we are in!

I dropped off the face of the blogosphere, didn't I? Sorry about that. I have a good reason for that, though! We moved into the house, and we have to wait for the internet to come back. A few more days until I can upload pictures awaits but now, my phone and laptop can share a 3G connection so I can BLOG! Sorry about the lack of photos, though - partly it is the limited uploading, but also because I keep seeing things that can be tweaked before I do the "before and after" blog post!

I will say, though, that the move, while stressful, was over quickly and I was 90% unpacked within seven days. Pretty good for a gal with a baby who is THISCLOSE to walking, right? I have to finish up the dining room, paint the bathroom, and get started on a plan of action for trimwork painting over the next month or so.

We were in by our wedding anniversary, and it was so nice to wake up, the first morning ever, in the new place and recognize that the three years of marriage we've shared helped to get us where we are right now. I say it now and then but it bears repeating: my husband is the best person I know. He is kind, absolutely polite, fearless, dedicated, loyal, loving, trustworthy, and handsome too. He always makes me laugh. I love watching him with the baby: he is so gentle but fun and she adores her daddy so much. I got VERY lucky three and a bit years ago when we said "I will" to each other.

There will be pictures soon, when our internet returns, but I just wanted to pop in and tell you all I was still, in fact, alive.

Cheers!

Penny xx

the last push.

This weekend promises to be hellishly busy, but I am prepared. This will be the last push. Moving day is set for Monday, and if I have to live without a fridge or a shower screen then I'll make do, because we will move in on Monday. (I may have just done the fist-clench to the sky.) Anyway: moving day is fast approaching, so I'm spending this week packing my apartment.

Yesterday I packed all of my fabric (except a little bit of Kona Snow for sashing my Garden Fence quilt) and it was so hard. I love my craftiness and my fabric is a significant investment, so putting it into brown moving boxes was tough. I kept trying to leave things out, as if I would somehow magically make time to sew in the next six days! I know my limits but my heart wishes I had a wealth of time. I kept it to two projects, the aforementioned Garden Fence quilt and my Sophie Makes Tracks.

I managed to pin baste my Sophie quilt, though!

How amazing to finally have the backing and batting firmly sandwiched to my quilt top. It's ready for me to wind bobbins and as tomorrow is Anzac Day, I am letting my hair down and treating myself to some quilting!

I have a great little helper, though, don't I. :)

"Who, me? I'm definitely not rolling all over your quilt in my sleep bag, looking all cool..." My goofy kid.

Now, the floor polishers have been hard at work for two days. We braved a visit tonight to "check the mailbox" (or peep in the windows!!) but we arrived at the right time: they were just about to put the third coat of polish on the floors. Just as a reminder, this was our dining room floor on Monday morning.

It looked like a big golden retriever rolled around on fresh glue. I did my best to prise up the big chunks of glue, but it still looked awful. I was scared it wouldn't come up, but when we stopped by the house, the floor polisher explained that, five sandings later, it all came up.

And WOW.

CAN YOU BELIEVE THAT IS THE SAME ROOM? I could not stop grinning! Mr Poppleton was equally impressed and we both couldn't stop talking about it. I can't wait until Thursday, when we can go back in and look it over with shining, home-ownershippy eyes. It is just beautiful. The wood came up so nicely - I never expected it to look this warm and knotty - and I just feel so happy. It's close. It's so, so close.

So: back to the moving tasks. But I have a new wellspring of hope, having seen the beautiful "new" floors in our little house o' dreams. It makes it easier to sort our belongings, to get rid of the old and worn and make way for the new, when I know that I have a home worthy of nice things. It's a good feeling. It makes the work lighter.

We are so close. So very close!

Ta ta for now!

Cheers. xx

on the home stretch

We have been beavering away on the house, and it shows. We're nearly done. And it is a miracle we haven't gone spare, that is for sure. This renovation has tested me in so many ways. As a normally competent, capable person, it has been really eye-opening to rely on others for help and expertise. If I only had the time to learn how to do it all myself...but I don't, so I can't, so we have lovely Clark to help guide us. He hasn't steered us wrong yet!

