Been away a long time.......

I feel as though I have not sat and visited with you for ever so long and so I am sitting in a comfy chair and pretending that I have had a chance to chew the fat with each one of you.
Cal, I have chatted through your latest trip and all the amazing things you have seen and done. You have told me how much I would have loved a certain place and now I am be green with envy. We also have chatted about our latest craft projects and Ben and Rebecca's latest decorating trend (Thank you Ben and Rebecca for providing me with inspiring stories of your boldness and wonderful decorating ideas!) We have talked about God and life and Love and loss.
KT, I have just chatted to you about some op shopping that you have done and some modifying that you will do with the clothes. We have organised a sewing day together and talked about what we will do at the next clothes swap. You have told me about the amazing things that you want to do in the next year and I get a little sad about not having you around all the time, but understand that you are like those beautiful migrating birds that have an inbuilt need to fly North for a season and then back again for a while before heading off again to adventures that are wonderful and exciting.
Linny, we have talked about children and how hard yet rewarding it is to be a mummy. We have also chatted about sewing clothes and how nice it is to be able to claim that it is a Linny original. We also remembered the silly things that we used to do when we were young! A telephone in the car! Crazy perms! Paris boat trips! We have laughed and chatted and talked and have not been interrupted...nice!
And so my darling sisters I have spoken to all of you.....in my head....wishing it was in person......wishing you were all here....wishing and praying that one day my day dreams will come true and I will have these conversations....same or different I care not, just so long as we have some conversation, we talk and we laugh and our story, our journey as sisters continues where ever we are and whoever we become.
I love you all very much and feel very honoured and privileged to have each of you as my sisters and my friends.

La Boca

Being a tourist, I figure that I can get away with doing touristy things so yesterday I walked out to the La Boca area of Buenos Aires.  There's a tiny part of the area that is painted in bright colours.  It's now a total tourist trap with coaches disgorging their loads of tourists with cameras on every street and local touts trying to persuade you to come in for lunch, have a photo taken with a real tango dancer, or buy a painting from a local artist.  I wandered about snapping pics here and there and then retreated to a little square across the street from the area to sit and watch the frenzy.  I wish I had gone earlier in the morning when there would be less people about but I hadn't realised that it would take so long to walk there (something which tourists don't do, all the guidebooks advise against going anywhere in the area outside of the painted streets but I don't have a guidebook and the worst thing I encountered was locals trying to chat me up).  The area was created in the 1950's by an orphan who had been raised in the area and who felt he wanted to give something back.  The idea is based on the history of the area.  La Boca is a port and when immigrants to Buenos Aires came pouring in during the late 1800s and early 1900s many of the Italian immigrants set up their homes in the area.  Scavenged materials from the port were used to construct their houses and the leftover paint from the port was used to paint the outside of these houses, hence the vast amount of paint colours used.  Inventive, colourful and fun!

Inspiration

Isn't this cool packaging?  I was in San Telmo yesterday looking for stocking stuffers for Andrew but ended up buying a funky shopping bag in the shape of a strawberry.  Mission not accomplished, but I thought this was the cutest idea ever.

Kt Mac's New Home

I went trekking around Buenos Aires yesterday and found this little beauty.  It's for sale, it's a motor home and it made me think immediately of Kt Mac.  I think she could get a nice deal on it if she habla español and wobbles her little girls at the owner!

Where to start

Let’s start from the very beginning, 

A very good place to start.  

When you read you begin with ABC, 

When you travel you begin with gay Pareeeeee! 

Note that the photos are all in random order.  Just warning you.

We had a long stopover in Paris and as it was date night we figured we had to be all romantic and have a date in the City of Lights.  We wandered about the city (me with rubber bands holding up the bottom of my trousers!), wending our way up to Sacre Coeur.  The last time I was here I was proposed to by a guy with a beer cup plastered to his hand and was pick pocketed by one of a number of little cheeky street urchins.  This time it was much less event-filled but still beautiful as we climbed the stairs and gazed out over Paris.  At the bottom of the hill we bought crepes (all good trips to Paris MUST include crepes) and continued wandering.  Andrew took photos of the bikes for Dad, you know the ones he always talks about?  We also happened upon the sweetest little cake shop.  The front window was filled with the most amazingly coloured giant cookie things, so Andrew got his French out and we bought a lavender cookie.  It was goooooood.  After all our munching, romancing and wandering it was time to head back to the station where I almost peed myself laughing as they have people to cram you into the train even when it’s pretty much full (I only thought this happened in Japan!). 

The one that got away...

I never found him outback- I'll keep searching till Dec 13th ;-)

(I do think he looks gay though and that would be a challenge!)

Our new puppy

Lulu- African for Pearl.

