Where to begin...?

My goodness, we have had a lot of developments happen in the last week I hardly know where to begin to start an update.

A quick summary of some previous events to give what I'm about to say some context - Our intentions had always been to come to Brisbane for 1 or 2 years. We had it all planned - Phan would complete his final year of training this year and we hoped that Phan would be doing a fellowship in the second year and then we would go overseas for 6 months so Phan could get a bit more experience and then we would come home to Adelaide and live happily ever after. :) However, as often it happens in life, things haven't quite gone to plan and about a month ago we found out the funding for that fellowship fell through, meaning there was no job for Phan. At this time, his bosses were talking about this and involved Phan in discussions on what possible options were available to provide funding to keep Phan here for another year. They were really keen for him to stay on next year and threw a few ideas onto the table. One of these ideas was for Phan to do a PhD. Now, in all honesty, a PhD was one of the last things that Phan thought he would ever do... but with all the support and encouragement his bosses have give him it looked like it would be really worthwhile thing to do, plus the PhD would be researching something he actually he has an avid interest in.

Fast forward to one month later and we found out late last week that Phan has won *2 scholarships* to do a PhD here. This is a huge achievement, it's hard to explain just how big a deal it is. It is generally considered hard to get funding for a PhD project... it often takes many submissions and many rejections until some success is achieved, so the fact that Phan is the recipient of 2 scholarships from just 2 submissions just speaks volumes about the concept the PhD is based is and what an amazing this opportunity is. Not only that, but one of the scholarships is a national wide one, so he will be attending a conference in a couple of weeks to receive the award in person... apparently there will be media and stuff there, so it's a pretty big event! Soooo, the consequence of all of this is that now we will be staying in Brisbane for the next 3 years.

Okay, so because we are now going to be staying here for the short-term future, we figured we would buy a house... partly to avoid wasting money on rent, partly so we wouldn't have to worry about rental renewal and getting kicked out of our current residence and partly because we felt that buying a house would give Elizabeth a bit more room to play and run around. We've actually been house-hunting and actively researching the real estate market for more than a month (pretty much ever since Phan applied for the scholarships) and last Monday I went and had a look at a place that turned out to be perfect for us. Over the weekend I took Phan to see it and we both really liked it to we submitted an offer... after a bit of waiting, we found out yesterday (while we were at Movieworld! But more about that later) that the offer has been accepted! Settlement is in a month, so it's rapidly becoming all stations go-go-go around here. Settlement happens 5 days before we come back to Adelaide, so it really will be a busy time for us, moving, unpacking, coming home to Adelaide and travelling back to Brisbane.

Currently we're in cooling off so organising all the regular inspections and getting all the paperwork going and I think over the weekend I'm going to have start working out the logistics of packing all of stuff up for the second time in 9 months and moving it to our new home.

It's been a crazy week in the way that everything has just started happening all at once... add to that my SIL Bao and her partner Ty dropped in for a 5 day visit on the way back from a holiday in Hong Kong and you get that it was a busy time in our household!

We totally loved, loved, loved having Bao and Ty come and visit... just loved having them around and Beth adored having new victims, sorry I mean people... (:)) around to read her books and play with her... It was just nice to be able to show them around our regular haunts (like our favourite Vietnamese restaurant and Chermside shopping centre) Bao and I squeezed in a wonderful girly afternoon shopping at DFO (yes, we bought up big, but we scored some fantastic bargains... that place is sooo dangerous!), and yesterday we went to Movieworld for the afternoon... the boys went on the craziest looking rides, and Bao and I got to see Shrek 4D which was pretty cool... The looney tunes characters (like Bugs Bunny etc) also were pretty short! It looked pretty funny... Bugs Bunny also did a japanese style bow to Bao as she walked past - it was hilarious! Oh and we discovered Beth doesn't like fairy floss... she refuses to touch it and put it anywhere hear her mouth, even if we try and feed it to her... it's hilarious! She screws up her face and shakes her head and says "Noooo". So Bao and I ended up eating the fairy floss!

Beth has been a rather clingy and cuddly today ... I think she's worried that I'm going to go away like Bao and Ty! We went to playgroup this morning (Beth had fun in the sandpit and jumping on a mini trampoline) and Beth actually stayed awake all the way home instead of crashing in the car like she normally does. So I gave her some lunch and then at 12:30pm put her down for a nap... about 15 minutes later I hear her crying upstairs so go in and try and resettle her and she refuses to go to sleep in the cot, totally screaming and literally throwing dummies across the room at one point and trying to climb out of the cot (that was pretty scary actually!)

So I bring her downstairs and she is completely happy to potter around by herself... reading books, raiding the box of post-it notes. Everytime I asked her "Is it time to sleep?" she would breakdown and have a cry like she didn't want to go to bed... it was so unlike her. Eventually, I had a cuddle with her on the beanbag and she started drifting off, so I went upstairs and she semi-woke up and stared at me and I lay down and cuddled her for a couple of minutes and she fell asleep and I put her in the cot at 1:45pm! That's really late for her! I was exhausted too, so I had a little nap too and then she woke up at 3pm... a little distressed, but she was fine once she saw me. I thought bedtime might be a drama, but she seems to have settled in...

Okay, this has been on mega big blog post... So I'll leave it here with a few of the best snaps from our trip to Movie World... I took almost 300 photos, so I'll have to go and pp them... but that might not actually happen 'til after the move...


The famous Movie World sign.


The super crazy superman ride the boys went on...


The boys were so proud of themselves for going on that ride




















Beth, not so impressed...
And I loved this antique scooter thing we found on the street.


Finally, we get a family photo... :)


The child would not sit still and insisted on making funny faces!


My favourite photo from the day... love love love this photo!