Catchup 1st installment

Welcome back to our blog which has been in a long hibernation due to the stresses of moving house. I'm going to attempt to catch up in several installments.

After Fiji I came back into the Melbourne International Chamber Music Competition. I wasn't actively working but I'm on its Artistic Committee so felt I should hear as much of it as I could (the first round had to be missed because of Fiji). One of the jurors was my old Boston friend, Larry Lesser, eminent cellist and teacher and President of the New England Conservatory but more importantly, whose house I lived in for a year after I finished my studies in Boston. His wife, Masuko Ushioda, eminent violinist, taught me to love sushi. Larry came over for a meal with two other old friends, Euan Murdoch and his wife Shelley. Euan and I used to play together in Trio Victoria and now he runs Chamber Music NZ and was over checking out the talent in the competition.

Will came over for a slightly late birthday celebration. and Mary and Peter, our rugby buddies, came over for a Bledisloe Cup game before she and I had to dash off to a concert.

After much collecting of junk and culling of possessions followed by many trips to the tip and the Salvos store it was finally time for our house move. Rosie and Sophie and I picked up the key on a Friday afternoon after school and went to the new house to finalise whose room was whose before the move the next day. The old house was filled with a hundred and something boxes (packed by the movers).

On Saturday afternoon during the move the girls introduced the dogs to their new back yard with some actual grass in it (the few blades that survived the drought), a novel experience for them. The movers left us with the daunting task which we had to do without the organising skills of Jessye who was not due for a visit home till the following weekend. This meant that she had last dibs on a room but luckily everybody has their own room and they're all nice and spacious.

The dogs and kids enjoyed discovering our new park which can be easily accessed through a gate at the corner of our back yard and down a laneway. We met a very large horse-like animal called Sultan, who is apparently a dog and we always look out for him there.

Ikea, huge kitset furniture store, has been our friend since we moved. The new house has less built-in storage so we've been busy constructing.

The week we moved Sophie had her Grade 4 camp for 3 days and 2 nights - much excitement since her close-knit band of girlfriends were sharing a cabin.

Sophie came back from camp the same day Jessye was home from Howqua for a break. The girls are enjoying having a back yard and introduced Jessye to the park and Sultan.

Sophie's Grade 1 ballet exam came and went. Then the lunar eclipse came on a cloudy night, unfortunately, but we still went to the top of the Ikea carpark where astronomers had set up 20 or so telescopes for the public's enjoyment. Since the moon was behind cloud most of the time they trained the telescopes on Jupiter so we had a good view of the big planet, its coloured bands and its 4 moons. Coincidentally, Sophie's school concert with a space theme followed shortly afterwards.