Blog? What Blog?

I know what you are thinking. I thought the same but like a phoenix from the flames, the blog has risen from the fires of neglect and procrastination to once again appear on your screen. But after two months of silence, where do I begin? What do I tell you? So much has happened, I don't know where to start. So I will let the photos do the talking. Oh, speaking of talking, though I've forgotten many of the recent colloquialisms, I can tell you that most of Jonah's sentences begin with "well," and he knows exactly how to use the word "actually". He likes to talk septic systems vs compost toilets and is, in his words, "really into big machines". From the moment he closes his eyes at night, to the moment they open in the morning, he is a burst of energy, a flurry of questions, of remembrances and plans and of statements that usually concern fur, firetrucks and ferry boats. All bed times stories must involve 3 cats named Gina, Cindy and Rupert and a group of rabbits named Hank, Barbara, Herbert and Paul....

Jonah loves to work with me outside. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't be shuttling him off to a playdate or preschool or some organized crafting kumbaya read at the library. These things are great and have wonderful value and yes, I should do a bit more of them. But Jonah (and Mama) are very happy to stay home and be in the garden. Or make bread. Or hang laundry on sunny days. We like to take the truck out (no airbags, thanks for checking) and return with a load of leaf litter or firewood or gravel. He loves to be a part of whatever I am doing and perhaps his greatest desire is to be alone in Jason's workshop touching tools, singing the theme song to Bob the Builder. He rakes, he digs, he cuts, he saws, he excavates, scoops and dumps.

I recently took a SOLO trip to Australia to take part in a historic venture back to my family's roots. My grandparents, Mum and Uncle lived in the outback for years and we've been hearing stories about these properties and the lives lived for a long time. In honor of my Nanna's 85th birthday, a trip was planned by my sister, Aunt and Mum and thanks to some parental funding, I went along. It was an amazing trip, to say the least. We traveled by train into the outback to visit a couple of the large properties my family lived on in the 1950's. At Wanda station, we sat on the verandah of the home my grandad built and ate huge yabbies (think crawfish + lobster + steroids) and drank beer (not nanna) and talked at length with the new owner about the past and present. We wandered around the woolshed (also built by grandad) where sheep are still shorn and the wool pressed with a huge antique woolpress. We could smell the scent of lanolin and deadly spider breath. We visited the MadMax museum and stood overlooking Mundi Mundi plains, a place so flat and expansive, I swore I could see the curvature of the earth. At the local pub in Menindee, my nanna stood, walking stick in hand, surrounded by locals and she regaled them all with tales of flood, car accidents and pet kangaroos. It was in a word, phenomenal.

Also phenomenal was taking care of only myself for over 2 weeks, though by the end I began to feel useless and wandered around trying to spoon feed strangers and wipe their bottoms. It was a great trip for me and Jonah had a wonderful time with his Daddy. They went to the opening of the farmers market, they enjoyed the playground, they hiked, they fished, they ate a lot of ice cream and pizza, they said goodbye to winter and hello to spring, they bonded.