Birthday Boy

It was the second week of the school holidays and Tess spent Monday with Lisa, Tuesday at the zoo and Wednesday making jewellery. I took Thursday off so that Tess and I could spend the day together. We went to the imax cinema to see Under the Sea 3D and it was very funny seeing all these children reaching out trying to touch the fish in front of them. After the cinema we met up with Jules for lunch which made Tess feel very grown up.

On Friday we got together with Leanne and Alayne and their children and did a big bush walk starting at our house, up to Tania Park, along the Manly-Spit walk down to Reef Beach where we had lunch and paddled in the sunshine before walking back to the car that we had strategically dropped at the end of the walk - there was no way we would have got all 8 kids up the hill to my house again! It was a glorious day and the kids had so much fun particularly at the beach where they clambered over the rocks and ended up soaking wet from running in and out of the sea. The kookaburra in the picture stole my sandwich out of my hand which gave me quite a shock!

On Saturday Jules needed to fix the rudder back on the yacht so we headed down to Davis Marina. When he was taking the rudder off a couple of weeks earlier he dropped a washer into the sea and he was determined to retrieve it so we went down armed with a wetsuit, goggles and flippers. There was no sign of the washer and after a couple of feeble dives down I went home to get a fishing net so that Jules could sift the sand. Unfortunately this didn't help either and by the time Jules admitted defeat his toes were completely blue. A couple of helpful passers-by pointed out that a new washer would cost all of $1.50 from the local chandlers so potentially not worth the effort and risk of hypothermia - he did manage to catch a dead fish though which the kids thought was fantastic?!

In the evening the Mennies and the Jamos came round for a birthday dinner. Ryan had insisted that Julia re-create Jules driving into the dam on a quad bike and she did an amazing job as you can see!

After a week of sunshine (on Wednesday we had the same min and max temperatures as London!) it was a shock to wake up to an overcast day on Sunday. Jules had a lie in (too much red wine the night before) and after present opening we took the kids on another bush walk this time down to Clontarf. Tom has really come along with his walking - I wouldn't have dreamt of asking him to walk such a distance even 3 months ago so it's great that we can now enjoy these walks altogether. Jules had to leave mid-afternoon to go to NZ on business so the kids went for a play round at Hunters whilst I tidied the house and made dinner. The advantage of Jules being away on a Sunday evening is that I got to gossip on the phone with Kristie and Rae which is usually Jules' treat. It's 8pm now and both kids are sound asleep - bliss!