Camping

Last Friday was a public holiday seeing as CHOGM was on in Perth, so instead of having breakfast with the Queen, we decided to go for a bit of a drive and go camping overnight. I've been saying to Rod for a while that I'd like to go out to Toodyay (which is about 1.5hours north-east of here) while the weather is still cool and hopefully everything is still a bit green and the Avon river is flowing. So that's what we did. We have a book with a few different 4WD day trips out of Perth in it, and one of the trips was out this way too, so we decided to follow the directions in the book and see where it took us :-)

All packed and ready to go

having lunch along the Avon River

We then did some more driving around and checked out some of the campsites. They were all pretty full and not really what we expected, so we ended up back tracking and finding a campsite on the other side of the river where only one other couple were camped. It had a drop dunny, a fire pit and a picnic table which was just right.Miss Olivia enjoying the fire and Devon running to his chair so
he doesn't miss out on being in the photo!

dinner time

roasting marshmallows

Devon was only interested in playing in the car with his torch

So maybe you're wondering where we all slept and how the kids went at night. Well...we had already told Olivia and Devon a few days before we went that we'd go camping and they would be sleeping in the car. Olivia thought that'd be great of course but Devon wasn't too sure about it. He kept saying that we should take the camper and coming up with all sorts of reasons, like "Camper got beds in it" and "Camper got table and chairs". Anyway, we weren't going to take the camper and he'd just have to sleep in the car. So come bed time, he has his sleeping area all set up next to the fridge there and we had Olivia on the backseat, which you can fold down. She was well and truly ready to sleep but Devon was just so wired and would not settle down. He kept switching on the interior light and playing with his torch, sitting up and doing all sorts of stuff. After a few good telling offs and smacks he still wasn't calming down or showing any signs of sleeping so we ended up taking the fridge out, putting the cargo barrier down and putting the kids next to each other so that I could lie with them and hopefully get Devon to calm down and sleep. Hahaha like fun! Anyway, after ignoring him for a bit while he climbed all through the car, then holding him on my lap by the fire and being told "I not love you!", then lying next to him again, he finally crashed around 9:45pm, holding his precious torch and we (thankfully) didn't hear him or Olivia till 6 the next morning :-)
Rod and I slept in our swags under the stars by the way.

mmm, bacon and eggs for breakfast!

our campsite with the dunny in the background

these bright blue flowers are all through the bush - very pretty!

having some morning smoko in Toodyay

Rod was watching this guy trying to get his car started for a while and in the end he thought he better see if he needed a hand. Turns out the guy was a medic (he'd saved someone's life already that morning) and the car was his mates and he actually didn't have a clue what to do to get it going! After a jump start it was all good again.

From Toodyay we drove down through Northam and then to York where
we checked out the car museum. Lots of old and interesting cars in there!

Isn't this one just the right size for Devon?

some very old cars

Hey! A corolla like I used to drive!

A photo from Olivia - she thought these were pretty cool telephone boxes

Backyard work...

Our work on redoing the backyard has seen a lot of progress in the last couple of months!

Remember this is how it used to look:a year ago

August 2011
We are not connected to mains sewage and therefore have leach drains. At the moment they're
towards the back of the block and we can't do much with that bit of land, except grow grass on it, so Rod decided to put new ones in directly behind the house seeing as that's where the grass area is going to be anyway.

so here's a view of the retaining wall Rod and his band of merry helpers built and all the leach drains covered over with sand where one day we'll have beautiful green grass to run around on and enjoy :-)

steps out near the laundry door
(they've been cemented up now)

Rodger the welder building the trusses for the new patio

old patio

And this past Saturday, the merry band of helpers (Paul Byl, Marcel, Mike and Justin)
came to help barrow the concrete into the patio area. Tony from Rod's work helped out
with all the screeding and technical sides of working with concrete


And there it is! All poured and ready for honing...

...so eventually it will look something like this:

Dad and Mum van der Schaaf celebrated 40 years of marriage on Sunday the 9th of October, so we went down to Albany on the weekend to join in with the celebrations. On Saturday afternoon, everyone (except Fritz and Viv and kids) enjoyed each others company while playing a game of 10 pin bowling :) Was great fun!

some of the van der Schaaf crew:
Ethan (in the stripey shorts), Olivia, Ezra (mini Pop), Devon
Darryl (in the red jumper), Rod, Glenn, Lauren (looking backwards)
Michael, Kara, Sienna (her daughter) and Kathryn

Rod showing us his style

Mike showing Zachary how it's done


I didn't take any photos on Sunday, but we all had coffee, cake and nibblies at Dad and Mum's house. Dad has just had another knee replacement and hasn't been feeling too great, so we just kept it low key. Next year March we all hope to go away for 3 days to a farm stay down south which should be nice.

