Usually at Easter time I don’t go away with the masses for the four days. Last weekend we went to some friends holiday home for the Sunday night. We stayed about one day overall and it was lovely just to do that one day.

Their house is near Lake Albert at Meningie. Lake Albert’s water used to go all the way to the reeds you can see in the photo below. Now, due to the drought the water levels have gone right down.

We took our chairs and a couple of drinks to the shore level and sat down in readiness for the sunset.

The boys went for a swim in the water.

I noticed this rusted out 44 gallon drum and couldn’t resist taking a photo of it as the setting sun shone. This drum had rusted out because it used to be submerged in water. We also found a couple of empty beer bottles.

Who can resist having a mud fight?

The result of the mud fight.

And when some has a new camera (ie me) sometimes people can’t resist having a go with it so I end up in a shot. I’m  the one standing up at the back.

And I love this photo of JJ and his mate. JJ’s on the left.

I managed to get the sun just as it disappeared. Ever notice how quickly this actually happens? If you look away for a moment, it’s snuck down behind the horizon all ready to greet our northern hemisphere friends for their morning.

photo credit: Sakurako Kitsa

Easter bunny came last night and he left easter eggs in a plastic container because we’ve had a marauding chocolate loving cockroach in this house and I’m too scared to leave any food out just in case. Now I have to go and do Easter bunny’s job for him so JJ can still have the thrill of the easter egg hunt.

Yesterday was a lovely afternoon. A friend I haven’t seen for 18 years (I can’t believe it was that long), and her husband came around for lunch. They live in Sydney and are here visiting family and friends. I took some photos but because this is a quick post I’ll write more about that later.

Today we’re off to visit a friend for her birthday and we’re staying the night so I’d better go and get organised for that.

Hope you all enjoy Easter and the long weekend. It’s beautiful autumn weather here - just gorgeous.

I love my bedroom. It’s my haven from a busy day, a stressful day, a good day, any day, and when I hop into bed I look forward to my usually peaceful sleep. Some nights are restless but that’s either because I’m sick or just thinking too much about something.

About a week ago I woke up to an unusual noise in my room. I couldn’t figure it out. I turned on my light, had a look around but could see nothing. The noise continued on and off throughout the night but I kind of slept anyway.

A couple of nights later I heard it again and it sounded like it was coming from my wardrobe nearby. I opened the door and had a bit of a look around and again could see nothing. After work that day I pulled out some of the stuff that was sitting at the bottom of my wardrobe - it’s a place where I keep presents that I buy people including an Easter egg stash.

I picked up the chocolate Bilby that mum had bought JJ for Easter and had a closer look at it. It had a small hole in the bottom where the foil wrapper had obviously been eaten, and some chocolate was eaten as well. As I’ve had recent encounters with mice at a holiday shack I was pretty certain it wasn’t them but my other thought was cockroaches. I do see the odd cockroach inside and outside my house and they’re generally not a problem.

I put all the easter eggs, including the eaten one in a plastic bag, tied a knot in it and placed it on top of my little stepladder in my room - a place that JJ would never look. That was the end of it, or so I thought.

A few nights later I heard a rustling noise again. A pattern started where I’d turn on my light, sit up and try to figure out where it was coming from. I eventually got up, got the fly spray, gave the room a bit of a spray and went back to bed. The rustling continued. About the fourth time I turned on the light I realised the noise was coming from the plastic bag with the easter egg stash. I got up, shook the top of the bag a bit and a huge cockroach jumped out the bag and dashed to the wardrobe. As he did this, I screamed and jumped out the room - my heart pumping.

I got the bag and took it to the kitchen. The cockroach had obviously eaten a hole through the plastic bag and eaten more of the Easter Bilby so I threw it straight in the bin. The others were unscathed. I made sure there were none of cockroaches friends in the bag and put it into the fridge and went back to bed. By this time I’d been awake for nearly two hours.

The cockroach was obviously hungry, however, as he kept scouting my room for food. I have wooden floors in my bedroom so there’s no carpet to mask the sound and they’re quite loud - especially this big one. The next time I turned on the light I saw him jump out the rubbish bin. I tried to go to sleep yet again but this time he thought he’d have a party under my bed.

That’s it I thought - I need my sleep. I got up, got some blankets and went out to the lounge and bedded down for the two hours that were left of the night. This was yesterday morning.

Yesterday after work I bought some cockroach bait and put it in my bedroom and in the kitchen. When he started making some noise last night I didn’t even hang around to see if it really was him. Hopefully he’d eaten his bait and was in his death throes. I went out to the lounge, set up the lounge cushions on the floor and had a kind of okay sleep.

Today I will give my room a good clean and hopefully I find him flat on his back with his legs up in the air - DEAD.

Yesterday was a gorgeous autumn day, sky was blue, a gentle breeze in the air, and it was warm but not too warm. After doing my cleaning chores I decided we’d go for a drive in the Adelaide Hills - something I don’t normally do unless I’m visiting friends up there.

We ended up at Gumeracha which has a giant rocking horse, a toy factory and a small park with some animals.

