Australia - clothes lines

I'm sure I have commented before on the long lost art of air drying things. Mum has an amazing old huge metal Hills Hoist that probably can't be replaced (on a bit of a tilt now...).

Australia - cooking with nana

I cook with the kids, but Nana in QLD is the original.

Australia - bushwalking

Bushwalking = Hiking. Good to be out in the dun coloured wild with the eucalyptus again!

Australia - meeting the chooks

Backyard chooks my parents organized for us to visit at their friends house.

Bethany Beach, day two

Today we witnessed a bit of a beach meeting because some people had lost their child. The lifesavers blew their whistles, pulled everyone in, and gave them a description of the child. I think the lifesavers at the post one up and one down did the same thing, which effectively got about 60m of beach keeping an eye out for the kid.
Very busy at beach today - Sunday of July 4th weekend. Fuller than we've ever experienced.

Bethany Beach

After four days of teaching VBS, right off the back of our Outer Banks adventure, we upped the craziness and followed hubby to Bethany Beach, where he spent two days walking around a water treatment plant taking measurements and I spent two days taking the kids to the beach by myself.
In retrospect it was a very good object lesson about overcommitment and not doing things just because the calendar has nothing on it.
But Bethany Beach is such a lovely little spot, and we'd often talked about staying there so we didn't have to do the 6am start for a couple of hours on the sand and this way work would pay for part of the accommodation, so... (oh yes, and I can do taking three kids to the beach on my own!!).
There don't appear to be any ok photos of our camp, but because we had a Trolley, and Chairs, and an Umbrella (as well as towels, sand toys, sunscreen, food, baby gear etc etc). Baby rode in a backpack, boys walked along side, and I pushed our Trolley, full of supplies, about three blocks... The hardest bit was the sand.
Thankfully, Americans are rather decent when you're carting around a baby, so someone in the camp beside me helped with the umbrella, and they were ok with the boys joining in with their grandchild.

Testing the stairs

Third baby, busy life, no baby proofing done except the urgent stuff... so seeing her test the stairs is a bit nerve racking. We need gates...