Shiny Happy

I can finally stop pretending to be a PC person :)

Toff and I received our wedding present from Mom and Dad yesterday - a new MacBook Pro! Faaarrr out! It's so beautiful. But my favorite part is that it stays on, and you can finish an email without it freezing...which is a luxury this house has not seen for a good 8 months! We had planned on buying one ourselves earlier, but put it off because the sales dude said the new model would be coming out in Aus in a matter of weeks...and then decided to put it off even further until after we travelled, because a plane ticket was a lot more useful to us than a laptop. But now all is good, and I have commenced uploading all of our music onto iTunes, and buying a few songs to supplement our collection so we have a great mix to play at the reception. Who needs a DJ when you have a Cara (or a Toff) with an iPod?

If there is anything I can say about Toff in regards to his role as a groom - it is that he is nothing if not involved. As I sit beside him, listening to him discuss the merits of having the legal declaration before or after the vows with our pastor; and when he is trying to talk me out of putting Biz Marke, "you got what I need" into our play list (okay, so not really a 'wedding' song, but by golly I love that song!) I just think how lucky I am that he actually cares about this stuff! I think it might be a little obvious by this point, but I think this guy is frickin' amazing.

In other news, Mom and Dad have arrived safely and we've had a good couple of days. We have had a BBQ at our place with Toff's family, gone to lunch at the Pub I worked at, gone olive tasting and today we went wine tasting! We're kind of saving the bulk of the touristy stuff for when everyone gets here, so we're just having a few relaxing days where we rarely get out of the house before noon. But it's all good! We do have this little thing called a wedding to prepare for...which keeps requiring attention. Did I tell you how we had to move the time of the ceremony up by 5 hours because we misread the tide chart? Oooops. No worries though, now we're just having everyone come back to either our place or Toffs' mums' place for soup made by his Nan, and we can catch up with people who aren't coming to the reception (since Russell's Pizza has a limit of 100, we'll have about 75 people coming for just the ceremony - which seems a little backwards, but that's how it's done here in South Aus). And, a fun little tidbit of info that I found out on my morning walk on the beach last week - the walkway down to the beach (which is a gorgeous easy sloping ramp beside the cliffs that is essentially our 'aisle') is going to be closed for construction. Ooooops. :) But no worries! We'll get around it somehow.

In other news! we have (practically) finished all of our backyard renovations! It looks so much better than the dirt patch that was there previously it's not even funny! I would love to post photos for you to see, but that might just have to wait for a couple of weeks. Toff did most of the ground work, like installing a grey water system (including all of the piping), setting up a pump to automatically turn on when it feels you turn on the spigot, replacing two of the posts in the veranda, building a raised veggie garden that takes up the back fourth of the yard, and leveling out the area for the paving stones so that with our amazing roommates the 4 of us laid all of the pavers in one weekend. It looks amazing, and it's pretty neat to be able to say "I did that."

The fact that we are about to head out on a 4 month around-the-world adventure hasn't even really sunk in yet - there is just too much other stuff to comprehend at the moment. Like Kiki, Mimi, and Rachel flying in the day after the day after tomorrow! :)

And on that note, it is my bed time, so ciao y'all! Have a good night/day/everything in between!

Cararoo

ps- in case you were wondering, Biz Marke TOTALLY made it to the wedding playlist :-D