Berrimans get two more years in Canberra, but need somewhere new to live

Just a quick update tonight. As the title suggests we are very pleased that the good people at New Life Presbyterian Church have offered us a two extension to Tim's contract, so looks like we will be in Canberra for a couple more years. This is really exciting news. We love our church and are very happy to be staying. And we are loving Canberra, so it is good news all round.

The only sad news is that as we got excited about settling here in Canberra for another couple of years, we got a lovely letter from our Real Estate Agent saying the house we are living in is about to be sold, so we are back looking for a new house to rent. There is no pressure to move out just yet, but we have started looking and are trusting God to provide a new place for us. We have looked at one nice townhouse really close to Yerribi Pond, so if that comes through we will be looking to lower our PB on the 3.2km track around it. We have currently got it from 21min down to 18:45, but I reckon we can take a few more minutes off that pretty quickly. (There is a running reference for you Ben).

I know you all only really want to know how the girls are going though. They are both now sleeping in the same room, very exciting for us. Claire has started rolling over which is great until she does it at night and can't roll back, so has no option but scream for us. And Emily is now tall enough to reach up on benches, and is starting to get heaps more words. "Shoes" is a favourite word, can tell us she wants to blow bubbles, and her first full sentence was "Mummy, I did a stinky" one morning after successfully sitting on the toilet. Very funny!

Anyway... that is probably about it for the moment.

Tim, Lisa, and the girls

A new niece, snow in October, and the Donna Hay experience

5:15 am, October 17, Tim wakes bleary eyed, tries too turn off his alarm only to realise it was the phone ringing with news of the arrival of little Genevieve Anne Berriman earlier that morning. Genevieve is the first child of Tim's brother Ben, our second niece, and Tim's mum's 4th granddaughter inside 2 years. After a frustrating few days having to make do with seeing photos on facebook, we ventured up to the Blue Mountains Thursday and met little Genevieve. And little she is, 3.5kg, normal baby size I know, but after our two monsters she seemed so tiny. Kel has recovered well and is back home, Ben is clearly loving being a Dad, even if itdoes mean getting poo-ed on every nappy change. 

Aunty Lisa gets her first cuddle

Grandma and her four Granddaughters

Grandma with her kids and grandkids

Uncle Tim gets a cuddle

Beautiful mum and bub

Back here in Canberra we are trying to get Emily to sleep in her "big girls" bed, with mixed success. After having her climb out of the bed and lie at the door until we put her in the cot, we have now pushed the bed and cot together. This proved a little more successful, though getting out of the bed was clearly still possible as seen in the last photo.  We now have a bed rail and a doll house stopping her from getting down and this is working for the moment...she actually sleeps in the bed side rather than the cot for some sleeps.

Em helps Daddy to take the side off the cot

The bed/cot 

What she gets up to instead of sleeping

Claire continues to be a chilled out little bub. She is now holding her head up heaps more and stretching her legs out, so it feels like she has doubled in size in the last couple of weeks, and we get plenty of smiles and interaction from her now which is just wonderful.

Tim has just got through 5 weeks of preaching and is looking forward to a (hopeful) 2 year extension on his contract at New Life Pressies. We experienced our first snow for the year, not in June or July, but mid-October, go figure! Other than the one day of snow, the weather is getting warmer and more and more people are venturing out of their houses again.

Lisa is spending her days recreating the Donna Hay magazine covers (Emily is recreating the Donna Hay experience), getting in heaps of exercise and hanging out with other mums at various places.

All in all, life still good in Canberra!

A Morning at the Park

Since Tim was involved in running a Holiday Kids club yesterday at church he took today off instead of yesterday and we took the girls down to a park on Lake Ginninderra. We arrived and had a picnic morning tea then let Emily loose in the playground. When she became bored of the playground she and Tim wandered around the park throwing sticks and rocks into the water

Don't fall in!

We walked down to the lake and found a family of ducks. They came up so close to us Emily could nearly touch them.
 

Some little ducklings

Tim and Emily were playing hide and seek on the way back to the car. I think Tim thinks he is thinner than he actually is!
 

Where's Daddy?

There he is!

  Claire slept through most of our park adventure so here are some other photos we took of her today. She is growing so quickly and is such an angel child.

.

Claire in the driver's seat of the car

It has been a lovely day and we get Tim at home again tomorrow too!

Welcome to our blog

Welcome to our blog....I don't expect it to be the most interesting blog on the internet but for those who want to keep up with what we are doing here in Canberra this is the blog for you.

We have now been in Canberra for nearly nine months and so far we love it. We have successfully survived our first Canberra winter (and the first winter electricity bill) neither were as bad as we imagined. 

In the past nine months we have settled in well to our new church New Life Presbyterian and have been very warmly welcomed by the church family there. Tim has been preaching regularly, leading the youth group (FNL), meeting with a young guys group, leading and hosting a Bible study in our home, meeting up with some of the men in the church and lots more. Lisa has been growing and popping out our second child Claire (born 25th June, 2010) and caring for Emily (now 20 months). She has also been making lots of new friends with mums from the park and church and getting to know lots of other people from church. She has also recently joined Fernwood gym where she assists with the creche and is loving being active again after having  Claire.

There are lots more things that have been happening but that will do for this post. I look forward to sharing more of the Berrimans experiences in Canberra with you in the future.