Beach Crowd

Mr Sunshine is such a funny man.  He was having some fun with my camera and said, "You'll have to put this picture on your blog because the beach is so crowded today".  That's the crowd in the photo.  We do usually have more room to ourselves it's true, but really we don't mind sharing the beach with crowds like this.

We had Lion and Dragon with us for an overnight stay.  Too short really.  Dragon got into the spirit of a beach holiday with this lei he found among the toys.

Both boys enjoyed crushing aluminium cans with Mr Sunshine's "bommy-knockers".  Is that a real word?  I hope it's not rude. We collect them for the Leprosy Mission (cans, not bommy-knockers) and they sell them to metal merchants to raise money.  If the cans are crushed they don't take up so much storage space and little boys just love hammering the living daylights out of anything as Lion's grin proves.  I swear these boys keep getting more handsome.

They didn't spend all of their time doing hard yakka. Some of the time was spent playing at the beach.  We built a race track in the sand for the toy grader and dump truck to whiz around.

Obviously, the crowd had thinned out a bit by this time.

Soon...

Less than two weeks to go. . .

then our house will belong to someone else
"Grandma's park" will no longer be "Grandma's park"
the bank will be repaid and off our backs
the threat of having our house repossessed will be over
the packing will be completed
the giving away of everything we cannot store or keep will be completed
most of our financial debts will be fulfilled
the most stressful time of our lives will be over
most of the tears will be over
the photos will be all we have to remember our home of 18 years
But (staying positive) we will be living at the beach. Thank God for MIL's with beach huts.

Dragon at the beach

See those rosy cheeks?  That was not sunburn or wind burn or from energetic running around.  That was just because it was sooooo stinking hot!  These boys really needed a dip in the nice, cool sea.  Unfortunately nice, cool sea is at least 1000 km away, so they were looking forward to a dip in the hopefully-not-too-warm-sea.  The specks of dirt on Dragon's face are bits of sand from trying to play in a tiny bit of shade that the eaves created near the side of the house.  Perspiration made it impossible to wipe them away because they just stuck like mud.

While waiting for the sun to die down a bit, Dragon and Lion produced some beautiful drawings - very generously given as gifts to Mummy McTavish and Grandma.

When we were finally able to get down to the beach, Dragon was not really very keen on the sea (shallow as it was) or the waves (tiny as they were).  He had a little bit of a paddle, but did not let go of Grandma's hand  for even a few seconds.

When Grandad said that he was going for a walk, that was great news for Dragon.  He liked walking on the beach and it avoided the stress of being expected to actually enjoy the scary water.  Off he went with Grandad.

You could not describe it as a brisk walk, especially since there is a childrens' playground behind the trees about half way along.  Somehow Dragon managed to twist Grandad's arm to spend about 20 minutes at the playground.

Soon after Dragon and Grandad's return, big brother Lion was confined to the shore for being disobedient and causing his Mummy and grandparents unnecessary worry. Lion dug a hole in the sand.   Dragon helped by fetching buckets of water to pour into the hole.  The problem was that Dragon still did not want to go into the water, but he was counting on the waves coming up to the bucket.  The annoying waves always stopped short of the bucket.  Just look at those disappointed, sagging shoulders.

With a bit of help from Grandad and Grandma, a few bucket-fulls were collected and a safe, little artificial beach was created by the boys.  "Little" is probably an understatement as you can see from the bottom photo.

Dragon got in trouble from Lion for putting some sand into his pool, which Lion began to feverishly dig out.  How do you tell the difference between the original sand and the unwanted, added sand? 

That is Lion wisdom that is too lofty for mere mortals and little brothers to understand.

Lion at the beach

You can tell that it was a seriously hot and steamy day when we went to the beach with Mummy McTavish and the three little McTavishes.

The sad thing for the kids, is that they look forward to the beach so much, but when we get there, the sun is far too fierce to go out until late in the day.  Lion has such lovely milky skin, we would hate to see him get sunburnt.  So the boys play in the beach house and try not to be too impatient and sad.  Every now and then, you can't help but let your feelings show though.

Finally it is time.  Lion wastes no time in getting dressed and heading straight for the water.  For a long time he played happily on his own in the sea while Grandma rolled her shorts up shorter and shorter and still got wetter and wetter trying not to let Lion get too far out of reach.

The problem here, is that he has no fear of the water.  In spite of Mummy McT and Grandma and Grandad all calling him to stop (and the other family sharing the stinger enclosure all staring at the noisy people all yelling like fish wives), Lion kept wading into deeper water and pretending not to hear. 

Unfortunately for Lion, this happened once too often and he was confined to shore for some time.  He made the most of it by getting Dragon and Grandad to fetch buckets of water for him.  If Lion can't go to the ocean, the ocean must come to Lion.

Finally it was time to go home, so while Mummy McT gave Monkey a "top up" feed, Lion was allowed back in the sea for one last swim.  That tiny yellow blur in front of Dragon is Lion.

