At the beach
Eden is loving living only thirty minutes away from the beach. So much so that we were there on Friday, Saturday and Monday (lucky he was working today...I think Chloe and i needed a break from the sun and sand). One of the reasons that Eden loves going to the beach is to go spear fishing. For a Sydney-sider he thinks that there are lots of fish in the water though all the locals have a diferent idea about what lots is. Since Chloe saw that Eden was so happy with his spear she thought she would have a go too.
Dirt...
...that is the word that comes to mind when I see our block;
dirt.
Eden arrived in Tassie a week before I did and in that short time he with the help of an excavation machine and Ben Ziesel, transformed our block from a beautiful lush green rolling hill into, well,
dirt...and lots of it.
Before
If he could make that much dirt appear in one week lucky I didn't leave it too long before I followed him down. At the moment I can't envisage that there could ever be a house built on all that dirt, but I will trust him as he is the professional.
Will keep everyone posted on the progress of our dirt pile ;) Hopefully the dirt will soon be joined by concete and timber and all those things that are supose to be on a building sight...not just dirt.
New Boots
We thought that since we are now in the country we needed to get Chloe some proper country shoes as sandals with holes in them just were not cutting it. Today we went into Del City to see what we could find and surprisingly we found some little boots in her size. After her nap we went outside to play and gave the new boots a try. Watching her first attempts at walking in them was quite funny as she waddled like a pigeon toed duck. For about five minutes she convinced herself that she could not walk in the without holding our hands. She even thought it was safer to crawl on the gravel drive then walk in her new boots unaided. We thought the problem might be that they were too tall (they only had tall ones in her size) so we rolled them down and her confidence began to grow. When her walking was almost normal we rolled them up and she managed just fine, she even did some stomping and a little dance. All in all I think she likes her new boots.
Mummy still needs some 'country shoes'
Besties
One of the saddest things about moving to Tassie is taking Chloe away from the people who she absolutely loves so much. Every morning when she wakes up the first words to come out of her mouth are Adalia (her cousin), Max (her uncle), Mamar (her grandmother), Pa (her grandfather) and an assortment of the extended family pet names. She really adores her family and they adore her especially Adalia, who wakes up saying "Going to see Chloe". They have spent so much time together in their short lives that both my sister Vienna and I are not sure what we are going to say to them when I leave later this week. My brother in law Ricki told Adalia that we were going to heaven but I think we convinced him that that is not going to work especially when we come to visit or talk on the phone ;)
Today I thought I would go over and let the girls hang out together. They played for a while and then we decided to help them make some cookies.
Chloe has not done any real cooking yet as she has been a bit young so while Adalia who has had a lot of cooking experience knew exactly what to do Chloe thought it was fun to flick the flour around.
In the end Chloe got the hang of using the cookie cutter and we ended up with some very individual looking stars.
It wasn't the children that we had to worry about getting to the cookies while they were cooling rather my brother in law who ate the A cookie we made especially for Adalia- whats that saying, 'Never work with kids, animals or men' :)
Adalia was so excited when she got her first cookie to decorate, I think if we left the cooking experience their she would have been satisfied.
Not the prettiest looking cookies but its all about process not product when you are one and two.
After the cooking it was time for a nap. Normally the girls go to sleep together in the same room pretty well but the must have been hyped up from the red food colouring in the icing today. Chloe was showing her disapproval at being put to bed in a very loud way. When they finally dosed off I had a peak and Adalia, who had been telling Clo to "lay down and stop crying," had the pillow wrapped around her head to cover her ears. I went back with the camera to get a photo but she had moved, oh well maybe another time.
Spots
Put a
spot over here,
And a spot over there,
And a spot on your ear,
And a spot in your hair.
And a lot of little spots in the air everwhere.
It's a chicken pox kind of day!
A week at the beach
Just after Christmas most of my family went away to Nelsons Bay for our annual family holiday. Since we got our 'toy' 4WD Eden has been looking forward to going to Stockton Beach because there are really large sand dunes that you can drive on. Near where we stopped there was a 4WD tour/lesson group. One of the students was not doing to well as they got bogged, and I mean bogged, twice just in the short space that we could see them. I guess that's what happens when people think that there toy 4WDs are the real thing. This photo is what not to do when you go sand dunning.
After we went for a drive we found a nice big hole to slide down. Chloe wasn't to interested in going down the dunes but she loved playing in the sand.
This is the hole that we were sliding. That is Eden standing at the top of the hill and an adult on the board sliding down. The dune was so steep that you could not walk up it unless you were on all fours. Those of us who braved it only had a couple of gos because it was so much work to climb up. The boys decided that this wasn't fun enough so on the following day they all went out and pulled each other behind the car on their boards. Now everyone knows that when boys (men) get together all sense goes out the window. My brother Jeremi, who did most of the driving, doesn't have any sense to start with so while they all had fun the high speeds resulted in lots of spectacular looking falls and a fracture in Eden's hand...oh well self inflicted, no sympathy (well just a bit).
Chloe is like her dad and thought that riding the board would be fun. It also made it easier and quicker for us to get her back to the car. Just a tip from a very sorry Mummy to anyone who tries this at home; 14 month olds don't have the balance to stay on when you take them over a big bump, sorry Clo.
They had a wildlife park nearby so we thought we would take Chloe as she loves anything that breaths. She loved chasing after the kids and lambs and she especially loved pulling there tails. When we gave her the pellets to feed them she would try to put them into the animals mouths one at a time. When this proved to be ineffective she decided to eat them for herself, tasty :)
They gave each of the children a bottle of milk to feed the animals. Chloe thought that it was for her and kept taking it out of the kids mouth and trying to put it in her own. In the end Daddy had to finish the job as Chloe could not be trusted. It must have been a bad day for the animals or they just decided that they did not like us. An emu pecked Chloe's finger, a pelican tried to attack Eden and Chloe, the nasty alpaca was a brut as was the kangaroo that tried to box Chloe for some food (we told her to stop eating the animal food). All this moodiness from the animals did not deter Chloe as she is even more in love with the fury and feathered kind then before we went.
When we weren't at the dunes or the wildlife park we spent lots of time at the beach, just hanging out and Eden went spear fishing a few times. For new years we went into Nelson's Bay to see the fireworks display. While Chloe loved the fireworks I don't think she thought it was worth being confined to a small space for 2 1/2 hours. While it was nice to get away it was great to get home (well sort of home), as there is only so much family that you can handle in a single house for a week.
The day that we got back from the holiday was Eden's birthday. He got to share a Dora cake with our niece the day before but you can't have a birthday without a cake. As Eden was at the Dr all afternoon with the car getting his hand checked I could not get any supplies to make a cake so he had to be satisfied with a Wollies one. None seemed to mind though and Chloe was ecstatic. I don't know what she loved more, the cake or the candles.
On Monday when we went to the beach lots of family and friends were there as well for the Australia Day public holiday. This was good for Chloe and I as it meant that he spent more time with us instead of just going off spear fishing the whole time. There was this little rocky island near where we were and as the tide was low we went for a walk out to it. The water was lovely and warm (I'm not joking, it really was), it was just getting out that was the painful part. At the island Eden found a starfish for Chloe to look at. While she didn't seem overly fond of it we did convince her to have a hold, however momentary it was.
What Australia Day public holiday is complete without a game of cricket. Chloe thought she would help with setting up the wickets and through the game she and through the game she kept running across the pitch like a streaker (only with clothes on).
