The Right Time

September 2010 - bits and pieces

The rest of September until the school holidays was spent working at Kinder, a one-off  babysitting of Skyler, Soccer Semi and Grand Final (played on the same day)... we lost the Semi so didnt make it to the Grand Final this year, Scrapbooking and then Gary discovering he had a inguinal hernia ... (more about that in a later post) 

Then the first weekend of the school holidays Gary and Mitchell went camping with the Dads and Boys group 

 

 

Some fields near where they camped 

 

 

 

 

 

Looks like they had lots of fun lol.  Gary/Mitchell never take that many photos lol so that's all I have of that weekend away. 

I went shopping, watched tv/ dvd's and started getting ready for our upcoming trip to Ballarat ... :-)

Jen :-)  

Paws and Claws Exhibition - September 2010

In 3rd term in Year 7 Mitchell did a whole Year 7 project on "Paws and Claws" which included a visit to the zoo and the project covered many subjects. 

It was a matrix project where you chose one item from each column and row and they were worth different points and you had to have a minimum of 30 points. (Maths) 

The school then had a Paws and Claws Exhibition night and the Parents got to come along and see everyone's work on display.  

He had some of his own photos from his zoo visit and then also borrowed some Kinder Zoo photos lol  Each student had half a table and that width of a wall for their display

 

He also borrowed some large zoo animals from Kinder for his display.  Engllish was involved with Argumentative writing pices etc.  The teachers kept 2 of his pieces of work to show to the following year's Year 7 students. 

German was involved with making up Zoo notices in German 

 

Bird Feeder 

 

Art was involved with them making up a creature lol 

One of Mitchell's friends is a very talented artist so I took a photo of his creature too. 

It was a fun night and there was some amazing work!!! Kids chose different combinations of the the Matrix so each display was completely different from the next! 

Jen :-)

 

There's no business like SNOW business.... Aug 2010

The weekend after Mitchell's party, Gary, Mitchell Graham and Jesse went skiing at Lake Mountain.  They had such a great day and were exhaisted when they came back! 

Gary took a few photos 

Mitchell wearing Gary's coat as he doesnt have a suitable one.  Gary wore my coat :-) 

LOVE this one of Mitchell (aren't I terrible!!) lolol .... Lets just zoom in for a close up!! lol 

Despite the falls (of which there were quite a few) Mitchell still LOVED it and wants to go again this year!! 

Jen :-)

Oh-Oh there's a TEENAGER in the house!! ... 19 August 2010

Well you know I am still 18 months behind as he is now 14 1/2!! Lol 

19th Aug 2010 was a school day and Mitchell of course woke super early as he is always keen to open his presents lolol 

We gave him ..... UMMMMMMMM (See end of post!!) LOLOL

As it was a school night we had take-away for tea and stuck a candle in our desert lol and had the "proper" cake on Saturday 21st at the family party. 

We looked up the Minute to Win It website and chose a few games from there to play... :-)

 

This one was bouncing a bal against the wall and landing it in the bucket - Shanae

Aunty Chris

Go Uncle Rod!! lol 

 

Belinda

 

Daddy-o - Love the face!! 

 

 

Streamer twirling lol 

 

 

 These funny sized photos (above and further below) are snapshots from the videos we took 

The cake 

 

 

Another game... you had to knock over drink bottles by swinging the pantyhose which had a tennis ball in the end of it lol  (more snapshots from videos) 

Lots of laughter during these games and a fun time was had by all!! lol 

Well I'll be back to edit this post once (Mitchell or) I can remember the pressies lol 

Jen 

 

 

Operation Christmas Child 2010

After we got back from our weekend away I had to set up for Operation Christmas Child at Church  http://operationchristmaschild.org.au/?page_id=25 

I set up a display in the Foyer to show people what it's all about and with sample items etc (sample box not in photo)

Here's a few photos (taken with a pretty average mobile phone back then) 

 

OCC were still waiting on a delivery of boxes when I set up the display!! Usually we order around 400 boxes!! 

 

 

The display stays up until mid October-ish and then we arrange for the Van to come to collect all the boxes. 

Our Boy Boxes  

Our Girl Boxes

Considering the economic downturn and the fact that people have many different avenues to hand their boxes in these days, our collection was pretty good - 347 boxes !!  This included about 30 odd from the local primary school 

Jen :-)

 

 

 

New Header photo

Yep another new header photo..... 

The photo was taken on our Jan 2012 holiday at Somers on a walk along the beach one evening and wasnt enhanced at all - the camera just made it look like this lol - in actual fact it wasnt that brilliant a sunset in real life lol - anyway I liked the look of the photo and have made it into the current header which meant changing the colours of the backgrounds etc as well lol ..... oh and I did slightly increase the hue of the colours for the header - as you can see the original is slightly paler.  

Original photo ... 

 

 Yellow/apricot etc are most definately NOT favourite colours of mine so I'm not sure how long this one will last, althought I do like the photo lol ...

Jen :-)

Weekend away at Phillip Island - August 2010 - Monday

Last day here and we had a late check out so once we had packed up we decided to have a game of chess at the Caravan Park's Giant Chess Set

 

 

Can't remember who won but they had fun anyway!!! lol 

 

We then set off to use the last part of our 3 Park Pass - the Koala Conservation Centre and we spent quite a lot of time there. 

