Peace of a sort

I'm supposed to be sorting photos I have about 5 weeks worth to go through- the 600 or so we took at Christmas are slowing me down. (Read: Making me procrastinate.)

But Will has been dropped off for his first full day of 'kindy at school' and I have done my walk for today. Tama is still asleep in the pushchair meaning I have a moment of peace.

Not that it's very peaceful- my mind is a buzz. It's been like that since we got here and I haven't really had much time to sit down and write in a state where I am not purely exhausted from a day hanging with a 4 year old and a 7 month old. Did you read that- I have a 7 month old.... it seems not that long ago that I was settling into life in Perth with a 4 month old! That said it also feels like a million years ago that I had a newborn! Those memories are fading fast and I need to get them down on paper sooner rather than later or they will be all but gone.

I'm glad to be back into term time- life is reaching some sort of normality and we can see what our new routines will look like... I hope this space in the morning after the get to work and school rush is over will be a part of those routines.

I was thinking last night about what would happen if we won this weekends 30 million dollar powerball draw and could afford to retire. Would we come 'home'? I found that the answer was no. We're happy here. It is home for the time being and there's so much we have yet to learn about the place. On the day we left NZ I was mentally composing a '10 things to do before you leave Auckland" list in my head... hopefully it will be a future blog post. Right now I only have a list of one thing to do before you leave Perth. I think when we get to the point that we have things clamouring to make our top ten- then we'll be ready to think about leaving.

We've yet to do much exploring of the city and surrounds but we'll get there and I think a lot of it will come as we do other things like attend Glider Comps and School camps and such. (Although Kieran's School camps all seem to consist of places like Ruapehu, Victoria and Italy!!)

One thing we've been trying to do is find some fresh water to swim in- it's funny in a city that defines itself by SOR and NOR (South and North of the Swan river) and has two great rivers running through it that the place to swim is at the beach- beach for us means a 30 minute drive, blazing hot sun, wind-a-rama and sand in.... well you know where the sand gets in- everywhere. So we're looking for fresh water- a swimming hole- but no one seems to know where that might be. I ask a lot of people- check out operators, kindy teachers, neighbours and so forth- I'm sure they all think I'm nuts.

We're are finally fully sorted at home with Les completing the last job on the weekend- which was to gather up the last of the builders rubble down the side of the house. I'm not sure why that was our job but nobody else seemed to care and we wanted it to look tidy. It's now just a big sandy strip... I've been looking at all the weeds and wild flowers growing on the verges and such when I've been out walking and considering how I can bring some home to plant- they obviously don't need retic which is a plus because it's dry down there and we don't want to be spending any more on water!

Talking about walking I can now proudly say that I have walked 22 days in a row. I can't say it's got much easier physically and it's not having any impact on my weight- due to my bodies efficiency at storing energy to feed the poor starving baby. (Not). But it is a lot easier mentally there's a lot less of the bargaining and cajoling to just stay on the couch than there was at the start. And a lot less of my brain suggesting that due to one excuse or another I should just do a 'short walk' it's a lot less satisfying to come home having only done 20 minutes than the days where I've done 30 or days like Saturday when Les and I took both little boys out and almost did an hour.

I'm still on the look out for snakes when I walk I'm not sure if I'll ever stop looking, not because I'm particularly worried  but more because I don't know, and also because I really want to see a live one in the wild. It's a weird feeling of not knowing if you need to be worried or not. The week before last I found a redback spider on the door frame and I almost feel more relaxed about spiders than I did before... it was like the not knowing if I needed to be vigilant was more energy than actually knowing that I do.

I'm going to finish up now even though I feel like I could write for a couple of hours! But I am trying to simplify our lives this year and I need to spend a bit of time focusing on just what that will look like for us and what it will mean I need to do. And this space with Tama STILL asleep is perfect for figuring.

I'm determined that I will write again soon.