December 2015 Birthday and Christmas craft

Riley turned 7 at the beginning of December so we had a few friends over for games and lots of crazy noisey fun. He got some great presents, no.1 is his truck :)

(choc and flour cake game)

The end of year school Christmas parade is usually stressful but Lucas thought my painting and effort was all worth it! good!

Easiest costume in the world. thanks Riley!

So now, thankfully it's school holidays. Sleep ins, relaxed mornings and surrounding ourselves with Christmassy mess, craft and cooking.

Never complete without the musky tropical smell of mangoes :)

November end 2015

We took the kids out of school for a week towards the end of term (not like they do much anyway leading up to Christmas) and headed up north to Coffs Harbour.
We stayed a couple of nights in Dorrigo (pic below).

The Bavarian restaurant at the big windmill was FAB!

The butterfly house is always a favourite, though really over priced there is so much potential there! 

Lucas was the most still I've ever seen him in his life! He was determined to have a butterfly land on him :)

On the way down to Port Macquarie we stopped at Ricardo's strawberries. So delish but really, no cheaper than the shops. I suppose it's fresh and being able to pick and nibble that's better :)

The kids were apalled that I was dishonest enough to eat a strawberry before paying. I can live with that.

Timbertown at Wauchope was great fun! Sort of a weak version of Old Sydney Town but with a steam train.

The Koala hospital was a must visit and a good lesson for why dogs need to stay on a lead, why bush fires are dangerous for more than just humans and why tender loving care is sometimes the best medicine.

October 2015

Quick update for October.
We found a baby magpie on the bush track, either flew out, pushed out or blown out of the nest. It had a sad ending which was extraordinarily heart wrenching for Riley. A necessary life lesson. x

We went on our annual mulberry pick to the monster tree.

Made monster pies

Kids had a colour fun run at school.

Halloween - never again. The crash from the lollies just isn't worth it. But we had great costumes!!

Yabby Catching at Somersby Falls

I had this memory of visiting my brother in Coonamble years ago (just in the middle of no-where..) and he caught yabbies. They were de-lish! Steve took this awesome pic of one up at Somersby falls on the way to Nannies house, so we had a go at catching some.

 (Steve's awesome pics at the end)

We used sheeps kidneys on a string and tried to lure them out.

 First catch!! (ahem... only catch)

 We set up a few strings on sticks by the plunge holes. Really strange rock formations that all of a sudden have deep deep holes in the rocks.

Best part... getting stuck in the mud :)


Pics by Steve the previous week at Somersby Falls:
Yabbies are small and would fit in the palm of your hand, so I'm not sure if there are some mutant yabbies there, or this is just a really cool close up!

June School hols - environment day

The kids loved the local Environment day fete.. fair.. thing. They spend ages drumming with a man on his stall.. which was a bit embarrassing as we had to buy something after :) haha

They both LOVED helping on the wildlife stall. Lucas has an injured baby possom in that woolly pouch and Riley ofcourse, has a blue tongue lizard :)

They made their own milkshakes by bike power and somehow I ended up minding a fermented product stall while she went for lunch. Random but happy.

Lots of things to see..

We always end up at the park and getting stuck into some mess.

They made a really good cubby house at the end of the driveway. We later found spray paint, pen knives and other contraband items inside. Boys being boys eh?

National Maritime Museum

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