Dane’s been getting enthralled by surfing over the past few weeks as the water’s warmed up and we’ve been spending hours and hours at the lake and in small waves with him practicing his paddling, standing up and backhand grab-rail barrels. He gets really worked up if he can’t do something, culminating with an outburst that “I’m just not a good surfer Dad!” when he fell off a wave yesterday. I had to explain I didn’t get very good at surfing until I was 10 years older than he is now, and that he might want to be a bit more patient with his expectations.

With Clint and Jakey down this weekend, we had a great morning with the two boys getting into it. If early indications are accurate, we may even have a couple of goofy footers on our hands…

Emma practicing waiting for the boys to come in from surfing

After a great October we’ve had a dearth of good waves through November, but luckily a bit of an east swell pulse and south winds over the past few days has eased the pain, with the point serving up some small fun ones in the rain…

Dane’s cousins Maya & Jarrah paid a visit this weekend while down here for a pre-christmas family get together. Getting them to actually stand still for a photo together proved a bit harder than I’d hoped, but we got a few cute ones nonetheless…

The usual November weather cycle of hot sunny days and late afternoon thunderstorms has kicked the garden into overdrive for the past few weeks, with some impressive flowers coming to life in the process…

Amazing what you can solve when you spend most of your time surfing and snowboarding: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/11/14/scisurf114.xml&CMP=ILC-mostviewedbox

Just a pity the effort is a bit deficient.