They do make me chuckle...

We managed to jinx the weather once again this weekend with talk of a quick one night camping trip. We woke this morning to find the glorious sunshine of the week replaced by dark clouds and thundery rumbles. So after packing the stuff into the car and back out again twice over, we finally made the decision that we'd be mad to go, and went off out for a day trip instead.
We went to an old town to the East of Perth called York. It's a one street town, but quite a pretty one. They have a motor museum which kept us occupied for the best part of an hour and had some amazing old cars and memorabilia, the boys loved it but would ideally have like to be able to get inside all the cars for a play.

We had lunch at a local hotel and were served by a girl from Tipperary who had cousins Brian knew in Kerry- scarily small world- then went for a walk by the river and found a pedestrian suspension bridge over the river Avon which is rickety and huge fun for the kids.

The boys in their turn gave me a laugh too. On the drive out they had some (nominally) chicken flavoured corn puffs to nibble- a bit like wotsits but not cheesy. These are new and Ru was the more adventurous to try them. When asked what they were like he answered "Yumm, they're pieces of chicken flavour yellow chocolatey stuff" Interesting concept I thought, if not necessarily an appealing one.

We had the Levellers playing on the stereo and Alfie asked about the words to one of the songs -"Beautiful Day". I told him part of the chorus "nothing is impossible in my own powerful mind" and proceeded to talk to him about how that was a great way to think of life - if you believe in something nothing's impossible and you can do anything you want. Perhaps my choice of words was poor and I should have used "achieve" instead of "do" in that last sentence though, because a nodding, serious looking Alfie came straight back at me with "You can do anything except break the speed limit Mummy, only the policemen can do that." 

I'll keep my philosophical thoughts to myself in future!!

Natures harvest.

We've spent a bit of time since moving into our new house doing some gardening. It's soo lovely to have a proper garden again but much of the "border" area is overgrown with bracken so as a quick fix I've planted up some tubs with herbs, tomatoes and pea plants to get us underway. A small area near the house that was fairly easily weeded out has been the recipient of some courgette plants, known here as zucchini, and some strawberries are going in there too when I get organised.

Lettuce and tomatoes.

Sugar snap peas.

The boys always love to get involved in digging and planting, especially when there's the promise of some food at the other end of it.

Whoever originally planted out this garden must have been a person after my own heart as there are fruit trees galore here, which I find very exciting. As well as the very normal (for these climes) lemon and orange trees, of which we have several, there are also a couple of more unusual ones. At the far end of the garden is a large Mulberry tree which is currently laden with fruit and which I'm ashamed to say I only discovered last week as it's a bit overgrown down there.

Lemon tree by the pool (which you couldn't miss!)

Mulberry tree (which I nearly missed).

 There are also two large bushes of a fruit that we couldn't even start to identify. It looked as if it should be edible, but in the absence of an ID, we didn't dare try. So today went to the garden centre laden with a branch of fruit and leaves and immediately met a man who proclaimed "Oh lovely loquats, lucky you."  "What?" said we. "Could you write that down please?" - so he did. And now we have yet another great source of fruit from the garden.

Apparently it's also known as a Japanese plum -I'm going to need to google search some recipes though if we're to use all this bounty well.

Oranges from the trees

Big bowl of mulberries.

But for now we're managing to enjoy it in a very simple way. Fresh fruit pancakes with vanilla yoghurt for breakfast is surely one of the best starts I can think of to a day.

Yum.

Camping(!) and a birthday boy.

In the past couple of weeks we've bought camping gear, put up the tent, and then failed spectacularly to actually go camping!! Last weekend was the planned trip, so the weekend before we bought a stove, camp kitchen, inflatable bed, chairs, sleeping bags. We had already borrowed a tent from Brian's cousin, but hadn't put it up and had no idea how easy or difficult that may be, so it was decided a trial run was in order just to be sure. In fact, despite the fact that it is by far the biggest tent I've ever used, it also turned out to be the easiest. These canny Aussies are into their camping you see, so they use a bit of common sense and make it foolproof.  The poles are colour coded in each length, and then the tent itself has colour coded tabs. You'd need to be an extra from "Dumb and Dumber" to mess it up.

Anywayyy, having done all our research the weather seemed to turn a little. The rain came in and the nights got cool, and we all managed to come down with a dreadful cold/ cough/ chest infection thing. In the end it was decided that we'd leave the trip for another time ( read "wimped out").  The friends who we were going with went anyway and had a ball- weather lovely.  Typical!

Having ducked out of the camping, we managed to go completely mad and went and bought a car instead. We wanted a 7 seater to make life easier when parents or friends come visiting, plus extra boot space (for all the camping equipment!) when there were only the four of us. So after a small amount of research and 3 test drives, we chose a 2008 Holden Captiva Diesel. Sad to say I wanted it basically because I liked it best to look at and it's nice and high off the ground. Brian's reasons were to do with fuel economy and boot space and those are of course the reasons money was actually parted with! So far anyway the boot space has had little advantage as the boys are insisting on using those seats every day for novelty value!

Wednesday brought Ru's fourth birthday. It goes without saying I can hardly believe it. He got a new bike which he absolutely loves, but has already had to watch Alfie use more than himself as it's a little on the large side. His next favourite pressie was a Lightning Mc Queen laptop from his Grandma and also an Ikea pop up tunnel which has provided hours of fun for a child who is as often as not pretending to be a cat or a mouse anyway.

We went to Jandakot airport for a treat and met  a couple of friends there. This is not the international airport. It's the "local" airport with helicopters, training flights, royal flying doctor service etc using it- and it's really busy. What a great spot for a boys day trip though. There's a cafe with picnic area directly overlooking the two runways, the refuelling area and the helipad, so we sat and drank coffee and cut his cake with entertainment on tap.

And today is Saturday. The Rugby World Cup has overtaken our afternoon. I sit typing and watching the Ireland-Wales match. Currently it's 10-10 but the Irish are struggling and it's a bit disheartening. Having said that, we're in the garden, the sun is shining and I have a beer beside me.

Not such a bad way of life really.