We’ve moved into our “permanent” residence for the rest of our stay here in Australia.  The first place we were was only for three weeks or so while we waited for our current house to become available.  Michael was adamant that I would like this house better, which I doubted when we moved into the first house because the first house was very, very nice.  Now that we’re in the second house, I will totally admit that he was correct.  Both houses are huge and close to the beach, but this second house also boasts this:

My kids are so finally learning how to swim.

The other side of the backyard looks like this:

See that big tree bush thing in the middle?  It is a haven for birds.  There are multiple birds in that thing every minute of the day, slowly waddling along the lengths of the branches, sucking the nectar out of the weird honeysuckle-like pods that grow on it.

My favorite birds that visit are the Rainbow Lorikeets.  They usually visit in pairs, and we’ve seen as many as five at a time making their slow searches through the branches.  We eat lunch out on the patio almost every day now, just so we can watch these beautiful creatures as they eat.  Lunch has never been such a quiet event in our family, ever.  Even Monkeyboy silently munches on his sandwiches while his little eyes follow the Lorikeets’ movements.

I was trying to get a good picture of this guy’s underside to show how colorful their bellies are, and he was scooting along and totally bumped his head on the intersection of that branch! Hee hee!

Because this place wasn’t beautiful enough, right?  Goodness me, it’s just wonderful to just look at the world here.  You can’t get enough of the light, the trees, the colors…it’s just gorgeous.  Hopefully I can get some photos of some of the other insanely-colorful birds flitting about all regular-like each day.

These are my favorites, even when they’re squawking their little heads off at each other.  Michael tells me that there’s “Lorikeet Trees” in various parts of the city where big flocks of them go to roost at night and you can’t hear another person yelling at you right next to you because the birds are so ridiculously loud.  I’m glad we don’t have that problem, just the occasional squabble every couple of hours.  It’s worth it though, to look at those brilliant feathers.  So pretty.