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 :-)

Ningaloo May 2011

This has got to be one of the best and most relaxing holidays we've had! The 1200km trip was definitely worth it. We had gorgeous sunny days of around 27-30C, perfect for taking the boat out to do a bit of fishing, perfect for snorkeling, perfect for playing in the sand, perfect for lazing around and reading a book or taking a nice beach walk. The best thing about this place is that you're camped on the beach so no need to pack a car with all the gear every day and head out and no need to be back on time for afternoon sleeps and such. There's not many places close to home where you can do this sort of camping and that's probably why it becomes an annual holiday for some families.
Ed and Evette and their kids Tegan and Corey were once again great camping companions as were Ed's brother Chris and his girlfriend Charlotte. The latter were also great dishwashers and babysitters... haha...Charlotte had a quite fan club by the time we left!
If you want to know more about where we went and stayed, check out this link for more info - www.ningaloostation.com.au/

Anyway, on to some photos...All ready to hit the road at 4am Monday morning!
L-R: us, Chris (and Charlotte) and Ed (and family)

happy little travelers
We drove to Canarvon on Monday, which is about 900km, stayed there the night
and did the rest on Tuesday. By the time we had set up camp it was late Tuesday
afternoon, so we're glad we did the traveling over two days.


letting out some air at the beginning of the track that heads into Ningaloo Station

what an awesome sight at the end of our first day there
there's not many places you can get a view this good from your bed



We had a few luxuries and one of them was yummy freshly baked bread
(and no, Evette's not that round, the wind is just blowing her shirt like that :-) )We also had lovely warm showers every night thanks to
Ed and Evette's hot water shower system

looking down one way of the beach to the point...
and the other way across the bay, where everyone else was camped
so we were nicely by ourselves :-)

The tide is up here so you can't see the reef close to the shore,
but on the next 2 photos it looks quite different

Towards the end of the day, the tide would go out a fair bit and leave the reef close to shore exposed, creating all these rock pools, which was perfect for the kids to play in


Good morning kids!
Checking on Charlotte who had her tent set up behind our camper

Rod with his coronation trout - good eating!

and me with my little sweetlip something I think

the three musketeers - the fourth one is probably exploring in the dunes somewhere

this is the way I wash my face...
play dough time



all that playing tires you out

yep, I did a lot of this... got through three books :-)

the end of another wonderful day
doing the 'water run' We went through some ridiculous amount of water every day...

There are three wells here where you can pump out drinkable water.
Apparently the owner of the other car that's on this photo saw kangaroos digging in the sand one time (he's been coming here for years) and drinking here, so he dug a bit, tasted the water and found it was fresh, so he put in a well. Saves you carrying all your drinking water in! You just need a small pump connected to a bit of hose and you can get the water out.

out in the boat with the kids in the morning...


...and with Ed and Evette in the afternoon to do some fishing
We even spotted whales a fair way away from us surfacing and
blowing huge sprays of water - amazing!

we all had great catches! So much fun when they put up a good fight!

yep, an old ironing board makes a good place to fillet fish

such beautiful sunsets every night


dinner time
Chris trawling behind the reef and managing to catch a big one
On our second Sunday there we went for a drive to the old whaling station in the late afternoon.
There were dead starfish everywhere which the kids thought were cool to collect. By the time we left, this concrete thing was covered in starfish

ruins


Charlotte and Chris

having some fun in the dunes on the way back


On one of the windy days, we headed up to Turquoise Bay, near Exmouth for the day and boy it was beautiful there! It's all sanctuary so there's fish swimming right in the shallows, there was no wind, it was nice and calm for the kids to play in the water and the snorkeling is just amazing! So much sea life! Rod and I even got to sea a turtle having a feed off the coral. And where we snorkeled is called the Drift Loop, so you hardly need to swim, you just drift along with the current - very cool :)


chill-axing

Heading home from Turquoise Bay along the Yardie Creek track (that'll rattle your brains! talk about corrugations!) anyway, there are these huge termite mounds everywhere
yep we got a bit of rain that afternoon, didn't last long though


our home away from home...
Just showing you how much better it looks now with the new curtains and cushion covers :)

another day out with the kids on the boat so they could do some fishing

all that brown/black colour in the water is ink from the squid!
we did eat some that night and they tasted great

spot the (tiny) crab

last sunset


all packed up and ready to go home
Not that any of us wanted to really, I mean, look at that water! and that sunshine!


huge road trains

...to be done one day again hopefully...