Charity

We received our new pots and pans today, so we decided to donate the old ones to our local charity case...


...Zemmy has been loving banging the old ones together and pretending to eat food out of them.

2009 Easter Show

What do you do on holidays anyway? Sitting in the sun and watching your toenails grow. Yeah? Somehow, as appealing as that sounds, it just doesn't happen at our house! So, what do we do when we have nothing to do? Go to the Easter Show! But there's no point in going alone so we managed to convince Adrian to wag work and come along too.

And we had an awesome day! At first we followed the animal trail through the different animal pavilions. Zemmy loved seeing the pigs, goats, sheep and cows. He recognized horses and chickens.



We loved getting the free taste-testing food at the Woolworths exhibition.

This 'fish' was made entirely from apples.

We took in the sights of sideshow alley. We watched the finals of the woodchopping events. We tried to get in to see the racing, jumping, swimming pigs...but the lines were too long.

We finally took a ride on the big wheel before we headed home on the trains, exhausted from such a big day.

Big Day In

Well, Pop and Nan Cole took off back to Queensland this morning, but not before coming over to say goodbye.


After such a big day yesterday, we had a leisurely morning. So did the chooks, by the looks of it.

Eventually, we got ourselves motivated and went out to the park in the afternoon. Zem had terrific fun on the slippery slide, the swings and playing in the chip bark.



Finally, at home Zem got stuck into some of his Easter chocolate.

A walk in the gardens

Easter has been a fun time this year. We even had a visit from Pop and Nan Cole. Together, we wend for a trip up to the Hunter Valley Gardens. It was a beautiful day, with heaps to see. On the way home, we stopped by Ellen White's old home "Sunnyside". Although Zem was tiring, we were shown through some of the rooms and saw some of the original furniture and garments that were used when Mrs White stayed in Australia. There was also a South Sea Islander Museum beside the homestead. It was well stocked with all sorts of tribal and traditional dress. Not to mention weapons, communication drums, and decorative weaving. Zem only wanted to play with the rocks in the driveway by this time, so I missed out on the rest of the tour as I looked out for him.

Some of the our day's highlights included the 'Storybook Garden'. Here's Zem with Humpty Dumpty.

And here, at a tea party with the mad hatter.


Sometimes, old sayings still ring true... as we passed this feature, all Zem wanted to do was jump out of the pram and play with the mud.

Mud and rocks, a match made in heaven.

What do you mean I have to put it all back??

Can't you see the family resemblance?

Here are some of our favourite photos of the day.








All up it was a really fun day to spend with Pop and Nan Cole.

Greenhouse and Zem

When Sharlene and I decided to retain the back yard, we decided that we would buy treated pine sleepers from the supplier rather than from a retailer. As it turned out, we then had to buy a bulk amount of sleepers, which, although cheap, were more than we needed. So for the last year, we have been wondering how on earth we could possibly get rid of about 20 sleepers. At this time, we also had been experiencing some problems with our seed strike rate when planting directly into the soil. The answer to both these problems was quite clear - build a green house. Adrian kindly gave us some help at the beginning, and Shar and I put the finishing touches to it last Friday. It means that we only have 5 sleepers left, and we now have a place to propagate our seedlings. It also means that some of our gardening stuff can rightfully be kept in the greenhouse instead of cluttering up my shed.





The backyard is now mostly clutter free. I have been planting grass runners throughout the back yard over the past few weeks in an effort to get the area greened up without having to resort to turfing the lot. Most of the shoots are still green, although the chooks and dog have caused some casualties. Hopefully, next spring will see a nice green colour over the back. It will also mean less sand and dirt in the house.

Little man Zem is really trying hard to grow up. He copies sounds, facial expressions, gestures and thinks that he generally is the boss. Especially when the television is on...

Coming out of the closet...

Recently, we altered the furniture position in our lounge and dining room...Zem loved his new space on the lowest shelf.





And finally, here's a short vid of Zem's first birthday party: