Mr Fixit

It's a new year but some things don't change. If you have a house, you have to fix it continually and in my particular case, if your sisters in law have a house, you get to fix it - continually. And so it was that I found myself at Kim & Laurels putting up shelves in the girls room, setting up climbing rings in a tree and adjusting a dangling cricket ball so that it is a better height to have a good swing at with the bat. While I was there someone was talking about putting some steps up the pin oak and into the branches which sounded pretty cool to me so I got some spare wood from home, shaped the top edge to give a good grip and a bunch of 6" nails and nailed the steps onto the tree. I definately work too much with a keyboard because after driving in 6 nails my forearm was aching, this is not good. I shudder to think what it is like to use a hammer all day. We now have a set of steps up to the first set of branches about 4m off the ground. Had a lesson showing Samuel and Hannah how to climb safely and making sure that they understood that falling out of the tree was going to be a hospital affair not just a couple of bruises. I think they got the point. Made Samuel go up so that I could check that he had actually listened to what I had to say about climbing and he more or less got up to where the branches started before he bailed out, clearly unhappy about the height. Next it was Hannahs turn who went straight past and right up to the branches. I think they are going to really enjoy this, I will wait for the request for a tree house before I start thinking about how to build it. A couple of days afterwards Hannah and a friend climbed right up into the branches and were talking to passers by and having a great time. Sage, who can only just reach the first step was obviously feeling left out told Kim that I must come over with my car and build her a ladder too. I offered to build a 6m Sage ladder but it was politely declined. Sorry for you, Sage.

Went over to my folks for supper on Saturday night and only left just before 23:00 which must be something of a record. Quite an enjoyable evening, my mother has actually been reading this blog and true to form continues to complain about my habit of missing out on commas and full stops so here they are :
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that ought to suffice for a couple of months of writing. She continues to be amazed that I can actually write, actually, so am I.

Sunday morning Caron and I put our moutain bikes on the back of the car and headed out to Northern Farm where we had a fabulous ride. Caron on her own and myself on my own. I had my GPS with me so I was going up and down every road that I could. I normally just go around the perimeter but there are so many roads that I only managed to map about 1/3 of the area in the 2 hours I was there. Had an absolute ball whizzing down some of the roads, there are these large bumps to direct water away from the road and at speed you take off over these. Gotta be a little careful about landing in the same path as one took off from otherwise there would be a pretty spectacular moment. Found some really nice shady routes through some pine forests as well as a whole bunch of dams which I didn't know about. It sounds like my sister and brother in law are readying themselves to buy mountain bikes for the family so I am going to have to bring them out here.