An unusual pet

We've had a lot of rain this summer/autumn and during the week I found a leech on the carpet downstairs.  I stood and watched it for a while, they are fascinating in a rather gross kind of way, and then called the kids to come and have a look.  Tess immediately decided we needed to keep the leech so ran and found a glass jar despite my protestations.  In the absence of any readily available blood we put a rose leaf in the jar for food and the jar was lovingly placed on top of the beautiful cake stand that Bella gave me for my birthday.  Every time I walked past the jar I carefully removed the lid for a couple of seconds to let in some fresh air and then carefully screwed the lid very tightly back on.  The leech lasted approximately 36 hours but in that time made a sizeable dent in the rose leaf - who knew?!  

Tom and Barney playing with boats in the bath at 10am

George at the shampoo stage

It's been a very busy second week of the school holidays which is not ideal but the kids have had fun.  We had friends over for play dates every day this week except for Friday when Tom and I headed round to Sequoia's house (Sequoia is Tom's "girlfriend" from school - she's a girl version of Tom if you can imagine) and whilst Saffron and I chatted, drank tea and ate cake, the 2 kids gave George, the guinea pig, a shampoo, condition and blowdry.  Tess participated in a 3 day netball clinic which started at 8.30 every morning a good 30 mins away from us.  I seriously object to having to hurry anywhere during the school holidays and despite a car pooling arrangement the early mornings almost finished off Tess and I.  


Friday evening found us round at the Mennies for a customary Friday night curry.  Jules and I were very very honoured to be asked to be Darcy's godparents and Tess is very excited because she reckons that makes her Darcy's godsister!!  


Saturday morning we were up bright and early for the first netball match of the season - we were relieved to find all our matches are a 9am start this season (as opposed to 8am last year) but the downside is that it's impossible to find a park.  Tess played goal defence in the first half and wing defence in the second half and was fantastic - she's really beginning to understand the strategy behind playing netball and did some spectacular intercepts.  In fact the whole team played amazingly well and you would not have thought they'd had a big long break which is credit to the amazing coaches.  In the evening we had dinner with 3 other families hosted by Trudie and Sheldon (Ruby's parents) and it was a fantastic evening.  After a busy sporting day and 2 weeks of school holidays everyone was ready to let their hair down.  Tom fell asleep in a tiny gap between 2 sofas and I'm a bit hazy about how we got home!  

The weather was again glorious on Sunday so we spent some time in the garden preparing the steps for decking with Tess and Tom doing some great digging and this is in spite of a conversation Jules had at the deli about the explosion of funnel web spiders as a result of all the rain!  In the afternoon Jules did an impressively long run and the kids and I went on a bush walk with an ice cream stop thrown in to keep everyone sweet.