So, here (finally) are all the pics from the visit of my Dad, Susan and Rebecca in July. They flew out on my Dad's 60th birthday - and after 24 hours on a plane, he almost looked it!!!
It was great to have visitors here, and we only wished they could have stayed longer. The kids loved seeing Papa, Nana Suze and Auntie Rebecca - you can see how excited Ella was here.
Didn't do too much during their week and a bit here (obviously had to consider my dad's advancing years), but did investigate Barwon Heads which is a little seaside town down the coast from Geelong. They were staying at a golf resort just outside Barwon Heads (didn't want to get too close to us...), and we had dinner in the town there one night - our first night outside Geelong!!
Also went for a quick walk along the shore in Geelong and my Dad found a new woman... She looks a bit fake if you ask me!
Packed them off on a tour of some local wineries in a 1935 Buick Sedan as my Dad's 60th birthday pressie - it looked awesome, and it's something that I hope Nick and I will get to do before we leave. This did mean we got to keep Auntie Rebecca for a sleepover and let her get jumped on by small children at an ungodly hour of the morning.
We went off to Melbourne on the Saturday and absolutely loved it. It's a spacious, attractive, vibrant place with a really great feel to it. We particularly loved the Victorian (era, not State) shopping arcades with the domed ceilings and stained glass. Reminded me a lot of Leeds, or a posh Argyle Arcade if you like! Also really enjoyed the little narrow lanes running between the main shopping streets which are stuffed full of little bistros and cafes of all nationalities with tables and chairs (and patio heaters) for eating outside and watching the world go by.
On the news here the other day they were discussing whether the staff who stand outside trying to entice you in are too 'in your face'. Now, all they do is say something like 'Good afternoon, looking for lunch, would you like to see a menu?' I'm guessing that whoever finds that too much to cope with hasn't been to any of the Mediterranean tourist islands where it's nigh on acceptable to scoop family members off the street to get you to eat at their restaurant... but I digress...
Took just around an hour by train from Geelong and was cheap for all of us to get there, so bound to be an exercise we will repeat over the course of the year. Ella, of course is the unstable element in the train equation... To be fair, my Dad and Suze were sitting opposite (black) Sideshow Bob, but Ella staring at him, silent and unwavering, for the best part of an hour is bound to have given the poor man a complex which he may take some time to get over.
Decided we had to go to the top of the Eureka Skydeck
- the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere with a viewing platform on the 88th floor... which (considering that my Dad has always hated heights and I'm going the same way) was quite an undertaking. To be honest though, unlike, say, going up the Eiffel Tower, where you feel every clanking inch-by-inch rise, the lifts are so quick and smooth to the top that it feels very surreal when you step out on the 88th floor. But the views are amazing...
And finally, Fat Sponge and Rose Bigsie: Two dollies of freakishly real looks and the same size as Phoebe. Only one, I should point out, belongs to one of my daughters. I am saying no more... And, I would explain their names, except that it was so funny when it happened, and so not funny when I write it down that I don't think I'll bother! But you can be weirded out by the pictures anyway. Just imagine how I feel every time I walk into a room and find Rose Bigsie face down on the floor/under a chair/limbs akimbo. Sometimes I leave her in the driver's seat in the car to freak out passers by...
So here are the latest pictures of my baby at just over 6 months. She has two teeth, fuzzy blond hair growing straight out from her head, and extremely chubby thighs!
She started solids about a month ago and hasn't looked back since - the first time I gave her baby rice, she grabbed the spoon out of my hand cos I wasn't going fast enough, and since then she has pretty much demolished everything on offer.
She is also spending all her time rolling on to her front at the moment too - 
which is very tedious as she hates being on her front - so we turn her back over, and she turns back and starts moaning again etc etc...
And of course everything goes in her mouth, feet, the camera...
And she also likes to sit - she's not very good at it, but she likes to try! Note Nick in the background of this picture in case she does a speedy faceplant.
She has also been swimming with all of us on Fridays - loves the water, doesn't mind being ducked either.
And her dislikes? Still hates getting dressed, still screams and screams when we have the cheek to try!!
Number one Darling Daughter has just scrunched up her birth certificate and thrown it in the bin. That is her idea of helping me with paperwork. Don't think she was quite prepared for the reaction that got....
