Good Clean Fun

I do love Persil's (a laundry powder here in NZ) slogan - 'Dirt is good'. I agree wholeheartedly, and the kids having been having such a ball in the backyard in the last week or so, soaking up the sunshine and exploring all the things that have grown or appeared since autumn.

Had to add this pic - Tim is sporting his favourite hat at the moment. Last summer I couldn't get him to wear a hat, this year he loves this reject of Penny's. This is actually an unposed photo - the kids love to climb the steps and sit there together waving to me.

But, there's nothing like a bit of good clean fun too. You know, the kind where kids don't have to be bathed and dressed again following. We discovered a great outing the other day. Down the road at the bottom of 'our' hill is a fabulous reserve, Percy's Reserve. On Friday, the last day of the holidays, I had a sudden urge to take the kids somewhere and do something rather than letting them run wild in the backyard. We threw the trikes in the boot and grabbed the remainder of the bag of bread off the bench and off we went.

The kids jumped on their trikes the moment they were out of the car and proceeded to slowly inch their way up the hill to the entrance where we were greeted by a Mummy duck and her tribe of very cute and not so obedient ducklings (she had 10 of them, I wondered how she really was feeling trying to keep track of all of them). Anywho, we had a lovely time - the ducks and their ducklings were obviously hungry - and the kids really enjoyed having pretty much the run of the place and being able to bike along the paths.

And the fab thing was that Tim on a trike is SO much slower than Tim on foot. Though he did get off to do a bit of duck chasing with his sister...

Actually, we had such a lovely and peaceful time down there that today we headed back with Blair/Daddy (and the camera). The ducks seemed a whole lot less interested in us today - but on throwing our bread bag in the bin we saw it was overflowing with other bread bags and so know now that Friday is probably a good day to head to the Reserve...hungry ducks!

Wheeeeee - Tim just about to head down the path

'Grrr Mama! But I was hungry too!' (after mentioning to madam that the bread was really for the ducks)