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, poking around rock pools and seeing the tide come in.
At the Point the sea is wild, angry. The surfer boys stand on the dunes in the morning watching the swell. The waves surprise you with their ferocity and try to dump you in the shallows, the water foaming and bubbling effervescent, washing smooth the sand and bringing up broken shells and bits of driftwood.
I know a secret place amongst the rock pools where all the hermit crabs live. They're always there in multitudes, if you go at the right time when the tide is low. Around the back of a huge rock are some sheltered pools where they congregate - in stripey and patterned and conical shells. The boys were amazed to hold the shells in their hands and then feel the tickle of little claws, nipping and scrabbling to get back into the water.
At lunch time we would retreat to our shaded shack made of weatherboard and tin, in a little hollow just behind the dunes, with rainbow lorikeets screeching in the trees around. We walked back to the beach in bare feet over the gravel when it got cooler, to watch the sunsets and say goodnight to the foaming, pounding ocean and that incredible sky.

Ok we've arrived in Oz and I completely intend to spend the next few posts describing our visit "home", but before I do that I wanted to write a little report on our last month before we left for Oz. It was focused on getting as much done to the house before we went... and as the drab pseudo-winter dragged by with its fair share of lurking lurgies and sleet, our 'renovators delight' was rapidly reduced to a sad shell. The demolishing crew started work on a Monday morning and by Monday afternoon the place was practically unrecognizable. Seven young strapping lads ripping up floorboards and smashing out old stoves. By the time I got there they had already over-enthusiastically demolished one old stove I wanted to keep and most of the plaster off the walls which didn't have to be removed! But at the end of the two weeks we had got over our losses and were beginning to understand the gravity and enormity of the job we have taken on board... As it turns out, (I know, I know, you all knew this was going to happen) under the plaster, the house was in a much sadder state than we had originally suspected. Everything in the roof structure is rotten and needs replacing; many internal walls need parts rebuilt; almost nothing of the original old finishes remains.
For a museum curator and self-confessed collectibles addict, there were difficult moments, where 'out with the old' was a bit of a nightmare. At times I almost wept in front of all of those manly builders who were ridiculing me for admiring the archaeological layers of wallpaper - which could be peeled off in eras: early 1990s independence with trendy ugly wallpaper; then numerous layers of old-fashioned 1970s soviet wallpaper; then earlier 1950s soviet stencil-rollered paper; then the regal floral or Latvian traditional symbols stencilled in the 1930s; finally to newspapers in the old Germanic font which were dated 1878. The hardest day was arriving when they had begun tearing down an mdf wall which had been painted with groovy 60s retro geometric designs - it would have made a fabulous feature wall in our living room... see photo above.
We are now faced with a much bigger (and more expensive) job than was originally expected, but at the same time, the demolition has also opened the house out to light and let in a fresh breeze, and we are excited about what the final product will be like. And to give the house credit: it is 120 years old. It's seen more winters than any of us will ever experience, and it's still standing. How many of the cinder-block gyproc numbers being built today in the suburbs will look this good in 110 years time? So below are a few snaps of work in the last few weeks. And the next blog will be all sun and meat pies, I promise.

So there's only one more day until we fly out to Oz - a trip for 6 weeks - haven't been back for three years. We are very excited here and frantically trying to get everything organised before we go. The boys can't wait to get to this legendary land that they hear about all the time that neither of them can remember. They are also looking forward to meeting all the kids we keep telling them about - and animals, beaches, theme parks, etc! Jem and I are also looking forward to it. We are wondering if anything will have changed - people here (Aussies) have been telling us that we will be shocked by how expensive everything is in Australia, although I don't think anything like that could shock us, considering we are currently living in a country which clocked 16.7 percent inflation last month!!! Now THAT is shocking. Jem suspects that the EASE of life in Australia will seem very alluring - a part of that never-ending equation we are pondering, regarding the advantages of life in both countries. The HEAT and SUNLIGHT is certainly something we are pining for, and seeing old friends, and having friendly strangers in the street and museums geared for inquisitive children, meat pies and sausage rolls, Milo, takeaway chinese, garage sales, bare feet, mangoes, frangipani flowers , passionfruit and thunder storms. Hopefully we get to enjoy all or at least some of these when we are back. So for those of you in Oz - see you soon (if we survive the flight)! And those of you in LV - see you when we get back!!!
PS. i wrote this a few days ago but forgot to post it - we have now arrived in Melbourne in one piece, very jetlagged, shall post again soon with pics of the great sunburned land

Māra (my gorgeous friend and fellow blogger and perhaps maybe one day sister-in-law) has 'tagged' me to this book challenge thingy which seems not quite as bad as all of those chain letters I have a habit of rejecting...

