Sam turns three and Glanmire is green

Back in Sydney, worked all week and went up to Glanmire to join Peter for the birthdays. 3/5 of the family have their birthday between 12 and 19 January - and two of their cousins in the same week! The countryside was green after a couple of really good downpours - and we got another lightning storm and rain on Sat night - you can see by the debris that although the creek flooded and blocked the ford, it wasnt as high as it had been a week ago when quite big logs had been washed down. Rain is always welcome, but we had to cut our meal in town short and drive home in a hurry or else we would have been spending the night in a motel in town! Within 10 min of getting home the ford was impassable by other than a 4 wheel drive and a high one at that!

Sam had a family morning tea birthday on Sunday morning with the cousins and she had been to another birthday party the night before -she is so quick to mimic every word you say and her favourite saying this weekend was " you rock Nana" or "you rock Mum" etc... The doll Peter won in a raffle was amusing - not sure how much it will get played with but it was well received.

I love the quietness up there but this time the noise of frogs at night was almost deafening - you could barely hear the TV and they went all night = quite incredible, wish I could have recorded them and posted them on this blog! The kids had collected oodles of tadpoles which they put in the little swimming pool, so they are likely to be overrun by frogs in a week or so ( how long do frogs take to go from tadpoles to frogs - we will find out!

Peter staying for a few more days then down to Sydney for a couple of days with me before he heads home to Auckland.