Home decorating!

 So for those of you that haven't been to our house our main bedroom had a really ugly feature wall that I really did not like at all! Its difficult to capture truly how ugly the colour was, but I am sure Ethan's nappy has been a similar colour at times hahaha! You will have to excuse the unmade bed and the pretty bad photos... but here is the bedroom wall in question pre home decorating!

Here's a look from down the hallway!

 So a couple of weeks ago I had finally had enough of "the wall" so off we went to Bunnings to get some new paint.... and we came home with a couple of rolls of wallpaper!

Jason was a wall papering machine, he papered the whole wall in Ethan's afternoon nap! Here is the hallway shot again for you... again, excuse the unmade bed! How much better does the wall look!

 Here's the whole wall! Jason did have to deal with a very old and crooked house so there is one part of the wall where the wallpaper just didn't meet/match up (bottom right under the windowsill). But we have a plan to fix that!

 Here is the pattern close up! Its sooooo pretty and no longer resembles a baby's nappy!

I have also been playing round with the off cuts and will make some art work for the other walls! This one was just an experiment... watch this space for the finished products!

So as you can imagine I am very happy with the new improved bedroom.... but the new wall paper really highlighted how awful the carpet is in the bedroom....

Friends of the Zoo

Ethan loves anmals (animals), he also loves the Movie Madagascar 3.... so two weekends ago we visited Perth Zoo, and enjoyed it so much that we became friends of the Zoo (i.e. buying an annual pass so that we can go as many times as we like!).

We started off in one of the bird enclosures... I didn't manage any photos of the birds, but it was a lovely setting!

We then headed off to see the elephants! Ethan was mesmerised!

We got to see turtle shells... they must have been sleeping when we visited!

Ethan loved "talking" to this furry fellow!

I really enjoyed the Zebras and loved some of the photos I got... so I have included a few of them here for you! Sorry if some of them look very similar!

While Ethan and Jason were checking out the lions den, I got a couple of old favourite shots of flowers... these ones were very interesting and made me wish that I had my macro lens with me!

Jason called me in just in time to catch the big cat up and about...

It was a warm and humid day and lots of the animals were happy to sit still... we willed them to move but they were staying put!

Ethan LOVES birds so we spent a bit of time checking these fellows out, which I was pleased about as I got some great photos!

Finally we said hello to the penguins - having a nice swim!

The following week we decided to take advantage of our passes and visit the Zoo again. I stupidly said - I won't take my camera this time as the animals weren't very active last time.... well the second visit was SOOOOO different. It was a cooler day, later in the afternoon (just before closing time), there were very few visitors and the animals were all very active! It was a whole different experience to the previous week and I missed getting the photos! But in saying that, I got to just enjoy being at the Zoo and enjoy seeing Ethan's reaction to the animals!

Happy Birthday Daddy... from Ethan

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY DADDY! 

Thank you for doing all the fun things that you do with me! 

You are always there for me, no matter how late it could be.
I am always excited to see your face, it is something that no one could replace. 

Happy birthday Daddy, I love you so much.

 I can't wait to see you and feel your gentle touch. 

I LOVE you Daddy, hope you have a great birthday xxx

Another year, another paddle to Rotto!

Every year since we have lived here Jason has support kayaked for a local swimmer in the annual swim to Rottnest Island (19.2km off-shore).

Jason borrows a kayak off our friends Sandy and Nathan, its very lucky that we can do this otherwise Jason would most likely need to use his canoe polo boat - which wouldn't be a pleasant 5 or 6 hours!

As you can see below, our boat crazy baby LOVES it!!! He runs round saying "mumma, its a boat", and "Dad, its a boat!"...

In the last few days leading up to the race the forecast was for pretty horrendous crossing conditions so Ethan and I declined the offer of tickets over the Rottnest Island to meet up with Jason when he finished. As it happened the bad weather never eventuated!

On race morning we needed to get Jason and the boat to Cottesloe beach by 6am. Ethan was such a good little boy - it probably helped by all the boats, planes, helicopters, and birds that he could spot! All we had was "mumma, its a boat, birbie (birdie), pane (plane), its a boat!!!!!!!". He was sooooo excited and had a great time!

The race itself was a bot different for Jason this year,his swimmer is usually a solo swimmer but this year he was swimming in a team. It meant the race start was later than usual but they were passing lots of people along the way - which is always good for morale!

Visit to Whiteman Park

Whiteman Park is a 40 square kilometre bushland reserve not far from Perth (around 30 mins drive from our place). The park has heaps of attractions:

• Lots of open lawn space for picnics;
• Playgrounds;
• a Water Playground;
• A 4km electric tram journey around the park;
• A 6km railway line around the park;
• A tractor museum;
• A car museum; and 
• The Caversham Wildlife Park.

We visited on the weekend and did the train ride, tram ride, playground and soft serve icecream (yummo). We will have to go back for the wildlife park and other attractions!

