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)

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.

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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.