Another Wonderful Family Holiday

A few more months have passed and the weather is starting to get colder again as Canberra prepares for winter. In preparation for winter the Berrimans decided to take a summer holiday and have been in Coffs Harbour and on the Gold Coast soaking up as much sunshine as they can to get them through another Canberra winter.

We have just come back from a massive break...1 month away from Canberra. Tim had a study intensive for the first two weeks and Lisa and the girls joined him up in Sydney (after a flying visit to Wollongong) staying with Tim's mum. We had a lovely Easter break where we spent lots of time with Tim's family, went to the Easter Show and caught up with as many Sydney friends as time allowed. The Easter show was the highlight of Emily's Easter (with the exception of being allowed to eat chocolate for breakfast lunch and dinner). She is still saying "I saw duckies at the E-sir show" "I ride a horsey at the E-sir show". It was lovely spending the day with Tim's mum and seeing the girls get really excited over the animals. Lisa also made sure to sample the CWA scones.

Claire with Grandpa on our visit to Wollongong

Easter Morning

No chocolate for Claire

Emily and Daddy take on the BIG slide

Emily's wonderful horsey ride

After a lovely time with Bronwyn we set off to Coffs Harbour where we stayed in a lovely apartment in Koroa. It was nice to be able to have Lisa's Grandparents and mum over and to cook them a meal. Emily has given them the celebrity style name of "Nannyfuffa" (like Tomkat/Brangelina). We normally call them Nanny and Fuffa but she seems to like Nannyfuffa instead. We spent the rest of our time hanging out at the park or at the fantastic Woolgoolga Beach and also took a trip to Armidale to visit Gus and Christy (Our friends from SMBC). We thought that might be the end of our trip as Tim might have had to get back to Canberra for a medical test but it was scheduled the week later so we booked some accommodation on the Gold Coast and headed up there for six nights.

Nannyfuffa, Grams and the girls

Playing in Woolgooga Beach Park

  

Yay Seaweed

We stayed in Biggera Waters in an apartment which had a couple of pools but the one on the roof was heated so we all had lots of swims. We bought a VIP pass to the theme parks and were able to pop in and out of the parks (Sea World, Movie World and Wet and Wild). We went to Sea World the most (3 or 4 times). Emily loved the dolphins and the fish and the cute kiddie rides they had. We enjoyed lots of lazy mornings and lazy afternoons just being a family. It was a truly wonderful holiday.

Claire's first pigtails

At Sea World watching Dolphins go "Splash, Splash"

Afternoon nap (as close as she gets these days)

Wet and grumpy girls....opps maybe shouldn't have been so mean to those people with the water cannons

Lazy afternoons in our apartment

We came home via Lisa's mum's place, via Tim's mum's place (where we attended a wonderful extended family lunch) and got back to Canberra on Sunday night. We were really excited to be back (even though it was noticeably colder) we had missed our life here. We missed our wonderful church family most of all and we can't wait to be together with them again this week.

New Year, New House and much more

It has been a while since our last post mainly due to the fact we have been super busy. After getting the notice that our house was to be sold we got looking straight away and soon became very frustrated with seeing awful places or being rejected for anything that was remotely live-able. The house sold within a couple of weeks which added to the stress and we were also in the middle of planning for Beach Mission and having Claire baptised. There was not much more we could do but keep trusting that God would provide a place for us to live in His time.

On the 21st of November we had Claire baptised at our church New Life Presbyterian church. It was such a lovely service with lots of people we love there and then a picnic at Lake Ginnanderra on a perfect picnicking weather day.  

In December Lisa took the girls to their first Wiggles concert which was heaps of fun. Emily was up the front dancing with her friends Jazzy and India and Murray the red Wiggle waved to her. She has been obsessed with the Wiggles ever since.

We finally found a house just before we went away to Beach Mission/Christmas celebrations and had no time to pack anything before we went away.

Christmas celebrations involved a string of celebrations starting with Tim's family the Sunday before Christmas, followed by Christmas with Lisa's Dad in Wollongong then a quick stop on the way to Coffs Harbour to introduce Claire to her Paternal Great Grandmother (Nanna) with Christmas Day with Lisa's Mum. Claire also got to meet her Maternal Great Grandparents (Nanny & Fuffa) for the first time.

Claire meets Nanna

Claire meets Fuffa

Claire meets Nanny

Beach Mission followed Christmas and was fantastic as usual despite the oval being covered in thick mud and there being a lot of rain. Most of the team went out and bought gumboots in order to be able to survive the week and a bit. Lisa found it pretty hard work with the girls with no where to put Claire down which was not muddy and trying to keep Emily from playing in the mud. Tim was able to lead the Dynamites group and had some great kids coming along to learn about Jesus.

Beach mission church by the Sea

We drove home from mission only to arrive home to find our house had been robbed. All of Lisa's jewelery was gone including the box it was in and a few ornaments and saddest of all the girl's jewellery they had been given when they were born. They went through everything but things were not destroyed or ruined. We were pretty annoyed that they had been into our fridge and ate our chocolates! So we had to start our packing in between calling the police and having our forensics dust our house for finger prints.

We moved in to our new place and we love it. It is smaller than the old place but great for us and we are still enjoying having people over and we are really close to our running track!

We celebrated Emily's 2nd Birthday with a party in the local park at Yerrabi Pond. It was nice and relaxing for the adults and the kids had lots of fun. Emily looked so grown up running around with her little friends.

The Birthday girl

Emily's beautiful little friends

Just a couple of weeks ago we went to Victoria for a wedding and hired a house for the week leading up to the wedding. We stayed in Cape Schank and went strawberry picking, ate yummy morning teas, played in the park, swam in hot springs, went into a Maze garden and lots more. The wedding was lovely and Tim and Lisa got to enjoy a night without the kids thanks to a friend from Melbourne coming down and looking after the girls.

Our holiday house

Scones

Hedge Maze

Strawberry picking

 
So now we are back into routine. All the normal things have started up again and life is really busy but we love it... although we are looking forward to our next holiday which is not too far away.

Oh and I nearly forgot...we said farewell to Stinky Pinky the disgusting wrap that became a sucked on germ filled comforter for Emily over the last year or so. We told her it went on a holiday back to the holiday house (really it went in the bin...sorry Emily if you read this in the future we thought it would be better to tell you it went somewhere nice). She has been really good about it and has barely missed it!

Stinky Pinky (many pieces of them pictured here)