I have a few pictures.

The tiler finally turned up. Two weeks and two days late. I tried to ignore him but unfortunately I had to let the benchtop guys know about the road resurfacing that was happening. Anyway, there he is. He's done, and we paid him. Thankful that's over with!

As I said, the benchtop guys turned up on the same day...with my gorgeous Caesarstone. How I love it. They set the sink in and the tap in but didn't install it, so those are just floating there, but dang. It looks so great. And it is SO cold - perfect for pastry!

I worked on the wardrobe in the master bedroom a bit, worrying over configuration of shelves, the trouser hanger (pictured), and the clothes rail. The wardrobes are 2.4m high,  but we have 2.8m ceilings so there is plenty of room for them...and a bit on top for my A3 box collection!

And we put in our new front door. I was outvoted on the handle - both Clark and Mr Poppleton thought it should go on the top of the lock! I protested but even though I knew it was wrong somehow, I was outvoted. The next day Clark sheepishly admitted that because the lock was so high up and the threshold a step up from the stoop that yes, I was right to want the handle lower! Thank you very much. :)

Oh. And I painted. We went with a glut of blues. As you progress toward the back of the house, it gets deeper and deeper. In late afternoon, the darkest room, the dining room, is where you end up. But during the day it's like looking down into a very blue tunnel.

And looking back the other way, toward the light.

Of course my hands were a casualty. I think I could be convincted of Smurficide with that as evidence, eh?

The study got a fresh lick of paint, too. Pink along three walls and the same deep grey along the back cabin log walls. It works so well, the pink and grey!

On Friday, I took a Tips and Tricks class at Cottage Quiltworks and my in-laws and husband took out the floor coverings. When I came to visit, I had nothing but bare floorboards to greet me. Even unsanded, they look amazing. This is Piper's room.

And our room (note the finished wardrobes, so super pretty)!

But the dining room didn't fare so well. It looks like the glued the vinyl down, and it's all hairy and stuck to the floorboards. I have been experimenting with getting that fuzz up, and it looks like a stiff brush  cleaned out often is my best bet. What a pai, though - it's a HUGE room.

But then I have the consolation of the gorgeous living room to think of. Oh how lovely it will be when they are all done!

And of course the loveliest thing of all - the dearest and sweetest girl in the world, my gorgeous Piper. She was so tuckered out the other day that she fell asleep in my arms - that NEVER happens. I took the time to sit and enjoy it!

Since the floorsander is in on Monday, we have one more day to finish everything up. I have trims to paint, and three ceilings, and fuzzy floor to rescue, and a hall cupboard to finish. (It was horrible just to get the frames done - I'm so grateful all we're doing to finish are doors and shelving!) After Monday, I get three beautiful days to spend at the apartment, packing. I want this place spick and span by Monday afternoon. Mostly packed and totally spruced up - the floors cleaned, the spots on the wall painted, the drapes at the dry cleaner, everything. I'm packing two to five boxes a day at the moment trying to get ready...because we move in a little over a week.

I'm not sure when next I'll post, so here's hoping it will be sooner rather than later, but if not...hang in there, I'll be back soon!

Lots of love,

Cheers. xx

muddling along

Well, the house is still not finished. SURPRISE. I feel like the world's biggest jerk, but I'm so disappointed that it's taken us TWICE as long to move in. It's money wasted on rent. By my original timeline, we should be well moved in now, and just unpacking. Instead, we're still without a tiled bathroom.

So we're doing small things, getting lots of other projects finished up. This week my goal is painting. Unfortunately, my little one has her first cold. She's not feeding well, absolutely hates the aspirator, and will not sleep. (And she really needs sleep.) I went so far as to turn the heater on because we've had such a cold snap the last few days, I am sure she needs to be kept toasty warm.

This cold, though, means she's a very sweet, snot-covered little barnacle, which limits the amount of painting I can do. This weekend will have to be THE weekend. I will be finished BY SUNDAY EVENING!*

Some things have happened! Like my drawer units have HANDLES. ALL in preparation for the benchtops coming in on MONDAY.

