Hens' teeth, Ravioli, Shahnaz Vocal School

Sometimes Max and George walk Sooty the dog before school.

Here's George with his school bag on, ready to go.

Living right next to school means that Max can leave at the last minute and he should get home right after the bell rings at 3.30.

Here is Max about to get jumped on by Lachy.

One day Lachy and Riley's chooks escaped and came over to visit us. Everybody had to catch the chooks before they got away!

That was when I was informed by Max that hens do actually have teeth, "they just don't like to show you".

When they're not chasing chickens they chase the dog. It's their little game. 

The zucchini plant has been getting rotten on the ends before the zucchini reach full size. 

It could be just the wet weather this summer, or it could be caused by lack of calcium in the soil, so we saved our eggshells (= calcium) and here's George crushing them to sprinkle on the dirt.

Max gets homework on Mondays which has to be completed by  Thursday.

  

Here's George at his kindergarten, playing with his friend Isabella and some birds in their habitat.

Remember those little seeds the kids planted? Now they have sprouted into radish plants. One day soon, we're going to have to eat RADISHES.

These are the seeds of a capsicum a.k.a. bell pepper, sprouting in some cotton balls in Max and George's room. 

This is an avocado seed, from a fruit we ate back in December. It has been sitting on the windowsill beside George's bed, and just this week it is putting up a shoot. 

Beside the avocado are more capsicum seeds, these ones growing in dirt with some weeds as well.

We made our own ravioli from scratch recently. It was a group effort. 

Here's Max using a paintbrush to paint water on the ravioli so they will stick when we fold them up. 

George likes a good breakdance, and he said he'd like to try out Aunty Shani's School of Singing and Dancing. 

Apart from one spectacular handstand, he just watched the class intently. As a break dancer, he was a little out of his depth in a Bollywood Dance environment.

They played "chinese whispers" to train their memories to one day memorise the words of songs.  

Even Max joined in the chinese whispers part.

George enjoyed himself quite a bit and would like to try it again.  

Becker family Christmas, George's birthday

Nanny and Gramps stayed in their caravan, parked in our driveway, and Uncle Michael, Aunty Nat and Saskia stayed in our house. Aunty Shani and her family live near by. And so we had a Becker family Christmas gathering.

The kids swam in the pool.

We ate the other half of our giant Christmas ham. This time Gramps cooked it on the Weber BBQ.

George's birthday party was held the weekend after his birthday.

We all sang Happy Birthday and we used the guinea pig cage as a table to cut up the birthday cake.

We were invited to Piama's birthday party the following week. Uncle Kim did a fabulous job on the birthday cake in the form of an artist's palette.

George likes me to read him a bedtime story in french sometimes. We are reading  La Vie de Madame Souris. He has informed many of our Australian friends about the meaning of the word "mange" and has asked to learn more words.

We have a puppy! His name is Sooty. He is a Kelpie - Jack Russell cross and he is as cute as a button.

Max is a good dog owner. He takes Sooty for walks, feeds him, gives him baths and shampoos and conditions his fur. He has taught Sooty to sit, lie down and we are working on "stay" and "come here". Aunty Shani's dog magnets have come in handy!

Sooty is very interested in our guinea pigs and derives hours of entertainment from terrorising them.

Every single day of these summer holidays, Max and George have been playing with friends. It is simply unacceptable for a day to pass without a play date of some kind.

We have mostly been swimming in the backyard pool. We tried to go down to the river to swim at the rope swing where we were last year. The river is too full and too fast in this location for kids to swim in this year.

Shoes have been worn very infrequently over the past months, and the soles of their feet have become tough and leathery. 

Our veggie garden is coming along. Here Max and George are pulling out weeds. Then planting radish seeds.

Here we are posing with our first home grown vegetable: a cucumber.

At the deep end of the Bairnsdale outdoor pool, in water that is 1.53m deep, George is comfortable swimming in water that is over his head. He swims underwater, until he needs to pop up for air. I didn't get a photo of it, because I was ready to dive in and rescue him if necessary. 

George on his first day of 4 year old Kindergarten. This year he goes for 2 days per week, 6 hours at a time. 

The day before school went back, we and everybody else in the region had the idea to get the kids hair cut. So after a long wait, Max and George went from mop tops to faux hawks.