Murri Christmas!

Polaroid from our annual trip to visit Murri Claus! (This is our Christmas card, but it won't make it to all of you until the new year...)

New Zealand Day 1: Christchurch

Nate had a week off from work for the holidays, so went took a holiday to New Zealand. We flew to Christchurch on Christmas morning and spent the night at a Tudor-inspired motel where we enjoyed Christmas dinner. They even had Christmas crackers waiting for us.

Nate at dinner, looking like he's about to be crowned king by the lit chandelier.

Roxy with the kind of creepy headless suit of armour.

Before dinner, we took our rented Yaris for a spin on the winding roads outside of town. We saw our first kiwi sheep about two minutes after we drove out of town.

Hut at a rest stop on our afternoon drive.

There's nothing uniquely New Zealand in this next photo. I just think it's cute.

Baby buns. My Christmas present to you.

Murri Christmas!

Apologies in advance: Our Christmas cards will be late this year. There's a 'postie' union strike on for tomorrow and I put the cards in the mail today at 5:01pm (sure, I'll blame the strike and not my procrastination). They say it won't affect Christmas mail deliveries, but I don't see how that's possible if there's no one around the sort the mail.

Scan of the polaroid we got at the Murri Claus meet-and-greet.

A few weeks ago, the State Library of Queensland invited children to meet and have their picture taken with Murri Claus. Who is Murri Claus, you ask? Why, he's Santa's cousin! Where does his name come from? The Murri people are indigenous Australians who traditionally occupied Queensland. 

Before he arrived, we danced and sang songs about Murri Claus and his life in the Outback. Last year Murri Claus arrived in a tinny (a small aluminum boat) on the Brisbane River. There were some rumblings about seasickness from our song leader, so this year, Murri sauntered up, fresh off the trail and accompanied by a couple of elves riding on miniature ponies.


Many of the babies in my mothers' group had their picture taken with Santa Claus at the mall. We though we would go the non-traditional route with our bub. 

Who is this? Where am I? Why is everyone so cheery but me?

I expected some tears when we handed her over to Murri, but she did pretty well and only got a little panicky when everyone was trying to get her to smile at the camera. 

She was dressed in the Christmas outfit we got it for her to wear on the plane on our Christmas adventure! We're hoping she'll charm the flight attendants and maybe we can get some free headphones for the flight. 


So a very Murri Christmas to you all! We're celebrating it at the beginning of a nice, hot Brisbane summer. While a lot of you are shoveling your way out of a snowstorm or inching your way through a foggy morning, we're trying to beat the heat! Sure wish you were here!

First post of 2009!

(We've got on our antlers and Roxy's got her festive nappy cover)

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

We brought in the new year with a pizza and beer and a Cirque de Soleil special on tv. Wouldn't you know it - tv is really bad on New Year's Eve. We listened to the fireworks go off around 9:00 and then again at midnight. I guess the early fireworks were for folks with young kids.

It's been warm the past few days. Our high temps (Celsius) are the same as the high temps (Farenheit) in West Chester, Pennsylvania - about 31 degrees. We skyped with families on both coasts and heard all about the Christmas Eve tamales and Christmas Day hams. We had a delicious arroz con pollo for our Christmas feast and our daughter gave us a wonderful Christmas gift - her umbilical stump finally fell off! It was getting really, really gross and it was the best gift we could have gotten.

Here we are skype-ing and Roxy is sans stump.

We've managed to stay away from all of the Boxing Day and End of Year shopping that's been going on. Nate and Doreen trekked to IKEA a few days ago to pick up the final pieces of furniture for our casa (dining table and chairs, bookcases and bed frame) and reported that it was pretty jam-packed.

Nate and Doreen have also been making daily trips to the local swimming pool. It's a 50-meter 8-lane pool that's just up the street. Both come home smelling like chlorine and looking refreshed. I can't wait until The Rox is old enough for us all to go together!

Looking forward to the next couple of days before Nate has to go back to work. He went in today (Jan. 2), but was the only entomologist around. Doreen is here for another week before she flies home. We're on our own for a few weeks before Davis friends Eddie and Lisa stopover on their way to start a new life in Papua New Guinea. We will be in the middle of summer when they arrive, although I hope we'll be through the worst of it by the end of the month.

On a sad note...
For those of you who knew her, my prairie dog Maggie died in early December. She was such a sweet girl who was friendly to everyone and I'm afraid that the news has got me pretty down. She and her brother Oscar have been living with my parents for the past few years and my mom wrote this little tribute to our sweet Maggie girl.

Magellan P. Dog

“Maggie”

Magellan P. Dog passed away peacefully at her home on December 5, 2008. Her twin brother and life-long companion Oscar was at her side.

Maggie, as she was affectionately known to her family and friends, was born in Texas in the early spring of 2002. After a brief stay in New Mexico, she relocated permanently to California in the fall of that year. She was a dedicated home maker and took great pride in the appearance of the home she shared with her brother and, in particular, the placement of her furnishings. On more than one occasion, she stayed up late into the night to redesign the interior of her cozy home and rearrange her belongings.

The garden was a special place for Maggie, who especially enjoyed getting her hands dirty and sampling the fresh greens growing there. She spent many hours on the back lawn, soaking up the sunshine while playing with her family, entertaining visitors, and sometimes running full-tilt just for the sheer joy of it.

Maggie will be remembered for her cheerful smile and luminous brown eyes, her unassuming ways, her industrious and inquisitive nature, and her abiding love of the outdoors. She leaves behind her brother Oscar, her extended family, and the many friends she made along the way. We will miss her.

Private services were held December 6. Maggie was laid to rest in a sheltered place where soft breezes blow and the grass is green.

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!