Blue Mountain weekend away

This last weekend we went away with our friends Valerie, Guillaume and Elise. We went up to the Blue Moutains and stayed at Leura. The house was great with an open fire, Leura is a nice township with a great Mall of shops and a nice place to have a walk round and we managed to see quite a few places within the area.

Jacob, unfortunately was teething AND had a slight reaction to his immunisations the previous week. So he was a little clingy, tearful and needed some love and attention from his parents. When he was feeling alright, he was his normal cheerful self and played really nicely with Elise and was a pleasure to be round.

We had some great evening meals with Valerie and Guillaume taking the lead and providing the equipment for a raclette and fondue. Both were great and we had two great evenings talking and eating some really nice food.

We managed some walking in between having coffees, long drives whilst the children were sleeping and eating cake!

I would recommend taking some time out in the mountains, it's a lovely place for a relaxing visit.

Chichester Dam

Saturday 29th March saw us driving through New South Wales countryside to Chichester Dam. We met up with Tracey, Ant, Ciara, Tom, Ena, Gordon and Lyn for a barbecue.

It was a great day. It was really nice to spend a day with a group of really nice people. Jacob had his mate Ciara there. We had two sets of grandparents and two sets of parents keeping an eye out for the children and the sun shone for the majority of the time.

Tom was chief barbecue cook and got busy setting up the wood and paper when we arrived. We started to notice some wing flaps as the wood was placed in the barbecue area. As time went on and the barbecue was started, more wing flapping and then the meat was placed on there - we had seven kookaburras, seven!!! And you felt they were watching you whilst you ate, we had to have someone near the barbecue to keep the birds away. Bread and meat fat was chucked at the birds, just to keep them away. Two birds got into a sudden death situation whilst both trying to eat one piece of fat - they stayed like that for at least 20 minutes with the occasional movement and aggresive calling. Great fun for us to watch though.

We had bought a variety of different cakes and because the rangers had kindly placed a hot water tank (for hot drinks only, no washing up) we had a nice cuppa and piece of cake. Followed by a nice walk up to the dam and then because we'd been for a walk, we rewarded ourselves with leftover cake and another cuppa!

I nearly forgot to say, on the way there Dave and I saw what we thought was a fox but looked too big and more like a dog, so we think we saw our first dingo. On our return we saw a nice big lizard running across the road, followed by a snake (my first) and some wallabies.

A really good day out and would love to return back there at some point.

Swimming lesson

Dave had his first swimming lesson with Jacob on Easter Tuesday. It was interesting for me to sit on the side and watch Jacob, as I'm normally in the water with him. Dave didn't do a bad job considering it was his first time.

We are nearly at the end of Jacob's first term of swimming and it's great to see how much more he's used to the water and enjoying the lesson, I just wish he wouldn't get cold so fast. It doesn't take too long before he's shivering and by the end of the 30 minutes, he has blue lips. Poor little chap.

I've already booked and paid for the next term. It's nice to take him for the weekly lesson, but also good to know he's learning a very valuable life skill too.

Ciara's 1st birthday party

Jacob's friends are all starting to celebrate their birthdays and it was Ciara's turn on Easter Sunday. Unfortunately the day wasn't so sunny and warm but we were lucky to be at Ciara's grandfather's house and using their garage - perfect for sheltering out of the wet weather.

Jacob used his walking skills, with his friend Coby, to wander around the drive and road. He wouldn't wear his sensible shoes and was only wearing his socks ... they were soaked, his trousers were soaked where his knees were (as he kept crawling!) and his bottom (where he kept falling onto it). It could have been worse, Coby just wanted to keep splashing in the running water at the edge of road and got even wetter!

Ciara had a great day. She had some lovely presents, lots of friends round and a beautiful beautiful birthday cake. She looked very pretty in her pink outfit and really enjoyed all the attention.

Quick update

Well, we've been pretty busy in the last couple of weeks. We've had birthday parties, mothers' groups, swimming lessons, Easter, barbecues, walks, play dates and a host of other things that I can't even remember, to attend and have had a great time too!

Jacob has also had his 12 month injections, skin allergy tests, blood test and urine sample. Not the nicest of things to have had to put Jacob through but needed to be done. It has been found that he has an egg allergy, so have to be very careful what to give him. The rest of the testings were fine. Also, on the last visit to the paediatrician we were advised to cut out lactose (milk related foods), fructose and other sugars from his diet for the next 6 weeks. So the choice of things we can give Jacob to eat, is rapidly reducing. All good fun and hopefully it will help him out to put weight on.

Jacob has also had a haircut in the last couple of weeks which has seen his untidy curls go - yeah! We were hoping Holly would be able to perform some magic and turn his hair from slightly ginger, I like to say sandy!! ;o), to blonde but no, there's no "Just for Babies" hair dye as yet.

We are off to the Blue Mountains tomorrow morning for the weekend with Valerie, Guillaume and Elise, so there shall be more photos for the blog next week.

I've also got more photos to download from the camera, so will update the blog next week with them too - you have been warned!