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.

Even more SNOW!!!

Last week we had a bit of a cold blast and some frosty mornings.  Everyone was saying to us "oh that's normal, we usually get one last blast of winter before spring really kicks in".  Apparently it wasn't enough of a blast because this morning we woke to the largest snowfall we've had.
All of the mountains around us were snap frozen on top, it looked exceptionally cool.  There was a defined line of white trees and a lot of mist hanging around.
It was when you got up to the top of mountain range though that the winter wonderland really kicked in.  There were kids on the side of the road building snowmen, and the "slippery when frosty" sign was covered in snow.  Derek came up after I went to work and took some photos, my favourite was the dam

How gorgeous is that! Put me in a great mood for my day at work.

 Derek also went to the land to see how much snow we got. The frogpond is very, very full and a little icy, but the picture below is looking up to the back of the block.

I'm sure that we'll get to the point that this stuff is not exciting, although I don't want that to ever happen.  But until then, expect photos of snow (probably no more for this year) when it's this impressive.

Laying out the house

Last weekend we took a massive step in the process of building our dream home in Tasmania.  We had the block resurveyed on Friday and on Saturday we went out onto the land with our designer, Nigel Jones, and  marked out the house on the block.

It was really strange to stand there and have a first conceptual image of how the house will sit on the land.  We were going to scan in the floorplan and put it with the post, but as we were working things out we made a few minor changes, so we decided to wait.

This week we will be having a soil classification done on the block, and from there it should only take about a fortnight to get the development application into Council.  They have about 6 weeks to give it the thumbs up and then it's a building surveyor and then submitting a planning application. Once the development application is approved though we can start preparing the site (excavation) for the build and Derek and start trying to cost the project (the really scary bit).

Nigel has given us a building figure which is above what we had hoped it would come in at, but we need to qualify some of this.  The big thing is that if we owner build then it should be cheaper, although Derek is a little freaked out about it all at the moment :-)

So we'll get the floorplan up as soon as we have an amended copy, but barring any unforeseen changes in the plans it is very likely we will be starting the build before the end of the year at this stage.

SNOW!! (and photos of the ute)

This post is a little late, since it is a week and a half since I got snowed on driving home (we're not talking a snowstorm or anything, just a light fall as I was coming up over the mountain).  Since then we've pretty much had snow on the surrounding mountains the whole time, but it hasn't come back down to the road I drive into Hobart.

The great thing is that Derek went up the next morning and there was snow on the land in Mountain River.  Again, not great big snow drifts or anything, only about a centimetre coverage by the time he got there in the morning (the block gets a lot of morning sun), but snow nonetheless.  Below are a few photos of the block, in its newly cleared state and with snow!

The ute and the nearly cleared block

Light snow on the land (dark lines are the piles of bracken that we have to burn)

Obligatory ute close up

However, I can categorically state that even with picturesque snow capped mountains surrounding us it is still warmer here than Canberra!!!

Our view with snow

The New Ute!

Yes it has arrived, well more precisely Derek went into Hobart yesterday and collected it.
The Mazda BT50 is pretty cool, and it is really nice to have a ute so we don't have to try to cram the brushcutter into the Peugeot anymore.  We'll get a photo of it up soon, I'll try to get Derek in his flannie and ugg boots beside it :-)

In store competitions

You know how you sometimes enter in store competitions and never win them, or know anyone who does? Well now you know someone who has.  When Derek bought my bike from Anaconda we entered into a draw to win a few hundred dollars of bike gear.  We didn't look at what the prize was because we assumed we wouldn't win, but then we got a phone call from Anaconda and yes we had won first prize!
We went down to collect the gear and it was a pretty good haul really. Clothes, bike computer, trainer and a cleaning kit.
So maybe the move has been even better than we thought :-)

It's been a busy 10 days

Since I've been so slack this will be a bit of an epic post, so I'll just get straight into it.

Matt's Exhibition

We went to Melbourne for the opening of The Fortunate Life of an Unfortunate Man in Fitzroy.  This is Matt's second big exhibition and it is really fantastic, and that's not just sisterly bias talking :-)
Derek took photos and Matt will post the exhibition up on his website in the coming weeks.  There are a few images that nearly made me cry, but overall it is a sweet and uplifting exhibition - way to go Matt.
It was also great to catch up with family down there, both Matt and Pia and also Louise, Stephen and Emma.

The Ute

We came back and decided that we really needed to sort out a ute sooner rather than later, since I was starting work on Wednesday and Derek would start losing the car, and the brushcutter doesn't fit very comfortably into the Peugeot.  We got it down to Nissan, Toyota, Mazda and Mitsubishi and headed into town to have a look at their base models.
Funnily enough three of the four dealers we went to are called DJ - so DJ Nissan, DJ Mazda etc, so it's pretty clear that there was a good chance one company was getting our business. 
After gathering all of the information Derek geeked it up with a spreadsheet to try to work out what was the best car for our needs, but it was the discussion with one of the local mechanics that sort of sealed the deal for the Mazda.
So next Friday we officially become locals when we collect our Mazda BT-50 ute, or as I will refer to it from now on 'Derek's Car', because if he thinks I'm driving that thing around he has another thing coming :-)

My New Job

As mentioned above, on Wednesday I started my new job.  Derek drove me in, as that was the day he test drove all of the utes, so at least I didn't have to deal with parking on the first day (which isn't actually bad at all since some of the people at work recommended a place).
The workplace is great, everyone is really friendly and I'm not the only new person.  Another newbie started the same day, and she's come down from the NT, so it's been a big climate change for her.  It's great having another new person to share some of the pressure with, and someone else to talk with about whether we should know things or not.
The bosses seem really nice and it is a very laid back atmosphere in the place, I can actually go to work in jeans all the time if I wish.  There are only 240 people in Housing in total, so it will be really nice being with an organisation where I can know everyone and what they all do again.
My staff all seem really nice as well, and there are only 10 of them this time, which is a bonus.  I also have an office, which is a definite bonus - open plan whilst managing people is never an easy ask.
This is not to say that my bosses, colleagues and staff in the RTA were not nice - I actually do miss a lot of you guys - I'm just saying that I think the Housing role will be a good fit.

Derek's Interview

And for all of you that were bucking for Derek to be a kept man, he has a meeting with a recruitment agency on Monday afternoon to try to get a real job - more on that as it progresses I'm sure.

So a very busy time in the last few weeks.  For anyone paying attention, we still have not sold the Lapstone house, which is probably the only thing that continues to be a downer in this whole process.  We're really at a loss of how to sell the thing, given that there are still heaps of people going through it. I guess we couldn't have everything go our way though, because everything else seems to be going very well at this point in time.

I think I need to get back into the lounge room in front of the fire though, we've hit a cold snap and there is a lot of snow on the higher peaks, including Sleeping Beauty which there is a photo of earlier.

Bye for now, hope you are all well.