Anyway, Ella is just Ella - seems to have taken a move to the other side of the world completely in her stride. Still funny, stroppy, stubborn, smart and always right. (Don't go there...) The 'Look of Death', by the way, is the filthy
look Ella gives you when she doesn't like what you are saying - which is often....
She is still refusing all attempts at toilet training. She can't see why she would want to interrupt her extremely busy life to sit on a cold toilet when she can just go in a nappy thank you very much - and yes, before you ask, we have tried removing the nappy and can in fact confirm that she is just as happy to go in her pants. She came to my room sheepishly with very wet trousers the other day and told me that it was OK cos she was only wet down one leg!Conversation with Ella takes strange turns on a daily basis. Yesterday's ran like this'Dad'
'Yes Ella'
'When can I have a pink Darth Vader?''Never, honey'
'Why?'
'Because Vader is Lord of the Dark Side and only comes in black'
'Why?'
'Because pink is bad for villains'
'Why?'
Because they prefer black'
'But I want a pink Darth Vader'
'Ella, Darth Vader only comes in black'
'Why?'
'OK, how about we put some pink dolly clothes on Darth Vader.... Don't tell the Galactic Empire...'
And the other day after a mammoth walk around Geelong, I made the fatal error of letting a snotty grumpy Will go in the back of the pram instead of Ella...
'WHY is Will in the pram???? That's MY pram!!! GET OUT OF MY PRAM WILL!!!' Ella, Will is really not too well so we're going to let him have a little go in the pram while you walk for a bit
(Wailing) 'But it's MY pram and I want to go in it'
'Ella, I tell you what, how about we walk to the bakery up here and get a treat?'
(Will pipes up) 'I would like a treat'
'Will, don't you DARE talk!!! You are really NOT TOO WELL so be QUIET RIGHT NOW!'
Oh dear oh dear. That little girl is going to be trouble....
We sent over the kids' Leap Pads and Ella has taken over the My First LeapPad, which fortunately comes with Dora Susplora (as she is now called) - Ella's new best friend and mine too, since she keeps the Crazy One amused for hours. Ella now has Dora pants (pointless though that is), a Dora jigsaw, Dora books..... Seems like only 5 minutes since James was Dora daft (though he doesn't believe me about that) and littering his sentences with Spanish. Ella still loves Charlie and Lola and In the Night Garden too, and fortunately both are available here.
As you can see from the pictures, 
Ella has been in mummy's make-up too. This is her sporting a very fetching shade called Blushing Nude - Clinique mind - none of the cheap stuff for my girl. Unfortunately the effect is definitely more queen than princess, so clearly we will need to work on the application...
...in a 'glass half full' kind of way. When he plays his Nintendo DS, he often tells us he is the eighth winner. Otherwise known as 8th out of 8.... or last. Bless!
Will has of course done everything since arriving in Australia that we least expected him to do - coped, flourished, settled.... Much to my relief, I did eventually manage to get him a place at kinder - he has three four hour sessions a week - on a Monday afternoon and Tuesday and Friday mornings. The kinder is in Highton which isn't very handy for where we live, but it's no more than a 10 minute drive, and it's a really good nursery. The first day I took him, I expected tears and snot and clinginess, and had told his nursery teacher as much, and he walked in and sat down for group time without a backward glance!! So now they have me pegged as a hysterical parent.... But who cares? He's really loving it, his teacher says it's like he's been there all along and he has friends called Dylan and Baillie (though not as good as the Baillie in Dunbar apparently, and a different colour (!))
The nursery has fantastic outside play equipment, with a huge shade sail above for when it gets warm, and they seem to do a lot of really good stuff with the children. For the last two weeks they have had a chicken incubator on loan from a local farm and have watched a dozen or so chicks hatching from eggs and getting up and about. Will told me he held one of them but didn't like its little scratchy feet! They have also been doing a lot of Olympics-related activities and Will has appeared home with many flags and gold medals!! Will has to take his own bag (Spiderman) to kinder and twice a week has lunch there, so as far as he is concerned, it's basically school without the uniform. It's weird to think he would have been starting P1 in Dunbar by now - he still seems so little!! Though the peace and quiet would have been nice!
Have also noticed that Will is beginning to pronounce/k/ properly too, sometimes, so we have mastered crab and crispy and clap but still 'toot' dinner and drink 'toffee'.... Will has also reached the stage of being unintentionally very funny... Last couple of weeks comments range from 'Dad, will you still be alive when I'm a grown up?' to 'Well, you know, I'm not really very keen on wiping my own bottom', and the best of all whilst watching the Olympic rowing 'I want the guys on the bikes to win'. Those would be the coaches Will.... Now that the weather has been improving, we have been trying to walk more too, but Will moans about that as apparently his legs are 'really a bit too small still'
Haven't started Will at gymnastics yet but will do next term as this term finishes in September. There is a class he can do at the same time as Ella so they can learn together. He is doing brilliantly well at swimming lessons though and getting more confident every week. He is currently mastering holding a float and kicking his legs to move about the pool and also working on getting more comfortable going underwater. The last two weeks of this term focus on survival training so all the kids will do classes in clothes to learn what to do if they fall into the water.
So all in all, Will has proved to be remarkably adaptable and alternates between saying he wants to stay here and wants to go back to Scotland. One thing just the same here though - the number of people who feel the need to touch his hair...
Thought it was time I gave you all an update on what's been happening to each of us, so I'll start with James. James started school at Manifold Heights (Mano) on July 14th and this is a picture of him on day one in his new uniform. It's very green - but very comfy as they wear trackie bums (shorts in summer) and sweatshirts so nothing to iron for me!! He does seem to have struggled a bit to settle in. For a few weeks the larger-than-life loud and crazy boy was replaced by one much more subdued and generally hard to live with! Poor James, we just assumed that he would not find it so hard to re-adjust, but I suppose he has been at Dunbar in school or nursery for the last four years, so it's all a big change for him. He is in a composite Year 1/2 class (which would be P 2/3 for us) and although his teacher says he is Year 2 academically, socially he is more year one. She did cite some incident about a flying headless Lego man, and though I really wanted to go 'That's nothing, you should see what he does at home', I thought that probably wasn't the response she was after, so made some kind of disapproving noises and left swiftly....
Anyway, this week he really seems to have settled in better and is spending lunch and break times with his new best friends Ben and Lachlan (Scottish Dad). Apparently they have been building in the sandpit.... 'So' I said naively, 'what have you been building?' 'A toilet, mum' he says.. 'First we build the toilet, then we take brown sand and make poo and then we use a big stick and that's the flush' Really by now you would think I would know better than to ask!! 
Anyway, here are some of James' major happenings of the last few weeks: - He has done a presentation in class about something important to him - he chose his Scotland rugby shirt and spoke about Scotland, rugby in Dunbar, the Saltire, his family and where his names come from, and some of the differences between Scotland and Australia
- James has been learning Indian Asian at school. Actually, he has been learing Indonesian as that's the foreign language they do at Mano, but he thinks its Indian Asian!
- He has had his first school trip - a historical walking trip around Geelong where they visited a historic house, the cemetery and the museum. Guess he enjoyed it as he is desperate to take me and Nick to show us.
- Swimming lessons - Saturday morning at 8.30!!! James, Will and Ella all have lessons at the same time, and the quality of the lessons is excellent, so it's well worth it getting up and out. Plus we get to go and have coffee (or milk) and cake afterwards...
- Joey Scouts - which is the starting level of Scouts here (Beavers at home I think?) - he starts next week
Guess I spoke too soon about James settling in - apparently he has been at the principal's office already - nothing major, just the usual catalogue of Jamesisms - pushing, throwing sand, disruptive in class.... Have now passed the stage of accepting the 'he's only 6' and 'boys will be boys' argument, and when his teachers said yesterday that she felt some of the other children were beginning to avoid him, I came home and cried then bit the bullet and arranged for him to go for professional assessment. As most of you will know, James is not lacking in the brains department, so they are going to look at whether he is frustrated at school because he is bored, or whether he has behavioural problems which need to be addressed... or both.
I have always said that James is extreme in everything he does both good and bad, and to give you an example, in the space of five minutes last night he had (1) beaten his sister on the legs for accidentally nudging him with her foot and (2) voluntarily started pushing Phoebe in the pram for me when she was crying and said 'Mum, why don't you feed Phoebe now. Will and Ella and I don't mind waiting for dinner, do we?'
Much as I really don't like labelling children as 'this' or 'that', Nick and I have had to accept that (1) James is not as happy as he could be as he is rubbing other people (peers and adults) up the wrong way and (2) this is beginning to affect him socially. I don't mind if he excels academically, but I do mind if he is unhappy and has no friends, so watch this space... Assessment is August 22nd and I'll let you know whet they say.
