The great outdoors

We went camping the week after Easter. Remember the Farm? 

The Farm was not in use these holidays and we'd been advised that there were some lovely camping spots around the place AND we could light campfires and dance round naked if we wished seeing as it's private property. All 3000 acres of it.

So we did. Light a campfire that is, not dance round naked. A tad too chilly for that.

We spent the first night in the homestead, seeing as we arrived after dark. The next morning saw us all out on the hill with hubby and his remote controlled airplane.

Then we drove to our recommended campsite (a 4 wheel drive would have been handy here but our trusty old sedan made it), right on the Goulburn river. Being autumn, the weather was perfect for having the campfire burning all day, though we did manage to peel off our fleece jumpers at various times when it almost felt hot.

See those grey clouds in the background? Yup, it rained about 2 minutes later. We had a few short showers that first day but nothing torrential.

After a chilly start the next day,

Exploring we all went. Plenty of wombat holes around and although the kids had us out both nights after dark with torches, no wombats were seen in action. Plenty of fresh wombat poop though, so we know they were there.

Too cold for an actual swim but they still managed to get wet of course. The river was running quite high, so even if it was warmer, I'm not sure they'd actually be swimming.

A bit of afternoon chess, lots of s'mores making, roasting apples, spuds and corn cobs in the embers.
The sun went down by about 7pm and so did we. Apart from wombat hunting that is.

Another chilly morning, not quite a frost, but almost. Who can breathe out the biggest steam cloud?
Listening to the kookaburras and magpies serenade the dawn.

Beautiful countryside

And we got to see the sun rise through the mist.

We spent two nights in the wild and one more night up at the homestead before heading back home. A lovely trip and a first intro for the boys into 'camping in the wild' as we called it. Pooping in a hole, grass in the food and lots of fresh air.

Must do it again soon, though we may wait till close to summer I think...

School hols over and back to the routine

Life has been a bit off-kilter here because my dear hubby was away for a month....yes, a month!....including the two weeks of school holidays. Ai yi yi! 

We survived, obviously.

The school hols we spent at The Farm which was just fabulous, joined at different times by one of my sisters and one of my brothers. The boys were in heaven, and so was I most of the time. 

Photographing a squashed-on-the-road snake.
No photos of the live brown snakes we saw though.

Feeding the farm dogs.

The helmets were so cool, they wore them everywhere the first few days.

About to go on a platypus hunt. 

Unsuccessful as it turns out, two loud little boys don't help, I'm sure.

Glorious view in the morning as the fog lifts.

The stillness and blissful quiet was broken from time to time, by some very, uh, tuneful singing. And loud keyboard. Turn up the echo on the karaoke machine and I'm sure every sheep and every cow in every bl**dy paddock could hear us.

Er, I mean them. Well, mostly them.

More morning views.

Loads of mud around after the storm that apparently just about drowned Melbourne.
Ah, the bliss of living on a great big hill.

Here is the aforementioned rain.

These were inspired by Mr 6 seeing three baby rabbits out the bathroom windows one morning.

And this set Mr 6 into "Can I have a pet, pleeeeeease?' mode.
(There may some bantams coming for Christmas if I can find some young ones, shhh.)

The view again. Yawning yet?

Lots of art happened.

A true picasso, that green smear is the dead snake from the first photo.

'The bog' as the boys called it. An overfull stream in reality.

Bullseye!

Hanging out in the Goulburn River.

Yep, a great time was had by all.

Mr 6 is now back at school, hubby is home and life has regained some semblance of normality.

Yay!

School holidays are kicking my butt!

Two weeks of school holidays and oh boy, I now see why many parents breathe a sigh of relief when school goes back. Not that my kids are even in school yet, so what hope do I have when they are??

Mr 5 has 12 hours of preschool a week, not a heck of a lot, but just enough to give us some breathing room. Add to that a weekly gymnastics class and swimming lessons and the week starts to actually seem very busy.

And now, two WHOLE weeks of time to ourselves.

Which I thought would be great, the kids seemed a bit over being told to hurry up and get your shoes on/find your hat/go and pee/grab your goggles/where's your drink bottle/I TOLD you to do it five minutes ago/quick/hurry! etc. But the boys (and I) are all getting on each other's nerves, what with too much inside-time due to winter and no other kids his own age/strength for Mr 5 to bounce off.

I actually feel like I've started a new job. This is the first time I've had both kids home ALL THE TIME. Last school hols they were both still in daycare one full day a week. No longer.

So my plan for next school holidays:

Buy (ahead of time) 1 million glue sticks for the hot glue gun.

Buy 10 rolls of sticky tape.

Stock up on cardboard boxes and random sheets of styrofoam. 

Have a few meals in the freezer.

Have cookie dough ready to go, in the freezer.

Have a giant stack of new library books.

Have all bike/pram tires and footballs pumped up.

Fence that darn front yard.

 (Proving to be more difficult than originally thought, due to the planning amendment that needs to be amended...)

That's all that comes to mind right now.

My butt has been saved for next week however, we are again (unexpectedly) house sitting the mansion.

And that follows on from a free weekend (actually last weekend) at the snow!

Ok, so it was just free accommodation, but still, that's usually a very exxcy part of a snow trip.

And it did actually snow, though it was still technically low season by a few days.

Mr 5 was in H.E.A.V.E.N.

We're hoping to get back there this season and up the slopes ourselves, which I haven't done since I was preggers with Mr 5. Yoiks!

Aren't they cute?

So, on the menu for this week is....

a zoo trip (we're 20 minutes closer to the zoo from the mansion, so yay for that)

cookie making

walking the dogs - both kids loooove to do that

a play date or two - all our friends love to visit us at the mansion

orange and lemon gathering, from trees around the border of the mansion property

lots of tree climbing/trampolining/scooter riding/sandpit digging

kumquat wars (the mansion driveway is lined with kumquats that go uncollected)

Deep breath....

See you on the other side!!