April Activities

April has been a productive month.  We have enjoyed the settled autumn weather of cool nights and warm, sunny days.

I sometimes think, when I see other peoples photos of their nature walks, that we don't have anything as pretty.  But really the beauty is there if you choose to look hard enough.  It is more about perspective than it is about location.  

Life is just like that too.  Sometimes what we see around us seems boring or maybe ugly, but there is beauty there if we choose to see it.  The same goes for people.

This day I decided to take the youngest 3 on an adventure.  We headed down to the local river and went exploring.  It was great fun.

Life's simple pleasures - dandelion blowing.

The adventurer.

"This is my kingdom!" he cried aloud

Then we headed into the forest.

This is the only shot we seem to be able to get of these 2 lately.

Besties <3

 And sometimes I find lovely things on my camera...

Lego is a daily staple for the little boys.  One particular day Arrow saw Master Yoda from Star Wars on the computer and he wanted to make him.  This is where we found the instructions.  Yoda Lego Instructions

Our city clock tower was lit up red for Anzac Day.  We had made a family trip into town for dinner and we walked to the clock tower to see the Anzac displays.

Our silhouettes - can you guess who is who? 

 Autumn is my personal favourite season.  We found a decent pile of leaves in a park and had some fun with them.

We joined a community food harvesting group which gathers food to give to the organisations in our city who distribute free food to those in need.
The first harvesting we did was the University apple orchard.  We got to take some apples home with us too, which was a lovely bonus.

The second harvesting we went to was an enormous paddock of pumpkins...hundreds of thousands of them!  The estimate I heard was 500 tonnes!  Can you even imagine it!

The girls did a great job, and I am sure they now have a deeper appreciation of giving to others.
It is quite a humbling experience to work hard to collect food for others, and knowing that it was just going to rot and that it was impossible to gather all that was there so most of it will is a real life lesson.  There is so much waste in our world.

Look at those happy faces!  Good job girls.  

~Lorna

January Activities

The most important part of January was this little guy's birthday.  He turned 5 years old.  He loves trains, so we went to our local city children's playground where there is a miniature ride-on railway.  We rode the train, and then headed on to the pool to spend an afternoon swimming on a hot summer day.

 Cake by Butterfly.

My garden did really well this year.  Yay.

Hollyhocks

Alderman Tall Pea plants growing over a frame...yummy!

Giant Sunflower

Blossom among my leeks and spring onions

Crystal with a Gladioli

Swan Plants which are now just sticks!

My herb-walk path to the chicken area.

There have been some very hot days, calling for a visit to the local river for a cooling swim.

We are easing back into "schooling". 

White carnations in food colouring - science of plants taking up water.

Another colour science activity was "walking water".  Watching water drawn up the paper tissue and down into the empty cup.

Before - 4 cups half full in primary colours, 3 empty cups.

After - 7 cups equally full in the rainbow colours.

Crystal wanted to dry out the paper tissues to see how they looked.

A bit of fun mixing the coloured water.

Painting rocks.

Lego card building challenge.  This was Arrow's efforts.

Butterfly made her own "backstage" dresser with plastic cups and Christmas lights.

~Lorna

Backyard Renovations

Our backyard got a bit of an overhaul.  Needing to move one of our caravans meant rearranging things, giving me a perfect opportunity to revamp some areas to make them look fresh for the coming summer.

I made the decision to sow just over half my large veggie garden patch back into lawn.  We let one of our chickens out to forage for slugs and other bugs.  She was joined by one of our pigeons.

Josh the pigeon and Pebbles our old lady chicken joined us for the afternoon

 This corner brightened up when we transplanted our huge Yucca tree from the wine barrel it called home!  A few months ago my friend gave me a selection of succulents from her garden so they found a new home around the Yucca.

~Lorna