...is what I must assume produced this bacon. Either that or they just have REALLY big pigs. Or maybe they just put the whole pig on the slicer.. Who knows? Good bacon though!!
Grocery shopping here is horrendously expensive. About £2.50 for a basic loaf of bread, £4.50 for a punnet of blueberries, £4/5 for 500g ham... £2.50 for small wetabix, £3 for honey, £5 for 250g (cheap) ground coffee.. Yes, I know I should stop thinking of it in pounds, but it's hard as our income is a quarter of what it was at home and food is probably twice as expensive. I would say that the quality is almost certainly better, and the choice of fresh food is great - but boy is it a shock when you do just a basket shop at the supermarket and it's over $100! Have decided that the problem is the exchange rate - The Aussie dollar is obviously supposed to be three to the pound like it used to be, not two like it is now. Then everything would be just right. I have enquired as to whether they would change it for us, but apparently not. Something to do with a strong global currency position or other such nonsense. 
Anyway, when we did our very first grocery shop for the new house, it was a biggie as we literally had nothing at all. Had to buy not just that week's fresh food, but also all the ingredients you take for granted as being in the cupboard like flour, sugar, stock cubes, pasta, rice,sauces, herbs and spices, tins.. and freezer stuff, and cleaning and laundry stuff.... so needless to say when we got to the till with two trolleys the total was rather hefty!!! I won't tell you how much, but this is a picture of the receipt. The guy who served us reckoned it was the biggest total he had seen in four years of working there! It was obviously a big event for him as he remembered us a couple of weeks later. I don't think he gets out much.
So here are the shopping Woo hoos and Yah boos so far
Woo hoo
- Fresh fruit, veg and meat - range and quality fantastic. And all fruit and veg is really big! Just like the bacon...
- Shake and Make pancake mix - big bottle like a plastic milk bottle, pancake mix inside, just add water and shake... and pour batter direct into the pan. Awesome.
- Tetley Teabags British Blend. Need I say more?
- Fresh squeezed juice - every variety under the sun. Kids particularly keen on Apple and Strawberry at the mo.
- Grazia - just released in Australia last week. Apparently they knew I was coming.
- Cadbury's chocolate with Macadamia nuts - like Whole Nut, only better.
Yah boo
- Huggies nappies - or rather no Pampers. Have never been a fan of Huggies and have rediscovered why I hate them so much - they don't keep the wee and the poo in, which seems to me to be one of the fundamental roles of a good nappy. They still do boys and girls nappies here too - pink for girls, blue for boys of course, and I have even tried the boys ones to see if perhaps Phoebe is anatomically unusual, but in fact she leaks out of those too. What I wouldn't give for Pampers Active Fit....
- Mayonnaise. Third ingredient in all mayo here is sugar - and it is sweet. And slightly transparent. Like nasty diet mayo, without actually being diet.
- The price of decent shampoo and conditioner - £7-8 a bottle for anything not Pantene/Fructis type). Ironically, the one shampoo I really like at home and haven't found here is the Aussie Mega stuff!!
So on balance not too bad. Certainly nothing insurmountable.
And the one thing which is definitely cheaper than home here is eating out. So we will just have to do that more often. Shame...
So here it is - our little Geelong house. Actually not so little. In spite of having only three bedrooms, the rooms are all a great size and shape and it doesn't feel at all cramped.
Couldn't ask for a better location either - just a 5 minute walk from Pakington Street which is full of cafes, delis, fantastic butchers, fruit and veg market... and plenty of hairdressers... (FYI I have been brave and picked one for a cut and colour next week, so please send your good hair vibes. Most of the women out there might understand how stressful changing hairdressers is. Men please just skip this bit and move on) and about a 20 minute walk from James' school. Can drive to down town Geelong and the beachfront in 5-10 minutes, and be on the main Melbourne road in about 2. Also liking having a choice of takeaways beyond Chinese and Indian. There's even a Nando's round the corner, so Nick is overjoyed!
Big thanks have to go to Graham and Leanne for (a) being such a valuable source of information before we got to Geelong and (b) collecting an amazing array of items for people they had never even met - courtesy of them we have a fridge, a washing machine, two single beds and mattresses, table and chairs, a couple of drawer units, two tv's and kitchen bits and bobs..... Can't imagine how we could ever repay them unless they move to Scotland, so will have to content ourselves with plying them with alcohol at every available opportunity. Graham has also been trying to explain the finer points of AFL (Aussie Rules) to us and Nick is kind of getting the hang of it. It's a really big deal here in Victoria and The Geelong Cats were AFL champions last season for the first time in 40-0dd years, and are on course to do it again this year. I can't quite get past the vest-wearing issue - icky!!! And it's just not rugby union... but come to think of it, it's kind of nice to live somewhere with a winning team for a change, so I may get my head round it sometime!
