What a fun day!

My friend Kim phoned this morning to ask if we wanted to go to the Crazy Joker with her and her kids, Jared and Charlotte. The Crazy Joker is this cool indoor kids playground with ball pits and jumping castles and a three story climbing thing with giant slides and things. It's great fun. Jared and Jack had an absolute ball. Jack's not too fond of the giant slide though and only went down it once with Daddy. Jumping in the ball pit.Jack has started doing this with his tongue when he's concentrating.After the Crazy Joker we headed down to Yeppoon to collect our projector which was being repaired and we had a bit of a play/walk on the beach. It was a bit overcast and the water was pretty mucky today but I still find it so relaxing. It's my zen. This is Jack actually laughing, his big fake wide mouthed laugh.(up on my shoulders)There were huge piles like this all along the beach of debris washed up from the flood. There must be so much stuff flowing out to sea. And here's the flood water today. There is a bit of water over the roads in some of the low lying bits of Rocky but I don't think there's going to be much damage at all.
I'm about to change my header/blog look. Let me know what you think.

Cheers

Oh and just in case anyone drops by here that happened to attend Rockhampton State High School from 1986 to 1990, my old school friend Toni and I are planning on organising a reunion. Drop us a line or check out our Facebook group or I've set up a blog here (check out the old prom photos)

Flood photos from today...

Good to see that Aussie sense of humour not being dampened by the threat of the floods, check of the tigers. Yes they are wearing snorkels and dive masks.

Flood photos

Photos of the rising river taken yesterday.

See I told you I'd be back with more photos...

As I said in my last post we were going to the Rock Pool Water Park this afternoon. It was a great afternoon, the kids had an absolute ball. Here's some photos.

Lifeguard SofieHayley BearLittle Miss CharlotteBathing BeautiesThere is a little activity station that has a couple of slides, various water spouts, suspended walkways and things. Here's Daddy and Jack on the straight slide which was mighty fast.

And here's the kids on the spiral slide. It was so fast that we had to have a person to slow the kids halfway down and a catcher at the bottom.
Here's Owen demonstrating the speed of the slide. See what I mean about him using Jack as an excuse to play on the kids things. Ollie was too fast to capture today, so here's Ollie's blur and splash on the little slide.Erica, Lauren and Hayley.Just Jack
And here's a photo of the river today.And this is the same pontoon from yesterday and again today there were bloody kids swimming in it, it was on the news. I can't believe they are game/stupid enough to do it. You should see how fast the water's rushing. If they went over the side there would be no way you'd ever find them again I'm sure.

Ok, see ya!

Playtime and some flood photos

We were getting ready to go for our Sunday afternoon walk and Jack threw a tantrum because he wanted to climb the "spiderman", one of those big rope climbing web things, so instead of going for our normal walk we went to the new park over southside and Jack and Owen had a bit of a play and then we went and checked out the river which is due to flood and will be at it's highest on Wednesday.

So firstly here's the photos of playtime...

Jack did really well on the spiderman. He practically climbed all the way to the centre by himself. I can't believe how quickly he's growing up.I really think that both Grandma and Daddy use Jack as an excuse to have a turn on the play equipment, especially Daddy who had a turn on the slide and the climbing thing as well.Here's Jack, sick of having his photo taken.After our play we went for a walk along the riverfront. There are the most beautiful banyan trees along there that are over a century old. This one was planted in June 1887 to honour the golden jubilee of Queen Victoria's reign. When we were kids we used to swing off the arial roots of these trees.

Arn't they just beautiful...It's a really nice area along here now. There was always a park but it's been completely re-done. There are pontoon things along the river with bbq's and fish cleaning stations and tables and chairs (you'll see below, they're about to be submersed). The park has great equipment. It's all about to be flooded though. They've removed all the gas for the bbq's, chained all the bins in place and unhooked the lighting and stuff before the water rises.This tree was even hiding a little surprise, ghecko eggs. We must have an affinity with ghecko's or something. I've never seen eggs before the ones we found at Christmas and now they're just everywhere.Here's the lowest of the pontoons just going under the water. The police were there yesterday getting the kids out that were swimming in there.This is the barrage to give you an idea of the force of water that's coming through at the moment.
It's amazing how many people are out looking at the water. There were cars and people everywhere yesterday. The council have started marking the telephone poles to the eight metre mark which is where the water is meant to peak. These poor people aren't going to fare too well, the mark is about a metre above the woman's head in pink on the pole. There is the most beautiful old house down this street, I really hope there's not too much damage.