You've got to:
1. Pick up the nearest book of at least 123 pages.
2. Open the book to page 123.
3. Find the 5th sentence.
4. Post the next 3 sentences.
5. Tag 5 more people.

So I've done it, this is a quote from the "God Delusion" by Richard Dawkins:

"It is indeed fabricated from start to finish: invented, made-up fiction. In that respect, it is exactly like the gospels. The only difference between The Da Vinci Code and the gospels is that the gospels are ancient fiction while The Da Vinci Code is modern fiction."

So there'ya go. Interesting.

Now, as for tagging 5 more people, that's tough, as not too many people I know actually have blogs. So here we go, if I tag you then feel free to send me the answer by email, or as a comment, or not participate at all ;)): Jon Smedes! Courtney Smedes! (don't make it the same book you two), Joel Smedes! Gerry Smedes! and, lets make it another Smedes... hmmm... JULIE SMEDES! Go go go!!!

If kids are about anything at all, they are about teaching parents patience. And about letting go the reins now and then.
Tiss is now a gorgeous five, which means that in Australia he should have started school this January. I have been a little worried about the fact that in Latvia, kids start school aged SEVEN - so he's got a whole two more years of bludging before he starts his official schooling. I've been worried that he won't learn to read or write before then. But lately he has begun to prove all of those wise people right - the ones who have told me that things like an interest in letters or literacy just 'happens' in kids at their own pace. It's not something you can rush or force on a kid. Of course you can try, but you run the risk of it backfiring, and making them hate the thought of reading.
So at home we've been going slowly, slowly, with gentle nudging... For a while now (about 2 years!) Tiss has known his alphabet, but only recently has he started putting letters together. Thanks to our knowledgeable friend, Mara, we've been encouraging Tiss to do "think spelling" - when he gets the urge, to just write, write, write, however he can, no matter what the spelling is, so that he practises his letters and sounding out words and gets used to the idea of writing and communicating with letters. It doesn't matter if the words aren't spelled right. Or if there are no spaces between words. We'll get around to that a little later down the track. So this little gem (above) is what he wrote today when he was in the middle of an imaginative game. If you are trying to decipher, you need to keep in mind that in places he is writing English words with Latvian phonetics; and that for Tiss a "TH" sounds like a "D"... Anyone know what it says?

For those of you wondering if we've moved in to our 'castle' yet, here's a pictorial report of how things are going... and I suppose it will be patently obvious that we are NOWHERE NEAR moving in! Nothing has been done to the house yet, we are still consulting with various building firms. Opinions range widely about how much work needs to be done to the structure of the place - some people are advising us that it's all bad, bad, bad and we need to rip it all apart and rebuild it, others seem to think that things should be approached more conservatively. There's also a huge cultural difference here about what to keep in an old house - most builders seem stunned by the fact that I want to preserve the old floorboards, the plasterwork, the staircase - the number of times I have listened to lectures on the advantages of gyproc and new plastic window frames. Mind you, there's not very much charm to preserve in this old place! One heartening incident recently was when I found the original plans for the house in the city building archive - it was built in 1898 and the facade used to be a bit more ornate (the paperwork was mostly in Russian although the streetnames were in German - our street, Mazā Nometņu iela, used to be known as Kleine Lagerstrasse - "Small Camp Street"!). We will try to recreate the facade as far as we are able - I'll scan the drawing and post it here soon.
The photos are from this weekend when we spent an afternoon at the house trying to plan out some of the spaces. Jem ripped up some lino while the boys watched old 1960s "spiderman" episodes on my laptop. It was cold - around zero - so we tried out some of the old stoves while we worked...

The last two years have been pretty pathetic in the snow department - we have spent the past two Christmases waiting for the snow and having to endure slush and mud instead. Disappointing for a pack of Aussies who think snow is terribly exotic. But at least this year Mother Nature had a romantic and spectacular trick up her sleeve - she decided to hold back the snow until New Year's Eve. This year we celebrated with friends who have a house in the forest at Jūrmala - and before we got there, it started to snow. And snow, and snow, and snow. By midnight the whole world had been turned into a big white fluffy paradise. I went out into the unlit forest by their house with big flakes falling silently all around me in the dark, it was totally magical. In the morning we all woke to a world transformed - everything covered in a clean white, rounded layer - every fencepost and tree branch and car and house. A very fitting way to begin a new year. And the snowball fight we had was also pretty good!
So Gabe, how's about some time in the future you come over and have a white New Year's (or maybe even Christmas) with us?
Oh and here's another shot of the snow, taken yesterday in our new back yard, note the new (unreasonably expensive) fence!