Our stuff arrives.

Well the removals men came and went, both lots of them. I'm fairly sure at this point that pretty much everything that came in the door stayed here. The boys watched much of the comings and goings from the back of the car. This house, you see, doesn't actually have any road facing windows. The majority of the frontage is a double garage. I actually recognised this slight fault with the place last week when I had to sit in the garage for over half an hour with Ru. There's a house being built over the road and a crane was working, then being packed up to leave. Ru couldn't bear to go indoors, and I couldn't leave a 3 yr old on the front drive. I think the builders thought I was having an ogle at them, but sadly none of them was really worth the wait. So, anyway, back to yesterday, the car boot it was for the boys.

Ru watches with a sunshade styled from our picnic blanket.

How cool was the truck? No wonder the boys couldn't leave.

Just some of the boxes.

The men helped unpack the boxes but it was very much up to me to try to find places for everything. I'm still working on much of it 24 hours later but no matter. In theory the service included reassembling beds, sofas etc that had been taken apart for the move. In reality they "don't have a long enough socket for those legs" (sofa), "don't do ikea-type furniture" (Alfie's Flexa high-sleeper) and I think the truth was they generally couldn't be arsed taking the boxes of books upstairs to the room pointed out as the study. Never mind, the boys were so delighted to have their beds, bikes and toys back it was very sweet.

Ru's beloved Noddy car bed that the men did assemble...

...and Alfie's mid sleeper that they didn't!

Come evening we had the obligatory take-away curry that one always has on moving-in day and I must say it was great, so coupled with the fact that we all had our own bed to sleep in things didn't seem bad at all.

The only slight hitch was a mad search for my set of keys this morning. I knew I left them on the hall chair, and they weren't there. We tried ringing both companies in case they'd been picked up by accident, then B started researching replacing them all. After 2 hours of searching house and car and me worrying about the consequences ( car keys, house keys and garage door remote thingy were all on the bunch), they turned up in a previously undiscovered cubby hole inside the car itself. Clearly it was only we adults who had not previously seen this hiding place, but at least one little boy must have. No idea which boy, and by that time we were so grateful to have them back that we didn't care much.

After a trip to "Bunnings"  (think B&Q, with green writing rather than orange) for electric plugs to replace our UK ones, we headed out for a trip so the boys could enjoy their newly arrived bikes. They practised first on the drive, to get back in the swing of it:

Then we went up the road to the local playpark and football green (not the big pirate ship I've mentioned before).

On the way back we saw some of the local parrots. There are some white ones which are very common, some beautiful green ones with red/blue and orange markings around their head, and then this kind which I have seen a lot around our area. They're grey with very pink necks and white heads and they're called Galahs. They're renowned as being rather stupid, though heaven knows if they deserve this claim.

(not the best picture I know)

The last 2 days have also been somewhat cooler. The morning and evening are really the only time you might notice this, but the boys happily had a bath this evening for practically the first time since our arrival ( they have been showering before you ask!).  It's also been just a little too breezy to tempt the boys in for a dip, but they've always been desperate to play with a sailing boat Brian got for Fathers day last year, which we've never tried out for one reason or another. So when the guys unpacked it yesterday at last they got their chance to use the pool in a different way:

Ok, I'll sign off at last. But before I go, I'll share this. Because I was tired I made the simplest pasta for dinner tonight. Literally 4 ingredients. Pasta, garlic, spinach and olive oil. Both my kids came back for seconds and said how much they "love this dinner". I think I'll give up on anything more complicated in future, clearly I'm wasting my time!