Justine Clarke plays Queanbeyan

There's no denying that we are huuuge Justine Clarke fans. She's a children's entertainer that we first came across on Play School. Describing her as a children's entertainer really does her a disservice, she's an actor a singer a musician. Yes, we are in awe.

We were all excited when we found she was visiting Canberra (well, Queanbeyan). It was the second Justine Clarke concert that we'd been to and if we're truthful I think both Amy and I were perhaps more full of anticipation leading up to it than Audrey and Eli. Justine is now 3 CDs into her solo career (all are compulsory listening on car journeys) and the 1 hour set that she played was just fantastic.

Because I'd been hot off the mark with booking tickets we had excellent seats. Every child in the place was enthralled (for the first 15 minutes). Eli in particular didn't seem to be able to believe it he sat frozen and agape. Once the initial spell wore off everyone was in various stages of dancing/crying/singing. Justine is a fabulous entertainer. Roll on the next tour!

It's a Great Big World!

What a Load of Rubbish!

As Spring cleaning goes our day spent cleaning out our garage was pretty significant.

We'd put up with boxes that reached to the roof for nearly 2 years, but now it looks as though we're going to buy the house/shack that we've been renting we took the opportunity to clear out some junk.

What was slightly galling was that much of the debris that ended up in the skip was stuff left by long gone past tenants, we'd lived around it or put more junk on top of it. Now we were nearly owners of the ancient junk we decided to clear it out.

I suspect that the skip will be the first of many we hire.

As well as the broken down tele and two old desks we came upon an old oil drum rusting in the hedge, an old spring bed (umpteen cockroaches), and probably most surprisingly a possum and its baby nesting in the furthest corner of the garage. With two big pairs of eyes starring back at me it was impossible to deny that possums are definitely cute, but apparently can be nasty when cornered. I tentatively moved the box/nest out of the garage in the hope that we could all go our separate ways but still remain friends.

Later that evening with the two possums still entrenched in the box it started raining and I felt guilty (almost to the extent of dragging them back into the garage). Fortunately though at some point they must have sloped away on their own.

Audrey and Eli at Amy's Party

No, not THAT Amy. Audrey and Eli have a friend called Amy who turned three at the weekend so we were back to Kambah cottage for an excellent party. Here's a couple of picture of our kids enjoying themselves...

Audrey's Art

Here's a few works of art that Audrey has produced recently..

A tree (Audrey described the roots and the leaves at the top)TigerAbstract!

Click go the shears boys

Today we had our playgroup at a sheep farm near Tidbinbilla National Park so we could watch the sheep being shorn. Audrey was so excited, singing 'Click go the shears' and 'Baa baa black sheep' on the drive to the farm.

The farm has 9000 head of sheep and 1000 cattle. The shearers are paid per sheep so were working pretty fast. It's amazing how quickly they could get the wool off the sheep. We also saw the wool being classed and packed into bales.

It was a lovely sunny day so it didn't seem so bad for the sheep to be stripped of their woolly coats but I bet they are feeling the cold tonight! Brrr...

The shearers working hard

Tom Roberts' (famous Australian artist) painting 'Shearing the Rams' from 1888 (not a great deal appears to have changed)

Audrey feeding the pony

Weekend in Sydney

We drove to Sydney this weekend to spend some time with our friends, Tim and Hayley, and their two children, Alex and Ted. Audrey had been talking about seeing 'darling Teddy' for a while so we decided to make the trip. It was a lovely relaxing weekend and the kids all played together really well. It wasn't until we were leaving on Sunday afernoon that we realised the only outing we had taken was a trip to the local park. Who needs to go anywhere when the company is so good!

Tim reads to the kids

Eli and Mymie

Eli has a couple of toys he loves. One is a wolf (stands to reason really) and the other is Jemima. Jemima tends to be carried everywhere and is known affectionately (by Eli) as "Mymie". Here's a picture of him and his "Mymie" taken this morning