Sunday, September 30, 2007

On the slippery-dip

Mitch is still learning how to go on the slippery-dip. We're trying to get a bit more freedom, sometimes it's hard as parents him experiencing things for himself, knowing he could hurt himself. As it turned out, the first time he went down by himself he flew right off the end and landed on his bum on the ground. Thank goodness for the rubbery ground at the park! The next time Meeks tried to catch him as he flew off the end and half did it, but he ended up bumping his head on the slide. He cried a tiny bit but then went back up for another go.

I love the motor drive on the camera, it means you can get sets like this one.




Meeks had to catch him again, he's so slippery!

Trains

Meeks bought Mitch a train set a few months ago, but he wasn't quite ready for it. Then on Wednesday Mitch was in his room pointing at it (it was on the top of the wardrobe) so I got it down for him and put it together. He kept on knocking the top off the bridge and every time the train came off the tracks, he looked at me like he'd broken it and didn't know what to do. Eventually he got the hang of it though. He likes to drive the train up the bridge and let it run down the other side and say "Wheeeee!"

Wednesday, September 26, 2007

A morning at the beach

Meeks and Mitch went to Balmoral Beach yesterday for something a bit different. Mitch loves playing in the dirt but hasn't had much experience with sand yet. At first he wasn't too keen on it.

But eventually he got the hang of it.

In fact he liked it so much he decided to lie on it and roll around on it.

When it was time to go, Mitch had decided the beach was pretty fun and he was a very happy boy. We'll have to try it again soon.

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

What's been happening

A few bits and pieces happened last week.

Meeks and I were struck down with a very unpleasant gastro bug which had me off work Monday and Tuesday and Meeks feeling crook Tuesday and Wednesday. We were very worried Mitch would get it and have to go through the unpleasantness, but somehow he managed to avoid it. Then Nana came down with last Friday! Very nasty business.

On the weekend we ran a Garage/Moving Sale at Nana and Poppy's house. Nana was still sick and Poppy was overseas so it was just Meeks and I. A bunch of small bits and pieces sold, but most of the furniture didn't get bought, despite the bargain prices. So now they're on sale on our ebay. Hopefully someone will snap up the furniture. Someone has already bought a couch that was for sale.

On Sunday morning we had a big combined service for our church. The 8:30am, 10:30am and 6pm services were all combined in one big service in a hall at Abbotsleigh. It was a really good day and there was lunch on the oval afterwards which was really nice, it helped that the weather was fantastic. Mitch took the opportunity to run around on the oval with his shoes off and do some exploring. By the time we were ready to go home he was exhausted and fell asleep in the car on the 5 minute drive home.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Growing boy

We really have the feeling that Mitch is growing up at the moment. He's starting to say more words and develop his own little personality.

He spent some time playing on the deck this morning.

This is just a beautiful photo. What a gorgeous little boy.

More deck news

A few more deck photos. It's pretty much finished now. We stained it on the weekend, so there are a few photos with everything off the deck. It looks a lot bigger with nothing on it.

Then with everything back on the deck.

From the opposite angle.

That's enough deck stuff. You're probably all bored of it now!

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Work on the deck continues

Today I got a chance to fill the planter box on the deck. Beforehand Mitch had a bit of a play in the box.

As the dirt pile went down the planter box filled up


Then with all the plants in. They're all looking a bit crook after sitting in their pots for a few weeks. They were really dry as well. Hopefully they'll perk up after being replanted and having a big drink.

We have this azalea in the front garden that spends most of the year looking like it has died and we spend most of the year thinking we should pull it out. Then at this time of year it sprouts all these flowers.

So we keep it for another year. Maybe this year we'll prune it so it looks a bit neater at least.

Monday, September 10, 2007

Cleaning up the Deck

We've been doing some work to clean up and reorganise our back deck. It had become cluttered and was filthy and was just becoming a bit of a mess. It is such a great entertaining area and with summer coming up we will be using it a lot more so we decided it was time to do something about it. Here is the before shot:

We spent a while shuffling through a bunch of ideas and discarded a lot of them because they were either too hard or we couldn't afford them. One of the big things was we needed to clean the deck and stain it because we hadn't done it since we moved in and that isn't a good thing for a deck. So we started cleaning it using wood cleaning stuff. The difference was amazing. We didn't realise how dirty it was until we started cleaning it. Unfortunately it is back breaking work even with the cleaning stuff because the deck is so dirty. Add to that we measured we have 65 sqm of deck so we're doing it in chunks.

We decided we needed some new pots and plants so we bought those and then tossed up between putting a bamboo screen or building a sort of under deck planter box along the back planted with something to screen the lattice, but decided it was a bit too much work. In the end I built a 3m long planter box out of some timber sleepers we had left over from when we removed the pond out the front. Using the old timber was good for the environment (reusing!) and saved us some money. Plus I got to use power tools! Anyway, here is a couple of photos of where we are up to. Click on the links for bigger pictures:



It all looks a bit bare at the moment, but there is still much to do! We're going to put nice timber slats along the front of the planter box and fill it with small lillipillis after the soil arrives (it holds about 500L of soil!). The idea being it will screen the lattice in the back. We still have to stain the deck. It looks quite dark in the picture because of all the rain over the weekend. We also have a shade sail that we will rig up over the spa so that we can swim in the shade in summer. It is one we can put up and take down as we need it. We're also going to get a little wooden bench for the left hand side. Aside from that we're not really sure what else to do, but I'm sure we'll come up with something.

Wednesday, September 05, 2007

Goodbye Ganny and Grandad

Ganny and Grandad left today for a month long trip to Europe. I was the good son and drove them to the airport. Mitch came along with me to say goodbye. He loves looking at the planes


Then we said goodbye and off they went on another European adventure

Monday, September 03, 2007

Father's Day

Sunday was Father's Day. It gave me a chance to reflect on how lucky we are to have Mitchy and what a blessing he is for us. In the evening we went to my parents house for dinner with Grannie and Grandad, Mike and Mandy and Uncle Rob. Mitch also got to play with Cousin Lilly again.

Here is a cute one of Mitchy by himself:


In other news, three out of four of Mitchy's eye teeth have poked through and the result is he's been a bit of a sooky boy during the last week or so. It's very unusual for him to cry for no reason and there has been a bit of that in the last week. It looks like our little boy has come out the other side though because he was back to his happy-self today.