Another nice quiet weekend, with Paul's birthday on the Friday. For Jacob's birthday he had requested a bulldozer cake and Jeremy had ordered a train cake, so I asked them "What cake should we make for Daddy?". I was expecting them to answer a truck or a grader but after thinking very hard for a few moments Jacob replied "a Bible cake"!! You can't get much easier then that, so a caramel mud cake was made into a 'Bible cake' and greatly enjoyed.

We've finally had time to get back to working on the house. Paul's been getting up early and going out painting to get the north and eastern side finished before the hot weather arrives. We had the boys out helping dig holes last weekend but the rate they were going it'll take a while to get the house finished. Better get Isaac onto the job too! I'll put a house photo here when I take an updated one.

Last Sunday I saw Jeremy fishing around in the bottom of the pram (which was in the back yard after coming home from church) and emerge triumphant with a tupperware container. He took it off to play with, as little boys do.

He came up to me a short time later and while offering the tupperware container asked me "Do you want to pat my baby snake?"

A bit taken back but very curious now I asked if it would bite me, to which he replied "No, it's asleep". Very cautiously I prised the lid off the tupperware (at least whatever was in there would still be fresh) and to my delight discovered a length of cord - an old drawstring from the waist of boys shorts!!

Don't you just love the imaginative play of a 3 year old! He carried around the tupperware container for quite a while, checking on his baby snake occasionally. Later that afternoon he accidently left it on the Church Bus - we better get it back before it bites someone!!

Hmm, that reminds me - I'd better check to see if I got my tupperware back?!

Tea anyone?

A beautiful warm day outside - perfect for a tea party. We went outside with a picnic rug and the boys had great fun pouring cups of 'tea' (apple juice) and eating the snacks off their little plates. It's a beautiful day, warm but a bit windy, making me think thoughts of spring cleaning.

The other day the boys were playing with some wooden blocks and Jacob made a little square and said "this is your vegie garden mummy". He held up small blocks and put them inside the garden: "this is your brocolli, this is your cucumber, and this is your garlic bread."

A photo of our tea party:

A quiet weekend but it was greatly enjoyed as it was our first quiet weekend in a long time! Saturday night was a pizza making fest - see photos below - and they didn't taste too bad either. We have also recently made the cardboard box cars that I've been promising we'd make since they saw Jesse's Wiggles car in Mt Isa. Jacob thinks they are so cool. The photo below is of them sitting in them while watching a Play School DVD.

The aim this week is to get some decent scrapping done, and clean the house, look after the boys, prepare for Sunday School which starts this week, etc etc. If I do anything worthwhile I'll post it here!

The Big Trip

We are still being asked about the big trip away so I'd better share some of it.

Our destination was Mt Isa, via Corner Country. We thought we'd get to Mt Isa within about 4 or 5 days but it ended up taking 7 days as there was so much to see on the way. Towns and places of interest that we passed through on the way up were Tibooburra, Cameron Corner, Moomba, Innamincka, Birdsville, Bedourie and Boulia. No, we didn't get to see the Min Min lights.

It was beautiful country, and very remote, apart from the convoys of 4WD's we regularly passed. We had to stop at every waterhole and creek along the way so the boys could throw rocks into them but fortunately the reason it's remote is that there aren't many waterholes and creeks about.

By the way, does anyone know the correct spelling of Innamincka? Some of the signs read "Innaminka" but others said "Innamincka". Would love to know which is correct.

We camped some nights off the beaten track (and alot of it WAS beaten) and we regularly listened to the words of one of John Williamson's songs "Camping under the leapard wood when the sun goes down and the fire is good because I've managed to find myself some Brigalow". It's good to be Australian :)

Birdsville was fascinating so we stayed two nights. We would highly recommend the Working Museum and the 40km trip out to Big Red at the edge of the Simpson Desert. We would NOT recommend the westerly road between Arrabury and The Birdsville Development Road. It took most of the day to drive 160km. We did see some cool stuff along the way though. We also loved following in the tracks of some explorers - namely Burke & Wills and Charles Sturt. If the boys were older it would have been a great home-schooling trip.

We got to Mt Isa after 7 days and spent a wonderful week hanging out with friends. We relaxed a lot, drank too much coffee, played some good games, and scrapped too little. Our boys learnt to play dress up with Jesse, and Jesse learnt to call his dad "Uncle Lalo" off our kids.

We headed home after a week and came back down to NSW through Cloncurry, Winton, Longreach, Barcaldine, Blackall, Charleville, Cunnamulla, Bourke. More camping on the way home with an unscheduled stay at Blackall due to tyre trouble.

Photos are below. :)

New Blog

We've also decided to jump onto the Blog bandwagon. (You all knew it would come eventually).

The usual 2 rules apply:
- We will aim to update weekly but will probably end up doing about 2 posts a year
- We will aim to put regular photos on but will probably forget

Oh yeah - Mulga Ridge is the name of our 100 acre block of land.

Happy reading :)