Making a spontaneous splash

It was a half planned fun afternoon out with some of the kids long time family friends.
 (see a long long time ago)

The idea was to get some pumice stone which has been washing up on our beaches in volumes (see my Auntie's story here)

I was collecting it for our new permaculture garden at my preschool (see THAT story here)

Well a quick trip or two to Cemetery beach turned into a most unexpected fun afternoon.

It was the unplanned that was the most fun.

On the first trip a brief shower of rain made us feel a bit chilly. A thatch of newly mown grass nearby felt warm underfoot so the next moments were spent lying in it, jumping into it and playing hide and seek in it, even I joined in the frivolity and shared in the fun and laughter.

where are they hiding Peri~Peri?

 

On the second trip, it was getting quite late in the afternoon yet the children who went to look into the rock pools were drawn by the waves swirling around a large rock resembling a crocodile.

One by one they went in! Launching themselves from crocodile rock fully clothed on a mid Autumn afternoon.

I ran back to the truck to get my camera (as I am not often without it.) I had to capture the leaps of faith, the smiles of enjoyment and the friendship & camaraderie between the 4 long time friends.

I mentioned to the kids as they sat in the back of the truck wrapped in emergency towels packed for exactly this 'just in case' moment that we are the luckiest people in the world with freedom and imagination.

 We are free to enjoy our own island, to explore and make our own fun. We are not relying on expensive video games or paid people to entertain us, instead we had the free-est of free days by not paying a cent to be able to discover and play whatever we wanted to.

We are truly blessed.

And I am darn grateful that I was able to capture the photos so the memories will last a lifetime.


 

Little Jasper wasn't as happy at everyone jumping in the water.
Hugs from Mama with the rainbow hair helped.



Happy Easter 2013

 

Happy Easter!

It is the kids first Easter without their Dad as he is working in Qld for a few weeks, but a chocolate egg hunt soon made them forget that :)
We will ring him today when he is at my sisters house and ring to talk to the rest of the family in Sydney also.
Hope you have a great family Easter long weekend too.

Making a SPLASH on Easter Saturday

 After torrential rains on Good Friday to break a long dry spell, we discovered that the concrete bike ramps drains had blocked up and were filled with water much like a swimming pool.

I was with the kids at the only public playground on Norfolk Island doing some photo shoots with other families when Jasper and his little friend Jordana wandered over to the bike ramp and cautiously stuck their toes into the water.

Once they knew that I was safely watching them, they ventured in a little deeper to be knee deep.

As soon as Teddy and Sienna saw the water, they too came over to play.

Before long a few other local kids also joined in and there was much splashing!

The kids made up their own games, followed by a little synchronised swimming :)

The water level had dropped quite a bit by the time I took these photos, but we had so much fun.

Friday Favourite~ planning to light it up blue again

Coming up again in a few weeks.....we are hoping again for a happy yet blue day on Norfolk Island!
Autism Awareness day April 2nd 2013

Friday Favourite ~ driving the tractor

Friday Favourite ~ Puppy Love

Welcome to our new puppy

Welcome (Katy)Peri-Peri to our family.

It has taken us 10 years to get another puppy after our beloved Ozone.

She comes 2nd hand from another family who couldn't keep her but we will show her plenty of love.

Brandt has Nando's Peri-Peri sauce on every meal and Sienna sings non stop to Katy Perry songs, so the name stuck.

She already has her own facebook page The-Adventures-of-Peri-Peri-the-Preschool-Puppy

We look forward to sharing lots of fun and love together.

 Sienna couldn't bear to let her sleep outside alone, so slept next to her by the front door.

One of 8 puppies in their litter, Peri-Peri meets up again with her sister Kello and they become mischievous play buddies everyday at preschool.

Now she is a big bigger, both Sienna and Jasper want to train her to do tricks and want to sleep with her each night.

 

Perspective

This is a post about sone amazing artwork done by the youth of Norfolk Island.

A competition was organised for the youth of Norfolk Island to produce some works of art for the display room at the entrance of the Norfolk Island National Park's Botanic Gardens.

My friend Michelle posted first so I will let you pop over to her blog here to see what happened while I continue to a different story about perspective.

 

You see Michelle's son deservedly came first in the competition with amazing painting of a native hibiscus flower (or white oak) while Teddy came second with a great picture of Captain cooks monument using the amazing perspective that he seems to have always had. This time he used lots of colour which surprised me as he is normaly a black pen on white paper kind of guy.

The day of the presentation I opened an old colouring book for Jasper and was so surprised to rediscover some of Teddy's drawings when he was 3 and 4.
I am trying not to compare the two boys at 3 as they are completely different in skill and abilities.

This is Jaspers not so interested attempt at colouring in while Teddy even at age 3 used to bypass the whole colouring in book and go to the black back cover and draw things like these incredible trees.

I have mountains of homemade books with his incredible drawings in. I am so glad I have kept them, though they take up quite a bit of storage, its worth it.


Does this put things into perspective? Well, I think we can safely say that although Jasper had a 25% chance of also being on the autism spectrum, at just 3 we can see no signs of it.

So proud of Teddy. I wouldn't trade him for the world.
 

Later at age 4 buildings began emerging complete with clotheslines and helicopters (We have NOTHING like this on our little island, so the idea must have come from somewhere in his imagination.)

Here is the link to some of Teddy's earlier work
drawings
and
computer and sketches