The Train

Ethan and Dad on the train waiting to leave the station 

Ethan getting excited about the train trip

"Train mama, train mama"

Some of the local bushland from the train!

 After the train we took a walk down to Mussel Pool.

 Some of the scenery down at Mussel Pool was great!

 Ethan and Dad had fun spotting tadpoles and turtles

Look Dad, there's a turtle.

While I spotted a pretty big, nasty looking spider.

After exploring the pool area we headed back to the village on the tram. Here's Ethan waiting at the tram stop. 

 And Ethan and mummy on the tram!

 After playing in the playground for a bit we all had a soft serve ice cream to tide us over until dinner!

All in all a great day, we will be back as there's plenty more to see! I am especially looking forward to taking Ethan to the wildlife park!

Busselton 10km race

A few weeks ago Jason, Ethan and I headed off to Busselton for the weekend for a 10km race. This was my first race since the knee injury and I was hoping it was going to go ok!

Busselton is a 2.5 - 5 hour trip depending on traffic! We left at 3.30pm so our trip (with a stop for a play and some food) was around 3.5 hours. Ethan was ok on the drive given we had picked him up straight from daycare!

We arrived in Busselton and it was idyllic! We went for a walk along the beach, grabbed a takeaway pizza and let Ethan have a play at a playground! I could actually feel myself unwinding after just being there 15 minutes! Ethan slept really well that night as well - given how difficult it was on our last away trip I was really happy! Ethan woke at 6.15 ish which was when I was due to get up anyway! So it worked perfectly!

The race itself was good, I didn't set any time records but I came 7th and I was happy with the effort and I made my time goal with 15 seconds to spare!

Here is Ethan on his All Blacks camp chair eating his breakfast on the foreshore while I am out doing my warm up!

Here's Ethan checking out the birdies and boats (two of his favourite things in the world) while I am racing!

All in all it was a successful weekend away!

Jungle Cub Sports

We have started Ethan in Jungle Cub Sports for a term. Its all about introducing 18 - 36 month old kids to a variety of sports. The program is about having a lot of fun with you children and also developing co-ordination, ball skills and listening skills etc. Sports covered in the sessions are soccer, rugby, AFL, basketball, cricket, athletics, obstacle courses and more!

There is a 9 week term and the kids have a cute little uniform to play in!

I would be lying if I said that the first week went well. As you can see below we had the kid rolling round in the goal in the background while others were passing the ball with their parents! It was a little struggle to get Ethan to concentrate and participate but we had to start somewhere!

Our second week was much more successful, it started out with some running relays and if there is one thing Ethan likes to do, its run! Just like his Mama! We then moved onto rugby which involved "scoring tries" on the mat. Ethan enjoyed rolling onto the mat (with or without the ball!).

I wonder what next week's class will bring!

New fence and landscaping part 1

Part of our side fence blew down in a winter storm and since then we have been working on getting it replaced.

First we removed the 4m high hedge that was down in the back half of the fenceline (which revealed a much more broken fence that we realised... in fact the hedge was pretty much all that was holding the fence up).

Jason and his Dad then worked on removing all the other plants and very deeply embedded roots from the hedge. We don't have a very beginning before photo, but here we are halfway through the job!

The three boys worked hard digging up all the tree roots!

But some of them proved far too hard for man power alone... so Betty was put to work!!! While Ethan and his Grandad Papps supervised!

Ethan showing the boys how its done!

Sheesh after all that hard work Ethan needs some sultanas and some milk!

After the plant removal the fence repair stalled for a few months as we submitted (and waited) for our insurance claim. Then we had to negotiate with the owner of the vacant block next door over the colour of the fence, the height of the fence and whether she would pay now or later (the law states that if there  is a vacant lot next door they only need to pay for their share of the fence when they erect a substantial building on the site). Lucky for us she agreed to pay her half, and agreed to the full height fence along the whole fence line. We did need to negotiate on the colour, but all in all it wasn't too difficult to get a satisfactory outcome.

So we were onto phase two! The fencing contractors came in and demolished the old fence (and old garden bed). This was not without drama as they broke a sewerage pipe and cut our internet cable. The sewerage pipe was fixed that day but it took around 10 days to get internet back!.

Look at the big hole we have with the old fence and garden bed gone.

You will see in the original photos above that there was a garden on the inside of the old fence, it was about a metre wide and slightly raised. We have decided to widen this garden and will eventually plant two citrus trees, herbs and a small vegie patch as well as a more established tree (or two) - that is phase 3 of our project.

Here is the new fence from the outside.

Here is the new fence from the back courtyard. We are now waiting on the fencing contractor to come back and put our new limestone wall in for the new, bigger garden. This should be done in the next week or two.

Watch this space for more developments as we finish the landscaping off! Is anyone free in the next month or so to come and help us move a couple of trailer loads of dirt into the new garden beds???