First weeks of Winter

The upside of doing an on call weekend with clinic duty: you get the following Friday off.

With all the kids at (pre)school we made the most of it and spend a day at Red Rock, with it’s glorious walking tracks along the beach and Corindi River it's a great way to recharge the batteries.

Namesake 

Traffic jam, 

(just a friendly, rather sleepy python)

Cold mornings,
4 degrees demands rugging up, a novelty for our kids...

My friend Erin send us one of her daughters, to babysit, we got to have a night out!

Tullara is such an amazing talent, grateful to have seen her live.

Sunday morning walks...

Life is so much better with mud...

Checking out the waterholes

And the fences

Our teddy bear horse, so fluffy in her winter coat.

Sophie is thriving at the moment, she has started drum lessons, a dream come true for her. 

The reading bug has bitten her, something that makes my heart sing. 

Even caught her doing the book walk (read and walk while you go to the toilet, get a drink,... too enthralled to put the book away). 

With increased alertness and energy she’s making the most of it, even took up aikido again!

We’re letting her set the pace, we never know how long this period will last.

Alex his turning 5 next year, that means he could start school. 

However, he’ll only be just turning 5 when the school year starts, which gives us the option to hold him back another year. It has been going around and around in my head, what is best for him?

Kindergarten is hard, with the curriculum demanding so much of these still very young children. Reading, writing and maths, including homework and sitting still for long periods is a lot for them. 

I hesitate. But have seen with Tim (also from February) that he needed that challenge and now in year 4 is still thriving on it. 

For now, we’ve decided to take the middle road. Next week, Alex is going to start the pre-kinder program, that our school offers for one school day a week. While keeping with preschool which is all play based. We’ll decide at the end of the year what we think he’ll need: another year of play, or “big school”.

Morning with warm porridge (and pappa).

Tim’s creation

The Grafton bridge, the only crossing for cars, pedestrians and trains over the Clarence River. 

Traffic has been increasing for years, to the point that it has become a huge bottleneck, while the bridge quickly deteriorates under the strain.

Work on a second bridge has recently started, working from both sides of the the river, country town Grafton has now the novelty experience of four cranes and a barge at work. 

Our kids are mesmerised and closely following the progress.

Climbing wall in action, some people just don’t seem to be hindered with gravity...

Rain, rain, rain, the garden is looking like a bedraggled jungle. 

Even though the surrounding area has had frost, our veggie garden doesn’t, I’m still picking chillies, while the king parrots feast on a sunflower, very surreal for a winter garden!

Another Full Moon Gathering. With countless weather and flash flood warnings it was a small one, the kids didn’t seemed to be bothered too much with the rain. Getting a couple of hour of spotlight in, only to shelter in the treehouse when the rain picked up to torrential again.

The quince trifle was a hit.

David got bitten again, the last time that ended with surgery after two horrific weeks. Not knowing what bit him, we were on high alert straight away. The swelling has come down, no raging fevers, so it has probably “just” been a bull ant, opposed to the overnight spider bite in our previous episode. 

Having a cuppa at Big Oma’s Coffee House, where they serve many Dutch specialties (kroketten!), taking a break from running errands in Coffs Harbour. Managed to stock up on (real) liquorice as well...

Wet Spotted Gum Tree

Welcome to the jungle... (without Roses)

Wondering if this rain is ever going to stop, the rivers are coming up, roads are going under.
It has given “a long weekend", a whole new meaning... ;-)

Our house, serene on the outside

 Chaos on the inside

The pool filter split a seam and needed to be replaced (under warranty), the new filter has different connections and heights so Sander has been holed away in the pump shed playing with cutters and glue.

The upside, with all this rain we can use rainwater galore to refill the pool and clean the new filter medium.

All baked out, I’m hogging the best place in the house, 

right next to the fire.

Making great progress with my quilt (and blogging). While Sander is playing with his new mitre saw,   Tim’s build-in-wardrobe coming up soon.
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Project Pool: Rope Therapy

 The freestyle balustrade is ready!

Sander hard at work

Just the last finishing touches and Project Pool is finished!

Out of the trenches

I’ve noticed that after many years on survival mode, at last I’ve started to crawl out of the trenches and reintroducing myself to society.

Hello there!

Making an effort to be more social, getting in touch with friends, having friends over. 

It’s been so long, it almost feels like a novelty!

