Rainy days and fun times...

We've had more rainy weather here on the Sunshine Coast. We've had two floods in two weeks. Seems like it should be called the Rainy Coast!

But it is so beautiful and the trees are all growing so well this year.





The creek flowing over the road again.






And I can't keep the kids inside. They love playing in all the puddles... it just means more muddy clothes to wash and try to get dry...








Even Tui sat at the door calling to be allowed out in the water to play. Eventually big brother came to the rescue and Zan splashed in a puddle with her for a little while.
Luckily even when it rains the temperature is still in the mid-twenties! (celcius)







Here's another beautiful Rain!





Then when the Sun finally came we were all keen to get into the garden. The kids built a wigwam with apple tree prunings, vines and branches.





Tui helped too!

The finished wigwam!

Well almost finished, because Rain decided to weave some mats for the floor.

Peace has bolted some rock climbing holds onto the big pecan tree over in the playground.

And made a rope bridge from the Pecan over to the platform tree.

Mr T loves climbing anything, he is such a monkey.

And Rain's friend had a go too...

I even climbed up but unfortunately no photos ;)

Gone to the dogs

After getting home from our camping trip I only stayed here for one night and then went to stay at my parents house while they were away 'galivanting about the country side'. I was official Dog-sitter and cat sitter for their lovely animals.

The Lovely Lab...

My parents live really close to a river. It's so close in fact that you can see it from the back door!

The two boys enjoyed fishing off the jetty. Didn't have much luck and I was kind of glad as it was up to me to kill and gut the fish if they caught any...and after being a vegetarian for 16 years it was a task I wasn't looking forward to.

Mr T on the jetty at Sunset

It was good to get home though. I think it's the longest I've been away since we moved to Rainbow Love Farm.

Nice to see my own puppy, hanging out with Buddah here!

And the veggie garden, my how things grow when you aren't looking! Mr T was excited to find his sweet corn was 'taller-than-daddy' and some of the corns were ready for eating. This one didn't even make it as far as the kitchen.

There ain't nothing as sweet as homegrown corn!

It was cool enough today to get out and do some gardening. So Peace (oops, I'm not suppose to call him that anymore! He feels it doen't represent him properly so until I think of a new psuedonym for him I will referr to him as the man formally known as Peace) and I re-mulched one of the gardens. It was sooo over-grown.




We lay down heaps of wet cardboard boxes to help supress the weeds coming back.





Covered the whole lot with sugarcane mulch and planted a couple of new plants. A ground cover I only know as pig weed. It is succulent and has beautiful redish/pink flowers. The other was a Dianella, a native grass with edible blue berries...yum.

I picked some coriander seed for sowing and cooking...

while Tui explored the grass...

feeling all the new sensations with her cute, chubby little hands...

Oh, and I just loved this photo of the cows in the shade down at the river...

Unswimming lessons...

My two oldest kids had a couple of swimming lessons when they were younger. Neither of them liked it much so I decided to take the natural learning approach with Mr T. Until this year he has worn a swimming-vest when we have been at the river, beach or pool but this summer I wanted to try to get him out of it.

The saftey-aids are great for peace of mind but I also think it kind of gives children a false sense of security around water.

So when I started my volunteering at the pool a month ago I 'forgot' to take his vest with me.

I also decided that I wasn't going to actively teach him to swim until he asked or initiated it.

Well the first week he pretty much played on the steps of the pool.

Second week he was standing in water up to his chin and splashing about but still not putting his face under the water.

Last week he was splashing about, when another little boy probably a year older than Mr T swam up to him. I was sitting in the kiosk watching him watch the other boy. He was looking really intently like he wanted to know how to do all these tricks and then all of a sudden he ducked right under the water.

Over the next two hours he went from not swimming to being able to hold his breath and swim about two meters under water!

It was such an awesome lesson for me to really see how children will learn by themselves when they are ready to learn. They will learn because they want to have that skill or piece of information. They don't need us to tell them what and when to learn something.

Since then you just can't keep him out of the water...

or a canoe for that matter...