Big Fish

Freya and Esther have had swimming lessons ever since they were tiny bubs. They are both confident and capable in the water and that gives Ade and I tremendous pleasure and peace of mind. 
We are pretty much regulars at the pool and now that I have met the 2 guys who take the aqua-aerobics classes I am keen to be even more regular. I don't want to be arrested for stalking, but I will try and snag a photo so you know what I'm talking about ;)
Y'all know Ade is V-P of the TP swim club (although he doesn't have his parking spot yet). The Jonkers have a season pool pass. This week and next both girls are doing school swimming, a lesson every day. Esther's regular swimming lesson is Monday, Freya's Wednesday. Freya also does swim-squad training Mondays and Fridays.
Freya has incredible technique and stamina in the pool. She is the youngest Tom Price squad member and last Friday she had to show the rest of the squad how to butterfly. Seriously...have you tried to 'butterfly'? I can't lift my arms out of the water, Freya can go for hundreds of metres, she's awesome. After her first school swimming lesson her teacher rang me to let me know that Freya was too good for her class and that they would be moving her to an earlier class in order to challenge her a bit. Today she helped coach the younger kids.
This is really just a 'brag post'. My girls are brilliant swimmers.
So there!

On your mark...

...Go!

Awesome swimmer xxx

Garage Sale

Humph. Did I mention that dear N/C/F is leaving town with her lovely husband and their children A to Z? We're gutted :(
On the bright side we crashed their garage sale and flogged a heap of our crap (we also acquired some of theirs!).

We'll miss our lovely N/C/Fs.
*sulks*

Rock'n'roll

Hey, guess what?!

My mum's in town!!!

Here she is four-wheel-driving:

She had loads of fun :)

Don't put your daughter on the stage Mrs Worthington

Esther has been a member of the Boom Boom Dance Academy for the past 10 months. You may reasonably assume, if you have ever met Esther, that girlfriend loves herself a little bit of centre-stage. She is no wallflower. So I was surprised that she got so nervous before her performance. There were nerves to the point of feeling sick. 

I watched her walk onto the stage for the first time with the rest of the coven for her 'little witch dance', I watched as she walked straight over to her dance teacher with a worried face and then I watched as her dance teacher ushered her immediately off the stage. 

My first instinct was tears, my second fury (there have been several hundreds of $$$, yup hundreds, and a whole bucket of parental hours invested in the Boom Boom Dance Academy, not to mention how disappointed I knew Esther would be when she realised what she'd missed out on); but I have not spent my most recent night shifts watching Toddlers and Tiaras for nothing. I know what a stage-mother must do when her offspring baulks...yes reader, I dashed backstage and shoved Esther back on*. 

She did me proud, and once she realised there was a buzz to be got from dancing in front of an audience there was no stopping her.

Make-up application, possibly Esther's favourite part of the show

With her witchy BFF

The show Esther must go on! Taken from the wings. Stupid blogger randomly refusing to rotate my photos again, grrr.

Talented little witch!

Mermaid, far left

Curtsey after being presented with her participation award <3

I have super cute film clips of Esther as witch and mermaid in her matinee performance but I'm jiggered if I can work out how to make them play on blogger. I am rather going off blogger...

*Esther was cajoled rather than threatened: true story!

There is a light that never goes out

Cute, pink boombox

Esther had a cute, pink boombox so she could listen to her CDs. Her current favourite is Jay Laga'aia's "I Can Play Anything". I also love Jay, his songs are great and he, along with Matt and Rhys, makes Playschool very watchable. Indeed there is much to be happy about in the world of children's TV these days: Jimmy Giggle, Steve Backshall... c'mon, I know you know what I'm talking about!
I digress...
I bought the cute, pink boombox a few years ago so it also had a cassette deck which was awesome because we inherited a heap of story and music tapes from my Canberra cousins (they are likely to be unique among their Gen Y peers in their ability to recognise an audio cassette). Anyhoo, the CD part of the cute, pink boombox packed up and Esther was missing Jay at bedtime so I had to find a replacement. I failed. It transpires that one can not buy a boombox that plays cassettes these days (why did that surprise me?!). So she has a CD/iPod boombox (still pink!) for her bedroom and the cute, pink tape-deck has moved to the kitchen. Which is where I was yesterday...
I was rolling sushi, washing up, baking (my Melbourne Cup lunch got cancelled last minute, what's a girl to do?!)...I needed a soundtrack so I dug out my box of tapes! What's left are the mix-tapes, made for me by dear friends, old boyfriends and first love. The playlists are handwritten and annotated, they have cut and paste front covers and names like "music for dishwashers" and "Spamella Anderson". They contain the songs of my university years and some from the subsequent 90s. Nostalgic? Much!

My sentimental reverie was interrupted this morning when I found a note from Ade on the kitchen bench:
Hi hon,
Can you please give our room a good spray today.
I saw a huge huntsman twice last night but didn't manage to squash him.
Love you xxxx
WTF??!! Didn't manage to squash it? Allowed me to sleep in a room with an enormous arachnid? I am too scared to go back into my bedroom. Adrian, this does not constitute a 'love letter', you need to show me some love with a mix-tape please!

In other news: we've had our first electrical storm of the season and it's raining!

Strange grey shapes in the sky that deposit water

What's new pussycat?

What's new Chez Jonker?
We've got a new kitchen bin. It's fancy: opens when you wave your detritus over the top of it and closes automatically too.
It's currently my favourite piece of furniture.

We spent today doing some garden maintenance, inspired by what is happening in our garden without any input from LAFE:

Beautiful frangipani out-front, making our house look purrrty :)

And, lo, the fugly tree next to the back patio turns out to be...

...a mango!!! There have been 4 fruit to date, 2 of which are already on the ground. We are instigating a watering program for "out-back" so that next year we might harvest some of our own mangoes.