Saturday, September 28, 2013

We Have Possums In Our Roof

The last couple of months have been very busy and exciting.  Here are some of the highlights.

Oscar and his team won their basketball grand final.  This is a new club and at the beginning of the year we didn’t even have enough players to field a team!  Every week I would have to go scrounging for extra players to help us out.  And here we are.... theU14 boys champions!!!  Go North Lakes Hawks!!!  
Oscar had a dreadful head cold on the day and did really well to get into it!  He had been on his school trip to Canberra a week previous and had brought the cold home with him.  He had such a great time down there however he’d do it all over again in a heartbeat.  In fact he wasn’t home 24 hours before he told me that he missed Canberra!  Of course, while he was having the time of his life in Canberra, Neil and I were sitting at home moping, missing him terribly and thinking how weird it was that the house was so quiet!  Missy, however, seemed much more relaxed than usual....  I’m hoping that Oscar will write his own blog on his experiences in Canberra but in the meantime here are a couple of his photos.

Cockington Green (minature village)

Sculpture at Australian Institute of Sport
Oscar Doing an Excellent Einstein Impersonation at Questacon


Just last week we had some friends of ours from the UK out to visit, Chris & Helen, and we all went to Australia Zoo.  It was fabulous!  We patted koalas and lizards, fed kangaroos, ooohed and ahhhed over dingo pups, pretty birds, baby koalas and the tigers.  As for the “Africa” section of the zoo, well I could have spent hours there watching the giraffes, rhinos and zebras.  We were really lucky that a mother rhino and her calf came right up to the fence in front of us and we could get a good long up close look.  We were also very lucky to come across a couple of handlers with a cheetah on our way back to the main part of the zoo!  Oscar was especially awed and said he couldn’t believe he was only standing a few metres away from the Earth’s fastest land predator!  So a wonderful day was had by all and we thoroughly enjoyed having Chris & Helen (and Wobbles the Penguin) to stay.  Hopefully they had a good time too!

Us With Blue Tongue Lizard and Shingleback Lizard

Oscar With Barking Owl

I'll tell you what we jolly didn’t ooh and aah over at Australia Zoo, and that’s possums!  Rotten little buggers have been thumping in and out of our roof for the past couple of nights keeping us awake.  Fortunately for Oscar they’re not galloping around his end of the house.  Unfortunately for Neil & I they come in directly above our bed!  Love it.  Neil is outside right now with the chainsaw.  Those possums are gonna get it man!  Actually, as they’re a native animal they are a protected species so no chainsawing the possums.  We can however chop down the vine that leads them to our roof.  We’re hoping that they’ll jump out tonight onto the fence but not be able to climb back up the fence and into the roof without the vine.  And we can get a decent night’s sleep! 


Enough ranting about possums, what else has gone on since my last post?  We’ve had Neil’s birthday, whereupon he very thoughtfully purchased his own birthday present so that I didn’t have to go to the bother.  I didn’t even have to wrap it for him.  Isn’t he generous?!  We’re currently in the middle of school holidays and last night Oscar and Neil went go-kart racing.  Check out Neil’s video:  


Super fun!  In a few days they plan to go again with a couple of Oscar’s friends.  We’ve also been to the museum, the Science Centre and the movies.  Not quite sure how I’m going to keep Oscar busy next week but I’m sure I’ll think of something.  Maybe we’ll just do it all again!