Framing almost complete; everything but the front door!

Saturday Morning, 7am, had a site meeting with contractors to measure up balustrading for the balconies. It was cold, but the tide was in and the site felt so peaceful. Unfortunately we forgot to bring a camera with us, however lucky mobile phones have cameras in them these days. The wall framing is just about done, and the window frames have started to go in too! Here's what it will be like to look out the front door: Well there will be a set of timber stairs, just like on the model. For those who know the block, you can see how close it will be to the old power pole. We have also found some old ironbark posts to hold up the curved roof over the front door; they'll be here soon - this is where they'll go: Looking down from the driveway, you can see the circular beams to support the curved roof over the entry foyer: And this is what the view will be like walking up the stairs from the lounge room and looking up through the skylight windows at the trees: Looks like its just about ready to have the 3 curved roofs go on... can't wait!

Oh my God, we have a Garage!

After staring at our model for several years, and wishing it to come true, when we got back from the snow, we were gobsmacked to see that a familiar shape had materialised. This is the model: And this is what we saw from the street: This is how it looks from our driveway: And here you can see the shape of the staircase down to the front door, and the new steelwork to hold up the skylight window over the entry foyer: Sorry if we sound too excited, well it is our first Garage! And it does start to put the whole building into perspective. This milestone also marks the highest part of the building - aren't we supposed to plant a tree or something? Oh well we'll plant several soon... We were so excited in fact, that we went searching for a vantage point from the other side of the river (armed with a telephoto lens), to see what it looked like from that side. Here's what we found:

With the trees that we were able to retain, it is difficult to spot the old boatshed. Once the new building is completed (hiding the fresh timber and orange builders plastic) and rendered, you will hardly even know we're there!

A week at the Snow - School Holidays July 2008

With Jess in Year 11, and Year 12 work commencing soon, we were not able to take her out of school for a week in August, as has become the family tradition, to ski our usual week.

So, for the first time ever, we went to Perisher in the School Holidays, and were pleasantly surprised. At first we were very nervous that there would not be enough snow to ski, as the resort only had 5 token lifts open (out of 50!) and two of those were the magic carpets for beginners.

In the lodge, the kids very quickly became comfortable with the other families staying there, as if they had known each other for ages. In fact, this is how they were behaving within 1 hour of meeting each other: The lounge room activities included Paper Aeroplane wars and games of "Celebrity Head": The first few nights did bring a top-up of snow, so while Jess went off skiing with the other kids, Kate and Jake shovelled some steps at the front of the lodge (only to have them buried in more fresh snow the next morning): As there were still limited lifts operating in Perisher Blue, we decided to do something different this year, that we have never done before. On Tuesday morning, we rose early to spend a day in Charlotte Pass - the smallest, highest , ski resort which has only natural snow and a great view of the main range. Below are photos of the ethereal sunrise as we prepared to set off higher up the mountain:

Here is Jacob skiing down to the Chalet (the domed building) which was built in 1939, and is the oldest remaining remnant of early skiing in Australia: The ticket price up from Perisher included a 40 minute oversnow coach ride, and a hot lunch. Here are the kids having a hot chocolate between runs in the dungeon-like bar in the bowels of the Chalet: Even though Charlotte Pass is rather isolated in Winter, with oversnow transport the only access, the shop at the resort still has all the essentials! On Wednesday, after yet another overnight blizzard, we caught the Ski-tube up to Blue Cow, part of the resort between Perisher and Guthega. Can't believe the railway is 20 years old this year. It was a beautiful morning, as there were fresh snowflakes all over the trees.

We all like this view from the top of the Summit Quad chairlift:

Zali's was our favourite run for the morning: We headed back to Perisher Mid Station for lunch, and met up with others from the lodge. Then the Quad Express chairlift was opened to the top station, and we spent the afternoon skiing first tracks from the top down to Happy Valley and Pretty Valley, playing "dodge the alpine heath" in the lower areas. At one stage, Jake caught his ski in a rogue root and "had a minor stack". All good fun though.

After a long day, we grabbed some shopping, and the kids were kind enough to carry it back up to the lodge while the "Mums & Dads" dropped into the White Spider bar at the Eiger Chalet for a Gin and Tonic on the way.

With everyone sporting good appetites, we all shared nibblies before dinner, and even got together again for pancakes after dinner! Later in the week, there were several more blizzards. Once the weather cleared enough to go outside, we marvelled at the wonderful icicles forming around the outside of the lodge.

We had a fantastic week with wonderful company. Before saying farewell to each other, we took lots of photos of each other by the snowgums at the front of our lodge. Here are just a few:

The kids wished they could stay forever, not wanting their holiday to end.

Cheeky Ethan grabbed a large icicle sword, and we suspected a mutiny was at hand:

On the way down off the mountain, the car still had 6 - 8 inches of snow across the bonnet that we couldn't remove (it took several more hours for it to melt enough to start coming away in pieces - very exciting when driving along at 100km/h).

When we got to Jindabyne, there was still evidence of fresh snow around, something we had never seen in all our years of skiing, in fact there was still snow almost all the way to Canberra!

We had a quick stop for lunch at "Nuggets Crossing", and guess who we bumped in to; All the other families from the lodge! It was a great break, and like all good holidays, left us wanting more.