Home Sweet Home

Well what can I say, its been a while since I posted a blog so a big SORRY to people who have sent emails requesting an up date. I thought I better up date everyone on what we have been up to since getting settled into our house here in the Perth hills. I think the best way to describe our time in one word would be "adjusting" to the change. Getting back into a normal life so to speak back in Perth has taken sometime. The nightmare of unpacking all our things from storage and overseas just went on and on but the positive to that was going through and sorting the items we wanted to keep and the items we didn't.

Pictures: The whole back yard was just about taken up with packing boxes

Over the past couple of months Ben started his new job where he works away for 8 days up in the Pilbra area and is home for 6 days area each swing, Paige started at the local primary school in the PP1 class and me well I have been taking each day as it comes. I seem to ask myself where does the time go?. I am sure there will be blogs on that later. The process of sorting the house out seemed to take ages and seems never ending. When we moved into the house there where a number of jobs around the house we wanted to do like replace the old green plastic roof in the out door area, put a fence up around the pool area, replace the pot belly stove and so on, so we had been busy working on all the items. I am glad we can say that we are nearly at the end of the list for now. We are really happy with the area in the hills suburb we chose to buy. Rents here in Perth are just crazy. The area has a real country feel about it with lots of trees around the streets and the local shopping area of Kalamunda is not far away, everyone seems really friendly. We have some great neighbours which at times I feel truly blessed for all the help they have given us. With Ben having to go to the airport quite often the drive there only takes 20 minutes.

Here are some pics below of the house we call home. We hope in a couple of years we will look at extending, as at the moment our house is a 3 bedroom by 1 bathroom home. Who knows it may take that long to finally get sorted........................................................ at times it has felt like that.

Picture: Standing out the front of our house looking to the right of the street

Picture: Standing at the front of the house looking to the left hand side of the street

Picture: Looking out the front door

Picture: The front of the house, standing at the road

Picture: Walking through the front door entrance

Picture: Looking right from the front door entrance

Picture: Looking left from the front door entrance into the lounge room

Picture: Looking back towards the study (left) and front entrance (right) from the lounge room

Picture: Looking from the lounge room towards the back yard

Picture: Looking from the lounge room through to the study area

Picture: Looking from the dinning area through the study to the lounge room

Picture: Standing at the entrance hall looking onto the dinning and kitchen area

Picture: Standing at the back sliding door looking into the dinning area and on left is the hall which leads to the bathroom and bedrooms

Picture: Looking down the hall from Ben and Bernadette's bedroom

Picture: Ben and Bernadette's bedroom

Picture: Looking from the hall way into the guest bedroom





Picture: Looking from the hall into Paige's bedroom

Picture: Lookin into the bathroom from the hallway

Picture: In the bathroom looking towards the hall door

Picture: Looking from carport to the backyard

Picture: Looking from the pool area back towards the house

Picture: Looking from just outside the back sliding glass doors into the outside patio area

Picture: Looking down towards the back patio glass sliding door

Perth

Picture: The house we will call home

I kind of feel like we have come full circle when it comes to our blog. This post marks 100 blogs and still going strong even if we have returned to Australia from our overseas travels.

We arrived in Perth just over a week ago and are staying in a short term apartment. Since arriving here we have been flat out and the exciting news is that we have found a house to buy. What can I say, the stars all became in line or something, maybe it was all the research I had did searching the net, I don't know what it was but I couldn't be any more happy.

So the story goes the last couple of days when we where in Adelaide I was looking at rentals and thought I would have another look at the for sale section and came across a couple houses that looked OK and worth our time to check out. It just so happened the home opens were on the Sunday after we arrived.

We arrived in Perth on the Friday, on Saturday we drove around and checked out some suburbs which I could say "Ive been everywhere man" then on the Sunday we went to the home opens and the second house both Ben and I liked so we arranged with agent a second viewing on the Monday, by Tuesday we had all ready had made an appointment to see what we where able to borrow from the bank and on Wednesday we had made an offer and it was accepted. Monday we had a the building inspection and all had come back OK so once settlement comes through we will be living in the Perth Hills.

We are all very excited about getting settled and sorting out all our belongings from storage, that's when the fun will begin.