 

So cuuuutttteeeeee!!!!! 

 

 

 

 

 

Ohhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

 

Love the zoom camera!!!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

It looks like this Koala is laughing!!!! lol 

 

 

 

 

So as you can see we had a great time wandering around seeing LOTS of Koalas!!   After this we went to play Minigolf at Amaze'n'Things using our discount voucher from staying at the CP next door.  (No photos)

 

 

The last photo is from the last cache we did before heading to Gary's parents place in Baxter.  The details of this odd looking object are following (from the cache page)

History in the making: The first trial at this site began in 2006, investigating tidal current electricity, a clean, renewable, reliable and predictable energy source. In April 2008 this more sophisticated generator, the Nereus, was installed; testing will continue until at least 2011.  Nereus’ blue arms, above, are usually underwater – with the sea nymphs! (which they are in this photo but werent in the cache page photo) Nereus works on the same principles as a wind turbine, and is already feeding electricity into the grid – a world first! It works on a horizontal axis, creating kinetic energy as it’s rotated by tidal flows; there’s even scope to apply the technology to fast flowing rivers.

So we found this cache and headed off...... really wishing we owned a holiday house down there and could visit every few weekends!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Jen :-0

 

 

Weekend away at Phillip Island - August 2010 - Sunday Night

Last time we were at Phillip Island we attempted to do the Night Cache however it turned out they were doing controlled burning at the park and so we couldnt do it.  This time however the weather was fine and the park was open so off we set.  We havent got any photos so here is our log from the cache .... :)

WOOHOO our FIRST Night cache and our 350th cache!! 
We found this a mixture of scary and exciting all in one lol!! we have decided we will probably go with other people on future night adventures!!!!!!!! lol 
As I said it was our first nightcache and MMelb was feeling a little nervous and wanted to sing songs to take his mind off being in the bush in the middle of the night lol 
Even tho we started this at 7pm tonight it felt like it was midnight it was so pitch black most of the time (except for the occasional glimpses of house lights etc) 
We missed a couple of turns and couldnt always see the next reflector from the one we were at and walked too far but it all added to the experience lol 
Took water squirter
Left Slinky 
TFTC Hell+Back, for the thrill/challenge of a night cache and a great cache to click over 350 on! 
Off to visit friends of GMelb's parents then back to the caravan for one more night...
PS Very cute tea guest! 
GJMMelb

So as you can see we sort of/mostly enjoyed it mixed with a bit of nervousness lol 

After that we went to visit Gary's parents friends in Cowes and had a nice evening there before heading back to the Caravan park for our last night of our longweekend away. 

Jen :-)

Weekend away at Phillip Island - August 2010 - Part 2

The next day we decided to use our Churchill Island part of the 3 park pass. 

On the way there on the bridge is yet another cache so we parked before the bridge and went looking ... 

 

After finding the cache we continued driving along the long "driveway" and were greeted by these friendly fellas along the way!! 

They came very close to the car and we had to drive really slowly!! 

Yep they were standing on the road!

We had fun exploring the grounds 

and the house

There was a Peacock roaming the gardens 

Interesting water feature!

We then  went for a walk around the land

It was a very pretty walk 

My camera battery ran out so I had to start using my phone so for some reason these photos have a purplish hue to them!  Unfortunately it was very hard to see what the photos looked like out in the bright sun so I didnt take many of the very pretty walk.

When we got back to the house/grounds, we saw a duck resting in a tree!! 

And then we were escorted from the island by the friendly fellas again!! lol                                                                                                                                             A fun day in a very pretty place!!                                                                                                                                                                                                           Jen :-)

Weekend away at Phillip Island - August 2010

Well it seems that this blog is going from holiday to holiday lol!!  

After we got back from Mildura we had a few days at home before it was back to school and Kinder! 

I was rapt to hear that Mitchell's school was having a Curriculum Day in August on a Monday and so we booked to go to Phillip Island for a long weekend! 

There were 2 reasons for this - the first was that we still had 2 parts of our 3 park pass to use up and we also wanted to find the final cache in the series that we had found all the preliminaries for on our last trip to Phillip Island.  We also stayed at the Caravan Park next to Amaze'n'Things and got a discount to go to the Maze etc.

The first cache was "Jack" which was a cache we hadnt had time to do on the last trip but it was actually one that Gary and Mitchell had been part of an "entourage of 479" that were there for a FTF on this cache when it was first placed (when they were staying down in Cape Patterson) but before we had our own Caching Name etc  so we decided to come back and find this under our own name.  

We tried to find one more cache but couldnt so left it then checked online to discover it had been recently muggled then replaced in a slightly different location.  (Armed with that info we found it easily the next day!!!) 

After lunch we went to Amaze'n'Things and had a great afternoon there with all the puzzles, mazes and crazy house!  Took lots of videos too and will see if I can upload ....

This mirror maze freaked me out and I had to hold onto Mitchells hand to get through it as I felt claustrophobic!!!

Lets see if I can get the video to work?? Hmmmmm - it appears I need to have uploaded them somewhere else first and then upload the URL here - so9 will have to do that another day. 

Being winter still, it got dark early so we played board games the first night 

Jen :-)