And I bought interior doorknobs, sash lifts, and window locks.

I gave the fabulous front door a prepcoat!

Bedroom 3 received the final prepcoat and now we're on to the dining room.

I scraped the ceilings, windowsills, and walls of the nook and caulked all the gaps to prepare for a prepcoat.

We chose the paint for the last room! Atlantic Mystique. It's a very oceanic house. Three of the rooms are blue, the bedroom and hallway are grey, and even Piper's room is green!

And I spent a minute just standing on what I refer to as the "laundry porch". This is overlooking my neighbor's back garden. But I like my pergola. I want to hang strawberry plants on those hooks.

And...here is my finished Nicey Jane quilt. Still needs a name! "Nicey Girls take the long way around" perhaps?

I am so exhausted. It is time to give the baby more medicine, and rock her back to sleep. We are listening to Angus Stone and trying to take a nap. Hopefully she will sleep. My poor girl.

Cheers, folks! Enjoy your midweek. :)

*I hope.

Hanging in there!

Renovating is one of those things that turn you into a bad friend. I am guilty of that and because of that I'm watching birthdays and weddings fly by, invitations forgotten, because I have been too busy to keep in touch. I'm sorry, friends. I love you and I miss you but I must get this house done.

Progress has been made, somewhat. There are architraves on the windows in the laundry and there's a loo now, so we can work at the house longer than two hours at a time! The wall faucets work but not the basin - it's not connected to anything!

We took the door off of the back hallway where the bathroom door used to be. The hallways is now useless (it leads to another back door, but we'll almost always use the laundry door) so we are thinking of closing it up and turning it into a shed, accessible only from the outside. For now, it is just another great source of light for the dining room!

The laundry room now has a door on the inside! This is for privacy. It still needs to be painted but hey, a door's a door, man.

And this...this is my future sewing nook. Mind, that is only the pre-prepcoat so it looks pretty rubbish BUT the log cabin wall will be a dark, moody grey and the walls a nice sweet pink. The reason for the "feature" wall is because the original exterior walls (i.e. the log cabin walls) have lots of spaces which, when painted white, show up. I don't want to gap-seal all of them. So we're painting them dark.

My kitchen cabinets are coming along nicely, though. They have handles.

And fancy light switches for my fancy undercabinet LEDs.

And oh hey, check out my cooktop, right smack on my drawer unit. It hasn't been installed as we're still waiting on the darn benchtops.

I love looking through the blue of the kitchen into the afternoon sunlit dining room. Such a change in color and tone. Makes such a difference!

In our bedroom we've begin building the wardrobes. They look SO enormous!

And finally, Clark has begun the skylight. It has a villaboard lining and he is setting in the corners so I can sand and paint those very soon. I might as well, since the tilers (&^$*ing tilers, UGH) flaked out AGAIN and are now two MORE weeks late getting in to tile this bathroom. We are now a MONTH LATE moving out of this apartment. I'm not happy we're still renting. It's costing us money every day we're not in the house, and they are directly affecting my budget. GAH.

The good news is, the bathroom is ready for the tilers. All of that waterproofing is just brilliant, isn't it!

It's not all negative. We do have some pretty roses in the garden to console us!

Well, until I take a walk and see how much more there is to do. But this can wait until after we're moved in! (That's my sewing window. It does not open both ways. So it needs to be repainted, and unstuck.)

I do find my patience wearing a bit thin, especially with tilers. (Actually, more or less, ONLY with tilers. Everyone else has been GREAT.) And I want to be moved in. The worst part though was that this long weekend, the perfect weekend for getting things accomplished...we got sick. Piper first, then a couple days later, ME! UGH. I really don't like being sick. It interferes with my whole "get up and go" personality! I knew it was a beautiful warm day outside, perfect for getting work done, but by the end of the day all I could do was get a few stitches in at the sewing machine. Boo. We are on the mend now and feeling much better, but I'm still tired and my ribs ache. I did manage to get the study/sewing room prepcoated last night, in an unexpected burst of inspiration!

Well we're off to get coffee and have lunch with the family for Easter! Hope yours is equally lovely. Cheers!

