Kemps Creek Hot Fire Day

Hi All. Told you I would be a bit quicker this time...

Well on Sunday I went to a place called Kemps Creek that is used by the RFS to conduct training, primarily Village Fire Fighter training. This is the training that Heidi, Robbie and Jamie are going through at the moment. I was there as part of a safety crew. (Or unsafe crew in some cases...read on.) Five of us from Faulconbridge went down, four on the safety crew and one was participating in the training. We manned the car fire scenario. There is a mid nineties Mitsubishi Magna (sedan for those who don't know) that is used for this. We fill it up with paper, grass, timber and almost anything else we can lay our hands on, douse the whole lot in petrol and set fire to it for the training crews to put it out. Once it is on fire we man a safety line (hose) to cover the trainees in case anything flares up. It was a long day, but heaps of fun. On the last run we were let loose by the trainers and told that we could make the last run as impressive (explosive) as possible. We filled the car with all of the combustible material we could find and for the finishing touch we doused it in 30 litres of petrol, lit it up and stood well back! It went of like a, well a fire cracker...

I was really tired by the end of the day, but no where near as tired as I was when I actually did the training. I feel for Heidi and the boys. I know exactly what they went through and by the end of that day you can barely put one foot in front of the other, you look like a creature from the swamp and smell like a rotten goat. Still, it is lots of fun....

Here are some photos....


Preparing the car.

Burning car! Ha ha ha!

More burning car! Ha Ha Ha Ha!!!!

Safety line in operation.

Well, it HAS been a long time....

Well you could have knocked me over when I looked at when we did our last post. December!!!! All this baby stuff really does eat up all your time. I will keep the writing short but the photos plentiful on this one for you as Xavier has changed a lot since the last post, as is expected. Before the photos, a little update.

He had his first day in day care on Monday. Karen and I were very nervous about this and we were wondering if he would feel a little anxious about being left with a stranger for a whole day, but he seems to have completely enjoyed himself. He was full of smiles and once the smiling was over with he crashed and slept better than he has for a while!! Seems day care will have its advantages. He is going to family day care, which for those not in the know, is where a qualified day care person takes care of kids in their own home. We were always very happy with the care provided to Ben with his day care mums, so we thought we would try to find the same thing here. We found a really nice lady at Lawson called Justine and she has two kids of her own. One is an 18 month old boy and the other is a 6 year old girl. Xavier will be happy with this as he loves other kids. She can only have maximum of 5 kids under school age in her care at any time including her own kids, so we know that Xavier will be getting personal attention. At the moment he is going Mondays and Thursdays and that will increase to include Tuesdays and Wednesdays in a few weeks.

Karen started taking him to the pool on Tuesdays and he is having a ball. Apparently he really likes being dunked. I am yet to see this as I am working. I am sure Karen will do a post soon and fill in all of the details.




He is doing lots of rolling, grabbing and chatting. It is all getting very interesting.

Here are the photos....

Trashing his bed...


His first solid food...


"Can I go to the Fire Brigade yet?"...


Enjoying a cuddle with mum before bed...

"I want to eat your brains!"

"This caterpillar is making me sleepy."

I thought I would add a few paintings as well. Haven't had as much time to do this of late, but try when I can...

Well that is all for now. Talk soon...