Mataranka

Seeing as we're (probably / maybe / hopefully) leaving here before too long, we thought we should get out and see everything while we get the chance. So today we went for a drive to Mataranka (about 100kms south of Katherine). It was nice, and we're glad we went because now we've been there, but there wasn't particularly anything there that we couldn't find right here in Katherine. The thermal pool was lovely and we had a really nice time in there. And Mitchell went from not wanting to get in at all when we got there, to asking me to step further and further back while he jumped in, so that was all fun. We haven't been to the base pool in a while as it isn't heated, and because it gets down to 18 or so overnight, the water is actually *really* cold during the dry. Both surprising and disappointing for us. Especially seeing as there is no option to go to in indoor pool instead like there would be if it was really cold. We will probably get to the Katherine Hot Springs a bit more often now though (they were closed during most of the wet) so that will be fun.

We had a nice lunch at a place that I'm guessing doesn't get very busy (she took our order on the back of an envelope!!) but the owners were lovely and the food was decent (although they put pepper on my toasted sandwich!!)

This is where we had lunch - it is a Cafe and Gallery - this is the old mailman :)

This is what you see in every direction when you walk to the thermal pool - v pretty :)

Mitchell laughing for the camera

Getting ready to jump in yet again...

Michael lining up with his colleagues for Anzac Day March through Katherine Terrace

The boys having a cuddle

4th birthday, Easter and other general catching up

Due to computer "issues" it has been a while since this blog has been updated, so apologies for that if anyone has been checking for updates... But now everything is back on track and I've loaded a bunch of pictures from the digicam and here we are :) It's been a busy few weeks so there's lots to update. The above pictures were taken at Katherine Gorge (otherwise known as Nitmiluk National Park) where they have a little children's area that you can walk through and read and learn. Mitchell was mostly keen on running through as fast as he can (because of course everything in life is a race) but he did like the little house above. Also the kangaroo, you can't really see properly in the picture, but you stand on a lever and a little joey pokes his head out of the pouch, very cute :)

Making an Easter basket to fill with eggs from the Easter Bunny

Yes, Mitchell still loves his footy. This is a local (beautiful) park where we headed down for a picnic lunch and the boys kicked the footy around (I did too a little bit but apparently I can't kick straight which is very frustrating LOL...)

Mitchell on Easter morning with his basket and some of the eggs that Easter Bunny had hidden around the lounge room for him :)

Easter Bunny also left an AFL egg, most of which is still in the fridge 2 weeks later. I think that Mitchell was more interested in the ladder on the side of the box than the actual chocolate.

These are 3 eggs that we attempted to paint. The end result was a bit dodgy but we had fun doing it, so that is the main thing.

One of the boxes that arrived in the mail for Mitchell's big number 4 birthday was these pads and gloves. Mitchell was soooo excited to receive them and of course we had to head straight out the back to give them a go. His favourite player is Adam Gilchrist (Gillie) so that is who he is :)

Massie watching the cricket - no he hasn't grown much, and he isn't likely to - but we love him, he rounds off our little family just perfectly

More backyard cricket shots

Gillie having a go at keeping (yes that's my leg and arm - for some reason I'm always England - go figure...)

These are the Crows cupcakes that we made and Mitchell took to child care the Friday before his birthday. One of the carers is also a Crows supporter and she and Mitchell are always talking about the football, so he was very excited to show her his Crows cupcakes. He was not happy, however, that they sang him Happy Birthday at the time, because he wasn't 4 yet!!

This is the water park at Leanyer in Darwin where we went for the weekend for Mitchell's birthday. It was completely awesome and pictures or descriptions couldn't possibly do it justice. That huge bucket you see on the top here is continuously being filled and when it is full it tips over with one HUGE splash. This happened once when we were at the top and Mitchell was a bit scared, but he loved to watch it splash on everybody else from a safer spot. Because of the water flowing everywhere, the slides were just like little water slides - very cool.

Mitchell going down one of the slides with Daddy watching on.

Just generally wet and happy :)

Taking an afternoon tea break

This was the view from our motel room in Darwin, how beautiful is that?

While we were in Darwin, Mitchell had the chance to spend his birthday money and voucher. We were so impressed with the way he thought about his purchases and what they were costing, that we have decided it is probably a good time to start thinking about pocket money so he can start to learn a bit more about the value of money. He bought himself a cricket helmet, a ball and box to go with his gloves and pads, and also some lego Batmobile and 2 light sabres. They are all things that he will actually use, so we were pretty happy with his choices.

We arrived home on the afternoon of Mitchell's birthday and he pointed out that he *had* to have cake, candles and "Happy Birthday" on his actual birthday. Luckily we had 6 cup cakes left over, so we iced them lime green for the Ninja Turtles and found 4 candles and had our "Happy Birthday" time.

This is the cake that we made for Mitchell to take to school on the Monday. Again lime green for Ninja Turtles (we had gone to McDonald's for lunch in Darwin on his birthday and he had a pasta Happy Meal which came with a Ninja Turtle).

