The Bell Family

Well, this is the first that we’ve attended the local show as a “family”… I must confess, I’ve been looking forward to taking Laura on some rides, visiting the animal displays and generally being a “big” kid myself.

So with Laura, Chrissy and my Mum (Nanna) in tow, we all headed to the show. After grabbing a bite to eat, we took Laura on a pony ride. At first she was a bit hesitant, although she wasn’t as scared as she was a few months ago when we first introduced her to ponies at the farm, and by the end of it, I think she actually enjoyed the ride! See obligatory photo below.

After the pony ride, we had a look at animal display and saw a variety of snakes. I picked Laura up so that she could see what was going on. She said the word “snake” pretty well straight away and when I asked her what sound they make, she said “ssssssssss”!

After a quick look at the snakes, we visited farm animal display and Laura got to see and pat some: pigs; goats; ducks; sheep; guinea pigs and many other animals. She thought it was great!

After leaving the animal display, we went past a huge multi-coloured slide which I thought would be fun for Laura, but they wanted $5 for three slides and if I wanted to take Laura, I would have to pay for two people. Therefore I decided against the idea. But a little while later, I saw another “huge” slide which Laura and I could ride together and we got five slides for the price of three… It was pretty big, so initially I was a little concerned about what Laura’s reaction would be, so I used my shoes to slow the pace down a little so that Laura wouldn’t be scared…. She loved it of course and in no time was shouting the words of encouragement – “more, more”!!! So we had a lot more fun on the slide and here’s some photo’s Laura and Daddy having fun!!!

Nanna had to leave for work, but we met up with Uncle Dan shortly after. The lucky “son-of-a” won a huge “Winnie-the-Pooh” teddy and “Fish” just by playing two, $2 games. Of course, Uncle Dan gave these to Laura, which she thought was awesome…

Later on in the night we took a ride on the Merry-Go-Round. Some of my mate’s reckon that I was using Laura as an excuse, because I really wanted to go on the ride myself

After that, Chrissy and Laura went to centre ring to watch some more action and I went on a couple more rides with a mate. After the rides, I met back up with Chrissy and Laura just in time to watch the Holden Stormrider Ute precision driving display and we then saw the fireworks. Laura was quite scared initially, but once we held her close and covered her ears, she didn’t seem to mind as much. This year’s fireworks display was one of the best we’ve seen at the show for quite some time and we really enjoyed it.

So after many rides, the compulsory dose of ‘show food’ and lots of displays, a fun time was had by everyone.

Until next time…

Take it easy,
Jason.

One of the jobs that I have been involved with lately is the installation of a “pool” style security fence in the court yard. The old fence we had (as can be seen from the image below) was too dangerous because Laura could easily fall through, so we decided to remove it and install a new fence.

I initially thought that this would be a simple job (as usual, famous last words)…
• Remove old fence.
• Use the holes from the old fence post and pour new concrete footings to which the new fence would “dyna-bolt”.
• Install new fence.

Now it sounded simple, but let me tell you, it is never the case!!!

Removing the old fence was pretty harmless… The problem arose when I tried to bolt the new fence to the newly poured concrete footings… I bolted the first post to the concrete and it looked okay…. but when I tested the strength of the structure, the post moved quite a bit which was due to the fact that about 2 meters of the old brick capping was moving with the post!

This was way too dangerous because if Laura or another kid hit the fence at speed, the entire fence would topple over! With the spate of accidents involving fences, I didn’t want to be another statistic!

Of course by this time, I wasn’t too impressed as the simple job had turned into a very time-consuming and expensive one!!! I would have been happy to get a professional in to install the fence, as I didn’t really have that much time on my hands anyway. But after getting a few people to quote on installing the fence properly, and once we actually got a few tradespeople to return our calls), the price was astronomical and the methods suggested were pretty dodgy. So I decided to do it myself (with a bit of help of course).

What we decided to do was:
• Remove the entire brick capping and lay a concrete slab across the length of the brick retaining wall that separates the courtyard and the backyard
• Then bolt the fence to the concrete using dyna-bolts.

Now, special thanks must go to my father-in-law “Dave”, who at the time had some time off and spent a day removing the brick capping and “forming up” ready for the concrete. Thankyou very much Dave for this!!!!

Then on then following weekend, we got in a concrete truck and poured some concrete and smoothed it all out. On the following weekend, we got a friend of Dave’s who does some brick laying part-time to help place a “half” a brick run beside the concrete (which made the entire thing look like it had always been there).

Then, on the following weekend, Dave and I (with the help of Laura, Chrissy, Kerrie and Susie) installed the fence. As you can see from the results below, it looks pretty good, and is much more secure than it would have been if we had stuck with the previous method of installing the fence.

As you can see, we have Laura’s swing set (that she got from Santa) and a “see-saw” and slide (which Laura got for Easter, instead of chocolate). Of course now that Laura is getting a lot more active she just loves to play out in the new courtyard area.

I have also just installed (about an hour ago) a security door leading into the garage which now makes the entire courtyard secure.

Until next time, take it easy,
Jason.

Hi Everyone!

Time for another update! We’ve had a busy couple of months. At Easter time we spent a couple of days away at some local cabins with friends and family and had a great time enjoying the company and our very relaxing surrounds! Laura loved watching all the animals and being spoilt rotten with attention.

For Mother’s Day, we went on a family picnic and had a wonderful time. We had a BBQ lunch and then went for a walk – here’s a piccie.

Laura is growing up so quickly. She’s getting another couple of teeth through (back molars) and is more active than ever at the moment – running, jumping, sliding, boucing, ‘falling down’, rolling around, singing and dancing!!! Her favourite songs at the moment are ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ (which she can almost sing from start to finish with a little pause in between verses), ‘Ring a Ring a Rosie’ and also ’1, 2 Buckle My Shoe’. She sounds a bit like a broken record at the moment, but we must admit, she’s extremely cute and we never grow tired of hearing her constant chatter!

Lucky for us, she still loves her books, yet she also has lots of fun outdoors on her slippery slide, see-saw (marjorie-daw) and swings!

Hope you enjoy the piccies half as much as we enjoy sharing these precious moments with you!

Anyway all the best and have a great month,
Jason, Chrissy and Laura