We're In!

Phew!  We made it!  We've been in our new house for almost a week now and we're loving it!  We are on the top floor and have lots of windows and natural light as well as lots of space for L to run around and dance in.
I'm especially excited to be setting up our home to enable L to be as independent as possible and will have some pics and a post about it coming soon.
Most of our boxes are unpacked(as long as you don't count the garage!)and we just have to get some more book shelves here and there.  L is excited to paint her bedroom and we are still under negotiations for colors.

We've still been big into learning about Australia and when I get my act together I'll have some posts on our activities as well.
I've missed posting and reading all of your posts and am looking forward to getting back to the bloggy world!

Have to share a conversation between L and my sister the other day while she was visiting.
L had her "dancing dress" on and was flitting about.  My sister asked her " would you like to play hockey one day?" To which L replied as she was doing a twirl  " No.  Too sweaty!"

Moving!

Yep, the day has finally come (well almost come)when we are moving into our own house! It's been over a year living with my mom and although it's had tons of advantages, as you can imagine we are so ready to have our own space!!
We have sold my mom's place and have bought a two story house with an ocean view! Woohoo.  We have a large deck upstairs so we can sit and eat our meals outside in the summer while watching the sun set over the water.  Ahhh can't wait.
My mom has her own separate suit downstairs so although we each have our own space we are still together.
We move in on the 15th so it's all hands on deck here and needless to say not much else going on post wise. 
One of the things I'm most excited about is finally being able to set up our own space to accommodate L's growing independence.  She finally gets her own bedroom and with it will come more responsibilities. 

So I probably won't be on here much in the next couple of weeks but after that expect lots of new house and set up posts along with our first Continent Box.
For those of you who expressed an interest in a swap I'll get back to you once the dust has settled!

From the airplane

Although I've tried to wipe the memory from my mind : ) I thought I'd post about some of the things we did to keep busy on the 10 hour airplane journey. I actually managed to take a lot of pictures (nothing else to do!). Thank you so much to everyone who left comments about activities. I used a lot of your advice. Here are some of the things we did.

Sewing a button snake. I think this was originally on What Did we do all day? but I saw it on Counting Coconuts. I made one ribbon for each of us and this kept us busy for quite a while. I just kept all of the bits in a pencil case which kept the whole thing contained.

Shape matching. I just bent some pipe cleaners into different shapes and cut out some shape pictures from the Amazing Sticker Book. I also brought this lid from a shoe box to keep everything contained and we didn't drop or loose anything!

I got a great suggestion from Montessori Moments to bring some small presents to unwrap. My awesome aunt gave L a whole bunch and I brought them out at different times during the trip. They were all a huge hit. Here is a cool sticker activity with different farm scenes.

We also did some counting but by this point she was really tired so it didn't last too long.

The super cool Farm in a Tube. Thanks Auntie S.

We also did coloring, reading books, a really hard 3D magnetic puzzle and had tons of snacks. She also took a 2 1/2 hour nap which was the best part of the trip! he he

All in all she did really well and the cabin crew actually commented that she was the best behaved child they'd had on a long journey. We survived but it's not something that my husband or I want to repeat any time soon!

We did it!!

Okay we've officially been here a week now and the haze is beginning to lift. It was absolute chaos trying to get over the jet lag and acclimatize with a 2 year old but things are looking a bit better now.
I have many things to post about but we realised when we got here that we forgot a plug converter for our camera charger. That is today's mission along with buying a car.
L is now settling in nicely and I have her Montessori shelves set up. She is doing a lot of new practical life things which is great. Will post as soon as I can retrieve my pics.

Not Long Now!!

Thanks everyone for the great advice. In the little spare time I have I've been making some projects up for the trip. I will take my camera and see if I can get any pics along the way. We're leaving on Thursday and still have TONS to do. My next post will probably be from Canada! Yippee!!
Poor L. The other day she was doing some baking with Granny and went to get her dustpan and broom to clean up a spill. Of course it wasn't there and she said "Oh no! It's already in Canada!"

Moving with a toddler

We have just put our house on the market in hopes to sell and move to Canada. This has been an insane process and I would not recommend doing it without a lot of extra help(which we didn't have). We had less than a week to finish all the odd jobs and clear and clean the house before the first viewing on Saturday. Normally this would have been hard work but doable. With a toddler around it was next to impossible!! I don't even want to think how it will be once we sell the house!
Thankfully my aunt was able to come for two days and that was life saving.

Needless to say the Montessori activities have been few and far between. My mom is coming next week for a month so hopefully we will be able to spend some quality time with L and get back into our Monti routine.