Holiday time again!

Another term has gone. I am the only one not on holidays. I don't mind so much as I do get a break from making school lunches and ironing white shirts. I'm sure Mimi will be pleased to have people home during the day to play with her. She (it is very hard to start calling her a him, even though the signs of maleness are startlingly obvious to all now) loves to sit on my shoulder.

Joss had her final exams for Year 11 and officially starts Year 12 when school goes back. She was made House Captain! We have booked her driving test for the second week of the holidays and then, all going according to plan, we will have three drivers in the house.

On the second last night of term, Bethany had her school disco. It is for kindy to Year 6, with an early and a late session, and they gave it a super hero theme and encouraged the kids to dress up. Do you know how hard it is to find super hero costumes for 12 year olds? I can't get those hours back. Thankfully, Beth had a great time.

Phil and the kids came to visit yesterday, on their way up north, and we had a lovely time with them (Kristin has to work). The little ones were keen and not-so-keen all at the same time regarding Milo and Mimi. I think Mimi will have a very quiet day in his cage to recover.

We went to the park for ice cream and play. I thought it would exhaust everyone, but Bethany and Charlotte still talked for hours in bed.

We will have more cousins arriving on Thursday; it is going to be a visitor-filled two weeks!

River watch

It has been a very wet year. We really love looking out over green countryside, especially as many of our years in Wagga have been in drought. The latest rain here and upstream has brought us awfully close to flooding, though.

When we moved into our new office building, which is just across the road from the river, we couldn't see the water from our carpark, because of the levee. As I pulled in I would think to myself "I really ought to wander over there at lunch to look at the water". The river is up so high now, that I can see it easily from the car park, and it has completely overtaken an oval down the road from work. The caravan park, all of the Wagga Beach area and carpark are all under water.

It's meant to rain more next week, too, so today, at book club, I told Stephen that he can come back to our place if he gets evacuated as he did in 2012. My workmate, Tracey, also lives in Central, so with her and her husband Grant it will be a big party!

It would be nice to walk along the riverbank at lunchtime, but I just can't give up that half hour of reading. I am doing Steptember at the moment, and it is very hard to get to 10,000 steps a day if I don't walk at lunch, so I walk and read. I stick to the road so I will have less chance of falling over! I have offered to make cakes for my workmates if they donate to the cause (cerebral palsy) so I brought this Malteser cake in today to kick things off.

Dream weekend

We have had some pretty memorable weekends of late, and though it is only Saturday night I am calling it already. This weekend has been a cracker.

Dad, who lives in Cairns, came to stay last night. We didn't do anything special, we just hung out, which was really lovely. The rain and wind did their best to keep us all awake last night, and we awoke to the threat of flooding (not our house, of course, on top of a hill). Dad hit the road to head for Coonamble, where it is already flooding.

Not ones for good-byes, the thought of the afternoon's birthday party bolstered spirits. The trouble with having your birthday in the school holidays is that your birthday party tends to be put off, then dithered over and then missed altogether. This year, we just decided to just do it late, really late. September birthday party for a July birthday; that's how we roll.

We held it at Airborne Gymnastics, where Bethany has her gymnastics classes every week. She was very excited to be able to show her friends what she can do. The head coach was there, training a new party host, and Andrew told him how keen Bethany is and asked how she could take it further.

The classes she attends are not focussed on skills so much, as just fun and exercise, but they do hold squad training, to which you need to be invited. The coach asked her to do a bunch of different things - the splits, bars, and backflips - and then told her she was around a level three and asked if she would like to come to squad training! I was talking to a friend while all of this happened, but I could tell something was going on as Bethany's face was radiating joy!

All of the kids enjoyed the party. Wall climbing, inflatable obstacle courses, foam pit, trampolines galore, lollies and chips. What more could you want?

I spent the morning playing around with the four layers of cake I made last night. On the whole I am dismissive, if not derisive, about the very-tall-cake trend. They seem hard to cut and hard for smaller people to eat! I did buy a book about hidden surprise cakes, however, and Bethany became set on the chequerboard cake. Two chocolate and two vanilla layers, cut into circles and reassembled with alternating colours, stuck together and covered with ganache and there you have it!

We dropped Sydney home and ending up staying for coffee and a long chat with our new Zimbabwean friends who are going to build a house across the paddock and Sydney will be moving schools with Bethany next year.

I won't say no to a sleep in tomorrow; our sleep will be sweet after such a lovely day.