. September 2013 .
| Hi there again! Well, you may recall the last issue was our account of Alaska. This month was not so far afield, but did involve a teenie bit of travel and was pretty busy nonetheless. We are back on track now, so the next issue should hopefully come out early November...fingers crossed! Read on! |
The 'tail' of the missing cat
When we got back from Alaska one of the cats was nowhere to be seen - we weren't too worried about her for the first day or so as this was not that uncommon. But after a few days we knew something was wrong. The kids made a missing cat notice and dropped it at neighbouring houses, then Jake and Michelle went out the next night knocking on doors but with no luck. They walked and walked around the neigbouring properties calling her then they heard a meow in reply - called again and heard it again - there was a cat inside a neighbouring garage. They went to the closest tenants but it was not their garage - they said it was the Landlords garage but they had gone on vacation. They tried calling him to see if someone else had a key but no-one did - oh no, how were they going to get the cat out? Well, just as well Jake is small - Jake discovered an open slatted window and managed to slide in through it, opening the door from the inside. Boy, was the cat glad to see us! We worked out that she had been locked in there for almost a week - luckily there was an unused flat attached to the garage and the door was open between so she must have been able to get water from the bathroom. What a relief - there were smiles all around!
Touch Dinner
September signals the end of the summer Touch Rugby each year. This year both Michelle's and Dave's teams have had mixed results, often through injury or non-availability of players. But the season is behind us now. No trophies or winners medals for us this year.
The highlight of the season is the annual Touch Dinner, usually held at the Wharf Restaurant. As always, there is a theme to the dinner. This year the theme was board games. It looked to be a tough one and the standard and variety of costumes was probably down a bit on last year. But it certainly didn't stop anyone having a fun night!
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| We went as Scrabble pieces, and made a number of words out of our letters. Unfortunately due to publishing standards and in an effort to at least maintain a little bit of decency, the majority of those words cannot be shown here. However, if you check out the Facebook album for the night you should be able to decipher a word or two. Click here for more Touch Dinner photos |
Chess
Twister
Jumanji
Guess who?
Jumanji zebra
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| Hungry Hippo! |
The Brac Attack
A week before that we found ourselves in Cayman Brac - one of the sister islands. It was our friend Mick's 40th birthday so a bunch of us piled on the little planes and the big planes planes and headed on over for a fun weekend. There was 56 of us - or maybe a couple more, so the local Brac economy got a little boost!
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| The Brac Attack Crew |
Between Friday afternoon and Friday night the majority of the group assembled in the Brac - as fate would have it, close to a pool and a bar. It's funny walking into a bar somewhere where you aren't known and seeing so many people that you know! Dinner and drinks pretty much describes the rest of the evening.
Dave was up to catch the All Blacks v South Africa at about 4 am. Unfortunately the Wifi was pretty average and he had to rely on updates from people all over the globe. The wonders of modern technology!
Saturday morning was Dive Time. The four of us went along and so did Doug and his Dad, Chris. We got a couple of boat dives in. It's pretty clean diving over that way. Because of the kids, we tried to restrict our depth to around 40/50 feet.
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| Jake, Michelle and Sam |
Saturday afternoon was casual socialising around the pool while the kids ran rampant all over the island. Saturday night carried on in a similar vein.
Sunday morning we all piled into the various rental vehicles and headed up to the bluff. Up on the Bluff the we found hundreds of these caterpillars. Apparently they turn into massive moths.
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| The Bluff! |
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| The boys enjoy a beer at the Bluff |
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| And the girls get into something bubbly as well |
After that we checked out a few of the caves around the island. This was our third trip to the Brac so the Caves weren't quite as exciting as previous times. Still pretty cool though.
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| A cave with comforts! |
We were told of a recently discovered cave so set out to find it. It was a very cool cave with lots of stalactites and mites that hadn't been affected by animals or humans. Hopefully it can stay that way.
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| Looking down from just inside the entrance |
Oldies Rugby
An oldies team was visiting from South Africa (and other locales) and they wanted a game. So the Tarnished Turtles assembled to give them a run. Dave hadn't played for a year so was due a game. By the look of the team not many others had played for a while either!
The game started off fairly leisurely, until the visitors found their straps and we realised that we had a game on our hands. They had some big boys in their team and clearly they had played together on several occasions before.
Cayman however just rocked up as per usual expecting the visitors to wilt in the heat.
These guys didn't and they were able to string a few passes together as well, which meant that the Cayman side had to actually run a bit and make a few tackles.
In the end the visitors won the game Seven tries to five. It was a good game and everyone had a good run about. Some more than others!
We found out after the game that four of the visitors had played for the Natal Sharks in SA, two others had trialed for SA and yet another had played for the American Eagles, and one other had played American Football for one of the big teams. So, after all that we didn't feel too bad!
Boat Day
Last Sunday we headed out on a friend's boat for the afternoon. It was a nice boat (41 feet) and there were about 20 of us on board. We met up with a couple of other groups on their boats out at Stingray City.
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| Mum and Baby... |
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| Our boat! |
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| "Barman!" |
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| Not a bad attempt at an underwater selfie! |
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| Looking for food! |
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| Some of the crew |
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| Jake goes for some air from the top of the boat |
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| The owners also took the opportunity to take a few promotional snaps and dressed up a couple of the girls as mermaids. |
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| Starfish Point |
Went popped over to Starfish point to set up the BBQ etc.
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| Heading back after a fun day out |
So, that's about it for this month. The weather has been pretty average so we were lucky with the day out on the water. August was the wettest here in 30 years. September wasn't exactly dry either.
Winter is coming, but that generally means drier and slightly cooler, more settled weather.
The kids are back at school after their big summer holidays. Both are back into swim training. Sam doing three early mornings and five afternoons each week, with Jake doing five sessions. There are a couple of local meets coming up so we'll see what progress they have made since returning to the pool.
Coming up in October:
Halloween
Swimming
Maybe a Dive?
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