Two and a half weeks later

The river has receded, we reentered our house two days after it went under water. Almost everything was damaged by the water and covered in sewage-y mud.

I started some of the photos I took of our destroyed things, but it was making me too sad. If you want to see for yourself, they're online: http://www.flickr.com/photos/sunmaid/

The big news is that we're heading back to the great US of A! We decided that if we have to make a fresh start somewhere, why not do it back where we want to live anyway. The decision was not an easy one to make; I'm quite sad about leaving all of my friends and the life we've made for ourselves here.

For the time being, we're living with a friend of mine. She and her husband have a two-story, five bedroom house. The four of us are in one bedroom and we have a little lounge area to ourselves. It's a full house, though. It's the four of us, my pregnant mate and her husband, their toddler, two Chinese exchange students, two beagles and a cat. 

We will be here for 6 weeks (2 weeks down) and so far it's been peachy. Roxy and their daughter Layla get on great, it's fun to live with beagles and we have big family dinners. We're not getting too much sleep at night, but at least we've got beds to sleep in.

The kiddies and I are flying out March 2nd. Nate is sticking around to go on one last collecting trip to Far North Queensland and flies home March 23rd or so. My sister is flying out to help me move all of our stuff and help with the kids on the flight. 

We'll be with my parents in Kingsburg until Nate returns and then we're moving to Albuquerque. Our friends Gavin and Kim are moving there this weekend so Gavin can start a postdoc. Nate will be in the same lab working on manuscripts and looking for jobs until, well, until something comes up, I guess.

Let's finish up with something positive. Here's Murdoch doing his best 747 impression:

He rolls over as soon as he gets put down on his back and starts doing this. 

Here's a short video of Roxy's Australian accent. This is pretty much the only thing that comes out of her mouth these days.

Current favorite movie

November 11

This is part of an e-mail about Remembrance Day that I wrote to my uncle, who is a veteran.

"In Australia, November 11 is called Remembrance Day. At eleven o'clock in the morning, everybody in the country observes a moment of silence for those lost in wars, and to honor the veterans of those wars. All of the news anchors, politicians and plenty of everyday folks wear a red poppy on their left lapel (as close to their heart as possible) all day because poppies bloomed on many of the worst WWI battlefields in Europe. Nobody gets a day off from work, and nobody says, 'Happy Remembrance Day.' It's a relatively solemn day and wreaths of poppies are placed at memorials and veterans gather to remember their fallen mates."

In other news...

Roxanne turned 11 months old on November 11. There's an old wives' tale that babies get cranky and grizzly right before a big developmental milestone. Well, she cranked to no end on Saturday and Monday and then all of the sudden, she started scooting deliberately all around the place.

Crankenstein Lives!!!

I shot the following video earlier today. She thinks it's a lot of fun to scoot into the bathroom and then scoot away as fast as she can when I try to get her. Sometimes she gets so excited that she just turns around in a circle before she figures which direction she wants to go. Tonight before her bath, she scooted as fast as she could to the edge of the tub and pulled herself up! Uh oh. We're installing the baby gate this weekend and keeping the bathroom door closed from now on.

[This video doesn't seem to work on Safari - anyone else having that problem? It plays in Firefox just fine.]