Mikus had a fabulous costume party for his birthday... complete with green (chocolate) frog hunt in the local park and a rocket cake made by Oma. He (and we) had a great time, and with his rapidly developing capacity for speech, came upstairs in the evening after our last guests had left and said: "I've had such a lovely day!" So that's it - now he's three and the "terrible twos" are officially over. Yip...

People in Latvia make pretty stereotypical assumptions about Australia. Most people assume the capital of Australia is Sydney, and pretty much everyone thinks that we have kangaroos jumping around in our back yards as a standard feature. When people ask me stupid questions about Oz, I usually go along with it. The girls in my singing group delight in my answers whenever there is a new girl joining our group who brings out the typical line of questioning: „Oh! You’re from Australia!! Wow! ...

In Australia the sky is bigger. You are so aware of it. When you go outside at night your gaze is inevitably drawn upwards to the millions of sparkling diamonds - the crickets singing all around and that huge, expansive sky above.The place I notice the sky the most is at Point Arkwright in Coolum. We've been coming here for ever, and a few weeks ago we had the delight of introducing the boys to our special spot. A week spent under that sky with good friends - eating fish and chips on the beach,...