Poo Water / Gwen Visits / World Train
Had a good weekend with the kids and family. Sorry Jeremy I never got around to properly calling you back, I must do that this week! Saturday morning everyone slept in until 8am or so, well I think the kids were up a bit earlier but they seem to both be old enough so that they don't stand at the bottom of the stairs screaming murder until someone gets up. Now they just play with each other, or their toys, or Beth sits in bed and reads a book etc until someone gets up. So I got up out of bed at 8am and came down to make pancakes. Weekend pancakes are a bit thing as I've probably mentioned, all week I am excited asked "Is it Saturday today?" and when it finally is Saturday there is whooping and yelling of "Pancakes, Pancakes, Yaaaah" etc. So I made some pancakes and then got everyone ready for going to see Joseph play Soccer. Trying to find a park at kiddy Soccer is mental, it's like being in Auckland again! Cars everywhere, people everywhere! It's insane. We all just make up parks all over the show. Eventually we found a park went over to see Joseph play, though Theo and I were only there for 10 minutes before we had to jump back in the car and head to swimming.
Theo was once again excellent at swimming, doing everything that was asked of him and listening and following instructions. He was told he had to jump off the mat and then turn over in the water and float onto his back. And he did, first go! Still amazed that this little boy didn't even like to float on his back 2 months ago at all, now can't wait. So we had a great swimming lesson, then zipped into Mitre 10 to buy some sausages, then headed over to Auntie Holly's to pickup Sarah and Beth. We came home and I did a bunch of gardening (clearing out all the weeds) and put the pool to sleep. Pretty sure with Winter well and truely here we're not going ot be getting in any time soon. After everyone had a good sleep we went over to Holly and Adrian's for dinner, yummo burgers. Everyone had a good time, Theo spent most of the night trying to master the toy Electric Guitar while Beth prefers to play with Joseph and Isla.
Sunday I made pancakes again though they weren't met with as much enthusiasm as Saturday. I think Beth was just mostly super excited because Gwen was coming to visit! Gwen started school a couple of weeks ago and before that went away on a 3 week holiday, so Beth hasn't had her as a friend at Kindy anymore. They still got on like a house on fire though, Gwen also bought Beth back a little present from her overseas trip, a little waving Chinese cat toy. Which Beth likes except the waving arm makes a clicking noise at night! Once the girls were settled in to play, I took Theo into town to visit Train World, or as he likes to call it "WorldTrain". We were the only ones there and he just had the best time watching all the little electric trains zip around, and "Driving" the Thomas and Gordon trains. They're just electric ones with a little knob to make them go fast/slow/stop. Once I pointed out to him he was driving them, he just loved it even more. I basically sat in a corner and just watched him play for an hour and half before I was bored to death and couldn't handle it anymore. Plus it was getting cold. So then we went to get a lunch, and then walked up to buy some lightbulbs and then headed home.
For dinner we went around to Peter and Mary's house, for lovely Beef cheeks and all the associated lashings. Very lovely dinner, thank you!
Last Thursday we had the water tested, Sarah thought it was probably about time. Good call too, because it came back with:
- 1414 Total Coliforms MPN/100 mL
- 2 E. coli MPN/100 mL
Which isn't great. The Coliforms aren't fantastic, but E. Coli is really NOT what you want in drinking water. Because we have a tank in the garden, the nasty could be coming from that, so I took in a sample of water straight off the bore yesterday too. If the Bore comes back clean we probably need to get the tank/house pipes flushed, if it's off the bore we probably need to get a UV filter fitted. Lucky us!
So we'll learn a few things today. We should get our water results back, and Beth goes to have her eyes tested again after having some special drops put in them that will stop her being able to affect the outcome of the tests. Not that we really think she is, but they like to test children with the drops in their eyes to make sure they're not really squinting or doing anything else that could be affecting the test results.
It's been freezing here the last few days, we've had the fire going 24/7 pretty much it's so cold. We put heaters in the kids rooms last night.
Finally, we've started a hunt for a backup BigBae, though I think it might be an impossible task. I just can't imagine what would happen if it ever got lost. Hopefully that day never arrives...
Finally here's a little movie that summarizes the weekend nicely.
Tim
Edit: The Bore is fine, it's the tank that's infected.