9wk old lab... So cute!

Until she chews your shoes & poops near your walking path!!!

Off.

ARGENTINAAAAAAAA!  Here we come...

Etzelwang

We arrived at Edel's late Saturday night after many helpful German's pointed the way.  I've realised that the stereotypical German doesn't exist in Bavaria, they're all smiley and happy and helpful!  

It was soooooo good to see Edel, she's a friend that we met in London who now lives in Peru and she's back visiting her family in Germany for a few months.We nattered away when we arrived at her place, eating yummy German cheese and meat and bread and drinking freshly pressed apple juice.  Edel's family is into doing everything themselves and eating organic stuff.  We tried out the oats roller that is on the wall in the kitchen.  You put the grain in at the tip, turn a handle and it goes through two rollers and comes out as rolled oats at the bottom.  It had never entered my head before that rolled oats are actually rolled, I just figured they came in that shape!

The next day we met all the family and had breakfast together.  This meant bread with honey from their bees, milk that was either from their goats or from another farmer's cows, and homemade muesli.  

After breakfast we headed off into the countryside to walk to the castle that Nicolas Cage used to own, Schloss Neidstein.  The jump photos were taken (so much easier when you don't have to use the self-timer!), the castle surrounds explored, and a whole lot more catching-up done.

We then headed home to the most hilarious lunch ever, I think it has something to do with the lack of preservatives they don't have in their bodies.  Edel's parents had invited a few of their farmer friends over for lunch.  A whole bunch of us crowded around their table and we proceeded to munch goat (their own), cabbage (2 different types made 2 different ways), and potato (again, done 2 different ways, 1 roasted and 1 canoodle which is like waxy mashed potato in balls that is boiled so it has a kind of firm clag glue consistency).  Most of the conversation was in German but there were some larger-than-life characters at the table so it was hilarious just watching them.  The weirdest part was when they started reciting Monty Python in English, Andrew, being a big fan, thought it was brilliant!

After that Edel showed us photos of Peru and a video of the orphanage that she is going to be working with when she goes back.  It sounds incredible.  Then we went back to the table for more food (yummy German plum cake and Peruvian jelly and corn pudding) and more hilarity.

In the late afternoon we went and helped milk the goats.  I was amazed that I could do it cause I remember trying to milk our cows when I was a kid.  I guess the size of my hands then and the size of the cows teats was a little different to my bigger hands and the goats smaller teats.

After milking we had to hit the road.  We were bundled off with organic salami (2 types), fresh apple juice and a jar of goats milk.

It was such a fabulous trip, and so worth the crazy amount of driving that we had to do.  It was so great to see Edel, she's one of those friends that I will have for life no matter where we live on the globe (we're already arranging to do kid-swaps so her kids can learn English and our kids can learn Spanish!).  It was also lovely to meet her family, I hope that people feel as welcome and comfortable when they come to our home, even if we can't provide them with milking experiences and celebrity castles!

The First Bit

This is our gelber engel, our yellow angel.  He swooped to our rescue with batteries and lollypops in Franfurt when our car was tick-tick-ticking and no amount of jump-start cables could get it going.  We'd had to jump start the car before we left Amsterdam, apparently an 11 year old battery doesn't take kindly to being left for weeks on end with no love and attention heading it's way.  We stopped twice on the way to Frankfurt, and each time the car started again.  We crashed at Rachey and Stephen's late Friday  night (never try to drive from Amsterdam to Frankfurt on a Friday, 4 hours slowly becomes 7.5 hours), and when we tried to head off on Saturday morning our can just wasn't having any of it.  So we spent the rest of the day trying to get it going, missing the road side assistance man, and then eventually having him work his magic on our car.  This was all interspersed with being fed fantastically by Rachey, watching Stephen pace about the house on the phone trying to find someone in Germany who could help us, and trying to figure if we were going to make a mad dash to IKEA before it closed to buy a mattress for us to sleep on (the air mattress had a leak).  But in the end, we headed off further into the black depths of Germany to find the village with the castle that Nicholas Cage used to own.  Yup, that's the only reason anyone would know this sweet little village!  And the rest will have to wait for tomorrow...

Cool family picts!!

HOORAY FOR YOU!

The photo's of me jumping again.......still on the chair!

Scary jump photo

I can fly......I can fly.

Angel girl...always dreaming of flying!

Now I think I am correct in thinking that Miss Strawberry Jam has now finished her last exam for this year!

WELL DONE
CONGRATS
YIPPEE
COOLEO
FANTASTICO
You have made it and now you can relax for a time before the final home run. If you were here we would take you out and bye you a milk shake and make you some pancakes and give you big congrats hugs...but because you are not we did a jump photos for you instead.
Well done Calli. We are ever so proud.