More renovations!

Does this count as a WIP Wednesday? I'm desperately seeking time to sew, but instead my house is full of renovations. I'll put up pictures of both, I swear...

Anyway, linking up!

So the work has continued apace, and the pace at which it has continued is...excellent! Except the tiler fell and fractured his ankle and then fell again and sprained his wrist. So my laundry has only been screeded whereas I should have had a functioning laundry room (with a toilet) by now!

But that's the only hiccup, so I should be thankful, right? And in a way, it's kind of fine that the tiling has taken so long, because instead of focusing on getting the bathroom ready, Clark went and put my kitchen in.

I painted the walls in the kitchen blue. Glorious, Dulux Shampoo blue.

So glorious with the light from the window coming through! And since the films on the cupboards are blue, it's very much like living in a pool at the moment.

I have had lots of help from the tiny tradie though. She's been coming along like a trouper, eating biscuits and pulping bits of cardboard and being generally very patient with her very patient mama.

She sits up all by herself now, and she has finally sprouted a third tooth! It's her upper left eyetooth, of all teeth to sprout, and she's had a miserable week and a bit of fussiness. I'm glad it's broken the surface, and I'm sure there are another two or three on their way...poor kid.

The bathroom does need finishing. Check out my raw skylight. It needs walls!

The board around it was swollen and waterlogged, and it came away like Weet-bix. It will be replaced with waterproof Villaboard in the future.

And, LAMP! It's done, and when I came in the other week, Gary had hung it up for me!

I think it looks so great, the blue of the metal against the stark white ceiling. I'm really proud of what we've been able to recycle, and of how my efforts are turning out.

I'm not the only one who is excited. Piper loves the new pantry. We played "Baby in the cupboard!" while the tilers were working hard!

She is also super excited about her new bright green bedroom, with its beautiful beaded pendant light. Oh, so cute and sweet and still girly!

The only sad room is the bathroom. It's so sad. The floor needs to come up before they put down a new screed and the cast-iron bathtub took three days alone to remove. You can see all of the work that the plumber has done; those are all new pipes and he's even packed the wall out to sustain the wall-mounted sink. Bless.

It is coming along. I know this. I am there every night with some little task. Last night it was drawers; the night before I was painting the kitchen. I'm at Spiders' Group tonight but I'm secretly hoping to head up and see if I can't get some trimwork done in the kitchen. Or some windows painted. Or something. It's so addictive.

Well, in the sewing department, I am still knee-deep in my challenge with Pinky. She is kicking my toosh in this challenge! I have a finished top but I am terribly undecided about the backing. I've been back and forth to Craft Depot picking out backings but none have matched my expectations. Sigh. SIGH. So this is as far as I've gotten.

But! I have a treat! I have photos of the fabric I picked up in AMERICA!

Check out all of these beauties...

And these DS Quilts fabrics from Jo-Ann's...

And some sweet boyish puppy dog fabrics and a few little bits and bobs...

And pretty pink and girly prints....

And sewing literature. Holy pants. I saw that blocks book and snapped it up so quick I gave myself whiplash. Boom.

And this spool holder barely survived in my suitcase. It has a slight lean to it....yikes!

Finally, I picked up a ruffling foot. I've wanted one of those for ages, to make ruffle-bottom pants for Piper!

I had so much fun buying this fabric with Sarah and with my Aunt Rose. I wish I could do it all the time! I got such a good variety that as soon as we're moved into the house with the sewing room sorted out (and everything unpacked) I'll be able to put these projects to good use!

Hopefully my blogging will get back to a normal schedule, sooner rather than later...I'm excited to be finished, and I'm really keen to get all the furniture built, the painting done, the floors polished, and the tradesmen OUT. (Though they are lovely!) I can't wait to just come home and be home, and not have to make two trips back and forth every day. And I can't wait to wake up to my east-facing bedroom windows pouring light over the foot of the bed, and my little family all curled up around me.

It's going to be so amazing.

(PS Sewing, I miss you. FREALS. Let's get together soon.)

