merry christmas!

Merry Christmas everyone! We're at the tail end of Christmas day and it's time to kick back and do... nothing.  The Challis clan invaded and we survived (it was a close one).  We had a great day of food, fun and friends, and the little ones loved their presents (well, Arabella was all about the food).  I took a few photos, so here they are - naturally, mostly kiddie focused (I love the last one - Arabella was so excited by the morning's events, the loss of a shoe didn't bother her in the least).  It's our last Christmas as a four member family (me, Rachel, cats x 2) and next year we'll be entertaining an almost-one year old.  Eeeek.

cracker's room - work in progress

As you can see, there's the cot, changing table, bassinet and Rachel's feeding chair thingy.  The alphabet stops and starts on a new line partly because an unnamed person (not me) didn't leave enough space to finish the alphabet on the same line (!) and partly because we intend to put a large dresser in the spot that Rachel is sitting in (I'll probably get her to move before we put it there...)

i almost forgot!

the world welcomed little bella lonsdale hayes last week - congrats to kieran and anna.  kieran of course being the mostly naked man in the pink apron featured right here just a few days ago...  here's mum and baby stolen from bella's blog:

getting closer to christmas

...and that deserves christmas cat photos, and a random photo of a cool coloured cup (from FUEL espresso, here in HK). but before that, big news. just kidding - nothing really going on at the moment.  challis clan arrives on saturday night and before that we have a whole lot of nothing going on. shopping is almost done and rachel is down to 5 days of work before her extended "vacation".  we got woken up by baby crying in the apartment upstairs at 6am this morning. good practice i suppose...

as i type this, rachel is lying on the couch with poppycat purring away (pop is doing the purring, not rachel), and ben is skulking around the room, looking for attention.

right, those photos i was talking about:

ben's remarkable aim

our apartment has about 1800 square foot of space we have three main bedrooms, a "half" bedroom and bathroom out the back, and two main bathrooms.

the lounge is large and joins onto the dining room.

for two cats, it's practically a luxury penthouse - there is sooo much space for them to run around in and play.

so, when ben decided that after breakfast he needed a little bit of gut purging, where in this vast expanse of apartment did he choose to vomit?

in rachel's handbag.

i love that cat so much.

the belcher

. .

i currently live in a culture where blowing one's nose is considered to be gross - but chewing loudly, chewing with your mouth open, sniffing 40 times in 2 minutes and burping are absolutely fine.

i of course struggle with this weirdness, but am particularly struggling someone burping outside my door at work.

every three minutes for the last week or so, this colleague of mine (let's called her belchy wang) lets out a loud and proud burp.  no apparent reason, she just does it. ALL DAY LONG. she doesn't even look vaguely embarrassed. just sits at her desk and burps. and burps. and burps.

i am at a loss as to what to do.  my current strategy is to close my door, gently rock myself to sleep in fetal position, whilst praying that belchy wang's little spasms will soon come to a halt. i am not a violent person, but i'd consider throwing furniture at her if it stopped the burping.

EDIT: in the time it took to type this, she burped three more times.  i kid you not.

some random photos

top photo was taken last night (rachel scratching poppy's tummy) and the other three were taken on saturday night when I wandered down to sandy bay at dusk to take photos after day 1 of the social cricket tournament.