Catch up blog...

Seem to be getting lax at posting on here at the moment - my apologies.
Will use this as a catch up post and then post again this week with the last part of Green Island.
Well grandma's stay is finally over and it was a very glum household after she had departed, although at virtually the same time as she left Jo confirmed her next visit so we all cheered up!
Life has been busy as is always the case with us it seems.
Xanthe and Hamish are doing art classes and Scouts respectively both on Thursday which does make for a manic couple of hours but is easy to plan that way - I will post some shots of Xanthes art in future weeks.
At home not much has changed other than the arrival of a new dishwasher courtesy of our landlords as our old one has finally given up the ghost.
Whilst the Wet has not materialised into anything of real note we have had several days with more than 40mm of rain (1.5 inches in old money) and one day with well over 60mm

I love the patterns that the rain makes although I don't always manage to capture them properly with the camera

A few days ago Tish went with some of the ladies from work to see Dolly Parton in Cairns
Getting ready to go out

The concert was at the Convention Centre and was by all accounts great

Dolly is not quite my scene so I was very happy to stay at home with the children.

Tish was off last weekend which is almost a first and we were able to continue the music theme in a very relaxed setting

sitting down have lunch....and possibly a few beers....at the Yorkeys Knob Boat Club watching...

We have seen this group before (they were the live entertainment at the Fields of Fire event in September) they play a mixture of traditional country and Hillbilly music, some of which dates back to the 1750s. They are based just up the road at Port Douglas but travel around Aus for a lot of the time so chances to hear them locally are not all that frequent. They were excellent as usual and put on a four hour set!

I normally have my camera with me but there are some places where it is not appropriate to take it such as the school grounds (unless we are there for an event) so I was a bit frustrated when I found these guys whilst dropping something off at the school office, luckily despite making a fair bit of a racket they were remarkably tolerant of me messing around with my camera phone and I did manage to get a couple of half decent shots

Bush Thick-knee and chick - a far cry from the distant views we used to get of their UK cousins the Stone-Curlew at Weeting Heath!