An absolutely gorgeous day

I was woken this morning to the VERY LOUD AND CONSTANTLY REPEATED yelling of 'Mummy!'.

Master M woke up well before 6am and couldn't sleep so he had to wake us all up to tell us that he couldn't sleep.  Thank goodness the day only got better.

It was the most gorgeous Autumn day.  No rain in sight and happy kids and mummy.  I didn't have any plans and made up the day as we went along. 

First up we made some things out of air dry clay.

Baskets, bowls and shells were made and we all had such fun making them.  Even a clay 'man' was made although he has since fallen apart.

While the kidlettes played on bikes and scooters, I was able to join some more hexagons on my bedspread.  It's coming along nicely and starting to look really good so I'll take another photo soon of exactly what I've done so far so you can see it.

During the afternoon we headed out to my sister Sandra's place.  We all LOVE going to visit there so much and today I also had a bit of an ulterior motive for going.

It has to do with my grocery challenge of course and as I have no garden to speak of, not even herbs growing anymore, I decided to pilfer some of the lovely offerings from Sandy's.

I'm also a little humbled to know that I've inspired my sister to start a grocery challenge of her own.  Good luck petal.  I know you'll be super organised (as you are the organisational queen) and will meet the challenge easily and well.  I feel if I can do it then nearly anyone can!

I've now got some lovely herbs including rosemary, basil, parsely and a nice big chunk of ginger.  You can't get much fresher than that!

The main reason we went out there was for the citrus.  The oranges aren't ready yet and there are only a few limes ready on the tree too but there's plenty of mandarines.  Little Miss R had about 3 before we even left Aunty Sandy's and you can see her below telling the dogs that the one she just picked is for her and not for them.

So over the next few months I certainly won't have to worry about citrus as we'll be supplied from the trees in the orchard.  You can see here when I did my first grocery challenge last year just how much we got one afternoon.  In fact I still have lemon juice frozen in blocks in the freezer from then and am mainly making lemon butter and lemon squash from them.  Yum!

Once we left Sandy's place, the kidlettes wanted to go the long way home.  I felt like a bit of a drive too so we headed towards the township of Glasshouse Mountains.  Looking at the late afternoon sunlight shining on the mountains was just beautiful and I felt the need to stop and soak it all in.

That meant it was off to the lookout to gaze over this beautiful area that we live.  In the middle of the next photo you will see a tiny sliver of darker blue where the sky meets the land.  That's the Pacific Ocean and about right in the middle of the picture is Caloundra which is where we usually go when we want a beachy fix. 

We live behind the mountain (or hill) on the left in the next picture.  Not right behind it mind you, about 5 kilometres north of it but our town is hidden by NgunNgun in this picture. 

For my overseas readers (or other curious Australians), we live in the Glasshouse Mountains area in Queensland.  These are volcanic plugs named by Captain Cook back in 1770 and you can read more about the Aboriginal legend of the mountains here.

Once the kids had run all around the lookout area, scaring the wildlife and tourists with their noise, we headed home.

It was the most gorgeous day.  The kids were delightful and Mummy was relaxed and very happy.  Lets hope the rest of this long weekend continues to be this lovely.

xx Susan