Mandurah spectacular

Another busy week consisting of helping out in the school canteen, catching up with all the emails I missed, a couple of coffee mornings and a Body Shop party - if I'm ever to make money out of this I must stop buying the products !

Mum arrives on Thursday so Paul has spent the day blitzing the house, I was supposed to be helping but he does a much better job than I do so best leave him to it. It is supposed to be my job but I'm busy all next week again with the canteen and coffee mornings - such a hard life !

I have made a start on the garden and have cut off and pulled up loads of plants. Whoever lived here before loved spikey, thorny plants so I'm trying to make them more child/animal/me friendly. Have spotted lots of wildlife in the garden (is it a snake/legless lizard/worm ? who knows, I've been searching the internet for hours but can't find any good websites with pics to help me identify the creatures) and the cats have now been allowed out to their absolute delight - it is very hot for them though, quite muggy so they sleep in the ferns a lot during the day but at least they dont' keep us awake at night now as they're usually too tired ! They haven't gone too far from home which is comforting.

We're no further on with a puppy. I can't seem to find (or at least get replies from) any reputable breeders but we have the dog basket,toys etc - just nothing to go in it ! Oh well, will keep looking. May have to end up at a pet shop in the end which I didn't really want to do.

It's been the crab fest in Mandurah this weekend and, obviously St Patricks day as well so the teenagers have descended yet again. I don't mind them so much as the mess they leave behind. They have the mentality that if you're going to leave a bottle as rubbish you have to smash it first. It's always such a mess on a Monday when I walk the kids to school, the police should force the kids and parents to clear it up, it's really dangerous. Other than residents no one else clears it up which is awful. This weekend did take the biscuit though as some of the teenagers parked their caravan opposite our house and camped there. I was awake until 3am with them. They weren't majorly noisy, not enough to complain about, but I am a very light sleeper and the windows aren't double glazed so I ended up sleeping on the sofa. I was looking forward to beeping my car horn at them really early this morning but they were gone before I got up so they couldn't have got much sleep themselves.

Back to the crabfest, this is held over a Saturday and Sunday every year and is well worth a visit - there was loads to do. There was a cooking pavillion with live cooking demonstrations, a crab, seafood and wine pavillion where you can buy food and drink and watch the WA show ski team, jet boat demo or listen to live music. There was also lots of entertainment and a fun fair (bit pricey I thought though - $7 for a ride) and stalls. Show bags are on sale too. At 5pm there was a parade along Mandurah terrace which is closed to traffic for the whole weekend and at 9pm a firework spectacular - and I mean spectatcular - it was awesome with fireworks going off from two sites simultaneously as well as fireworks on the esturay. I've never seen fireworks go off in the shape of hearts before, ahh.

There was also on the saturday a youth zone complete with skate and BMX demos and comps, a climbing wall, pony rides, fly wall etc. On the sunday there was a family chill out zone and from 5pm live music, bouncy castles and tonight an outdoor cinema - no idea what the film is but, hey, I only live here, perhaps they haven't made their minds up yet !!

It still feels wierd having all this on our doorstep but great to be watching a fab firework display in shorts and a tshirt with an esky, mates and a cold beer !

06:30 - Sun 18 March 2007