September has come around again and we say goodbye to Spring in Australia and" hi there" to Fall in California. We are situated in the foothills of Santa Barbara, about and hour and a half north of Los Angeles, surrounded by mountains and ocean.

Our daughters have happily settled back into the Waldorf School of Santa Barbara, bringing home their "old" friends as though we had never left. It feels more familiar every time, the road up the mountain, the places I stop to get coffee, the organic market across from school where I grab a few things for dinner on my way home, the woman in the knitting shop ( should say "yarn shop"), who knows me as that woman with all the little girls. But this blog in a lot of ways is a letter home, home to where my friends are gathered in the mornings over coffee, and I miss that a lot. But it is three months in this beautiful place where deer literally walk through the garden, where the sunlight at about 5.30 across those mountains just stops you in your tracks, where the girls pack little baskets each morning with their lunch and napkins and their knitting, and where on Sundays we just lie around all day together and only get in the car once if we feel like ice cream or a sunset drink on the beach. 

Mind you, the kids still drive us crazy, we still have to deal with nits and tantrums and "what's this" when I serve dinner, and husband stressed at work and me just wanting "five bloody minutes to finish this row", and tummy aches and spills in the rental car, and "who broke this? or "who did that? But for the next three months we will do it all from here.