I spoke to a lovely woman in the Expression of Interest team last week (they are so helpful there) and she told me that they were just waiting on our police checks and if they are okay then we should be invited to attend Education on 1 & 2 December. Now, I know our police checks will be fine (we both have blue cards) so I am biting my nails waiting for the letter with our invitation.

1 December is my work Christmas lunch, and the kids' Christmas play but both will be hastily cast aside if we are invited to Education. The kids understand - they want a baby sister as much as we do. God, I love them. They are beautiful children.

It's only 3 weeks until our holiday to China. We will leave on 4 December and have 2 nights in Shanghai, then 4 nights in Wuxi visiting Holly (our Chinese student) who will be home with her parents at that time. Then we are planning to take the train up to Beijing for a few touristy days. As we have a company in the sustainability industry, an industry colleague has offered to take us around near Beijing and show us a demonstation sustainability project. Scott is REALLY looking forward to this, as am I. The Chinese are a long way ahead of us in terms of environmentalism, and I guess this has been forced upon them as a way of dealing with their enormous population. On the way home we will stop in Tokyo for 2 or 3 nights, depending on whether we want to spend an arm AND a leg on accommodation, or just one limb.