In Flight

The Baby Angel's netball team won their Semi Final on Saturday due, in no small part, to her great game in Goal Defence. The Goal Defence must intercept the pass and prevent it getting to the attacker, in this case the Goal Attack player. I'm not sure if she actually made the intercept here, she may be a bit too far away from her player, as I was frantically taking random shots with the PAS which, as most of you know, are rubbish for action shots due to the shutter delay.


In this one however I remember that she was succesful. You can see the Wing Attack on the far right waiting to receive the pass from the Goal Attack (being defended by the BA). The neat thing here was the BA went for a tap down which put the ball into the hands of the Centre player on the far left of the shot. She may have been a tad too close to her opposition but maybe that's just the foreshortening of the shot?

Anyway, she did a brilliant job and kept the opposition to a rather sad 4 goals in the face of her team's 34!

Next weekend it's the Quarter Finals which will be a much tougher match but still do-able. The girls are just hitting their stride as a team after a fairly unsettled start to the season. They had been put together from two different teams and did not initially 'gel' with friends tending to pass to friends rather than the best available player etc.


As you can see it was yet another grey, wet, chilly Winter's day here in Adelaide. I have resisted complaining about the Winter so far as I complained so much about the Summer, but really, it is getting beyond a joke. Here we are on the downward side of August and the rain and cold continue unabated!!

Usually, by now, we are feeling the delightful tickle of spring. Instead, five day forecasts are a repetitive litany of 'showers, more showers, maximum 13C, further showers.......'
Apparently this is the coldest winter for 30 years but I'll have to confirm that. So much for Global Warming the kids at school say and I don't have an immediate answer that doesn't involve complicated explanations of 'long term trends', 'averages' and 'extremes'. Cold comfort at the moment if you'll pardon the pun.





Nevertheless, the sun did come out long enough for us to have a pleasant birthday lunch for Himself on Sunday afternoon. That sad landscape to the right is my version of the sun coming out. We enjoyed the company of several couples including A Free Man and his delightful family and the BA 'oo'ed and 'ah'ed over Baby Z and set herself up for some babysitting work in the future. Later we visited the developing shell of a 150 year old ex bank in the little township of Aldinga where some friends with vision are renovating and creating a fantastic cafe/lounge bar/wood fired pizza restaurant/cook-your-own BBQ/local produce market, all in the one spot! Can't wait for the opening.

See, There Really IS a Musical Called Pilgrim

I know, I know, I was supposed to be looking for costumes today (and I'm supposed to be marking essays tonight) but it was a beautiful 22C and it felt like Spring! The BabyAngel, who wishes to be renamed Bee (is for Beautiful apparently: see her My Space page) took this photo of me with the Spires of St Peter's Cathedral in the background. We had just walked from Memorial Drive ( I know this will mean v little to my O/S friends...but me Mam will know what I'm on about) to the Botanic Gardens and back again.

Bee and her friend accompanied me and we had a lovely time. I can't wait til the weather settles back into this pattern.

Anyway, the point of this post is my T shirt!!! It is a production shirt for the school musical and it was designed by my talented husband from an idea by the students. They hit the school on Friday. This is the only part of my job as costume director that I have actually achieved. I think it looks pretty cool, although perhaps not with me in it :-)

It was an idyllic afternoon. I knew it was Spring when I saw these.
There was a very conscientious father duck who was squawking indignantly at anyone who ventured too near to his brood. He's not in the picture as he was accosting a cyclist at the time.
I'm not sure about the pigeon there at the back. I think he has cuckoo tendencies.

In the Botanic Gardens there is a fantastic old Victorian Palm House with a gloss painted bannister out the front so the girls simply had to slide down it.

There were also Moreton Bay figs which HAD to be climbed.


And of course we couldn't leave the ducklings alone.What a wonderful afternoon. Roll on Spring I say!!!! Oh, and here is a tree in the lake that I shot in May and another shot of the same tree today. I'm looking forward to the Spring shot!!!!

