Evie's 5th Birthday

It was back to school for semester two a couple of weeks ago. After the first week back, Isla and Evie did some gymnastics on the beach:

There were some spectacular fireworks in the river:

We did a long walk in the National Park:

and our weekly trip to Bunnings:

We made some ninja stars using origami:

On Thursday, Evie came home from Kindy with Funky Chicken! He is taken home by each child to have adventures together so that they can talk about them the following week. Funky Chicken was lucky enough to be at Evie's birthday party. He also had a go on the computer:

Evie has been counting down the days until her birthday for a while now. She was looking forward to it a lot and was excited that she was having a party.

At her birthday party she had a PJ masks theme so we played 'Pin the mask on the hero' and also had some PJ mask amulet bracelets to decorate with gems and masks to wear. Evie played musical statues and danced to some funky beats with her friends from playgroup and kindy. She had a unicorn birthday cake and said her favourite bit of her birthday was when everyone sang 'Happy Birthday' to her. It was a lovely morning!

We went strawberry picking this morning to continue the fun of Evie's birthday weekend. The strawberries were huge and it only took us about five minutes of picking to fill our bowls up. They were juicy and delicious. Evie and Isla remember picking strawberries in England before we moved. Although Evie is now a 'winter baby' she is lucky enough to still have her birthday during the strawberry season. There was a fabulous playground at the farm so they enjoyed playing there this morning while we watched in the sunshine.

Here are the cats enjoying the garden:

The next stage of our pool project has seen coping tiles being laid around the pool, a new channel drain being fitted and an electrician climbing on our roof to install new power sockets for the pool pump to run. We've now got sand and rebar down ready for concrete surrounds to be poured this week. 

Our neighbour's banana tree is in flower and fruiting!

Making a swimming pool

A fortnight ago we decided that we could get a pool put into a corner of our backyard. Then at 7am on Tuesday, it all started happening!

First, we had a delivery of rebar from a big truck. This brought all of the children from the street out in their pyjamas to watch:

A little digger was delivered to our house on a great big black truck. The digger started picking up the huge rocks from our yard and stacking them neatly for us out the way:

The speedy bobcat zipped back and forth, taking up the turf.

The bobcat removed the top layer of soil which was taken to the tipper truck out the front.

The pool shape was laid out with string and then the digger started to dig out the soil and clay and pass it back for the bobcat to take out to the tipper truck.

We wondered how the digger would get out of such a deep hole. It pulled itself out and then reached back down into the hole to finish off the digging.

The digging went on until after it got dark whilst rebars were put into one side of the pool. We had a look in the hole!

The next day they built the rebar structure, fitted the pipes for the outlets and the skimmer box and the tubing for the light. They put gravel at the bottom of the pool under the rebar and put special seats underneath to support the bars on metal discs:

This morning, Isla had her sports day! Here she is doing the long jump and after winning the tug of war with her Eagles team:

After lunch, these trucks turned up outside:

and the pool sides and steps were filled with concrete:

 After a couple of hours, and a couple of truckloads of concrete, we've got the shell of a pool!