JUST ANOTHER BORING OLD WEEKEND IN MANDURAH

This is what we moved down here for.

Yesterday, after Connor returned from his friend's birthday party, we piled into the car and drove out to the Pinjarra Show, where we spent three hours wandering around stalls, listening to horrendously bad country music (by a band named, wait for it, "The Lone Rangers". Yup, the only four blokes in town who haven't seen Airheads....), and fondling antiques while the kids went on camel rides, fondled snakes, and stuffed themselves full of strange-flavoured licorice. (Sour ice-cream flavour? Really?). And, of course, underwent the obligatory face-painting. Battkid-style:

My daughter the skeleton (only because the face painter refused to do a vampire), and her younger brother, Hulk. The girls directly behind them took one look, and asked for butterflies...

Today, after a fish & chip lunch overlooking the canal, we picked up Blakey from the train station and whisked ourselves off to the foreshore, where we piled onto a boat and spent an hour cruising through the canals into the bay, where a pod of dolphins played tag with the prow and we all sat around wondering what the working classes were up to :)

The view less than a foot away from our, well, feet.

On the way back into the foreshore, Erin and Connor were ushered to the front of the cabin. And one after the other, they got to do this:

Because what you want when you're steering a $200 000 boat through narrow canals bounded by houses worth an average of $3M each is a psychotic 4 year old at the wheel. His first words upon grasping the wheel? "We're going to CRASH!" :)

Reason number one for moving here was to give our kids a lifestyle they weren't getting in the Northern Suburbs. So far, good God, it's proving easy.