Kerry's "Letter from Australia" - November 2007 Well only a month until Lauren returns home for two months bringing the “new boyfriend” Terry with her. She is now thinking about doing her 3rd year at Uni (she will start her second year in Feb 08) - which is practical, working on a Nature Reserve or some such - in Australia. She will then either return to do her 4th year in South Africa or she is also looking to transfer to Australia for that too, if it is possible. Kevin’s niece had a baby girl this month and I went shopping for a present and found the most adorable clothes, so much so, I thought “Oh it would be great to have another baby” but that soon wore off!! Reality dawned!! I did however get carried away and couldn’t decide between several sets which to get, so I ended up getting her some for Christmas as well. So that is one prezzie out of the way. Holly’s dance show was on at a theatre about 45 minutes away and it was surprisingly good. I shouldn’t say “surprisingly” really, should I? But I am sure those amongst you who have been to such productions can understand my comments. Holly only appeared in one dance (as she had joined mid way through the year and didn’t know all the other routines they had been practising) and this was right at the beginning of the show. The whole thing lasted 2 hours but the highlight of the show, after Holly’s appearance of course, was the really young ones, who are so sweet but always end up doing it wrong, much to the amusement of the audience. We had a pool party for Holly’s school friends (10 in all plus Holly) the other Friday, they all remembered their “bathers” as they call them here, but only one thought to bring a towel. So it was like a laundry here the next day with umpteen towels to wash, they were lucky I had brought so many for the B and B when it was still running, otherwise they would have been out of luck! Speaking of the pool, Kevin hates the thing, it costs us a fortune in chemicals, to maintain it and we also had to by a whole new system to keep the pool clean as the old one had had its chips and was failing miserably. Think pea soup and then you get an idea of the colour it turned in spring! It is an everyday job to keep it clean and maintained. If we ever move we will definitely be looking for a pool-less house. Kevin is thinking of offering the current one to the council for landfill!! Ha ha! My Mum has been tracing her maternal line through the internet and has been on Genes Reunited and left her details on there in case there were other relatives doing the same thing and guess what, she was contacted by relatives in Australia, she has a cousin out here, living near Adelaide. So we are not as alone out here as we first thought. When Mum comes to visit in January next year we are off up to see them. It has been great for Mum and has answered a lot of questions as well as extending her ancestry right back to the 1700’s. Well that is all the news for this month. You will not get another blog until after Christmas so I will take this opportunity to wish you all a great festive season and I hope the New Year brings you everything you could wish for. Love Kerry