First step was getting rid of all my maternity clothes, we’re not having any more kids and David has waved nursing a year ago. Time to invest in some real bras and clothes that actually fit and that make me feel nice just wearing them. You know something other then those yoga pants and stretchy shirts that have felt many babies grow. They’ll be great for the garden, which has come back to life again. Spring is definitely in the air! I’m doing some serious planting with the kids to make the most of these new beginnings. They’re completely fascinated by putting in all kinds of little seeds in the ground that turn into plants and flowers. It won’t be a neat garden, with tidy rows, but the fruits will be all the sweeter.

The last couple of weeks have had their ups and downs. 

I’ve been very busy keeping the household on track, I still miss my cleaners, but have made a schedule with all the tasks sprinkled throughout the week into doable jobs. With being sick for a week I’m still catching up on many things that have accumulated while I slept. Sewing has been on hold, which I hope to pick up again next week.

We’ve had our first brush with nits, just thinking of it makes me itchy again. We’ve been mouse hunting in the pantry where that cute little mouse had a large nest of babies. The mess they make is all but cute, a good thing just about all my goods are in containers. Safe from harm, they did manage to get all the paper of the emergency cans. It has made for some very interesting meals this week...

Alex’ climbing keeps getting him into all kinds of trouble. A quick dash to the clinic when he burns his arm with hot tea, a foot stuck in barb wire. But also into places he shouldn’t be, like the top shelve of the pantry feasting on honey. Or into my handbag doing a runner with my car keys and locking himself in the car, refusing to open it, his siblings were a little later at school that morning...

One of the many highlights was seeing my sister Lisa at the opening ceremony at the Olympics where she was on a rowing holiday (reserve for womens quadruple sculls that took home silver).

 Making “I love farmers markets” wraps for hungry swimmers

Having friends over for lunch, 11 kids behaving themselves beautifully and having lots of fun in the water holes.

David with his highly treasured minions beanie, send by grandma, waving and smiling on our grocery run.

Sophie wanting piggy tail plaits for school to tame her mad halo of curls. This is a steep learning curve for me, I’m so not good with the girly stuff!

 Friday night cooking with Tim

For me a highlight, for Tim & Alex not as much. Only one more training and game to go and the soccer season will be finished. It’s been a lot of fun to see the teams grow and develop, they have really loved their first year of soccer. But I’ll be happy to have my Saturday mornings back!

Sander has started the balustrade, going with a nautical theme.
500 meters of rope therapy, but it looks stunning.

This week...

This week...

Saw the kids going back to school and me back to business. We started slowly but steadily, next week is full again with swimming lessons, music, sports and who know what else. 

I’m hoping to make it through this term a bit better, settling in for a marathon instead of a sprint. 

While hoping that David’s last molars come through quickly so we’re back at full nights of sleep. Days get so very long when you start the day at 3am...

A night out at a friends place made us realise how much we love to be out and social and should really make more of an effort to do just that.

At last, I’m back in the kitchen garden. It might be slow, it might not be to the standards I would like it to see, but even a little bit is more then nothing. So this morning, I planted out some herbs, flowers and a minimal of veggies. Although is getting better, the chooks are escape artists and just love kids visiting them, all those veggie seedlings to plow, eat and uproot! We’ll see if the new door works before I get my heart broken again and see two garden beds with veggies destroyed. Although there is still plenty growing, I would love to see the garden thriving again.

In the meantime I’m enjoying all the natives shrubs that I’ve planted throughout the years and keep adding to. It always brings a smile to my face seeing all vibrant colours attracting even more in the form of birds, butterflies and bees. How I love to see bees. Inspired by a fellow blogger, I’ve started asking around if there is a local beekeeper interested in keeping a hive or two on our property. Because of the large diversity of native trees and shrubs in combination on with the kitchen garden, there is always plenty of flowers and blossoms around. 

 The kids (and birds) are anticipating the harvest of the mulberry tree.

 Lots of limes, I anticipate cake this afternoon...

The pool deck keeps progressing, it’s looking awesome!

A Winter heatwave gave us 28 degrees and 4 kids in the pool making the most of it.

Only a day later and we’re back to a wintery 18 degrees and an overnight wood fire.

Two finished baby quilts, I’m absolutely stoked with both of them. They’re on their way to The Netherlands to my sister and sister-in-law. I’ll do a seperate post with some photo’s of the fronts on here, once they arrive there.

While looking for a specific fabric online, I came across this one, Sophie just happened to look over my shoulder and was instantly in love. Frozen blue and unicorns, this one just had her name on it she said. If I could pretty please make a pillow case out of it. 

The funny thing is that a couple of weeks ago, Alex found some fabric with foxes in my stash and wanted the exact same thing: a pillow case. And maybe a quilt to match it, please???? (insert puppy eyes). So the curtains just have to wait another week or so... ;-)

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