Summertime play day

Whenever our friend Justine and the kids are home visiting from Indonesia, we love catching up with them and usually get together with Simone and Simon at the same time, so the kids can all play while us girls have a good catch up.   Last time we got together in July and it was a freezing day, but the kids had such a great time playing on the giant round hay bales and riding motor bikes together.

Today we headed out to see them as they are home for Christmas and it was the total opposite today - such a beautiful warm, sunny day.  The kids were really excited to see each other.  Last time Harri decided he didn't want an afternoon off school (crazy kid!) to see them, so he was really looking forward to seeing them this time as he saw all the fun the kids had last time and saw that he missed out.

The kids went over to visit 'Rusty' the pet bull who is very tame.

He loves being fed apples. Jalen thought it was better to do it like this.

But Gus showed us how he really likes it being done - by holding the apple in your mouth first! He came out with LOTS of cow slobber all over him.

Kobe was so excited to go out to see the kids.  He kept saying all morning 'we're going to Tilly's house!' (even though it's really Tilly's Grandma and Grandpa's house:)

We had a lovely BBQ lunch sitting out in the sun.




Papparrazzi Simone was out with the camera, until her battery died two minutes later :)

The kids then spent the afternoon riding the bikes around together. 

Harri was being a bit quiet and funny at first.  He jumped on the back of the bike with Oliver but wasn't very happy about it.   He has so much on his mind all the time and this morning before we left home he said 'does Gus and Tilly's Mum know that Noah died?' as he was worried that we would have to get there and tell them. 

He later had a turn riding the bike on his own and thought it was the best thing ever.  He ended up having the best day and didn't want to leave. It was actually really nice seeing him so happy as he's had a rough few months.  Nothing we would say would make him come, so we did the old 'hop in the car and pretend to drive away trick' sure that he would come crying and running to the car yelling 'wait for me!!', but the little rat bag stood his ground and said he wasn't coming home and wanted to stay at 'Gus and Tilly's'!   We ended up having to get him into the car with big black tears streaming down his face because he was so dirty, and was having so much fun and didn't want to leave.

These three have grown lots since they were together sitting on the hay bales in July.

Felix and Kobe were so cute holding each others hands everywhere they went.

It's so nice seeing the kids all get along so well and have such a great time, even though they only usually see each other once a year. 

It was such a lovely day and we wish we could see them more often, but for now we love our play days once a year (or twice a year if we are lucky:)