Tonight we celebrated Tom turning 4 years old!

My mother joined us, and Tom gave her one of his very special hugs to thank her for the dinosaur jigsaw that she gave him.

Thea watched, and was very good that Tom got all the pressies, but she’s waiting now for her birthday when she gets them all!

“For the first time since 2004.

Good to see the Queensland floods are being put to good use!

http://media.theaustralian.com.au/multimedia/2009/02/24-lakeeyre/index.html

—

No trees were harmed in the production of this e-mail. However, a

number of electrons were seriously inconvenienced.”

How wonderful! Yes, magic happens:-)

Tristan and Tom came along and helped us get Dusky Dolphin ready to go back into the water, and then walked behind the lifter as it carried the boat to the lifting in bay…

I’m carrying the last of the antifouling paint that our painting man, Gary, put on her.

Tonight we helped out with a mast-climbing demonstration. Naturally when Rob Hills, who does so much for our sailing club’s cruising section, called Rob to ask for some help with this (Rob being a famous mountaineer at our club), Rob said “Yes!” We decided to show them how I belay Rob when he climbs Dusky Dolphin’s 16 metre mast.

So here we are in the photo, tied in to our harnesses climbing style, Rob “climbing” along the deck with me belaying him. It’s a true partnership, doing it this way, just like sailing has become for us.

On the way home, I was thinking about where we are going now with our sailing. We’ve learnt all we are going to learn from the club, and need to go our own way much more now. But it’s been good to share the journey, always helping out where we can!

Tonight we celebrated Tristan’s 29th birthday.

A lovely Dad, husband, brother, son and geophysicist, it was a great privilege to share in celebrating the day he was born:-)

We’ve had the most horrible bushfires in Victoria this past week or two. Temperatures of 45C and high winds have allowed summer bushfires to becoming racing, raging infernos that destroy EVERYTHING in their paths. So whole towns and villages have been completely wiped out and the death count of people is 300 and rising. The death count of native animals is in the millions, with several endangered species possibly being wiped out forever. And then there are the forests, completely devastated. Where there were towns and lush bush, there is now charred rubble, burnt trees, and dead bodies of people, animals and birds.

Left are 7,000 homeless people and millions of homeless animals and birds.

All left at the altar of the human ego.

Our bush needs regular fires, and unfortunately with all the small towns in the wooded hills north of Melbourne that has not been possible. But with consequences like this perhaps we need to rethink how we approach bush-based villages and towns, where they are safe for humans and animals and plants to thrive alongside each other.

But pictures like this one give us hope that perhaps we can work it out:-)

We had a big fire in Kings Park, too, which wiped out a big swathe of native bushland. But not everything died. Magically enough, a flock of little honey eaters now comes through our back yard in the evenings for a feed until their usual patch of bush regrows:-)

Today is Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday!

He’s been such an inspiration to so many people with his determination to get his story out there, a story that changed the way his world looked at evolution and thus challenged the church’s control on that story.

Thank you kindly Charles:-)

This is Rob in one of his favourite places on Dusky Dolphin – at his barbecue – it’s a “Cambell male thing”!

And he’s cooking our wedding anniversary dinner:-)

On our 28th wedding anniversary, we were at Rottnest and caught the Rottnest train to the gun emplacement museum for a tour – as you do on your anniversary. Methinks that next year we might go to a dress shop:-) Or maybe a MacBook shop would be more exciting:-)

Seriously though, war stuff fascinates Rob and in going along with that I learned about the vital role played by West Australian women in our defense as the drums of war beat against us.

To help Blaine, and therefore Tristan, Rob, Jeanette, Christopher and I took care of Tom and Thea for a couple of days this week. Tom has entered the “Ferocious Four” stage (Rob’s term) which little boys go through when they have their first surge of testosterone. So he is extremely tiring and Blaine really needed a break.

Blaine came over yesterday morning with the kiddliwinks and we went to their favourite park (pictures above). Didn’t go so well this week as all the kids (and some Dads) were grumpy so we went back to our place. Blaine retired to the study as she’d really had enough of grumpiness. Thea went to bed and I spent some time with Tom and his new sticker book. Blaine left to be taken out for afternoon tea by a friend, somewhere with NO playgrounds and NO children, then have a nice evening with Tristan! Jeanette turned up to take Tom for the night, and Thea and I enjoyed some quiet time doing all the things that she wanted to do. Fi got back from her day’s time with Mum and joined us. She helped bath and feed Thea, and we put her to bed. Unfortunately Thea didn’t sleep too well, and as she was sharing Fi’s room Fi didn’t either. So they both got up this morning looking bleary. I took over Thea and Fi went back to bed.

Thea and I had a quiet morning, including morning tea in Subiaco with Blaine, while Fi had her last visit to Mum. Then Fi came back, got all her luggage together and left for the airport.  Jeanette arrived with Tom. After the children’s rests they had a last play with my “bling” as they call it before going home with a much more relaxed Blaine – see photos: