Music Under the Stars.

 

It's that crazy time of the year again, Ord Valley Muster. We sung on Wednesday night at Music Under the Stars. Milly is in year 4 this year so she was allowed to audition for the school choir. She got in and so the whole family is in choir this year. Kununurra's version of the Von Trapp Family!

 

 This is what the venue loos like before everyone gets here.

 

 

This is what we look like when we are all on stage! Milly is second on the right in the front row. Grace is behind Mr MacNeill, you can see half her leg and shoe. I'm in the back row on the right and Daz is also in the back row somewhere in the middle. It was a good night, practise for tonight when we are singing here.

Fishing!

On the last week of the school holidays we had an overnight fishing trip with friends to a top secret destination. All destinations are top secret when it involves catching barramundi! We drove through a few water crossings like the one above.

 

It was a long drive and Grace much preferred a nap in the shade of the car to doing any fishing!

Milly however was on fire and caught this cat fish which she wasn't impressed with. "Gross Mum!"

She persisted and then later her line went off and she reeled in a barra all by herself. Daz was giving instructions, "wind in, pull up, pause, wind in, pull up, pause" and Mr D had the net ready, we were not letting him get away.

 

Here is the end result, a beautiful 59cm barra and a smile that says it all. Well done Milly!

 

 

Three Fishermen. This photo shows their interest, Milly is still looking at her fish and Daz and Mr D are looking down river at where the rods are thinking they heard another one go off.

 

And I am saving the best photo for last. After the sun went down and the kids had gone to bed in the tent, my rod went off and look what was on the end! How big is that barra? 80cms long to be exact. It was very heavy, my arms from reeling it in and then holding it up for the photo. It was the best feeling though, I caught an 80cm barra. Not a bad end to the school holidays!

Happy 11th Birthday Grace!

 

Happy 11th birthday for last week Gracie! Growing up too fast!

Flooded!

We have had a bit of excitement in our little town over the last few days, we got flooded! It started on Thursday night, we woke on Friday morning to the above view of our backyard. It's been like that before. We got ready for school but I packed the girls a towel each in their bags and shoes were in their bags too, we all went to school with bare feet!

And the rain just kept on coming! A river started flowing through school. Grace's classroom is in the building on the very right, you can just see it's pillar.

 

This is the river a little bit further down from the previous photo.

 

Students started leaving at noon on Friday, the girls and I left spot on closing time at 2.10. Daz stayed longer to assist with kids that weren't picked up. This is the school car park!

It was getting pretty bad here. Note you can't see the road in the background!

 

We drove through this! Grace was taking photos with the phone. Someone has put some amazing footage on YouTube here. We got home fine, our house was fine, it kept on raining, Daz got home at 3.30, we made a curry for dinner and went to sleep with rain on the room. It rained 163mm from Friday 9am to Saturday 9am. 

Sunday, today, it hasn't rained as much, 25mm so we have been out exploring. Because of all the rain they opened all the gates of the Diversion Dam so Lily Lagoon has been drained. This is were we put our boat in. It normally looks like this....

 

Here is the Dunham River flowing quite quickly!

 

We went out this morning to visit friends who live out of town, this is their driveway! So it has been a very wet few days, 389mm since Thursday night and raining again as I type this....

Back to School.

Back to school today for the girls. Grace is in year  6 and Milly is in year 4. Can you tell they are happy to go back??! It should be an awesome year for both of them.

Our Summer Holiday

Back to work tomorrow, that holiday just zoomed by. We fitted a lot in, first stop was back to Perth. One highlight was meeting our beautiful niece/cousin, only 5 weeks old. We were all smitten with her.


Then after Christmas and New Year, Daz and I left the girls with their grandparents and went over to Tasmania for a friends wedding. Haven't been to Tassie before, so we did some touristy things like visit the Cascade Brewery. It was cold though, 17 degrees on average, I had to buy a beanie!! But the cold was a novelty for us as we are so used to the heat, I loved wearing a scarf again.


We hired a car and went to the historic Port Arthur. It was a great break away, haven't traveled without the girls for that long a time, it was different! And the wedding was beautiful, it was the marriage of two teachers we work with, so it was very special to travel 4,000kms to attend.


Then it was back to Perth for two days and to pick up the girls and head to Singapore! Bit different to our usual relaxing by the pool Bali style as there is so much to see and do.

We meet some locals. Milly was stopped three times and asked if she would mind being in a photo!

We also found vending shoe machines, handy!

We spent a day at the zoo, I loved the signage there. I guess an animal face is universal in any language!


I got to feed a giraffe!


Milly quite happy to pose with the food here because it was a plastic display out the front of a restaurant. Her taste buds aren't that adventurous. I have another photo of her eating sushi and her expression is priceless, like she was eating a poisonous poo or something equally as horrible.

This lovely lady sold us a new memory card for our camera half way through the trip. We just had to take a photo to see if it worked ok!


Milly all smiles before getting on the Singapore flyer, a big enclosed Ferris wheel, sort of like the London Eye.


And we got to go to Universal Studios! Here is Daz and the girls posing in front of the Universal globe the day before we actually went.

The moment we walked through the gate!


Amongst all the rides we got to say hi to King Julian...


And also Pinocchio....

And also Shrek and Princess Fiona! It was a great day at Universal Studios, we were there for 9 hours! We got our tickets upgraded to Express, so we went straight to the front of every que, that was nice!

This one was taken on our last night there, we were about to board the water taxi (the boat just in the left of the shot) to take us over to Marina Sands, the three big building in the background with a curved boat on top! So an action packed summer holiday, all ready to hit the school year now.

Jumping Crocodiles!

We have just had a well earned school holidays. We spent a week in Darwin, relaxing by the pool with friends, shopping, a movie, eating out, more shopping, visiting markets, more eating out and more relaxing by the pool! It was delightful. We did spend one day doing something touristy. I have wanted to go on a Jumping Croc tour for ages, booked one at last with this company here.

When we got on the boat they did the safety speil and it was "all children sitting in the ailse seats please". Which annoyed the girls greatly as they wanted to see. Well, it didn't take long for them to work out they could see just fine in the ailse!! This is Daz's head in the above shot, shows how close they got and shows how there are no windows on the boat....

It was just amazing, as soon as we had travelled 500 metres down the river, two crocs just swam straight up to the boat, just waiting for the food. It was actually pig's heads that were being dangled on the end of the rope for them to eat. They are so quiet and then BAM, they flick their tail and propel themselves up and snap that meat and then splash down and have dissappeared into the brown water. If you fell in you'd be gone.

We ended the holiday with catching up with my Mum and Dad. They have been on a 16 day cruise (big ship in the background!) and had a stop over in Darwin the last day we were there which was perfect timing. It was great to see them for half a day.