Christmas in Adelaide

We arrived back in Australia safely and were looking forward to slipping back into the Australian life style.
Our first stop was Adelaide as that was where we were spending Christmas.
It didn't take Paige long to find things to do, from riding Diesel the horse (Auntie Jacqui's horse), helping her Pa (John) brew his home made beer, making cakes and getting to know her new cousin Emily. Paige was making the best of being on holidays. For me and Ben, outings to the local supermarket was met with "There is to much choice, which one do I choose". Being able to do a one stop shop for food items I don't think will ever become boring again. All those friends still overseas will know what I mean.
Eating has been one of my favorite things to do since being back, I now think I have eaten everything on my imaginary list, my waist line isn't thanking me one bit.
My birthday was spent hanging out and trying to keep out of the kitchen as Paige and her Grandma (Margie) were trying to make the surprise chocolate birthday cake, so I think I acted surprised enough for Paige when she brought the cake to the table. My birthday dinner was spent down by the beach with Ben feasting on seafood which was very yummy and watching the sunset very romantic. "Who said romance was dead?".

Picture: Paige helping Bernadette blow out candles

Picture: Paige riding Diesel the horse

Picture: Paige helping her Pa (John) make home brew beer

Christmas Day started off quite late, Paige had a really good sleep in so when she finally woke thanks to her cousin Emily jumping on her with Uncle Tom's help, Paige found her present left by Santa. The funniest thing was that she was surprised that Santa had knocked over a chair and that was the topic of conversation for the whole day. It was hard to believe it was only a year ago we where in Mongolia spending Christmas Day with friends. How time flies. Its been a while since we have been able to have Christmas Day with some of our family so with being back in Australia, good food, good weather and being around family you could say it was just perfect.

Picture: Paige opening some of her Christmas presents with Ben trying to get the packaging off

Picture: The Family enjoying Christmas dinner

Picture: Paige with Spice the dog

Picture: Paige and Emily

Picture: Ben taking it easy after Christmas dinner

With Christmas Day over we had a chance to take in a couple of outing where we visited the Adelaide Zoo and Cleland Wildlife Park, two places we had never been so you could say we played tourist. Paige enjoyed seeing all the animals but she was surprised that there where no elephants at the zoo as was I. During our visit to the Wild Life Park Paige got to pat one of the local kolas she loved how soft it was. As we had being staying up in the Adelaide Hills with Paige's Grandma and Pa Paige had seen a number of koalas in the trees so this was the first time she was able to get close enough to pat one which I am sure was one of the highlights of her visit.

Picture: Paige patting a kola at the Wild Life Park

It was such a nice start to our adventure back in Australia, we are looking forward to getting to Perth to find our feet and a place we can call home. It will be nice to say those words once again "There is no place like home"...........................

Goodbye Hanoi

Picture: Local lady in the streets of Hanoi

Well as from the blog post title says "Good bye Hanoi" we are leaving this city and heading back to Australia.

This will be my last blog post from Vietnam. It only seems like yesterday that we arrived and the time has passed so fast, in away we are leaving here all too soon but that's the way life goes.

Living in Hanoi has been fun and an enjoyable city to have spent our short time in. In the past couple of weeks I have had time to reflect on why I have liked this city so much, from the people, the culture, sights and smells it is hard to put my finger on one single thing.

There seems to be something happening all the time from the traffic never stopping, women chatting, people eating on the side walk or just a baby sleeping in it's mothers arms in one of the many shops people call their home, the city of Hanoi seems to take on a life of it's own and all I can say is "I am glad we took the chance to come here".

Our near future will be in Perth, Australia which starts in January so never having lived there before I have decide that my blog will continue as I think it will be fun to keep it going.

We are all very excited in getting back to Australia as when you look at it we have been away for nearly four years so it is a chance to get back to what we call "normal life". Only time will tell where the road leads but in the near future it will be Perth.

Good Bye Hanoi...................................................................

Picture: Some artwork from local artists

Vietnamese Cooking Class

The food here in Hanoi is quite yummy so Ben, Sue (Ben's mum) , Nicole and myself decided to attend a local cooking class that is held here locally at Hidden Hanoi.

