Well, Dennis and I are back from our trip to Australia.  Got home very
late on Wednesday night and spent yesterday getting settled in.
Our trip was very good, although not as relaxing as originally
anticipated!  We went and drove down to Margaret River as soon as we
arrived in Perth.  This is the town we want to settle down in, it's
275 km south of Perth.
We looked around and through some strange stroke of luck, we saw this
lot that was for sale that we absolutely fell in love with.  It was
better than any other lot we'd ever seen there on previous trips.  We
never intended to do more than look on this trip but this lot was
exactly what we had always imagined.  So we made an offer and after
going back and forth about the price with the sellers a few times,
they accepted our offer!
Then we had to organize the mortgage, etc and we ended up being super
busy for the whole 9 days we were there.  Just got word that we're
approved for the mortgage and now we are just waiting for all the
paperwork to be completed.  We hope to be able to sign everything at
the HSBC branch in Bangkok before Dennis has to go back to work next
week.
So excited!!!  It's really our dream property, 3.8 acres of west
facing grassy slope overlooking rolling hills.  Has some trees near
the road with parrots in them.  Kangaroos coming to graze in the
evenings.  All the lots in the neighbourhood are the same size, so the
houses are few and far between.  It's 8 km from the town and 1 km from
a national park with hiking and biking trails.
Naturally we had to pay way more than we had allotted for to get this
land.  Now we are completely broke!  We won't be able to afford to
build a house on it for a few years, so will end up just renting when
we get over there.  I will get a job as soon as possible and hopefully
that will help out a lot.  Oh well, it will be worth it in the end!!!
Despite dealing with all this, we did have the chance to meet up with
Helen Wheels.  It was great to see her again and we spent the day
wandering around the weekend markets in Fremantle.  Grabbed some lunch
and ice cream and we really lucked out since it was the nicest day
weather wise that we had on the whole trip.
We also got to admire the handsome Tyler and Orly who are really
giants compared to Vino!  But we thought that of Susan M's Otis and
Chester too.  I guess we're just used to Vino and he's just not really
a big cat, even though we always thought he was.
Anyway, I had over 1900 messages to catch up on and now I'm down to
1200.  I'm trying my best but it will be a while!  Hugs and purrs to
everyone who needs them :-)
--
Britta
"There is no snooze button on a cat who wants breakfast." -- Unknown
Check out pictures of Vino at:
http://photos.yahoo.com/badwilson click on the Vino album