Due to the reliability (or lack thereof) of the postal service in areas such as this, another favourite present arrived several days later. Mitchell is very into "people that save people" at the moment, and Superman is his favourite, so he's very happy to be able to dress as him.

We did however, have an interesting conversation today where I had to inform him that Superman is in fact not real, but made up for books and movies (he was getting upset about have a pretend chest in his costume and didn't understand why he wasn't the "real" Superman). He then wanted to know whether Spiderman was real and then was concerned that there was nobody around to really save people. So we talked about policemen and paramedics and all those people, and of course, people at Daddy's work. So now he say that his Daddy is the only "real" superhero, which is rather cute really...

In other news, for anyone not aware, we are going to be moving to Adelaide at the end of the year. Long convoluted story, but in a nutshell Michael has been promoted and they have offered him Adelaide (Edinburgh) because they don't want to lose him, which was otherwise on the cards, because we really want to settle somewhere permanent now, mainly for Mitchell, but for us too. They have also been talking about the move being earlier, initially May was mentioned and then June/July, but at this point we have no definite confirmation of this earlier move. Michael seems to still be fairly confident it will be June/July, but who really knows. We will hopefully find out more the week beginning 7 May when the "manner" returns to his office in Canberra and has full access to all his systems.

In the mean time, we are here, Mitchell is enjoying school and child care, Michael is doing well at work and I am moving along with my degree. I have also qualified now (finally!) as an ABA counsellor and have so far done 2 helpine shifts. They've been very busy but also extremely rewarding. And the weather is pretty dry these days. The "official" start to the dry season is May 1, but it hasn't rained since that last flood warning that had everybody panicking, so the weather, particularly in the evenings, is quite pleasant. It's funny though how you adjust so quickly, because you can't imagine that at 34/35 degrees it would feel too cold to go for a swim, but it really does!!! Who'd have thought. I hope the move back down South, potentially in the middle of Winter, is not too much a shock to the system!!

Izzy...

This is Izzy, the bear that belongs to Mitchell's preschool. Every weekend one of the kids gets to take Izzy home and then they put photos and drawings and things in a scrapbook so that everyone can see what they did over the weekend. Massie loves to eat Izzy, which is why the only photo we could get of them both was through the vents :) He's still at that teething stage and Mitchell's fluffy toys are his favourite if he ever gets a hold of them (which we make sure he doesn't!!)

Mitchell was so excited about bringing Izzy home, he tends to be a bit difficult about having his photo taken these days but as soon as he came home with Izzy he asked me to take some photos "for the book"... He is having so much fun at preschool and child care, we are so impressed and proud at how easily he has adapted and how well he is fitting in. He loves to get his clothes ready the night before and put them next to Daddy's work clothes. And he's eating so much these days I have to pack his lunch box to the brim. Most days he eats 2 sandwiches, 2 apples, 2 boxes of sultanas and a muesli bar. He's recently shot up 4 cm in the space of about a week though, so I guess he needs the fuel for all that growing, not to mention the running around like a lunatic he loves to do :) He takes his footy to school every day now and kicks that around for their outside free playing time.

He also sings a song called roly poly and he's just awfully cute when he sings it and does the actions. Not a lot of words, so easy for him to remember and he really loves it :) So exciting watching him grow into this lovely little boy (although of course there are moments where he drives us completely insane too!!!)

This is Mitchell's basketball ring, well the base of it anyway. This is actually where we normally put his basketball and I was packing things away outside the other day and was about to put the basketball down when I found this in the hole. Those green tree frogs are just so beautiful and there are several have taken up residence in our back yard for the wet season. And we are actually getting a real wet season now. After several weeks of no rain (and I realise this is unfortunately normal down south these days, but it generally does *not* happen up here during the wet), it has been raining every evening / night of late, just the way it's supposed to. The other night I thought the lightning was going to crack our house in half, but Mitchell slept through it all... And many of the roads are closed due to flooding although at this stage it's not flooding to be concerned about, it's just normal wet season flooding that occurs every year. The town is ready to evacuate if it comes to that though, you have to be, it was April last year when it flooded last and the whole main street was underwater, and no Woolworths means no groceries, so most people have stocked up "just in case"... We probably haven't done enough so hopefully it won't come to that.

And here are the boys cooking their barbecue together :) Yesterday Mitchell told me that the BBQ is just for boys so I couldn't do it (how awfully said I must say) but then he added that some girls do and some girls like to but not Mummy... He got that one right ;)

School clothes...

and some of our kangaroo friends outside our back fence....

School clothes...

and some of our kangaroo friends outside our back fence....

Big preschooler :)

Making his packed lunch (cheese, carrot and cucumber sandwich)

Wrapping the packed lunch to go into "Cars" lunch box

Dressed and ready to go :)

So today was the big day and Mitchell was very excited. Had slight doubts about picking the afternoon slot when I heard "me want to go preschool now!!" from about 8am, but I think the afternoon slot will still be better overall for us, so we can still do our thing in the morning, we have fun shopping together...