With just the four of us in the class we had a great time learning about the local food, how to prepare and cook it. Our menu consisted of BBQ pork, Vietnamese spring rolls and dipping sauce. It seemed to take ages to prepare chop this, dice this and as the minutes ticked by all I wanted to do was tuck in. The end products where worth the wait nothing was left to spare as we dined on our yummy creations. I think we will all recreate our master-pieces once we get back to Australia.

Picture: Ben, Sue, Linh, Nicole & Bernadette

Picture: Some fresh ingredients , some I had never seen before

Picture: Linh explaining about the rice paper used to wrap the ingredients for spring rolls

Picture: Sue & Ben chopping some ingredients

Picture: Nicole wrapping spring rolls

Picture: Tomato roses we all made

Picture: A feast fit for any domestic goddess

Breathing In The Experiences

Every now and then the little things make you sit back and breath in the experiences.

A perfect sunset over West lake greeted our family visitors capture by Mark.

Picture: Sunset over West Lake Hanoi

I have always found while living in Hanoi the people very friendly and as we walked past a young couple sitting by West Lake they let us join in while they lit and let go paper lanterns. We had seen these lanterns in the sky on many occasions but we had never seen the process of letting them go. I am not sure the reason for the lighting and letting the lanterns go, maybe it is for making wishes or sending preys to past relatives what ever the reason watching these lanterns float through the night sky is quite pretty as they float up up and away.

Picture: The lighting of the paper wick for the lantern

Picture: Keeping the wick alight until the hot air heats the paper lantern for it to rise

Visiting Sapa

Picture: Local crafts products

Taking time out to see other parts of Vietnam is always worth a trip. When some of our family came to visit we took off for a couple of days to Sapa. John, Margie, Mark, Jacqui, Ben, Paige and I decided that to get there we would try the train as it is a six hour trip from Hanoi. "Why not?" we thought as we could sleep all the way and wake fresh. How wrong we were. The train was very clean but the beds where quite hard so most of us didn't get much sleep except Paige.

Sapa is an incredibly picturesque village that lies on the Hoang Lien Son mountain range near the Chinese border in NW Vietnam. It is called as "the Tonkinese Alps" many hill tribe people, their villages, rice terraces, lush vegetation, and has the highest peak in Vietnam. Tucked high in Vietnam's remote northern mountains, the former French military outpost of Sapa offers some of Vietnam's most colorful experiences. The views are breath taking. Vietnam's highest peak, the 3,143-metre Mount Fansipan, looms overhead, while the surrounding valleys feature terraced rice paddies and blazing green fields cut by fast-flowing streams. Layer upon layer of green ridges fade into the distance, edged by sharp, rocky peaks. Visitors to this isolated village can browse in the traditional market, then hike into the valleys and explore the surrounding ethnic minority villages. Here, people live as they have for centuries, raising water buffalo and pot-bellied pigs, cultivating paddy, corn and cassava, and weaving their colorful clothing. Come to these northern mountains and you'll feel the thrill of discovery. This is one of the rare corners of the world where people's traditions continue to flourish and nature reigns supreme. Walking through the area you become over welmed with local tribes people trying to sell you things and it becomes very hard to break free of them. The two days that we spent in Sapa we did a lot of walking and it was well worth it as we where able to take in the beauty of this place and the culture that we saw.

Picture: Jacqui, Bernadette, Paige & Margie on the train

Picture: Sapa town

Picture: Chau Long Hotel where we stayed

Picture: Paige & view from our hotel

Picture: Walking through the hillside of Sapa

Picture: Walking along the paths

Picture : Walking up the hills

Picture: Local Tribes women trying to sell Mark items

Picture: Tourist surrounded by locals selling items

Picture: Mark & Jacqui

Picture: Margie & John

Picture: Local man walking

Picture: Local lady walking

Picture: Local tribes lady

Picture: Some local women's tribes dresses

Picture : Small child

Picture: Paige standing in local hillside cafe

Picture: On the trail

Picture: Handmade blankets

Picture: Bernadette, Paige & Ben

Picture: Bernadette standing with local tribes lady

Picture: Ben wearing his new hat