Cheers, and happy WIP! Hope your days are less frantic than mine! :)

Drudgery, part the millionth

I'm scooting through house renovations as quickly as I can, but the past week has been a haze of getting 'er done.

Tuesday we had the asbestos removed, which meant we could see straight through the kitchen wall into the laundry! And I felt like I could REALLY BREATHE, for the first time ever. All that nasty asbestos, gone!

My house is made from what they call "Oregon timber" here in Sydney but I know it by its true name: Douglas fir. I was so pleased to hear my house was made of the same trees that I grew up surrounded by. These two-by-fours aren't the smooth sweetish pine of modern times, though: they are splintery and rough-hewn, scratchy and dark. Still, to me, they are beautiful.

We made our mark on the house. We are now part of its history. I've spoken before about the previous owner, and a few more little stories have come about. The house was built by the previous owner for his bride around 1950. She was the kind of neighbor who loved to garden and have cups of tea. I feel a bit like she haunts us, but only in a nice way. Houses move on to other people. We bought a house with a wonderful history.

And we've been magically able to keep a lot of that history alive.

Here is the old bathroom door. We are putting a toilet into the bath and leaving the existing one in the laundry, but there was no point having three entrances to the laundry room (outside and inside) so our builder Clark has closed up this door. It's Villaboard on the other side, but he recycled the splintery, rough-hewn timber from the wall he took out to frame this in. I love that he did that!

But of course, the old plumbing had to go. The hot water line was running up the OUTSIDE of the kitchen wall. Yikes! So our fantastic plumber Laurie spent Friday snipping, welding, drilling holes and making bends. And in the end he took the old, crappy (heh) toilet out and capped the hole in the floor. Ready for making new.

This is for the kitchen. Isn't it just super? Shiny and new!

I haven't been idle, either. I spent yesterday feeling sorry for myself (Mr Poppleton is away on a business trip) so I took the baby to Nanna & Granddad's and painted undercoat on most of the living room walls for three hours. I stopped at the rendered brick because I ran out of time.

I just love the difference the white makes. That whole room will eventually be sky blue, but for now the white is just so bright and cheerful!

And Mr Poppleton would like everyone to know he has not been idle, either. This week he and his mum and dad spent three evenings building my kitchen cabinets.

They are awaiting doors and handles, but Clark will manage that when the flooring is up and the kitchen walls are reclad!

More painting. I should really be flicking back to the "before" images, where everything was dark and moody because the timber was stained really heavy. Having it all white just freshens it up so much.

Those are Clark's two by fours in the floor there, but those boxes? Those are my living room tiles. Brilliant! I'll order my bathroom tiles as soon as I get a quote in from the tiler. He is mythical at the moment, but this week will be the week I get this house on track!

If a certain someone complies, that is.

Oh man. She's so perfect. I hope she understands someday how most of this work is for her. We are making a home for her.

Well - off to work I suppose! Today is more undercoating. Going to get the living room and hallway 100% primed. Boom. It's good to have goals, I guess. But just before I go, a sneaky look at something I did while husbandless-induced-insomnia had me in its clutches last night:

Hmm, it looks like a Nicey Jane quilt top...hmm...we shall see I suppose!

Cheers! xx

Asbestos

Today's the day it goes away!

I'm sitting on my front stoop waiting for the removal guys to turn up. Oh! My builder will be there as well. Hooray!

It's all happening...

I'm still alive, I promise!

Renovation. Renovaaaaation. Aside from the cripplingly bad cold I've caught (I really should be in bed) I've spent the last few weeks out at the new house. We have had to get quotes in from builders (our builder sings and I quite like him!), electricians (charmingly called "sparkies"), and plumbers.

On top of that, we've had a few things to do before we get anyone in. Like demolish the existing kitchen to make room for my sexy new nook. But I had some great helpers. My lovely husband is a king among men. Look at him destroying this kitchen! That's my equally awesome father-in-law making those cupboards understand who's BOSS.

And hey, I haven't been so idle, either! Check out what our old windows looked like BEFORE I got my stain-killer paintbrushes busy...

And after.