Mitchell took above sandwich, plus an apple and a muesli bar, which was plenty considering it's only 3 hours (as it turns out only 2.75, seeing as they told us to pick the kids up at 2:30 when I thought it was 2:45)... So Michael came home and the 3 of us drove to the preschool. A bit crazy, with the way the streets are designed here, lots of cul de sacs and whatnot, it took 5 minutes by car - I think in the dry season we will ride our bikes because that will only take 5 minutes too as we can pretty much ride the direct route. We got there and met his teacher. Everything is coded so the kids can find their own flannel and locker, etc and Mitchell's is an octopus. So we found his flannel and then found his locker, put his backpack away and his lunch and drink in the fridge.

While I was talking to the teacher about a bit of admin stuff Michael and Mitchell had a bit of a look and a play outside. Then we went up to Mitchell and told him we were going now, had a fleeting second where we thought he might protest but then he just said "okay" and kept playing. So Michael gave him a kiss and hug seeing as he won't see him until tomorrow now and I told I'd see him at 2:30.

It felt weird walking away, not bad or anything, just weird. Aside from a few rare times with grandparents and once with Uncle Justin, Mitchell has always been with one of us, so it just felt a bit strange, but we knew he'd be fine. And he was...

I arrived to pick him up at 2:30 and I was the 3rd to last parent to arrive and one of the other kids was in tears because her Mum wasn't there but Mitchell was walking around as though he owned the place :) He saw me, said Hi and immediately said, "I like my preschool" and then, "buy my t-shirt now please Mum"... Mitchell wasn't impressed to find out that preschoolers didn't have a uniform because he wanted to wear school clothes like all the other school kids, but luckily the preschool does have t-shirts, so he's pretty happy with that. So we got him 3 t-shirts in purple, blue and red and a yellow preschool hat.

I asked him if he made any friends as that's something he's always talking about. He said no, but apparently he has enough friends now... As we were walking away, he said again that he likes his preschool and he wants to go back every day so I guess he does like it :) He was pretty tired and in the car I got told off for asking him too many questions and he said he didn't want me to talk about it any more, so I took the hint and left it at that. As long as he's happy it's all good. When we got home I offered him a drink and he said "you have to say do you want a drink preschooler?" Too cute...

He eventually fell asleep at 6:15 so a very big day for the boy. He's very excited about going back tomorrow in his school top and school hat, so we'll have to take a couple more photos then. He's wearing the blue one tomorrow - he's already told the teacher that :)

Australia Day

So we went to the Sport and Rec Club on Australia Day where they had a few different things going on. We missed a lot of it (including a football game, one half Aussie Rules, one half Rugby and one half Rafferty's Rules - a combination - yes I know, 3 halves, but whatever!!) because we *had* to have our Friday night dinner at the Club so that Mitchell could play with his new friend K. Apparently I need to get K's phone number from his Mum so that he can be invited to Mitchell's number 4 birthday seeing as his "old friends" from Melbourne won't be able to make it to Katherine as it's too far.

They had a bunch of races for the kids which Mitchell was very keen to be involved in. They split them up into age groups by which year they were going to be in at school this year. Initially some silly man had started with the high school kids and was working his way down until a sensible lady took over and went the other way - it's much more difficult asking the little ones to wait!! So the lady asked Mitchell what grade he was in and he had no idea what she was talking about so for some reason he said 2 :) The lady did a double take, then I told Mitchell to tell the lady he was in preschool, which obviously seemed much more like it. Just an aside too, I can't get over how much taller the transition kids were than the preschool kids. Is Mitchell going to grow that much in the next year???

So it was the kind of races that are good for this age group when they were just fun and it really wasn't all that clear who won in the end and I think when it came to the preschoolers they were all told they won :) Well they all got a free drink after each race - I thought it was a bit bizarre that the free drinks were diet pepsi, iced coffee and orange juice when all bar about 4 kids were primary school age or younger. So Mitchell ended up with 2 bottles of orange juice so that was all very exciting. He said no thankyou to the lollipop and balloon offered which was surprising - didn't even want to take one for later...

So the first race involved getting flags out of cans and putting them in a jar. It was quite hilarious as there were only 2 preschoolers in this race and neither of them knew what they were doing, they were going to grab each others flags or those in the empty lanes, but with myself and the other mother helping out they both got there in the end. The next race (when we finally had the camera ready - gave it to Michael this time!) was a leaking billy can race, where they had to fill a bucket up one end by filling a leaky billy can and running with it. Mitchell had such a wonderful time - the look on his face was just priceless -- these are the moments you live for as a parent I think.





And then today Mitchell wanted to make pizza, but seeing as we are trying to only go to the supermarket once a week and we didn't have what we needed, we had to come up with another idea. So I got out a lebanese wrap bread and Mitchell made his own lunch. He chose what to put on it, which was hommus, carrot, cucumber, cheese and mushroom, and put it all together himself. All I did was grate the carrot and slice the cucumber. As you can see he's made a face - when looking at the photo he realised it didn't have ears but that's okay.