Anyway, here are some pictures of our little house-by-IKEA . Still no pics on the walls - think I sent some stuff back in April but can't actually remember so we will wait and see...
As you can see, the house has some really nice features like original fireplaces, high ceilings, cornices etc...like being back in Dalkeith Road without the 66 steps! Haven't included a picture of the boys room here . You can work out why for yourselves...
We have vented heating which blows hot air through floor vents - don't think it is quite as effective as radiators, but on the other hand it doesn't swallow up a whole wall either, and we also have air conditioning(hot and cold) and a wood burning stove so (grandparents) our children are nice and toasty.
Huge kitchen/family room has big double doors out to the garden so we are looking forward to eating outside once the good weather starts (September apparently) and I am looking forward to the children spending more time outside..for so many reasons!
Of course, the garden has no grass as such - more of a dirt patch really - the Geelong region is in a long-term drought at the moment so we have major water restrictions and can't water gardens, wash cars or windows etc and all water use is metered. Boy am I dreading our first water bill... have even started turning the water off while we brush our teeth. Global environmental concerns never managed to get me to do this, but financial penalties sure do!
Can't remember the answer to how you get five elephants in a mini (take out the giraffe?) - but I think we more than managed it.
Arrived at Sydney airport after an absolutely brilliant flight from Vancouver - we left Vancouver at midnight and because of various complications too dull and long over with to mention here, we didn't even sit down in Vancouver airport so the kids had not slept at all - and consequently slept almost all of the 15 hour flight. Yet more complications in Sydney (couldn't get a porter to help with bags - expected problems at immigration due to lack of visa stamp etc but they asked us NOT ONE QUESTION after all....!!) meant that we didn't make our planned Melbourne flight at 9.30 but got another at 10.30 instead. Also discovered that the later you are running for a flight, the less likely you are to be charged for your extremely overweight baggage as it takes too long. Yee-hah!
Flying the wrong way over the International Date Line though did mean that we skipped Tuesday - left Monday night, arrived Wednesday.... which was weird!
This picture shows us as we finally arrived at Melbourne on Wednesday June 25th in all our jetlagged bedraggled grumpiness. As you can see, Ella is refusing to smile and the boys are only complying under threat of violence...
Having picked up the car, we packed everything in around the children and very nearly didn't manage it... James is in the back of this picture somewhere! At least we wouldn't have to fit everything in the car again as we would be able to make two or three trips from the hotel in Geelong to our house on Saturday.
Found Geelong, found our hotel, found some dinner and found bed!
Spent Thursday morning visiting two possible schools for the boys and Thursday afternoon ordering a houseful of furniture. Very liberating to not have to buy anything to go with stuff you already have... and very astonishing when everything is in stock and you can arrange to have it all delivered on Saturday morning.
Decided on Manifold Heights (http://www.manifold.vic.edu.au) school for the boys on Friday morning then spent Friday afternoon at IKEA in Melbourne picking up all the other bits and pieces for the house. Totally strange to look around the marketplace and think 'I need one of those, one of those, one of those.... oh heck, I need one of everything..' Managed to get everything in the car - just- again and headed back to Geelong for our last night in the hotel.
So finally on Saturday 28th we picked up the keys first thing and moved to our new house...
So, the final Vancouver details - and we have been in Australia for three weeks now, so apologies to anyone who wanted up to date information.. On the weekend of 21/22 June, my Canadian relatives came down to visit - my (great) Aunt Evelyn and Uncle Norman, their daughters Sheila and Val and Sheila's husband Greg. We last saw them in Calgary in 2001 so they haven't met any of the kids before. We'd like to say a really big thank you to them for flying all the way from Edmonton, it really made our visit to Vancouver special. And also a big thank you to Greg (who is also an Orthopaedic surgeon) for putting Nick in touch with Vancouver contacts to see if he can do another fellowship there in a year or two. Watch this space... Anyway, after meeting and greeting at the hotel, it was time to get out and about and where do you go for lunch when you can't decide? Well, back to somewhere you have been before of course... So back to Granville Island on the bathtub boats it was..... for another lovely lunch and an attempt to see some dragon boat racing. Discovered we were in the wrong place for dragon boats, but did manage to catch a bit of a jazz festival whilst sitting outside in the sunshine and then retreated to a pub (children in tow) for local Vancouver beer. Mmmm.