I am shocked at how much this has changed the way all of the rooms feel, and they are only undercoated. I have two more coats plus the Aquanamel to put on before everything is white and crisp on all my edges! We have a lot of paint to work with though. No worries about any errant paint-spills in the car...there was no room for any of that nonsense with all that paint packed cheek by jowl!

That's not even ALL of it. I still have to buy kitchen paint and laundry room paint and decide what colors the third bedroom and the study/sewing room will be. For now my focus is the front of the house, which is fine, even if it means I spend hours caulking, spack-filling, and sanding so every surface is smooth and perfect. Not to mention scraping paint drips. You try to be careful but sometimes there's a squidgy bit extra....yikes!

Every time I get cranky though, I just take a deep breath, and go look at my kitchen plans.

Ahh. So nice. It will be my little nook. Everything is purchased (except the bloody dishwasher, Ikea you rats) and the boxes are lined up in bundles against the walls in the third bedroom, looking and smelling so gorgeous. I have a pantry. I have a microwave cupboard. I have a mothertruckin' porcelain farmhouse sink. And the best thing of all? Caesarstone benchtops. I just. Can't. Even. I am the luckiest little gal this side of the International Date Line, for having a husband who only sighs and shakes his head and then says, "Well, okay..." Many grateful smooches and cuddles ensued.

Anyway, as promised, this blog has become a renovation blog, but I SWEAR! I have still been trying to write...and sew.

Naturally, being Type-A and a glutton for punishment, I have agreed to begin a challenge with the lovely Pinky! I am so excited to do a proper challenge and with such lovely fabrics. It will be fantastic...if I ever find the time! I did whip up a few of these Modern Pinwheels though...

It was my first go at paper-piecing and while they are sweet and different, I think I will use them as corner posts. I still need to design and sew the quilt (gulp!) before April. I already know it will be stipple...that is just how I roll these days. The rest is a bit of a scared whirlwind at the moment.

As for writing, well, I was deeply inspired by our trip to Southern Oregon. I'm from those hallowed hills, and when I write, I always find my characters crunching pinecones with their hiking boots and swimming in icy snowmelt rivers. Almost everyone I write is of the pale, blue-tinted dirty-blonde variety of people I grew up with, or at the very least, is related to them. So going back was a giant kick in the writerly shins. I needed to soak up the smells and sights and re-center myself, and the whole time I was there I kept pointing places out to my husband from the book: "That's the bar they go into. That's where she works. This is the road she lives on. This is where her grandmother died." All real places, all quietly borrowed, and all secret. No, I won't tell you. I'm just glad I got to spend an afternoon (that was all I had) realizing my story's setting.

Even flying over the state is highly intoxicating. I'm sorry, are those just some amazing mountains hanging out underneath my propellor plane?

Oh why yes madam, there are a few little hills there among the Cascade Range. Just a few!

And on my parents' farm, just walking up the driveway is enough to make me catch my breath.

I wish I could see this all the time, mostly because I wish I could see my family all the time, but also because this is just stunning.

And finally, one thing I have missed even more than pine trees and icy cold rivers and actual mountains: fog. I love me some fog. The way it safely blankets a place, makes it ghostly but still welcoming, all of it just speaks to me. Fog and I are BFFs. Sydney is sorely lacking in this.

Just a view from like, the hotel parking lot or whatever. Not even kidding.

So: writing is slow but steady, sewing is sadly neglected, my poor kid thinks my friend Ellen is the bee's knees since she is spending lots of time over there with her friend Baby Olive (while I paint! ugh), and my house is slowly, surely coming along.

And I'm still alive, despite the chest cold and my blogging quietude. I'll try and post more often, I promise. For now, thanks for sticking with me as I undergo these changes. It's a crazy old life and this is just an extra crazy bit!

Ta-ta my lovelies! xo

A short trip.

It was a good trip, but it was too short. It's hard to assert that when it takes fourteen hours just to cross the ocean (fourteen hours during which, I might mention, that my daughter decided to cut her first tooth with no complaints at all) and another two to get to our first destination, but all of that time on the plane was not wasted. How can it be? I was visiting family.

