Clean-Up-Nonna's-House Day

Council clean up day is always a good enough reason to get your working gloves out, put on some sunscreen and go to Nonna's house in hope to throw some rubbish out. We found lots of weird and wonderful stuff there... ant nest in the old wardrobe for one...

...and other creepy crawlies, like this huge red-back spider for example. It was the biggest mother of a red-back I've ever seen! This is the one to stay away from!!! An adult would probably survive if taken to the hospital straight away but small child like Jacob would stand a little chance if bitten.
Nonna's beautiful bundles of joy :-)

Nonna wasn't happy to part with her precious "treasures"... but we managed to get some of it out. Not that it made much of a difference but we have to take this one little baby step at the time.

Men - hard at work!

Happy Halloween!!!

Although American holiday - the Halloween is becoming more and more popular every year in Australia. It's fun for kids to dress up and to go from door to door trick-or-treat'ing.
Last year Jacob was a batman, this year he loved dressing up as a pirate for a day.

Fathers Day 2008

Carmela and Lucia having cup of espresso.
Luca, Stef, Matt and Anth playing Wii.

John test-driving Franks bike.
The Argyle club in the garage.

Cool dudes.
Brothers.

Wii

Merci Marraine

j'ai reçu votre colis aujourd'hui. J'étais très sorti et heureux. merci infiniment d'un cadeau d'anniversaire gentil!



Je t'aime Marraine! Jacob.

In English now.

Thank you so much for a nice birthday present! Jacob was very exited and happy. Of course he had to wear the dinosaur shirt straight away! And after he put on the T-shirt with the picture of a T-Rex on it, he wanted to watch Jurassic Park movie. What a surprise! not.

When I took some pictures of him with his new shirt, he wanted to photograph me too so here I am.

My holidays in Gap

I'm just back from a week holiday in Gap.

Gap is located in the south-east of France, with 100 kilometers in the south of Grenoble and with 150 kilometers in the north of Aix-en-Provence. It is the chief town of the department of Hautes-Alpes. We could see the Mount-Blanc from the plane!

It is also the most significant city of the Alps of the South. Near to the lake of Serre-Ponçon and the National park of the Jewel cases, Gap is a feature of union between Dauphiné and Provence, the landscapes of high mountain and the softness of the hills of High-Provence.

A week spent with some members of the skydiving club of Nantes....obviously we went there to jump. Gap is the biggest skydiving club in France. It's where most of the teams and champions train! We also had some time to visit the area, especially the beautiful lake of Serre Ponçon.

And here are the cabins where we were staying, just by the water...

And because landing can be ..... challenging....

More:

Pirates and Prostitutes

Mid-summer night party Estonian style.
Traditionally we would make big bonfires, cook meat on the fire, play all kinds of games to compete in speed, accuracy and strength. Oh yes, and of course - get drunk.






This year though, we celebrated little-bit differently.

Margit and Indrek - young Estonian couple who work on the cruise boat in Sydney - organised a party on the water. Theme - pirates and prostitutes. Surprisingly everyone made an effort to dress up and costumes were fantastic. It was a group of 30 people, most of who I had never met before.
We left Darling Harbour on board of Solarsailor at lunchtime and party took off rocking the boat to the point where I thought we might fall through the floor.
The crew members looked shocked when Estonian music was blasting and everyone got up to dance and sing along. We had the best time!!! Arrrrrrrr! Best party I've been to in a long time! :)

Jacob's operation

We arrived in hospital at 6:30am. This is our room - 313.
Jacob was quite happy to be there as he probably didn't understand what exactly was going to happen to him.
At around 8:30am he was taken downstairs to operating theatre. I was allowed to accompany him and to hold his hand while he was put to sleep. He was very brave - last thing before his eyes closed, he gave me thumbs up - Tops!



View from our room.
Operation took about just under an hour. I was waiting in the room... had a good cry... it was awful! I hope I never have to do it again.








Here's Jacob right after the operation. He was really confused and in quite a bit of pain. It broke my heart to see him like this...









Awake. Feeling drowsy and sick. Poor thing!







Yummmm - green jelly, bring it on!








Ice block and favourite DVD - Evolution. Life is not so bad after all... :-)







We spent one night in hospital. Jacob had the drip and he was also hooked up to the machine that measures heartbeat and oxygen levels - it's just a little clip with the red light that goes on the finger.
Anyway... this machine was beeping every time the clip fell off which made it impossible for me to sleep. It was terrible - I was up all night because of that bloody machine!

At home. Having a good rest.
It's now a week and a half since the operation and only yesterday he was starting to feel better. He didn't even need Panadol and was able to eat and drink without pain. Today he looked back to normal.
He still wakes up few times at night because of sore throat but when he's asleep he can breathe normally and seems to have a good deep sleep :-) In the long run, it was all worth it.

Cockatoo

A highlight of my day.

Today around lunchtime, a colleague of mine said that there is a friendly cockatoo outside our office. I went out to see what she was talking about.

This beautiful bird was walking around in the car park and didn't seem to mind humans at all.
As soon as he saw me, he started to come closer to me and I got little-bit scared because I have never touched a wild bird this size before.

I kept wandering how much it would hurt if he decided to bite me with his huge strong beak.

As it turned out, he was very tame and polite, he even said "hello"! :-) It's obviously someones pet and for some reason he really liked me. He didn't take much interest in anybody else, although there were quite a few people around who tried to approach him, but he kept following me. It was love from first sight! :-D

Lucky we have cameras on all mobile phones nowadays so that we can capture moments like this!