Wandered into town for Italian dinner, ate drank and were merry (you'll see from the picture that the boys were not so much merry as clinically insane...) and wandered home at a leisurely pace.
Headed off early the next morning to tackle the Capilano Suspension Bridge (http://www.capbridge.com) - just outside Vancouver. Seemed like a good idea to take four unpredictable, mostly uncontrollable, hyper children across a thin strip of swaying woodwork 230 feet above the Capilano River, but actually they were fantastic. Shame their father thought he'd ignore the signs and see how much he could make it sway. And it really does...
It was built in 1889 by a Scot, of course - George Grant Mackay, a civil engineer who was also the Vancouver City Parks Commissioner responsible for setting aside the land now known as Stanley Park- and Aunt Evelyn remembered crossing it about 50 years previously, but I'm guessing it's undergone some major modernisation since the early days....
We then went on the 'Treetops adventure' which is a series of seven suspension bridges linking platforms high up in the trees and reaching up to 100 feet above the ground. In retrospect, I'm amazed we made it home with all the children and only employed minimal bellowing! Sat afterwards outside the gift shop in the beautiful sunshine, listened to live bluegrass music and drank beer. Oh yeah, and I ate a whole piece of Cookies 'n' Cream fudge... I wished I lived in Vancouver... If you haven't been, go!
Thanks again to the Edmonton Crew for making it a really fantastic weekend.
So, here (finally) are all the pics from the visit of my Dad, Susan and Rebecca in July. They flew out on my Dad's 60th birthday - and after 24 hours on a plane, he almost looked it!!!
Didn't do too much during their week and a bit here (obviously had to consider my dad's advancing years), but did investigate Barwon Heads which is a little seaside town down the coast from Geelong. They were staying at a golf resort just outside Barwon Heads (didn't want to get too close to us...), and we had dinner in the town there one night - our first night outside Geelong!!
Also went for a quick walk along the shore in Geelong and my Dad found a new woman... She looks a bit fake if you ask me!
Packed them off on a tour of some local wineries in a 1935 Buick Sedan as my Dad's 60th birthday pressie - it looked awesome, and it's something that I hope Nick and I will get to do before we leave. This did mean we got to keep Auntie Rebecca for a sleepover and let her get jumped on by small children at an ungodly hour of the morning. 
We went off to Melbourne on the Saturday and absolutely loved it. It's a spacious, attractive, vibrant place with a really great feel to it. We particularly loved the Victorian (era, not State) shopping arcades with the domed ceilings and stained glass. Reminded me a lot of Leeds, or a posh Argyle Arcade if you like! Also really enjoyed the little narrow lanes running between the main shopping streets which are stuffed full of little bistros and cafes of all nationalities with tables and chairs (and patio heaters) for eating outside and watching the world go by.
Took just around an hour by train from Geelong and was cheap for all of us to get there, so bound to be an exercise we will repeat over the course of the year. Ella, of course is the unstable element in the train equation... To be fair, my Dad and Suze were sitting opposite (black) Sideshow Bob, but Ella staring at him, silent and unwavering, for the best part of an hour is bound to have given the poor man a complex which he may take some time to get over.
Decided we had to go to the top of the Eureka Skydeck
- the tallest building in the Southern Hemisphere with a viewing platform on the 88th floor... which (considering that my Dad has always hated heights and I'm going the same way) was quite an undertaking. To be honest though, unlike, say, going up the Eiffel Tower, where you feel every clanking inch-by-inch rise, the lifts are so quick and smooth to the top that it feels very surreal when you step out on the 88th floor. But the views are amazing...
And finally, Fat Sponge and Rose Bigsie: Two dollies of freakishly real looks and the same size as Phoebe. Only one, I should point out, belongs to one of my daughters. I am saying no more... And, I would explain their names, except that it was so funny when it happened, and so not funny when I write it down that I don't think I'll bother! But you can be weirded out by the pictures anyway. Just imagine how I feel every time I walk into a room and find Rose Bigsie face down on the floor/under a chair/limbs akimbo. Sometimes I leave her in the driver's seat in the car to freak out passers by...
