Two birds with one stone...

Tomorrow is our anniversary. I ordered Jane's present well over a week ago and it was delivered in a timely manner, and in a largish cardboard box.

The present is a lovely little 4.5L proper oak port keg with a little brass spout. Even now it is going through the roughly 24 hour prep-process of cleaning/soaking with water before the 1st batch of port goes into it later this evening. All well and good.

Meanwhile, the children (especially Lillian) had designs on the box. Initially she wanted to make it into a giraffe costume, but Jane was able to turn the idea towards just making a giraffe. I provided one small (tho important) idea WRT the engineering to support the head & neck, but Jane clearly watched a lot of Playschool as a child.  Until such time as the kids need help taking down oldman Withers and his haunted amusement park, my own childhood TV experiences will be of little use. In any case, I thought the result was well worth sharing.

We interrupt this complete lack of activity...

 ...to bring you the following picture.

I am sure you will all agree that it was worth the interruption.

Ooooh Europe!

 My first ever European holiday started in the car. Before flying to Schipol and then onto Stockholm, we first had to drive to Toronto because the airlines always gouge you for flying out of Ottawa. The drive – unlike our one previous trip to Toronto - was largely uneventful. Luckily we gave ourselves plenty of time because the traffic for the last 20kms was terrible. We left the car at our hotel (2 weeks parking & shuttle to/from the airport for the cost of one night's accommodation – sweet!) and immediately set about checking in, clearing security, etc all of which was accomplished without incident. Even the flight across was nice enough. Jane got a really good deal on the tickets through a code-share arrangement between a Canadian & Dutch airline (Sunwing & ArkeFly). ArkeFly was easily as good as any flight I have ever had with United, Delta or any of the other usual North American airlines.

We flew out of Toronto about 6pm, and landed at Schipol in time for a proper dutch breakfast of ham and cheese on toast. I had never been to Holland before, and hardly consider it fair to make any judgements based solely on few hours in the airport. As such, all I'll say at this point is that it was a fairly unremarkable airport other than that every now and then an absurdly tall person would wander through my sleep deprived field of vision. Perhaps its an unconscious response after generations of living in a coastal country that is almost entirely below sea-level, but for whatever the reason there are an awful lot of very tall Dutch people.

Anyway, a few hours later we boarded our flight to Stockholm where we were met at the airport by Jane's family & a minivan. After much hugging we were whisked back to a hotel for dinner and sleep. Sweet, sweet sleep.

The next day was a bit messy. I found myself the designated driver of the minivan with Jane, her parents and our kids (plus associated baggage). OK, fine. It wasn't much bigger than our car back in Canada and the Swedes drive on the same side of the road as Canada. No big deal. ...unless you need to drive approximately 45 minutes to a ferry on the other side of a completely unknown city with all roadsigns in Swedish. Jane did her best to navigate from the Googlemaps print out we had been given, but (understandably) we still missed a turn and got lost almost immediately. To cut to the chase, we made the ferry but we spent most of the drive unsure as to whether or not we were actually going the right way. This is a very fraught way to travel when you have a hard deadline in a set location and I do not recommend it. To make matters worse, having reached our destination one of our backpacks was stolen at the dock. Thankfully it was not the bag with our passports. I lost the new Kindle I got in Iowa, and losing our camera on the 1^st day of my 1^st visit to Europe was pretty poor as well, but none of that was nearly as important as Jane's jewelry. Jane continues to jump through hoops for the insurance company, but even if she satisfies their needs the pieces that were lost carried considerable sentimental value. Their loss casts a long shadow.

Good thing the perfect antidote had been planned for the very next day...  

Counting Down...

And so, some two years later, here we are in a serviced apartment for the last couple weeks before returing to Australia. Nice enough place (free WiFi). Good views and located right on the edge of downtown. Plus, the kids love the pool.

Slowly but surely we are extricating ourselves from the life we built over the previous two years. Canadian kids are back in school this week, but Tom and Lilli are home with me. Jane is easing herself out of the loop at work. This Thursday will be my last trip to the store for games night. Friday night is our official farewell at the Australian High Commission. What started as a trickle of farewells is well and truly picking up pace.

I'll try to keep the blog going, but am not sure how much 'Jason returns to the 9-5 government job grind will interest anybody (myself included). If nothing else I have ample experiences from the last 2 years that I should have blogged but haven't. Que the flashbacks. First up, I'll try to knock out a few entries on the move and our recent trip to Sweden and Holland. Unfortunetly, most of the pics are on the desktop PC which is Canberra-bound in a shipping container but I'll do as best I can with the pics on the netbook.  

A Mighty Wind

For some reason it was the power going off that woke me. It was around 4am Monday morning, the second last night of the kids and I’s two week stay with my grandpa on the old Wagoner family farm in Iowa (more on that another day). The weather had been hot and muggy for days, but we had received some light rain earlier that day. At some point after we had gone to sleep, all that heat and humidity conspired to bring some serious weather hurtling down upon central Iowa. Even though the lights were out there was enough regular lightening to enable easy navigation to the living room. When I got there I met grandpa who was just coming down the stairs. The two of us fumbled around for a few minutes before he found where the kids had left the flashlight. We went out onto the porch to have a quick look. “I don’t like it” was all he said before we went back into the living room.  A few moments later I heard a popping sound that initially made me think of hail, but was actually a tree snapping over near that corner of the house. We grabbed the kids and headed for the cellar. About twenty minutes later – during which Thomas got to do a wee in the old shower drain - the wind died down enough that we decided it was scarier in the cellar than out of it. Up we went.