Our first stop is always Idaho to visit my best friend, Sarah. She and her husband Jason always open their home so beautifully it feels churlish to even suggest staying in a hotel. Sarah and I are technically cousins but she's always been more like a sister to me – even when we were children and we regarded each other with mutual suspicion. It was only when we were teenagers that we became really close, and I couldn't tell you exactly when it happened, just that I'm thankful it did.

My goodness. I miss my best friend so viscerally sometimes. It's hard to believe we've lived in different places for seven years, because it feels like just yesterday we were flatmates navigating boys, boohoos, and brouhahas. It is nice to know that all those years later, married and motherhood notwithstanding, we can still stay up until four in the morning talking and drinking Emergen-C like old times! I still got it, baby. Who cares I needed, er, six coffees the next day.

Her babies are so grown up now. Emma has words. Emma can make choices. Last time I saw that kid, she was a five month old spud in a pink dress. She doesn't look like a potato anymore, that's for sure: she's all legs and ponytails and little girl logic. Like when I asked her "How's it going?" while she was eating her yoghurt cup and she indignantly replied, "Down my THROAT!" Well. That was...accurate. Haha. George was a reluctant talker by comparison. He had a few key favorites: "Mommy? Up? Down? Car?" Everything was a question. My favorite, for the record, was "Foffee?" Oh man. Everything a grown up drank was foffee.

We drank lots of foffee.

We were lucky enough to have time to catch up with my cousin Jesse and his wife (also named Sarah) and their boys Jesse Jay and Toby. I can hardly believe how big their boys are! Time flies when kids are concerned. Turn your back on them for two seconds and they are tax-paying voters. Sheesh.

We also had dinner with my mom's eldest sister who lives in the area. Aunt Karen and Uncle Tony are in some of my earliest memories and it was lovely to organize a meal. Piper loved my Aunt Karen – it was first time I'd ever seen my kid dive into someone's arms – and it was nice to catch up with my grown cousins Brian and his wife Nicole, and Danny and his wife LaChelle, and all my little second cousins *deep breath*: Brianna, Annalynne, Zack, Zeke, and Andrew!

It was way too soon for it to be over. I felt like I had only scrabbled a little at catching up, and I was swallowing a big lump in my throat as we hugged quick and tight at the Flying M, Sar going in her home direction with her red mug, and my matching white one safe in my suitcase so that someday we could drink tea together from a distance, and it would make us think of one another. I indulged my tears very quietly on the plane and watched as the propellor bore us upward and over the mountains, west toward the land of my birth.

We had rented a car in Idaho so we could get around and we did a lot of getting around. I felt a lot more confident in town now that I've had to drive a bit, and it helped to have lots of practice being on the right-hand side of the road after, um, six years driving on the left! Unfortunately we ended up accidently getting upsold at Avis (BAD AVIS) which cost us a lot of extra money! We learned our lesson after that, though, and when we'd said our goodbyes to our Idaho family and friends and headed west, we were prepared. I stared Mr Car Rental Guy down in the Portland airport and made him understand that under no circumstances did we want to have to pay anything extra. Voila! Glare worked. Boom. Funnily enough, we liked the car we had chosen better than the "upgrade" option.

So: home. Home as in the place I grew up. Driving south after four years away made me really look at everything. So much had changed! The city I moved to out of high school was still navigable but peppered with large new stores: Cabela's, Lowe's, new Starbucks on every other corner. It felt like a lot of bigger, bolder businesses had moved in around the fringes. We don't really have fringes here (everything is city or suburbs) and it was strange to see it all so open.

I was so excited to see my family that even though our four-hour-drive-in-theory took roughly six and a half hours (two baby feeds, a dinner with my gorgeous friend Katie and her partner David, another baby feed), and we had to stop at the hotel and check in, I wouldn't even let Mr Poppleton take our luggage up to the room. It was only twelve more miles at that point and it was good, clear freeway driving, all through the mountains. My eyelids were stuck to my eyes, and I felt like a thousand years' worth of travel gunk was stuck all over my person, but IT WAS ONLY TWELVE MORE MILES. I kept the car idling during check in and maybe, just maybe, I sped a little. (Or a lot. Shh. It's the interstate. It's smoooove.)

