Radio silence

Bloody hell! That was almost four months. I have some reasonable excuses if any of you would like to hear them.

The last four months have held

...a bit of travel. I spent a few days in Rome, which was absolutely wonderful for all the usual reasons - beautiful city, lots of fun and fabulous food. The highlight for me was hiring golf buggies and driving around on a self-guided tour of Rome. It was so much fun! A close second was dinner at an old palace above the Spanish Steps where there were amazing views across Rome. Three days definitely wasn't enough and I'd love to go back there with Vaughn.

...a lot of throwing up, a couple of scans and more expansion than seems reasonable. Pregnancy is an interesting experience! I've started going to aquanatal classes and every couple of weeks the lovely man at the gym sets a new routine for me (and seems to have decided he's now my personal trainer, following me around every time I go the the gym). Our antenatal classes start in February, so brace yourself for some very boring posts as I inundate you with all kinds of uninteresting things about pregnancy and child birth! And to start the ball rolling, Vaughn and I have been watching with fascination as my belly button has gone from being an innie to a flatty and is now threatening to go over to the Other Side and become an outie. I'm worried every time I sneeze that it will be the final straw and I'll start walking around navel first.

...and of course a bit of planning for Christmas. We're heading to Interlaken on Christmas Eve for a week or so of fun and snow. I'm hoping to go sledding and hiking if not skiing. It'll be my first white Christmas. I'm so excited! Just think of all that gluehwein and chocolate and laeckerle and....

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year!

We've been in our very own home now for almost two months. It's gone so quickly! We're still working out how some of the rooms should work - the living and dining rooms aren't really working very well at the moment - but we feel we've made good progress on the bedrooms. Ours is now furnished, and the built in bookshelves in the spare room are now out. This weekend we'll be washing the walls and ceilings, caulking gaps here and there and ripping up carpet and underlay in preparation for polishing the floors and painting the rooms. Very soon now we'll have pleasant and fairly neutral rooms in place of the violence-and-nausea-inducing Barbie-meets-Mortisha-Adams pink and black wallpaper.

In other exciting news, we've been eating our own lettuces for the last week, all the new strawberry plants are starting to produce fruit, the beans, peas and courgette are all starting to flower, and the tomato plants are struggling under the weight of the fruit. I've ordered some heirloom tomato plants, too, (the others being common all garden red varieties) which should arrive soon. I'm really looking forward to eating them! I admire a tomato that determinedly sticks to be pink and fabulous in the (red) face of peer pressure.

The rest of the garden is starting to take shape, too. We spent much of the first few weeks clearing the garden, and the last couple planting some of the non-vegie beds. We're going properly English, with lots of lavendar, roses, honeysuckle, hydrangeas, bulbs and jasmine. In a couple of weeks when they are available I'll be planting ludicrous numbers of bluebell, snowdrop and wild garlic bulbs to cover the area under the very large tree in the back corner. Hopefully with all these flowers, we'll be able to find some friends for the solitary robin who's been eating the seed from our bird feeder.

In completely unrelated news, we've booked flights to Australia for a trip in Oct-Nov. We'll be in Canberra for a few days leading up to 25 Oct, Melbourne very briefly around 26-27 Oct, Adelaide for the weekend of 1 Nov, and south east Queensland after that until 18 Nov. We'd love to see you!