Halfway through the holidays

It's coming up for the second week of the school holidays which began with the Easter long weekend.

On Saturday we had Karen, Dan and Xavier and Roey and Peter to lunch. Karen and Dan brought Dan's grandmother, Diana and Roey and Peter brought Pete's mum, Pat and we enjoyed a nice lunch. Roey and Pete also brought their dog, Leo, to play with Bella and Josie but he seemed not to enjoy being out-numbered by the girls and spent his time whining at the back door.

Robbie was busy on a couple of days last week. On Tuesday he arranged a visit down to the city with some of the kids he shared a bus with in Japan and the next day he met up with one of the girls he met on the way home from Japan and they went to the Royal Easter Show together. He's been keeping in touch with everyone through SMS-ing and Facebook.

Ishbel has spent quite a bit of time with her mate Zanny. Zanny has either been at our place or Ishbel has been up at Zannys. A play day here leads to an overnight stay there. Here are the girls enjoying a sleepover here. For once they were asleep before 9pm (it was after midnight last night when Britney was here!)

I had the day off on Friday and, with the weather forecast for the weekend and all this week being bleak, decided to take Ishbel to the Royal Easter Show. We caught the train just after nine and headed off to Homebush.

We decided we would take it in turns to choose what we looked at next. Steering Ishbel carefully through all the show rides, we started off at the cattle and horse sheds. We got chatting to a couple of women grooming a very pretty little pony called Special Girl. We also enjoyed looking at the cattle. There was one little calf, Elmo, who was only 2 weeks old. He must have been born at the show?

Next (my choice) we went to see the dogs. Disappointingly there were no Border Collies, Mastiffs or Irish Wolfhounds although we did see some really cute Jack Russells and some Russian Deerhounds - very snooty looking beasts.

Ishbel was determined to go to the showbag place next. She'd wanted a Saddleclub bag but got waylaid and bought a Garfield one instead.

Next door was the arts and crafts shed. We enjoyed some paintings, some calligraphy (a beautiful rendition of In Flanders Fields), the cakes and knitting. Ishbel got her name done by chinese ladies for framing later. The farming district exhibits were there too. I was particularly taken by the Central District display - this trout is made of apples with wool for the water. It was truly stunning.

Late in the afternoon we realised we hadn'[t seen the cats so, via the sheep and pigs, we headed back over the other side of the showgrounds to the cats. Unfortunately, it is a small building and the crowds were such that it was very hard to see any of the cats. We did see a Burmilla like our Abigail though.

This weekend Jamie had an AFL game. They won their game - for the first time in 4 years I think they said!!! Jamie was planning to go to the Easter Show with some of his friends this week but they've had a late change of plan and are going to Luna Park instead.

Ian, after a month off, is going back to work tomorrow. Hoo-ray! He saw the plastic surgeon on Tuesday who did not see why Ian should need a skin graft and dispensed with all the fiddly dressings that have been on his ankle. He still has to see the hand specialist in early May and has to wear a splint until then. Meanwhile he still cannot drive so tomorrow will set off on public transport. It'll take a bit longer than in the car, so Sue has put him down for shorter days until after we've seen the hand guy.