondering, the move into Tara's place went off without a hitch. The old apartment has been cleaned and prettied up and now I just have to do one final sort through our things before my mom visits this weekend.)

we're approved!

visa approved!!

more details to come.

more good news

Nate spoke with his new boss today. After hearing that our visa should be approved within the next couple of weeks, he told Nate that we should contact the movers and after we schedule a meeting time with them, we should book our plane tickets!!

Although this entire process has caused a lot of stress and tears, it looks like we will be getting there just a couple of weeks later than we first thought. Keep those fingers crossed!

This weekend we are moving out of our apartment and in with our friend Tara until we leave (new tenants are moving in Oct. 1). We are also moving the kitties to my sister Becky's apartment in Palo Alto. :( I'm not looking forward to that. How will Nate keep his arms warm when he's working on the computer if we don't have the cats?

Nate with Lou, who is waiting patiently for love.

A real update!

I just got off of the phone with the Australian visa office in Sydney. I spoke with our case officer (after three e-mails and two phone calls). She said that she just spoke with our HR woman at QDPI and will be sending her one final form that we need to sign and send back. Confusing? She said that once the signed form gets back to her, she believes our visa will be approved within two weeks. YES!

Let's just see how the weakest link in this visa chain (the contact person at QDPI) handles this. How long will it take her to get the form to us?

Cross your fingers...

yard sale and baby names

We held a successful yard sale on Saturday with a few of our friends. One of those friends was unloading his used baby gear, so we scored a gently used co-sleeper! We are trying to limit the amount of baby gear we're taking with us, but a free co-sleeper was too much of a deal to pass up. Just need to wash the sheet and mend a couple of holes and it will be good as new!

We got it all set up yesterday morning and wondered how long it would take our current babies to make themselves at home. It didn't take too long...

Lou and Hector on their blanket (not a cheetah-print baby sheet)

We also held our Baby Naming Tournament yesterday. Nate and I made separate lists of our top 8 girl names and top 8 boy names (32 names total) to complete against each other, NCAA basketball March Madness-style. Men's and women's names were in different brackets, and I hate to say it, but the men's bracket was much stronger than the women's; we had some real doozies in there (fortunately Nate's "Omarosa" was eliminated in the play-in round).

We had only two names overlap and they were both in the men's bracket. One of them made it to the final four and the other was eliminated in the second round.

Sorry - we're not sharing the winning names with anybody until the big day.

I can share that Nate's #1 seed won the men's division and my #3 seed was chosen as the middle name!

The women's division winner is a surprise, definitely a Cinderella story -- it came out of nowhere and toppled some powerhouse names that have been on the table since the very beginning. The winning name was inspired by my #6 seed and essentially entered the tournament unranked. We haven't selected a middle name yet.

non-update Update

Well, no real news to report. We're still waiting for our visa approval and waiting to get the offer letter from Nate's new employers. In the meantime, we're living in a half empty house, waiting to jump as soon as we hear anything.

We were in Kingsburg over Labor Day to drop off some of our things in storage and to visit with my family and friends. My Aunt Peggy organized a little shower will all of my closest female relatives and it was the first time the little second cousins were all together.

Caitlin, Hana and baby Emma - aren't they cute (and a little wild looking!)?

My sister-in-law and I posed tummy-to-tummy with the cousins due at the end of the year. She's due a month before me.
While the ladies enjoyed a nice afternoon indoors with cool iced tea and yummy treats, Nate and my dad were out on the ranch loading up boxes of grapes that were headed for farmer's markets around California. Sorry I don't have any pictures of it. Here's a picture of Nate playing with our niece. It's their favorite thing to do together. Nate builds really intricate and amazing block structures and Caitlin destroys them.
So now we're just waiting. I should probably change the title of the blog from "Our life in Australia" to "Our life in Australia. We'll get there one day!"