Grandpa reckons it was the worst storm he has seen in all his 50years on the farm. The next day the place was a mess with assorted trees and limbs everywhere.That night, grandpa and I played cribbage by candlelight and it was hard to sleep in the air-conditioning free heat and humidity. The power came back around 11am Tuesday.



Grandpa had to use the chainsaw before we were able to clear the driveway. Honestly, I think he was kind of enjoying it. Everybody came through safely and no real damage was done to the farm, but now he has plenty of cleanup work to keep him busy and firewood for the winter. Before lunch he had set about fixing fence in a race to get as much of it repaired as possible before the cows discovered the storm had given them the gift of free will. I hope that when I am 83 I can still swing a chainsaw when needed.

All amusement aside, we were lucky.  The cornfields for miles around had been blasted flat as pancakes (think ‘tunguska of corn’). The little town of Garwin (500 residents) is just 4 miles down the road. They had a  to evacuate to the high school because of a gas leak. The substation was damaged, with lines down and even poles snapped over, so they are going to be without power for the better part of a week (the farm was reconnected on Tuesday morning). The Red Cross even set up a shelter and food distribution centre at the Garwin Fire station.

I took some video when we were in the centre of town and this 3min news report on the storm includes lots of video footage from Garwin.

I looked around as grandpa drove out the driveway to take us to the airport. It wasn't exactly the image of the farm I had intended to take with me for  how ever many years it will be be until we can return. Still, all in all, a rather exciting close to our visit.

A whisker’s difference

Saturday was a pirate birthday party for one of the boys in Tom’s class. Very exciting.  We got the boy a big book on all things pirate, wrapped it with pirate paper and put together a pirate costume for Thomas. A pair of black pants that were about to die anyway were sacrificed to the cause and cut into a pair of raggedy pirate-pants adorned with a sash (aka, one of Jane’s scarves). A simple white shirt for the top, and then a floppy tri-corn hat and cutless (post Halloween sales are awesome) were added to the mix.  Last but not least, a pirate needs facial hair. Tom doesn’t like face paint, so I decided to go with a thin layer of vasoline and coffee grounds.  Que drama.  He hated the stubble...

The saddest little pirate in town.

At one point Thomas was prepared to give me his pirate hat, pirate sword and even his piece of the birthday cake if he could wash off the stubble. I picked him up and carried him to the car. On the way to the party we agreed that if no other child had stubble or any of them laughed at his that we would wash it off.  Predictably, almost every boy had some kind of beard or mustache and Thomas had forgotten all about his previously world-ending stubble within two minutes of walking in the door.

It was also a great party.  The kids started by making pirate treasure boxes and personal pirate flags, but the coolest thing was definitely the professional pirate and his accompanying witch. They led the kids on a treasure hunt, and many associated games, through the whole of the backyard. Lots of fun.  Initially Tom was very suspicious of them, but he finally got over it and joined in. Fair enough, I rather like the idea that he is distrustful of pirates, witches and actors.

After the treasure had been found it was time for pizza and an ice cream birthday cake and finally, a treasure chest piñata.  Every kid took two turns, three swings each whacking it, but of course in the end it was up to the daddy to actually break the bloody thin open. A few of the kids gave it good and proper whacks, but there were also a lot of very light wrist-flicks, for which I blame Star Wars and lightsabres. There is no way a proper pirate would fight that way.

The triumphant return of Treacherous Thomas!

Helicopters of Happiness

Our back deck is covered with these, and it makes me happy. It’s a seedpod from a maple tree (penny included for scale), but the syrup connection is not what brings a smile to my face. It's the memories. When you fling such a seedpod into the air it floats down with a gentle spiraling motion. When I was a child growing up in the small town of Ely Iowa, we had a maple tree in our yard and I used to love playing with the helicopters. Over the years I must have spent hours looking for the best ones judged by perfection of form, but mostly by how slowly and gracefully they spiraled their way back to earth after being tossed skyward.  And when the quest for perfection lost its appeal, quantity has a quality all its own.  I distinctly recall gather up bags of these seed pods to dump en-masse off the edge of the nearby railway bridge.  That was big fun for a small kid in a preX-box, tiny town Iowa.

That bridge was a treasure in its own right. The occasional train would pass through, often leaving behind a searing hot flattened penny that some child had left on the tracks.  Standing underneath the bridge while a train thundered overhead was also a popular event. The bridge even spanned a wide, shallow creek that provided great entertainment and relief in the hot and humid summer months. 

These days, I have the pleasure of introducing the kids to the joy of nature’s helicopters.  It just so happens that there is a maple tree right next to the bridges at the end of our street. Fancy that.