Failure

I'm sitting at a computer in the Penneshaw Community Hall/Post Office where you can rent internet connection for $5.00 an hour. It's Friday here and we have been on Kangaroo Island (yes, that's a real place) since Wednesday night.

Of course I have known that the Theme Thursday theme was HEAT for some time. I have been thinking about it all week. Currently there is nothing hot over here at all.

I thought about a picture of Baby Angel's hotwater bottle. I thought about the flames in the wood stove. I thought about quilts and blankets and cats curled up near the window in the only scrap of sunshine available. Himself took photos of me in my coat, hat and gloves but this only served to remind us of how cold it is!
"How about a picture of you in a steaming shower, that would be 'hot'," he suggested unhelpfully.
(In what universe would THAT be hot? I wondered.)

Finally I have had to admit defeat. Short of staging a running race (get it? HEAT?) I am out of ideas and the time is up.

No wait, hang on, here is a great shot of seal tracks in the sand. Sand...beach...summer..heat...there is a link...tenuous but there...just imagine it is hot sand...ok, now to upload it using the Island's public dial up internet connection...

Ok, now to upload it using the dial up connection...

Ok, now to upload it.....

Upload.........

.......snore...............................

Oh dear, I think the computer has frozen.
EVEN THE INTERNET IS COLD HERE!

Oh well, there is always Best Shot Monday to look forward to.

Best Shot Monday

Summer. All the 'Moms' in the Northern Blogisphere are talking about it. Of course for us it's a memory and to find my 'Best Summer Shot' I had to trawl back though my files. I love this shot because it was early evening and we had just returned from the freezing cold UK to the joys of long days and 30C evenings before school went back. Baby Angel was now a seasoned 'boogie boarder' and poor old sun hat and sunscreen Mum sheltered, with her camera, on the shore under her sun umbrella while youth took a healthy bite of the ocean. The sad thing is that this is the childhood I dreamed about when I was a child. I was never confident in the waves. I hated water on my face, always burned really easily and was frightened of making a fool of myself in front of the other kids. I look on at her now in a cloud of pre-teen nostalgia for the way I wished I had been, even at the time. She's not even bothered by the oncoming wave.........well ok, it's only a little one !!!!!

For more (and mostly higher resolution) fantastic pix check out 'Best Shot Monday' on
Picture This.

Autumn Days and Nights

The log stove is in action again. It's lovely and cosy and heats up the family room a treat. Of course, it is the only room in the 8 room top floor that does get heated! Downstairs fares worse. There was a gas wall furnace near the kitchen but that died with a bang last year; this is what happens when you mix a leaking roof with an electric power point, but I digress. The gas wall furnace heated a small breakfast room and vented through a wall to usefully heat the next room...the family room. Thus the adjoining room it helpfully heated was the only other room in the house already containing heating! Everything else is icy. All costs and joking aside I am going to get some ducted heating people to come and give us some quotes. It's ridiculous. I'm colder here than I ever was in UK!!!


Mind you, the up-side of the colder days and nights are the beautiful Autumn colours. Baby Angel and I went power walking in the Botanical Gardens this morning. It was a glorious, crisp morning and we had our ipods ready for a good workout.
"Mum, is it ok if we don't use our ipods? Can we just talk?" she asked. "Did you ever think you'd be walking around these gardens with your daughter?"

The Botanic Gardens certainly hold many memories of childhood for me. It was a favourite place for a weekend outing with friends. We fed the ducks, played hide and seek amongst the giant roots of the Moreton Bay fig trees and visited little nooks and crannies like the Brownies' Toadstool which always fascinated me. Naturally we had to find it again this morning! We had a lovely morning and we did eventually put on our ipods for a 20 minute power walk around the rose gardens. We leaped around like loons to our respective 'walking music', she keeping strides ahead of me with her superior length legs, me jogging now and again to keep up. We grinned and gesticulated, choosing convoluted paths for the sake of the walk and racing around beds to meet up on the other side. I think we did plenty of communicating, even if it was to our own personal soundtracks! After all, my 'Drugproof Your Kids' lecturer assures us that communication and integrity are two of the key factors in raising happy kids!