Climbing

A few years ago, we had to encourage K to give climbing walls a go. They are great for learning that you have to persist with something over time, in order to improve. K now eagerly lines up to participate whenever we come across an opportunity to climb.

This one, at the foreshore over the holidays, promotes itself as the largest mobile climbing wall in Australia.

 K gave it a pretty good go, but didn't quite make it to the top. I'm sure she will build on this though for next time, and will push herself a little bit higher.

 We decided to try out, for the first time, a local climbing facility on the holidays. Daddy looked after the harness - which sounded all a bit complicated for Mum.

 K tried many different climbs, and eventually found some where she was comfortable getting to the top. This was a big confidence booster for her, as she has never actually made it to the top of a mobile climbing wall before.

K had fun climbing this rope. She has memories of doing this during gymnastics training in Darwin and always struggling to get up very far, whereas other girls could climb all the way to the roof. It is great to see her climbing has improved, or maybe it was the confidence the harness provided here. In Darwin, the girls climbed 10m to the roof with no harness at all. Regardless, K did a great job. Mum knows she wouldn't be pulling herself even one metre off the ground.

We Live Here

During the school holidays, our local beaches have many hundreds of people that flock to them daily. They become busy, crowded, and parking can be a nightmare.
At other times of the year, locals get to enjoy the beaches in all their glory, in relative peace.

These pictures were taken the week before the holiday break.

We haven't been swimming at the beach really in January. We will probably wait for school to go back, the holiday crowds to disappear, then will spend some time there in February. It's too easy for K to just jump in the pool at the moment at the end of the day, when we get home from work. To go to the beach, we have to make an effort. 

We live in a place though envied by many. We must make more of an effort to get to the beach :-) 

My Oh My

Have we grown.
Rumble is 8 months old.

He's a pretty good alarm. Although an outside dog, he has worked out what time our alarm goes off and normally starts belting on the door about five minutes before this, trying to find out where we are. I haven't needed the actual alarm to wake me this week, after being back at work, at all. Unfortunately, this morning he was 15 minutes early. This resulted in consistent banging from 4:30am - on a Saturday!! At about 5;15, I gave up, and got up so the rest of the family had a chance to get some more sleep. I need a 'turn off the rotti alarm' plan for the weekends clearly. I'm not looking forward to tomorrow morning.

Water and Sand

Although we only live 10 mins from the beach, we actually have more than enough water and sand a lot closer to home to keep K entertained.

I think Rumble actually enjoys the sand more than K.

 Like two warring knights, both K and Rumble claim their castle.

K has fun rolling down the hill, just as she would if she was at a dune at the beach.

Rumble does a good job of protecting his castle from the Blue Knight.

Unfortunately the sand fun is time limited. The Yellow dragon (aka bob cat) will probably tackle these piles tomorrow and leave them flattened across the yard.

Turning 7

K received a new bed for her 7th birthday. She's always wanted a bunk bed, but we have no need for a lower bed. This one has a desk and cupboard underneath, and drawers as stairs. She loves it. Mum doesn't like the fact she needs a ladder to make the bed. Needless to say, it doesn't happen too often.

 We got to visit Nanna and Grandad on her birthday, and K was spoiled of course with gifts galore. She adores her visits to see Nanna and Grandad.

 We had a party a little bit earlier with some friends from school. It was a Spooky Party. The kids had fun with broomstick relays, turning each other into toilet paper mummies, finding monster treasure and creating witch potions.

Thank you to Nanna and Grandad for the lovely costume.

Some spooky friends

Thank you to sister S for the cake. It was delicious. 

And a big thanks to three of K's favourite people in the world for spending the day with us and 16 little monsters.