It's been a while since I've had good news worthy of reporting, but I got some the other day. My car insurance renewal came!

Normally this isn't good news, but this year I turn 30 and that means it costs $300 less this year. Sweet. In related good news, I saw an ad for a place called sakenet which ships Japanese booze in Australia for not-too-bad prices. What better way to spend my hard-earned $300?

Rain!!!!! hooray hooray hooray!!!

Riding to pick up tali from primary school in the driving rain. All the mums and me watching Ella jump in puddles while waiting for him to come out. Riding through puddles with Tali to get home. Rushing about to change into dry clothes to go back out and race paper boats in the gutter.

Love it!! :-D :-D

(oh - and am reading It right now, so you can appreciate that it took a certain amount of rational courage to take my children out and play with paper boats in the rain...)

- taking this opportunity to warm my cockles with red wine :-D

House Husband

Successful day of having a little friend over to play for Ella this morning for the first time.

I picked up Emily from Tali's school this morning and we all rode home. Then they _vanished_ out into the cubby house all morning. I only heard from them when they arrived in the kitchen with demands for fairy bread and strawberries.

My little girl.

Not a baby any more.

Ella demon scooterer

I would like to report that, while I snarl and complain almost the entire time (because we're usually running late, my fault), it is one of the unexpected joys of my life right now that Ella insists of riding her little scooter down to Tali's school. It's a 1km ride, actually quite a distance for a little girl, and the sight of her barreling along with her oversized helmet and little legs pumping on those little pedals make me laugh out loud. She yells out "What Dad?! What are you laughing at?" and I say "You're adorable" but she can't hear me because she's already zooming off. We ride past the high school and I hear the big kids say to each other "OMG, do you see that little girl? That is so cute!!"

Tali continues to become faster and faster on the bike, and I am ready to upgrade him to the next size bike as soon as the opportunity presents itself. He's just discovered skids. Actually I had to teach him how to do it. Although I did have to say to him, "Tali, now that I've shown you how to skid I really should tell you to stop it, you're ruining the tyre."

I love that I'm able to be here for these times - I love watching my babies be such capable and energetic people - I love that I'm able to give them the opportunity to be developing these skills and confidence - but most of all I love seeing Ella going hell for leather down the pavement with her little legs going EE-ee-EE-ee-EE-ee and her wild blond curls flying out behind her.

Very quickly am in fantastic mood today because after many many many weeks of radio silence in the job dept I am interviewing with two companies (that you will have heard of - Willow Ware [they make tupperware and stuff] and Britax [they make all the prams and car seats at Target and Kmart. Our pram was a Britax {Steelcraft} pram]) in the space of 24 hours.

Beth continues to rock hard with the emergency teaching.

wish us luck - am heading out with lucien on maiden ATB training ride for the year in new knicks and new wind vest.

having not dropped below 12 degrees for weeks and weeks it's currently 3.3 degrees. woohoo!! is bright beautiful sunny day. this is going to be so much fun!

I did bench presses today. Maybe 15kg, so not breaking any land speed records yet - but... you know... first time in 14 months that I've done it without fear of my wrist snapping right off.

Rock-climbing scheduled for yesterday - but called off because of cousin's parents' reluctance to let her avoid meeting them - feeling confident that I can do it.