It costs $2 to climb up the rocking horse and it wasn’t until I’d paid and climbed up a flight of stairs that I realised the rest of the way to the top meant climbing ladders. Naturally I was wearing a skirt! I was all right going up the ladder but going down freaked me out a bit more and as soon as we both got down to the bottom JJ wanted to go up again. Guess what, we didn’t.

The little animal park had an assortment of animals from swans, peacocks, one sheep, ducks, a couple of emus and a few wallabies. The animals are really tame because they’re used to being given food from strangers who walk through their park with bags or little buckets of pellets.

I did buy some things from the toy factory which I’ll show off in another post. I could have spent a whole lot more money in there as there was some great stuff.

JJ had been complaining of feeling sick and hadn’t eaten his lunch so we went straight home afterwards. I wonder if the windy roads made him feel a bit carsick and sitting in the back probably didn’t help him at all. He feel asleep on the way home as I negotiated my way down Gorge Road pulling over occasionally so the faster drivers could go past me.

And then he wouldn’t let me take his photo - talk to the hand mum.

My whole aim had been to take some photos of the gorgeous autumn colour but I think I was a bit too early for the majority of it. I saw some autumnal trees but not many and it’s hard to pull over sometimes, and to see when concentrating on staying on the road.

I’ll be doing the I like walks along the beach and quiet nights at home posts next!

The mornings are now getting darker, the nights cooler and the warmer weather is slowly but surely slipping away for another six months or so. At this time of year I look back upon the summer and vaguely remember the two week 40 degree a day heatwave we had and also how often I went swimming at the beach or in a pool. While I’m not a fan of stinging sun hot days I do love the water aspect of summer and this time of year makes me miss it.

Tonight I was thinking about this after I’d run JJ’s bath and he was in it. I carried on with organising dinner and while he’s usually quiet in the bath, tonight he splashed a lot. I’ll tolerate it for a while but if he splashes too much then water goes everywhere and the bathroom floor’s dangerous when wet. So I put up with it for a while and went in and asked him to stop. Out I went and shortly after he started again. When I went back to ask him to stop it again, as now it was more a matter of principle that he hadn’t listened to me, and he could see I was serious as I have that look.

Here’s that look.

Unfortunately, as this photo shows, he’s snapped me when I have that look and I wonder that he doesn’t always take me seriously.

I walked off and he yelled out after me, ‘well I haven’t been swimming for a while’. True, he hadn’t and this is when I reflected back over the summer and wondered if we’d get another swim in before it starts getting too cold.

Later on tonight I spoke to a friend to organise what’s happening this Saturday. We’re playing in a gig together you see, with the ukuleles again you see. She said to come down to her place earlier (the gig’s near her place), and then she mentioned the word swim.

Being the quick thinker I am, I said we’ll come down early enough to go for a swim with you and then come back and we can practise together.

It’s a done deal, and the temperature’s going to be in the high 20s on Saturday so it won’t be a hardship at all. JJ will be rapt.

• It’s raining.
• My dirty car is in the rain in the hope that some dirt will be rained off.
• My son is really annoying me today.
• My son lost his second front tooth today. We were at the market and a stall holder we know pulled it out for him. Everyone up to that point had been commenting on it. The tooth fairy will NOT forget this time.
• I’ve used the slow cooker to cook my first roast (in the slow cooker that is).
• I forgot to buy cucumber at the market today so our salad is cucumberless.
• We went to check out some roadworks today. It might be the only chance we get to walk on this road (see photos above).
• I was going to garden today but the rain prevented me.
• The rain also was a good excuse not to walk the dog.
• I like my Sunday sleep-in but it’s a waste of a couple of hours I could always use on a Sunday.
• I had to take the rained on clothes off the line and hang them up inside.
• I shouldn’t complain about the rain, it might help fill up Torrens lake and it saves me watering on my watering day.

What’s your Sunday stuff? You could write a post and link back here where I can update this post with others’ Sunday stuffs, or just leave a comment.

For the last two weeks we’ve had Connie staying with us. She’s mum and dad’s dog and they were going to leave her home with someone coming into feed her but I told them she could come and stay with us. Last time she spent time with us was about two months after dad had his stroke and was in hospital and rehab.

Connie is quite small and a bit of blocking of escape holes had to happen around the place so she wouldn’t leave. Below you can see her small stature.

My side gate has a gap between the bottom of it and the ground so we’ve had a block of wood filling up the gap. When we walk Monty in the mornings I’d been leaving Connie inside the house but I noticed that she was scratching the door so I decided to stop that.

The other day when we all went for a walk (sorry, Connie was left at home) we’d carefully blocked off the gate and I thought she’d be fine. When we walked back into the driveway, Connie sheepishly snuck out from under the car. She’d managed to escape, but obviously hadn’t gone far - thank goodness. Mum and dad would have understood but I would have hated to tell them that Connie had run away or that Connie ran onto the busy road and was run over.

Despite her little adventure she was a pleasure to have around. She loves sitting on laps so we’d spend some time together on the couch - only when Monty wasn’t looking.

How could you resist this face?