I was a farm girl back when the last big flood hit and our property was bordered on one side by a lagoon so I've seen how quickly the water rises. We went to bed with the water down at the back shed, about 200metres from the house, and I woke up to go to the loo in the wee hours of the morning and the water was nearly knee deep under our house, which of course was where our bloody toilet was. I sat on the loo with my feet up in the air just waiting for crocodile to come and get me :P The next day we had to walk through the water out through our neighbours paddocks and then get a boat into town to stay with my Grandparents. My Mum's ex-husband stayed out at the farm and the water came up to the second top step of the house so we were lucky. Unfortunately we lost a lot of poultry, and I mean a lot. The stench after the flood subsided was just disgusting and we were bathing in yucky yucky water. The bonus was that we did get some new furniture that had floated onto our property. My Mum used to have the most spectacular gardens and they were just destroyed.

Anyhoo, I'll probably be back tonight with photos from the pool this afernoon.

Ciao

Happy Australia Day!!

Well we've had a sick little boy this week. Poor Jack has just been miserable. On Monday he had puffy eyes and was saying that his left eye hurt and he had temps in the high 38's and was awake every couple of hours at night. On Tuesday Owen took the day off and the boys stayed home together while I went to work. Owen said he wasn't too bad and in the afternoon he seemed fine, happily playing but then his fever started going up again and he was quite upset so I called 13HEALTH while Owen had a shower with him and they said just to go to the doctors within the next 48 hours or go to hospital if his temp got over 40. So anyway, Owen went out to his poker game and after about 2 hours of crying and Jack's temp getting over 39 he got a red rash on his thighs so I phoned Owen went and picked him up and we went up to the hospital. They gave him panodol and we waited about 20 minutes to see the doctor and by then he was perky as anything, in fact he was quite the charmer. He did everything the doctor asked, stick out your tongue etc. and she even let him listen to her heart with the stethescope. So everything checked out fine and off home we went to another night of being up every couple of hours. Wednesday was a little better, Wednesday night up every couple of hours, Thursday bad morning, made a doctor's appointment, got there and Jack was fine, happy and chirpy, Thursday night not so good but better than the rest of the week. Friday morning, goo coming out of his ear, Owen's day off luckily so they stayed home, phoned doctors and the sister said to come in, saw doctor and he said he's fine but that he'd give us a script for anti-biotic's in case due to the long weekend. Dosed him up and Saturday he's fine!! It was a looooooooong week and I'm soooo glad he's feeling better. Poor little bugger.

So anyhoo, on to Australia day...

We had a great day yesterday after a very slooooooow start (sorry Kim). Jack didn't wake up until after 11 (didn't go to sleep until 1am) so when he got up we headed down to the beach to meet Kim and Jared and check out the Australia Day festivities. They had markets with jumping castles and rides and things, an all day concert including Dorothy the Dinosaur and beach activites like sand castle building comps and beach races.

We got the just in time to see Dorothy. Here's Jack singing Rock-a bye your Bear...

Then we went and the boys had a turn on the jumping castle...And then the cup and saucer ride...

After that we headed down to the beach and the kids had a great time splashing about in the water. Jack is funny with water. He freaks out in the pool but seems okay at the beach. He got dumped yesterday and still happily went back for more. Scared the bejesus out of me though. He was lying down on his tummy in the shallows and a wave came and rolled him onto his back. His little face was under water and these big eyes were looking up at me filled with panic. Poor baby. He was upset but got over it pretty quickly. I think the fun of splashing around with Jared was enough to overcome the incident.

We then sat on the beach and had some crackers and dip and juice and then after Kim and Jared left Jack had a bit of a dig in the sand (naughty Mummy left the bucket and shovel in the car so the poor kid had to use plastic cups).

They had the most spectacular kites flying all day.

Jack had a little sort of turn at fling the little ladybeetle (he held the rope that was pegged to the ground).

Then we stopped and listened to a great local band, Busby Marou, for a few songs before having one last turn on the cup and saucer, a turn on the clown game and then headed home.

When we got back to Rocky we went and checked out the river which is due to flood any day now. Here's a piccy.

We'll be fine where we live even though there's a creek at the end of the street (thanks for asking girls).

And then last night I met up with Kim and a couple of her friends to see 27 Dresses. I really liked the movie, it was sweet and funny but the couple in front of us got up and left the theatre.

It's been a great long weekend so far and tomorrow our Mum's and Bub's group is meeting up to go to the Rock Pool Water Park so that should be great too, even the Dad's are coming.

Ok, ciao