A new year and a new video camera

Thankfully Brendon was home by morning tea. The girls wanted apple again and I remember to take a video of how Hannah is trying to say Apple rather than Upple. It's so funny. And I got to use my new iPod to take the video. So let me know what you think.

Then we headed out to get some gardening done. It was lovely to pick a whole hand full of raspberries.

There is hardly any weeding to do which is wonderful (just a little bit of grass in this section). The zucchini are looking lovely with their huge flowers and the lettuce heads (top right corner) are ready to be picked.

The cucumber plants have little flowers and cucumbers starting which is exciting. But the plants are really tiny in comparison to the zucchini (it's a cucumber plant on the bottom right of the photo above).

There is one section of the garden which does have weeds. The section of Strawberry plants from a year and a half ago which have not been moved and so there are no boxes down in that area. These worms however have decided that these weeds are lovely to eat (and thankfully they don't seem to be interested in the veggie plants).

Before lunch Brendon replaced the rope on the girls swing with a new strong one (to put a concerned mother's mind at ease - Rachel had just used some old rope she had found lying around). Then there was a rush to try it out. I think Rachel did manage to get the first swing, but then the little two went on together.

It was a lovely warm day so we headed down to the pool again before dinner. The water was 25 today - so a little warmer and I got myself in. Rachel did a good job of getting her head right in the water to do a little bit of swimming practice before we left.

Ruth just loves the water and again amazed us today at her fearlessness. She knows she can just reach the floor of the big pool on her tippy toes (if she tips her head back - she just gets her mouth above the water) and I think that gives her confidence. So she headed into the pool with her board and felt sure she could just swim around. It was so cute to watch. She is going backwards for now - but the fact that she is just getting in and not worried about anything is great. I am sure she is slowly helping Rachel to be a bit more brave too.

While we had dinner Tiger decided that the dinning room table was a bit too busy with all the legs under it so he ventured out and actually lay down in the lounge. It must be the first time since Jaz arrived that he has been happy to stay in the lounge (other than in someones arms). So there is improvement every day.

I got a bit more time to load music onto my iPod today and so have gotten through all our cds now. We have 75 albums loaded which is over 1,400 songs (and stories like Rachel's Narnia series) and have already used up 9GB. It's lovely to think I can now pack all these cds into a box and never dust them again. The girls are also getting into the hang of how the iPod works and enjoy looking through the albums as they recognise the covers and so can choose what they want to listen to.