We had to leave early Monday morning because I had a doctor's appointment at 10am, which I couldn't really change. I took Olivia along and we got to see the baby on the doctor's ultrasound machine which was really neat! Here's one of the clearer pictures he printed off for me - head to the right and body to the left if you can't work it out :-P. I'll be going for the 19 week anatomy scan in a few weeks time (I'm 16 weeks now!) so then we'll get some better pics hopefully :-) Looking forward to it!

Last week Rod had to work in Jurien Bay (about 3hours drive north) for the week, so, seeing as it was going to beautiful weather and we could stay in the house where he stays, I decided to head up there with the kids from Monday till Wednesday! It was a nice little getaway, good to see what Rod's been busy with, to not be lonely at home while he's gone and to relax and soak up some spring sunshine :-)

The house we stayed in with Rod, his co-worker Brent Geurts and
Des Heys who was also working up there

On Tuesday we said hi to Rod at the job site and then headed into town to this great playground which is right on the beach.

After playing on the toys for a bit we moved down to the beach and I built a pool for the kids. I didn't plan it very well, because none of the waves went near it to fill it up with water, so here's poor Devon trying in vain to get some water in it!

chillaxing, or rather, roasting...

time for a bit of lunch on the grass area

and then of course an ice-cream

This was Wednesday morning...had a little walk on the beach

and then popped in at Rod's job. He was polishing concrete on the top floor
so we had to climb up the ladder every time and then Rod would let us
go down the 'lift' (the contraption to the right) to get back down :-)

polished concrete folks!

Rod and Brent hard at work - trying to get the hand polisher thing working again.
It'd decided it had had enough

August celebrations

We've been at it again...partying! Last Friday night we all went round to Ingrid and Paul's to celebrate Paul's 37th birthday. I was having a nice game of pool when I glanced up to see who the visitors were walking through the door and lo and behold it's my Oom Jurien and Tannie Connie from Melbourne! Ok, so everyone else seemed to know they were coming over except Rod and I - haha, at least we got a surprise :-) They had flown in that afternoon and were leaving again Sunday night. So a very quick visit to join in celebrating, Paul's, Mum's and my Tannie Rianne's birthdays! We had seen Tannie Connie not that long ago, in April I think when she flew to Holland with Mum, but it's been quite a few years since we've seen Oom Jurien, so it was really nice to catch up with him too.
Saturday morning we had a delicious breakfast at Dad and Mum's to celebrate Mum's 55th and Tannie Rianne's 40th birthdays. There was bacon and eggs, pikelets, all sorts of yummy muffins, yogurt and fruit and of course, coffee, tea, and juice. The weather was perfect, the company great and it was just a really nice, relaxing morning.

Charlene holding Damon, Denise (cousin Renier's gf), Renier, Caleb (cousin Carlien's fiance)
cousin Raymond, cousin Albert and Oom Jaap

Andrew (standing), Renee, Justin, Annette, Oom Jurien, Mary and cousin Ilonka

lots of Afrikaans chatting going on here I think

all the brothers and brother-in-laws on the Bosman side of the family:
Oom Jaap, Oom Jurien, Oom Ian (mum's brother),
Oom Michael (mum's other brother) and Dad

Kelita and Skye (cousin Eric and Mary's daughters),
Clarissa (cousin Ilonka and Jan's daughter) and cousin Anisha

cousin Istvan, Reindert and Kevin (Jan and Ilonka's sons) and cousin Roald

Dad and Mum with all their girls (apart from the 3 in Holland)

and an attempt at a family photo - not a good time for Devon, who
wasn't feeling well and was well and truly ready for a nap

A quick happy snap on Sunday with the aunt and uncle before they jet-setted off again

A few random photos from June...

We've had some great rainy days as well as gorgeous sunny days which makes it perfect for the kids to play outside. We've also been letting the chooks out of their cage in the late afternoon and they just love it! So many places to scratch around and look for food! Olivia gets a bit worried that they won't go back into their cage at the end of the day, so I told her to get the scraps bucket (I have a nice enamel one) and take that outside, clang it a bit and show it to the chooks and they'll follow her. Sure enough, they get so excited about the prospect of

some scraps that they're after her in a flash!

and follow her straight into the chook pen

This boy can spend hours outside digging and playing with his trucks

Work on the backyard continues each Saturday if Rod can use the machines from work.
Here he's put in a pipe for the water from the gutters and one for subsoil drainage

Devon is in his element when Rod brings the bobcat home

Sunday after church...making an icing for the cake

and our Sunday night game - scrabble :-)