Wet Nights

It rained last night, and most of the day before, and it rained the night before too. On that first night we found Tiger getting quite wet out in the annex, and moved him inside. We moved Princess' bed, but later she got wet too and had to sleep with Joybug. We didn't have our special waterproof covers on the ends of our camper, and water came in on my side of the bed, mostly at my head, but also at my feet. Our feather quilt got particularly wet.

Christian took the kids to the beach in the morning so I could start the tidy up, we were both exhausted! Joybug and I slowly started to get things going. That's when the kids came back, all of them wet, and sandy, and dirty!

Now we had a mountain of washing and drying! The kids settled down to some Maths and journaling after their clean up, and we attempted to start the washing, except everyone else in the caravan park had the same idea. So we decided to split. Joybug and I went to bed, Christian and the rest went to have lunch and do the washing. Then we swapped, Christian and Tank slept whilst I took the rest exploring. Best idea yet.

Still by the end of the day the camper was all mud, sand and water on the floor. Christian took the big kids for a swim, yes it was raining. The Man went blue with the cold. By the time they were all showered I had managed to make the camper clean and a dinner to fill them up.

Thankfully, after devotions, and beginning our new book "Little House In The Big Woods", they all slept soundly until this morning. Praise God! We all needed a good sleep.

The first sound we heard this morning was a number of kookaburras calling (or having a party, as a book of ours says), then Joybug:

"Oh! Oo oo, uh uh...Monkeys!!"

"It's a kookaburra, Joybug" said Mummy

"Oh!! Koodaburra!! Koodaburras!!"

Sugar Cane Country

Today we started driving through sugar cane country. We pointed the crops out to the kids. The Man kept thinking I had said "sugar grain", which then got Tank saying the same thing. Then The Man said it was "sugar grass", which is actually a great description, because it is a form of grass, just like bamboo.

"So why is sugar bad for you if it comes from a plant?" asked Tiger. Great question! The answer comes fairly easily when we stop to cut a cane and try it for ourselves. Getting the cane juice out is easy, but the amount needed for a spoonful of sugar? Well, that's a bit harder. If we were to eat the sugar cane in its natural state we would also be getting lots of fibre, which is needed to move the sugar (fructose) through the body, but the fibre would fill us up, so we wouldn't eat so much.

We are now driving past crop after crop of sugar cane. It dwarfs my height of 165cm, and whilst most house poke their rooftops just out above the cane occasionally we see a house hidden inside the cane, which must be pretty scary if they still burn off the stubble.

It was raining when we got out for our taste tests. The kids all thought it tasted nice, although Tank initially took the whole cane in his mouth, rather than waiting for me to drip a bit out. Joybug didn't know how to lift her head with all the rain, so she got to sit in the car for hers.