Monday's swimming day

The boys have swimming lessons on a Monday afternoon. We've recently changed swim schools and have moved from an indoor pool to an outdoor pool. It has been a bit of a shock to their systems as it has been a wee bit chilly at times. Anyway, here are some action shots. Test yourself and try and work out which is Daniel and which is Oliver. I will admit they do look very similar in some of these shots.

Happy Birthday Ollie

It was Oliver's Birthday yesterday. We started the morning with the always exciting opening of the presents.
The main present was a Gameboy. Daniel gave him two remote control cars. They came as a double so you can race them.
Oliver went off to school with meringues shaped as ice cream in cones for each of his classmates. After tea we had a sponge cake with jam and cream. Yum!

A beautiful flower

Dad and Carol live on a couple of acres in country NSW. It has been very dry there lately (as with most of Australia), but with a little TLC they have still been able to produce some lovely flowers. This one was only a bud last time we were there, so Carol sent us a photo when it bloomed. Isn't it exquisite?
They also recently invested in a Wollemi Pine. Here is an extract from the official Wollemi Pine website ..... "The Wollemi Pine is one of the world's oldest and rarest plants dating back to the time of the dinosaurs. With less than 100 adult trees known to exist in the wild, the Wollemi Pine is now the focus of extensive research to safeguard its survival."
The boys were very impressed it was a prehistoric tree that was around at the same time dinosaurs were.

The Picnic Rug

The latest project I've been working on is for our school fete. Each class had to make "Something for Outdoors". I put an email out to Daniel's class (as somehow I've found myself being the Class Mother) to get suggestions. We had a few which I put to the teacher and I added as a last minute thought "If we get really stuck, we could always do a picnic rug". Well guess what ..... we got really stuck. The teacher and the children came up with picnic ideas and then painted them onto the calico. Each child did one painted block and one screen printed flower. I pieced it together and here is the final result.
If anyone is interested, let me know and I'll put a bid in for you at the auction.
P.S. Daniel's is the sun block in the centre.

Happy Anniversary

Wayne and I celebrated our 5th Wedding Anniversary last week. I thought I'd reminisce for a moment and include a couple of our wedding photos. The quality is not that wonderful as I took a photo of a photo.

We scrub up quite well if I do say so myself!

Karrrrrrateeeeeeeeee

The boys went back to Karate this morning. They do a lesson every Sunday morning during the school term. Daniel has been doing Karate for two years and is an Australia's Youth Ninja 3rd Degree Purple belt. Oliver has been doing Karate for one year and is an Australia's Youth Warrior 2nd Degree Orange belt. You wouldn't want to meet these two at night in a dark alley!

Bye Bye Little Car

Well, the car has gone to the smash repairers this morning. They will probably be holding onto it for about a week, 24 hours for the initial insurance assessment and five days for the repairs. For those of you who don't know, our car was vandalised last week. Someone drove past our car parked on the street and thought it would be a good idea to throw a wheelie bin at it. It has created a lot of damage, we couldn't even get into the car through the driver's side door. It is not much fun climbing through to the driver's seat from the passenger's side. At least the smash repair place have given us a courtesy car for the duration. :(

Welcome to Term 4

It was the first day back at school today. Even though Ollie didn't get out of bed until ten to eight this morning, the boys were looking forward to going back to school and seeing all their friends.
Daniel's teacher had an eventful holiday, she broke her foot closing a window somehow. The story was a little sketchy, Daniel's not the best at recalling details.

Pete and Barney

Pete and Barney are two more members of the Harding family. They are our pet budgerigars and we acquired them about 6 months ago. We decided to let them out of the cage this evening as they haven't been out for a long time.
Everyone was a little nervous, but it was all good and the boys handled them really well.
Barney is the white one and Pete is the blue one. Do you like Daniel's pirate impression?

She's back

Yesterday Helen came home from her 3 week holiday to Morocco. The boys and I went and picked her up from the airport in the morning and it was so good to see her. She had a wonderful time and came home with many photos and interesting stories. She spoilt herself and bought a stunning rug which she's put in the entrance hallway to her house. It's handmade from silk and the workmanship is superb. They say they get better with age and wear.
We also went and picked up Brookfield. He was very happy to see his Mummy.

The holiday's almost over

This week the boys went to vacation care at school and had a wonderful time as usual. Their program consisted of a climb up Centrepoint tower, a picnic in the park, a trip to a leisure centre that had 9 or 10 jumping castles in varying forms and their favourite, Wheels Day, when they get to take their bikes.

When I arrived to pick them up in the afternoon, I was met with "Mum, watch me do a wheelie!" ..... I closed my eyes.

They're back

I went to pick up the boys yesterday and bring them home from their week away at Epi's. They had a wonderful time and they had an opportunity to see all of their cousins in the one week, which they enjoyed very much. They did lots of bike riding, playing game-boys, learning chess, playing the piano and making very special items in the workshop. What a lovely way to spend the first week of their school holidays. There was one last social event we needed to attend before returning to Sydney and that was the Blessing of the Animals at Epi and Carol's church.


It was our job to bring Macca, which meant a short ride in our car from home to the church. Check out Ollie's "war wounds" on his leg.


The small country church was filled with adults, kids and dogs for the service which included each animal being blessed individually by the priest, Genieve. All animals were very well behaved and everyone was rewarded at the end with a sausage sizzle.


It was time for the Hardings to hit the road after a sausage in a piece of bread and then two very exhausted boys fell asleep and slept almost all the way home. There was the most beautiful full and golden moon last night which guided us home.

It is a miracle!

Yes, it is true. I actually did some exercise today. Ben and I went and played squash which we haven't done for about two years. The result: Ben won 5 games, Sally won 0 games. It's no wonder the man who worked at the squash centre just happened to come up to us at the end of our session to offer me a free squash lesson. He added "... not that you're a bad player or anything". Not half!!

What do boys do at their grandfather's ......

.... climb trees of course!!



And who supervises the tree climbing .....


.... the dogs of course, Macca and Kumul!
Sal x

Off to Epi's

Wayne and I have just returned from dropping the boys at my Dad's house for a few days over the holidays. On the way we stopped in at Berrima, a small town which you now by-pass while on the highway, but this time we decided to drop in and what a discovery. Lots of nice little shops that reminded us of Monteville, which is in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland in Queensland.


We had a Ploughman's Lunch at The Old Bakehouse. It was lovely and the service was fantastic. Highly recommend a stop-off in Berrima if you have the time. Sal

P.S. Berrima Patchwork is For Sale if anyone's interested. I might know someone who'd like to manage a place like that!!