I hope they slept well last night.  I know I did :)

Lion's Birthday

It's Lion's birthday on Monday 26th and it's an important one - the big 5. That means that in a few months he will be a big school boy. In honour of his birthday I thought I would find some of my favourite Lion baby/toddler photos. The first one is Lion and Mr Sunshine at the TV towers on Mt Stuart.
The next was a really exciting time (if you are a little boy) when Grannysaurus' street was full of BIG machines because the city council decided we needed new curbing and asphalt.  There were many far worse streets around that didn't get fixed, but Lion was happy.

The bottom one is Lion at the beach. He loves the beach. Isn't he a sweetie?

Happy birthday Lion!

The Deep North

Late afternoon and 25 centigrade with a gentle ocean breeze and this is mid-winter. Gee we do it tough here.

Once again we were fortunate enough to get away for a few days. This time to the very touristy city of Cairns. I don't really like Cairns, but my favourite department store is there and it is a good base from which to see heaps of beautiful beaches and rainforests of World Heritage significance. We were really here for work, but we tacked the work on to the end of the week and stayed for the weekend.

Unfortunately I forgot to pack my joggers, so Mr Sunshine left me sitting on the beach with my camera for company while he took a walk at Yorkey's Knob.

One day I hope to find out how it got it's name and was it intended to be a double entendre.

Life's a Beach

Blessed, aren't we? So much beach, so few people. It's almost like having your own personal tropical island, but it is only 40 minutes from Townsville. And don't forget that this is winter. It was a 'cool' 27 degrees centigrade for most of the day. To make it even more ideal for toddlers, the water stays shallow until you walk out for meters and meters.

All we have to worry about are crocodiles.

Making a splash

I thought I would try for an arty beach photo of Dragon running with water splashing up as he ran. The outcome was predictable and instead of an arty, splashy photo, I got an action series of Dragon falling over in the water. At 8 photos per second that makes it exactly 2 seconds for the whole thing to unfold. No wonder I rarely even get the camera pointed before the action is all over.

A Whale of a Time

Mr Sunshine and I took Dragon and Lion to Balgal Beach for the day so that Mummy McT and Wolf could do some spring cleaning. As soon as we got to the beach Lion found a stick and began drawing in the sand. First he made an excellent whale outline and then he decided that it needed to be "spurting". So he added the water spout on the whale's head. If you click on the pic it should show up larger and clearer. After the spout he added the smiley face. It's the happiest whale I've ever seen and it is entirely his own work! What do you reckon? Is that a great picture for a four year old artist?

Dung Beetle McTavish

Once upon a time, yesterday, Mr Sunshine had some work to do at his mother's beach house, a forty minute drive from home. We decided to invite Lion and Dragon McTavish to come with us for a trip to the beach. It was great. We had a ball. The boys went home very tired and very content with their adventures of "going out to sea" (Lion's words).

They swam in stinger enclosure which was large and safe and, because the tide was out, the water was mostly below my knee level. The stinger enclosure, if you are baffled by the term, is a large net held in place by a huge, floating sausage. You can see it running through the middle of the photograph, behind Mr Sunshine and the McTavish boys. It is meant to keep out our box jellyfish (its sting can kill within minutes) and the irukandji jelly fish (not as deadly, but extremely painful). These jellies (click link for more info) have caused many horrible, painful injuries and deaths in years gone by. Children are especially vulnerable. The box jellyfish used to be called the sea wasp, but the name was changed because overseas tourists tended to be fearfully watching the air around them and still got stung by what was under the water.

I was also entertained by a flock of our large (60cm/24 ins) red-tailed black cockatoos feasting on fruit in a nearby tree. As they fly their tail feathers fan out to reveal a huge, bright red blotch of colour. Like all cockatoos they are the clowns of the bird world.

But back to the title of today's blog - Lion McTavish is known for his many alter-egos. His imagination knows no bounds when it comes to taking on the character of an animal or machine. He has been known to be Lion Excavator, Lion Front End Loader, Lion Huddy (Huddy being a Love Bird), the list goes on. We think he even dreams in character because he wakes up in the same character as he fell asleep.

In the car, on our way to the beach, he was Lion Dung Beetle. Dung Beetles are those marvelous little beetles that live underground and pop up for poop. They use their back legs to roll the poo into neat little balls and take it back underground with them for future . . . er. . . recycling.

Lion knows all this and was quite comfortable to take on a Dung Beetle persona. We were passing the local refuse tip when he decided that his house is a refuse tip and he is a dung beetle who looks for poo and rolls it up and buries it. He kept up the tale of his life as a Dung Beetle all of the way to the beach. Poor little Dragon had difficulty getting a word in. Every now and then I would have to interrupt Lion Dung Beetle to give his little brother a chance to be heard.

Who would have believed that Dung Beetles could talk so much!

Mummy McTavish was not really impressed about the house/refuse tip reference. I can't imagine why??