My parents live on a piece of property down a lane in a town so teensy it barely has a post office. When I got to the end of their driveway and saw the lights on it was a lot of effort to remember to get the baby out of the car first, not just go running in there willy-nilly. Still, after four years, it was pretty amazing to go running up to the front door in my little travelling outfit, baby squished in my arms (and totally confused at being woken up and then taken JOGGING), to hug first my sisters, then my dad, then my mama. So wonderful to see them after so many years.

All of my sisters are grown up girls. It is amazing. And they LOVED Piper, which is even better. Boy, she sure got a lot of love when she visited!

I made myself useful: we cooked a dinner for my folks, I made cupcakes and a cake (though my mom absolutely kills at cake-making, so I should have stuck with a pavlova or something), and I even helped my dad out by driving the tractor behind him so he could shovel gravel into the potholes in the driveway. Yep. I drove a tractor. I even got to third gear! (Well, it was still pretty slow).

The rest of the trip was short but crammed with visiting. I met my family's church friends, celebrated my mom's birthday party in style (J3 and I made her a tombstone cake, complete with "RIP" and fifty black candles mourning the death of her youth – her idea, not mine!), went fabric shopping with my Aunt Rose, forced W to tell me about her crush over icecream (where I ran into a friend from junior high!), bought a panda hat for J4 with little claw mittens that are attached (!), did a late-night talk and Dutch Bros run with J3, and spent far too little time with J2, who was busy with family of her own. I understand, but I'd still hoped to take her out for coffee or lunch! I got to visit with my cousins Matthew, Jonothan, Angela and even briefly Adam. I got to cuddle my nephew Johnny and my nieces Sissy, Jayden, and for a precious half-hour, little Maggie, who is just so tiny. (Piper was never that tiny!) We visited my Grandma D and saw my Grandma B a couple of times, and though it is never enough, the time I have with my family, it is always precious.

I also visited my grandfather's grave. I don't take flowers to his grave, but he wasn't much for flowers anyway. I think I'm the only member of my family who goes up there. I cleaned his gravestone and told him about Piper, about where I live now, what I'm doing. I like to think he'd like my visits, but I don't visit for him. I go up there for me. He is buried on the hill under a tree and the sun shone so brightly during my visit that it made the trees ache with color.

On our last day in Oregon, we drove north quietly, and I thought about why it didn't feel like home. I clearly don't belong in rural Southern Oregon anymore. I'm from there but not an Oregonian. I documented our last day there: the maple bar from The Happy Donut, coffee from Pony Espresso (my high-school haunt!), breakfast at Brail's, a quick lunch at Cafe Yumm!, a pit stop at Starbucks in Keizer, then the horror of Piper throwing up everywhere and us nearly missing the flight. I left Oregon in a hurry, panicked and perspiring. I was relieved to get to Los Angeles, relieved to be on the flight to Sydney, and more relieved to discover that our checking in at the Alaskan Airlines gate meant we'd been put into premium economy! We had leg room! Consequently, Piper slept for ten of the fourteen hours of that flight (as did we).THAT is a good international flight! I had a good visit but I felt alien, other. Not American, no matter what my passport says. I felt weird.

But all of that displaced feeling disappeared when we finally landed in Sydney. I miss my family terribly. But I was home. And the shape of the gum trees scabbing the land beneath the plane was a welcome sight; the sticky air that enveloped us as soon as we walked off the plane a breath of life to our dried-out lungs; the shriek and chatter of the birds a glorious refrain. We cleared customs in no time flat, got on a train, and met Mr Poppleton's parents at the café to catch up and say hello. Home. Home where I can unpack and lovingly gaze at my new sewing stuff, home where the air smells just musky and just sweet, home where the cockatoos strut up and down my balcony like the cheeky devils they are. I used to think the birds here made such a racket. Now I've come to realize, all the other birds are just too quiet.

I am so glad to be home. But I am so glad to have gone, too.

It was a good trip.