Two Weddings and a hole in the backyard

We've had a busy couple of days, and we're feeling very sleep deprived at the moment, so if this post makes no sense you'll have to forgive me.

Two Weddings

Why the sleep deprivation? I hear you ask. Well we've recently returned from a long weekend in Perth for a wedding.  An old friend of Derek's (in that they have known each other for a long time, not a commentary on his age) named Sambo (well actually named Ian, but called Sambo) married the lovely Kate on Friday.

It was a beautiful ceremony, very sweet, and we had a great night.  It was really good for us to finally meet Kate, and their gorgeous little girl Violet as well.  One of the problems of being a continent away from friends unfortunately is that you just don't get to see enough of each other.  But we did get to meet them and be part of their very special occasion, and that was great.

We also caught up with other old friends of Derek's while we were over there (again a comment on the length of time they've known each other).  All in all a fantastic few days, just very tiring with all of the time zone changes, long flights and the red-eye last night.

But, as you can see in the title of this post, that was not the only wedding. Matt, my brother, married his lovely fiancee, Pia, last Friday as well.  This was a registry office occasion on Friday morning, I won't go into all the reasons why they opted not to have a big ceremony, suffice to say families are interesting parts of our lives :-)  So a big congratulations to Matt and Pia as well, I'm sure that you will continue to be as happy together as you have been for the last few years.  And remember Pia, you're a Dunn now, "one of us, one of us" :-)

The hole in the backyard

As some of you may know, part of the treechange will involve us finally getting a pet (or a few pets really, but I will talk about the goats and miniature donkey in later posts).  In order to achieve this we need to dog proof the backyard of our current house.  Derek has started this process by digging a hole in the backyard, or to be more precise, digging a step out so we can put a retaining wall and fence from the house to the shed.

Now the fun part of putting in posts, retaining wall, fence and garden - and Derek thought digging it was hard work :-)

Not an insignificant amount of work, given the concrete that was on top of half of it.

The ute finally starts doing some real man's work!

From this we have learned a few things:

• Number 1 - we are very glad that the soil classification on the land found very little clay, as the Huonville house is on a dolomite clay, which is apparently a b!tch to dig.
• Number 2 - when people renovate houses they cut some bizarre corners. The new downpipe was not actually connected to the old drain pipe, instead there was a half metre drop - lazy.
• Number 3 - concrete is not easy to break up, and even harder to get rid of in Huonville - luckily we found someone who is looking for clean fill.
• Number 4 - not really a new lesson, but Derek still continues to bleed with every handyman activity. I'm thinking we might need to get him to start donating blood now so there are reserves for the house build :-)

We'll post a lot more photos when the wall and fence actually start getting built - and then there will be the photos of the puppy when we finally get him/her.

Apple Blossoms

As a footnote, we haven't posted a photo of the apple tree in our backyard, see below.

Pretty apple blossoms - although it does attract bees

The whole valley is starting to really bloom at the moment, given this is apple and cherry country that is not surprising.  We'll have to drive down to Cygnet next weekend and see how the cherry blossoms are going, I think they will be spectacular.