Phoebe crawled into our bed a few nights ago after waking up from a nightmare. She dreamt about a T-Rex chasing butterflies, fairies and unicorns. I can't decide whether I'm sad that phoebe had a nightmare or happy that it included fairies, butterflies and unicorns :)

After a long and frustrating struggle, we've finally been granted Australian permanent residence status. It's a huge relief as we no longer have to live with the uncertainty that comes with temporary residence and now have much more stability in terms of schooling, employment, accommodation etc. We're planning on taking some time to relax before we make any more big changes!

The coolest thing about living in Sydney is that you can walk around with a cowboy hat and nobody thinks its odd (at least I think not).

Anzac day today, so a public holiday tomorrow. Off to the NSW Caravan Camping RV and Holiday Supershow this afternoon. Ultimately, camping may turn out to be one of few options available to us in terms of an affordable housing solution in Sydney.

Oh the soft pitter-patter of little pachiderms ...

We slept under the stars in the garden with the girls last night, which caused a bit of excitement. For supper we roasted a balanced meal of mushrooms, cubes of haloumi cheese and marshmallows over the fire. (The haloumi cheese was an experiment but I highly recommend it). Had to carry the girls inside at around 4h30 am when it started raining ... reminded me of camping at Winsome Valley on the Crocodile river, only no exploding bottles of Geoff's home brew during the night.

Had a late morning for a change and went to see "How to train your dragon" - quite good, worth a watch.

Holly and Phoebe have finally gone to bed for the night and are eagerly awaiting the Easter Bunny in the morning, as are Tracey and I.

from the mouths of babes ...

Discussions with Holly around spirituality always bring a smile to my day :)

This evening

Holly: Dad, where does the world come from? I mean who was the first person on earth?

Dad: Well, people have been asking that question for thousands of years. People have different religious beliefs like Christianity, Islam, Hindu, Judaism and many more. Some of these have similar ideas about how the world started and some have very different ideas.

Holly: Dad, what do YOU believe.

Dad: I think that it's more complicated than we can understand at the moment. We have many ideas but we don't really know

Holly: Dad, I think John Smith and Bob Marley created the world

Dad: [temporarily lost for words]

Mom: John Smith?! Which John Smith, the John Smith from Pochahontas?

Holly: No, John Smith from the Springboks.

WTF? I really have to marvel at the thought process that spurned this gem!!

Tuesday evening

Dad: Holly, how were Bahai lessons today?

Holly: Dad, Christ died!

Dad: Really?

Holly: Yes, he was kneeling down in the forest praying and a hunter thought he was a buck and shot him!

I think the time has come for me to put a little more effort into understanding the Bahai faith's beliefs :)

Surf's up!

Well, I feel like an old hand now that I've been at Commonwealth Bank for a few weeks. I'm really enjoying the job, leading a team of Service Designers, converting an existing SOA implementation to integrate with a SAP backend.

Tracey got her car last week and with all of the big things like bank accounts, schooling, jobs, housing, cars etc, out of the way, we're starting to organise the fun things now. We signed Holly up for "Little Nippers" at the local life surfing club and I signed up for surfing lessons every Sunday for the next two and a half months. We both go from 9am to 11am every Sunday. While I'm getting lessons, Holly does board skills and surf acclimatization. We're both quite excited!

We also had a lot of excitement in the household during the week with our first sighting of a possum in the garden. They're mostly regarded as pests here but we're obviously quite pleased to have them - for now! Tux, our cat, is also very pleased but it seems he has dinner in mind - hope we don't have any nasty confrontations. Yesterday I was busy showing Roger and Kerry around the garden with the webcam while we were skyping and I came across the possum again quite by accident. Got some nice close up action, though not too sure how it came across on the camera. The possum was really chilled and let us approach close enough to touch - Phoebe even managed to feed him a leaf by hand.

That's it for this session, I can hear my bed calling. Stay posted for further riveting revelations from Oz!