Another new member of the Walker family

You may have seen recently that we brought Barkley into our home. Well, a few weeks later and he is well and truly a member of the family.

Today marked another big day in our household - a sister for Barkley!



Hayley is a 6 month old tri-colour Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Being twice as old as Barkley she is quite a bit bigger and Barkley is rapt to have a big sister around the house. They hit it off from the moment they got together. He's a bit boisterous and Hayley is forced to tap him into place occasionally.



Hayley was going to be kept by her breeder, but she had a change of heart and would like to take some time out from the breeding and show circuit. As one last hurrah, she entered Hayley in the Royal Melbourne Show. Hayley took away first prize on Monday and was in our house on Tuesday. It was a sad goodbye, but Hayley is loving her new abode and playmate. The kids (and the adults) are also rapt to have a little girl in the house.

School holidays have begun

The first weekend of the school holidays was quite eventful. Leisa, Kevin, Hamish and Siobhan visited from their dairy - Leisa and Kev had the weekend off while Leisa's Dad tended to the herd (and he was glad when they got home).



While they were here, we went to the Melbourne Show. The day started out wet and miserable but had cleared up by lunchtime as predicted (the bureau get it right most of the time down here!). We saw some interbreed dairy cattle judging followed by a visit to the beef cattle and animal nursery pavilions.

Shortly after this we paid a visit to a few other pavilions before making our way to the woodchop arena. Just before going to the woodchop arena, nature called. While some of us visited the conveniences, Patrick wandered off (mistakenly) and got lost. 25 minutes of frantic searching later, Michael headed to the lost childrens office to find a very relieved Patrick. He wasn't the only one relieved!

From here we went and saw sideshow alley and all of the kids had a ride or slide and thoroughly enjoyed themselves before heading to the showbag pavilion and catching the train home. It was a long day indeed.



Sunday saw us heading up the mountain and visiting Silvan.



The Tesselaar Tulip Festival recently started and we visited on the Turkish weekend.



As well as loads of tulips, we were treated to a traditional Turkish marching band performance and singing.



This festival is a month long and certainly is popular.