March 27, 2011

After a good night’s sleep life continued on the farm.

Sofia, Teddy and Tessa had to leave in the morning because the kids were going to birthday parties, but John was kind enough to stay behind with us and took care of us for the day.

Viktor continued challenging us all with his own puzzles in the train game and kept us on our intellectual toes:

John wanted to go over to a town nearby, called Kynerton, to have a look at his grandparent’s old home which was now for sale. Helene and I decided to tag along and leave the kids to their own devices on the farm. It felt a bit strange, as we haven’t really been able to leave the kids much alone for the last 13 years. However, Iseline is now old enough to be looked after by Adrian, and he is old enough to do it.

We drove over to Kynerton and met John’s sister and aunt who also wanted to have a look at the house. The house that had belonged to his other set of grandparent’s was, by chance, next door. What a dream set-up for child.

Here is the house:

This intercom system was probably state-of-the-art when it was installed. Deluxe model, with built-in FM radio:

We felt a bit sorry for the real estate agent as we were the only ones to show up. He quickly understood that everyone was there for sentimental reasons or as hangarounds, but was very professional about it and smiled his brave almost genuine smiles.

John’s sister Melissa and her children Isabel, Jasmine and Alexander joined us back at the farm. The grownups relaxed in the shade

while the kids ran around.

With 6 kids playing on the lawn the dog, Domy (short for Dominique), was in heaven:

So he ran,

and he ran,

and he ran,

until he could run no more:

The poor dog collapsed and refused to run any more, despite the best motivational efforts of the kids:

He did seem very happy, though.

The horses got some more goodies:

Adrian demonstrated the Lego Digital Designer to Alexander. It’s freely downloadable from Lego and really cool. It has a 3D editor where you build your own lego models. Then you press a button and it produces a pdf with building instructions for your model! You can even order a custom boxed set containing your model, complete with graphics on the box top. Lego will put the needed pieces and the printed manual in the box and ship it to you. Isn’t that really neat? (I do not own shares in Lego, nor do I know anyone who could potentially profit from this blog comment, I’m just an impressed middle-aged geek who thinks it’s a shame they didn’t have toys like that when I was a kid)

Princesses and Barbies don’t always cut it with girls these days. Here is Iseline showing Jasmine the game “Plants vs Zombies” on the Mac. An amused Melissa in the background, watching as the plants kill the brain-eating zombies:

It was time to say good-bye to everyone. It was great to visit a real Australian farm and we thank John and Sofia for their fantastic hospitality.

We drove into Melbourne, checked into our rented apartment and found a Chinese restaurant in the center. Iseline loved the painting they had close to the entrance, of a crab eating a human finger, presumably in revenge. Look here:

It has eaten my finger, aaaaarrrrrgggghhhhh!

Eirik

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