After last weekend’s overnight success camping at Lake Leschenaultia we headed to Nanga Mill campground at Lane Pool Reserve with the Marshall Clan. 

Ellis, Freddy and Lara collected Dave from work in the Delorian and managed the 1:30h drive without needing to stop and feed 5.5 week old Freddy. 

Andy and Sara found a nice flat spot near the stream for the trailers while Ellis and Sam had their first adventure for the weekend. 

There is so much to do with the (older) kids down there and we tried to cram in as much as possible!

Saturday morning we all headed for a 2.1km walk which the kids did without any whinging! 

Dave then took Ellis for a MTB ride while Freddy had some more milk. 

Sunday Ellis went on the treetop adventure which she loved, going on each course 3 times. 

And Ellis also gave some (very small) Rapids a go!

It was a fab weekend and we are looking forward to a repeat adventure!

Ellis received a Merrit award today at school! Very proud moment. 

Dave dropped Ellis and I at the airport for our trip to the UK. Ellis has been excited since she found out we were going and the days have meticulously been counted down!

Everything went relatively smoothly once I had activated my bank cards to work outside of Australia. Not the best organisation on my part. Luckily I had my laptop so was able to sort it out in Dubai (after eating all the food we had ordered I did wonder if we would be doing washing up). 

Ellis also managed to spill her Soup and her Noodles all over the place on two seperate occasions. The noodles were not so much of an issue as they went in the seat pocket in front of her. The newly presented soup however went in her lap and all over Ouioui and the seats. She was covered. After we stripped the hot clothes off her and gave her a wipe down in the loo I got her the spare t-shirt and undies. Unfortunately I didn’t think she’d need a new skirt so she had to wear my jumper round her waist for the rest of the flight. 

We had a lovely reunion at the exceptionally busy Gatwick with Mum and Dad and trotted off to find the car. Luckily it was at this point I realised I had left Ellis’ booster seat on the carousel. Thanks to a very helpful member of Gatwick staff we got it back rather quickly. (No thanks to the totally unmanned information desk with phone list of unobtainable numbers). 

It is now 6 am. Ellis has pretty much slept since we arrived at 1pm other than to eat some Spaghetti Bolognaise. Good girl! 

Update: 7:15am

Turns out she didn’t sleep all night. Poor Grumpsy ended up downstairs after she was talking to Granny for an hour at 3 in the morning. On the plus side Granny got lovely cuddles in bed. On the down, Grumpsy slept on the sofa with Rommel. 

How to make Ellis orange juice.

Step 1. Climb tree in back garden and shake as hard as you can  

 
Step 2. Collect oranges into bowl and looked pleased about yourself

  
 Step 3. Get Dylan over to help you squeeze them 
Step 4. Hug Dylan and drink juice

CX in Perth, apparently this was the first race they have ever had with real CX conditions! It rained, hailed and was awesome.  I wore my disc pads down to nothing and had no brakes for the last lap.  I won a 6 pack of beer.  Thank you to Tony Meldrum for the photos of me.

We met a load of friends and their kids and headed off out to John Forrest national Park for a kiddy adventure.  Ended up with a load of wet, muddy but very happy kids at the end of it.  Lovely to get the kids outside and playing with each other exploring their little hearts out.

We gave mum and dad a taste of camping Aussi style at Wharncliffe Mill. The weather on arrival was not perfect but it only drizzled a little. The rest of our stay was glorious until we tried to drive home and discovered the car battery was on the flat side…

We also spent some time sampling wine of course!

Ellis also tried to beat grumpsy at ping pong!