More pics from the park

 

Callum spent most of his time trying to climb this fence, playing in the dirt (and eating it) around this tree


 

Cousin Tom and Callum looking like they're up to something 

Walk in the park

We went for a trip to the city botanic gardens in the town centre today. It's starting to get a bit warmer through the day, although they all still think it's freezing here. The boy was in his element.

 

Callum, now very much needing a haircut


 

His hair's started coming over his ears and people are starting to mistake him for a girl


 
 

Off as fast as his fat little knees can carry him 

New House

 
Very blurry photo of the house from the back of the garden - pool on left
 
Slightly better focused collage of the inside and views from the deck 

Location, location, location

Jen and I have been househunting. It has become apparent that Jen is preggers again and so the logical thing to do was to find a nest for her to be happy in - renting just isn't really the same. Plus, the boy has now outgrown the place we are in at the moment.

Our initial foray consisted of looking at a few places around the same rough area that we are in at the moment - we did find a place which suited and offered far less than the asking price. This was rejected. It only suited as it was big though - the place was a bit of a shambles and needed a lot of work, so we bid what we thought was fair. Given the fact that they had no offers prior to ours (on the market for a few months) you would think they would realise that the asking price was a bit stupid. Think they must have been greedy. We figured that spending around $40K on the place (seriously) would bring it up to about the asking price, so we bid $40K less with that in mind.

As it happens, we found another, much nicer, slightly smaller place the following week, and had our bid accepted. So then we get a call from the real estate agent that we put the first offer through with seeing if we were still interested. I think they must have realised that our offer was in fact fairer than they were wanting. Was very satisfying telling them that we had spent our cash on something else and they were too late. That'll learn them to be dickheads. Had already explained to them in painstaking detail the first time around the justification behind the low offer.

So anyway, the new place:

It's in Everton Hills (about a mile or two from where we are now) in North Brisbane, it's down a cul-de-sac, almost at the end. Although it's on the side of a hill, the land is gently sloping where we are so you could kick a ball around on the back garden if you wanted.

It 'officially' has two bedrooms, but there is a downstairs which has another two. This is a conversion and doesn't meet the legal height requirements to sell it as extra rooms ('utility area' on the schedule). This is a very common thing over here - the other place we bid for had the same. From our point of view it doesn't matter - the only real impact it has is not being able to advertise it for sale as rooms. So our utility area in fact has a lounge, study alcove, laundry, and two double bedrooms.

Upstairs, there's another lounge, kitchen, bathroom (though no bath - just big shower), and two double bedrooms.

We have a covered, fenced patio/entertaining area out the front, a large elevated deck out the back, another patio below that with steps up to the deck (which adjoins the kitchen), and the deck overlooks the pool. There is also a fair sized lawn and shed out the back. Block is 830 sq metres.

We'll be moving in in around 5 weeks - so looking forward to that (though not moving all our junk). Have a few pictures of it to post which will go up soon.

Mice released into the wild. There turned out to be 5 huddled together.