Spring has sprung

We did not take this trail! Keep walking little ones...

Entering the chasm.

Today is the Australian Father’s day so we celebrated by going for a nice walk this morning with another American family.  We headed out to Stanley’s Chasm again, though this time the weather was perfect – we have just entered the spring season here and the weather is incredible.  If you follow the blog you might remember this was where I swallowed my first fly, so thank you Heather for bringing fly repellent – worked like a charm.  We had seen recently in a local Chinese restaurant that the boys were born in the year of the monkey and they have really taken that to heart, they now think they need to climb every tree and large rock formation they see.

The climbing monkeys.

The Burlesque show.

Last night we had a wonderful date night and went to see a show at the local arts theater called Caravan Burlesque.  We honestly were not quite sure what to expect but when the opening act was what we thought to be a man doing a striptease only to be surprised by the naked breasts, we knew we were in for a show.  You could not help but think that this show would have never taken place back in the USA due to the extreme amount of full frontal nudity.  The show ended with 2 Abba songs and the entire audience of 500 on their feet, dancing. Great Night.

Straight hair.

As I mentioned earlier we are in the first few days of spring here, we are hoping the spring season will bring us some much needed rain – it has not rained here in 4 months!  For the last 2 months I have been wearing my hair straight due to the complete lack of humidity, not the best weather for those of us with natural curly hair!  The funny thing is Friday night JD and I were both awakened from the sound of rain on the roof, but as we mentioned it to others throughout the day no one else was aware of any rain.  I had begun to get that, “I must be nuts” feeling, but then Dillon said he had heard it also.  Saturday night we heard the same noise so I jumped up to see for myself if it was raining, turns out a sprinkler head had broken and the water was shooting on to the roof – so still no rain, and none in the forecast!

This weekend was also the end of the soccer season; the boys have played very well in spite of playing on a team with mostly 3^rd graders.  They have enjoyed it but we are glad to be moving on to the next sport, basketball.

The Drinking, not Sinking crew

Last weekend there was a golf tournament put on by the Rec. Association for J.D.’s work, J.D, played on a team called “Drinking, not Sinking” and they lived up to their name.  I volunteered and worked selling raffle tickets on a par 3 hole, with 23 teams of mostly blokes coming through it made for a fun day.  It was our first time on the golf course, we are hoping to get out there more often.  J.D.  was very lucky during the raffle, he won a family membership to the local tennis club and a gift certificate to the local video store – if you are wondering I had nothing to do with the raffle, I just sold tickets.

Swags by the fire

This what he looked like day 2

A few weeks ago the boys went on their first camping trip, it was a school class trip and they spent 2 nights out at Simpson’s Gap.  J.D. joined them for the first night just to be sure they would be OK with camping, the kids all slept in swags (a swag is defined as an Australian bedroll, it is canvas sewn together with a foam insert, you can put either a sleeping bag or bedding inside, then there is a flap on the top end to fold over your face while you are sleeping).  It was a very cold night at 26 degrees F., but between the fire and the layers of clothes they did great.  On the camp there was a talk by a local ranger showing them how to track the wildlife, they were also visited by a group of aboriginal women who taught them traditional crafts and cooked up a “bush” lunch that included kangaroo tail.  Dillon said he spit his out behind a tree!  The boys loved camping and after 3 days I picked up two of the dirtiest boys I had ever seen from school, they were smiling from ear to ear.

Learning how to track wild animals.