Tranquility

Welcome to the first installment of the camp experience...

Now camping with kids isn't the most peaceful experience, but it is still usually better than the hustle & bustle of everyday life.

When it came to the noise level, this camping trip definitely wasn't peaceful.

Here is a video of a Lace Monitor (otherwise known as a Goanna). It isn't a very exciting video, (sorry it's sideways but I couldn't help that) however if you turn the sound up as loud as you can, you will hear what we listened to all weekend.

That is the sound of Flying Foxes. Usually they are only this noisy at dawn & dusk, but this time there were so many of them fighting for space in the trees that they kept this up all day & all night long.

The only time this noise stopped was when it was raining so hard that the noise of the rain was as loud as the noise of the flying foxes had been previously. As soon as the rain eased up, the flying foxes began again. The worst of it was when it was only gently raining, because then we had both the noise of the rain AND the noise of the flying foxes.

Lovely weather .... for ducks that is !

Yet another exciting day in the life of us.


OK, maybe not ... but it had it's moments.


Today it rained again ! Yesterday DH mowed most of our yard (it took him over 1/2 hour just to mow the footpath the grass was that thick & the ground that mucky). It looks a bit better, but because of the conditions, it also looks very interesting. Lots of brown muddy grass & some of the grass seems to be mown at different heights.


With the rain comes the black cockatoos and the ducks.


Today I witnessed a rather surreal moment. I had Mummy McT & Dragon in the car, as well as Little Bear, & we were on our way to pick up Cheetah from school. On a 4 lane road with a traffic island in the middle, the car two ahead of us suddenly stopped. Thankfully everyone was driving carefully (unusual in Townsville) & there were no crashes, but next thing a family of little ducks waddles out from in front of that first car. They made it safely to the traffic island, but some of the littlest had a bit of trouble getting up on the island. It was so cute watching them flap their wings & try to run & propel their fluffy little bodies over the step. They then slid down the sloping traffic island to the two lanes heading in the opposite direction to us. I am happy to report they made it safely across the road & into the gully on the other side. Let's hope the water really is wetter on the other side of the road & they stay there.


Unfortunately that incident happened so quickly that M.McT & I did not have time to even grab our camera phones to take a pic.


Here is something I did manage to capture though. Little Bear throwing one of her tantrums. There was about 2 seconds of crying followed by this....

(Sorry it's a bit dark. I don't have a video camera, only the video option on my regular camera).


Most of her tantrums at home are very similar. There is usually a bit of crying, sometimes screaming, and very very occasionally she might stamp a foot or two, but it almost always ends like this. What you don't see in the video is her crying as she lies herself prostrate on the floor, pulls her hands in & starts sucking her thumb, & then crawls her legs in towards her tummy so her bum is sticking up in the air.


In the shops it's a different matter. She can scream for as long as it takes to change Mummy's mind & as mummy doesn't give in to tantrums, that's a lot of screaming !!! I stood in line one time at the checkouts for 20 minutes with her screaming for at least 15 of them because the nasty mummy that I am, I wouldn't let her jump all over my fruit & vege's in the bottom of the trolley. (I tried to lift the bags out of her way, but she would grab them & actually put them on the floor of the trolley specifically to jump on them. Charming child).




Something that was much more charming than tantrums in supermarkets was Little Bear looking after her dolly at lunch time. My little girl is only a baby herself and yet she is so gentle & loving of her baby. She wraps the baby up in a blankie, pats the baby on the head, brushes her 'hair', kisses her (lots & lots & lots & lots), and makes sure that baby is well fed.

Today baby got given a bowl of Macca's fries. Little Bear is only 19 months old, but no-one else had anything whatsoever to do with this setup.

Much as she loves her baby, Little Bear quickly decided that she couldn't let baby gorge herself on all those chippies alone so Baby was lifted up to the coffee table to share with Little Bear.

Don't you think baby is looking very expectantly at that chippy?

Little Bear thought so too, so offers the next one to her.

"Chippies are all gone baby, but you can suck the salt of my fingers now"

(OK, so she didn't really say that, but she might have been thinking it)

Raindrops keep falling on my head... and everywhere else

For your viewing pleasure, this is what the weather is like every day lately.

Actually these video's are mind deadening a bit boring but they give you an idea of what it is like to live in North Queensland during the wet season.

In the first video, I was trying to capture how full & slightly cloudy coloured the pool is. Hard to see through the window, but you can see the puddles in our gravel driveway & the big puddle in the gutter.

In the other videos, it is hard to see just how deep the water is in the yard, because the grass is so long because of the constant rain. You can also see the HUGE weeds that have invaded every single garden bed (we don't get a lot of time to garden, but our yard rarely looks like an overgrown vacant block as it does at the moment).

No Crocs in our pool yet, but given that we are starting to turn into the river of Townsville instead of the City of Townsville & croc's are beginning to end up as Road Kill, it probably won't be long. Then again, as they don't have opposable thumbs, they probably won't be able to get past the childsafe latch. Maybe they'll just take up residence in the puddles under our house!

What is all this wet stuff?

Hello from beautiful, cool, wet, North Queensland.

While some of our southern counterparts are suffering hot, humid & sunny 41 degree days, we have beautiful cool 22 degree days. While our South Queensland friends have only recently had very severe water restrictions lifted, we have a house with 360' water views at the moment. All thanks to Tropical Cyclone Charlotte.

If I take a deep breath, relax & try not to think about my life too much, I could almost imagine that I live in venice, or sometimes a pole house over the water on some tropical island.






.... Then again, maybe not.


This video was taken yesterday under our house. It had been raining steadily all day & when I got home I figured I would let the kids loose in the puddles.

I'm so glad I did, because when DH got home last night, he went straight to work digging a drain down the side of our house & down beside the driveway. This morning, despite constant overnight rain, we actually had dry patches under our house. I am so thankful I got the camera out when I did.

I'm afraid I don't have a video camera, just the video option on my camera & you will have to turn your head. I took it on this angle because I didn't want the number plate in or the mess off to the left of this frame. At least it's a short one.

On Sunday I had a watermelon that I had to get rid of, so I cut it up & banished both kids to the backyard until it was finished.

That's both of them standing in our backyard (doesn't Cheetah look spiffy in his new glasses?)



This is the same yard at approximately the same time, the next day...
(The photo of Little Bear at the very top of this post also chronologically belongs in the middle of these photo's)

(It is down this side where the drain has now been dug - for obvious reasons)

What glorious weather. I absolutely love it & today I love it even more because last night was the first night in at least 3 weeks that Little Bear has slept right through without even a wimper - despite the rain !!!