Max turns 9, apple peeling, myelinated optical nerves

Here's George dressed as a turtle. He is stringing cotton reels on a rope.

A school art project by Max, made to fit his face.

We visited the grave of great Grandparents Florence and Douglas Kerr, Nanny's parents. 

Max lent his talents to a rough draft of a logo for an upcoming event at the local Kindergarten

Visiting the farm, Riley the future cattle farmer usually comes with us.

Mon and Kev (Royce's parents) brought a home made birthday cake over a few days before the actual day. 

And presents. And presents for George, so he didn't feel left out. 

Mon's cakes usually involve lots of cream. 

We got this gadget that peels, cores and cuts apples into a spiral shape. George already knew how to operate it because they have one at his kinder. 

It turns out, kids will eat a lot of apples when they get to put them through this gadget!

This is one long piece of apple peel.

Max's birthday party was held on the actual day of his birthday. It also happened to be the Queen's Birthday long weekend - so he got the day off school too. 

Royce organised a game for the kids where they had to bowl bocce balls to targets, roll dice, and perform various tasks including pushups, singing a song, and doing the next move backwards. The prize at the end: a bag of mixed lollies.

Max's 9th birthday party also became the scene of some planking. 

Lachy won the "hairy leg competition".

Candles were blown out and the birthday song was sung.

George accidentally pokes Max in the eye on his birthday.

Max and Jack building things out of Lego.

Throwing stones into the Mitchell River on a day trip to the National Park. 

We built a fire, boiled some river water and made ourselves a hot drink. 

It seemed these tomatoes were not going to get any riper so we ripped out the plants. The guinea pigs like to eat green tomatoes.

Walking along the beach at Metung. In the rain. Sooty the dog went into the water, hoping to catch a swan, but in the end he decided it wasn't worth getting wet past the armpits. 

Max had to visit the optometrist. We learnt something interesting about Max's eyes. This is his left eye. The white circle you can see in there is the optic nerve. This is what a normal eye looks like.

This is the other eye. That white flashy patch next to his optic nerve is an unusual thing in an eye. It is myelin. The optometrist says normally the nerves drop their myelin coating before they go into the eyeball. This does not have any consequences for Max's vision, except a slightly larger blind spot than the one we all have on the optic nerve area.

Aunty Shani's Got Talent, Litoria Peroni, broad bean planting

This little frog was sitting on a basil leaf in the garden. Peron's tree frog was one of the first frogs seen by the one-eyed french zoologist Peron during an expedition around 1800.

The frog was a beige colour, with a patch of yellow with black spots just on his hips. He refused to eat in captivity despite being offered lots of delicious worms and beetles and things. So Max decided to release him back into the wild after a couple of days. But when Max went to find the frog to set him free, the frog had already escaped.

At Jack's birthday party there was a competition to see which guest could eat a plate of whipped cream with lollies in it the fastest. The catch: You're not allowed to use your hands.

George wore his batman suit to the birthday party. It wasn't a fancy dress party but he was just having a batman sort of day.

 We had cousin Holly visit one weekend for a sleepover. Here they are playing chess at breakfast time.

We read on the internet about how to grow vegetables encoded with your own DNA. This is said to enable the plant to know who will eat it and what they need, and where it is in space. The kids felt this was vital information and Holly wrote down the step by step instructions.

The next morning, Max weeded the garden bed all by himself, because he was so keen to get planting!

Hopefully the seeds were not sprayed with fungicide or something toxic, because step 1 is to hold the seed inside your mouth for 9 minutes. (That's a temporary tattoo on George's face).

Sooty was happy to keep the kids company while they sat with seeds in their mouths.

Then you put your bare feet onto the earth where the seeds are being planted, and warm the seeds in your hands, blow your breath on them, show them the sky before planting them. 

The easter bunny came along one day and his nests were found all over the front garden. Even one in Max's gumboot. 

Kade and James joined in the easter egg hunt with us. The entire stash is in that bucket. They all divided up the eggs afterwards.

George is very interested in learning how to write letters and numbers. When he has a shower he practises his writing on the steamy glass.

Even peeling carrots became a writing game. He can recognise his own name written down too.

For Aunty Shani's birthday, she entertained us all with some singing and dancing by herself and her students. We all think she should be on one of those TV shows like Australian Idol or Australia's Got Talent. 

Royce and his mum and dad enjoyed the performance.

Holly and the students of the singing and dancing class did a Bollywood Dance number.

We went for a little bushwalk half an hour from our house in the Mitchell River National Park, where a natural ampitheatre is formed overlooking a part of the river called Billy Goat's Bend. 

Max caught a tiny drop-tail lizard, then on our way home a pair of wild emus were crossing the road ahead of our car. 

One morning we had a skype call with Max and George's youngest cousin in Canada. His name is Luke at at that time he was only one day old!