Man Up!

I used to say to Sam, "Harden Up!"
I was afraid he'd grow up to be a pussy. Get teased at school. Like I was teased.
Shows my insecurity more than anything.


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This following series currently on ABC's iView (Episode 1 available to 25 Oct 2016) is a raw, powerful view into Australian masculinity.

Man Up!

I couldn't believe the stats until I heard and looked them up. I knew they were high, but strewth!
~2000 people kill themselves each year.  That's 40 a week!
That's on par with motor accidents.

Here I am, I've been banging on about safety at work (more to come later), when here's the gremlin silently killing us many times over, and we don't talk about it.

Dirt Therapy

The boys were driving us insane.

School holidays.

The kids get cooped up in the house.
They start bouncing off walls.
Especially Sam.

So our backyard makeover got urgent.
The boys needed dirt therapy.

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These ran through my head for the last year or so as I weighed up the pros and cons
Why do up the backyard?

• We'd like the kids to be more outdoors
• Our home has more paved areas than grassy areas
• Kids are safe and within cooee of us at home
• We can have people over who have kids - we'd like them to burn their energy outside
• I can kick the ball with Sam until JUST before dinner time
• The garden has a lot of wasted/dead space
• We can camp in the back 
• We can have chickens

Why not do up the backyard?

• There's already a park near by
• Spend money (I was raised not to spend too much money)
• How do I know what I want, what we need?
• More maintenance, mowing
• Uses lots of water
• A risk that the grass won't take and it'll like a tough mudder track

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So we started by ripping out the old pavers and garden boxes.

The digger driver was amazing. He carefully laid each paver into the bucket.
This meant we could keep the pavers. We gave lots to our neighbour Varunee.

Here comes the top soil.

The boys 'helped' compact the soil.

Sam learning how to cut pipe with a hack saw.
A good lesson in slow-and-steady wins the race.

 Sam learning to wheel barrow.

 Jimmy helping fill the sandpit.

The turf gets laid today. 

Hopefully we can roll around on it in a few good weeks.