School holidays in the country are very much looked forward to.  High school teenagers are home from boarding school, Mothers are free from either lunches and bus runs, or actually teaching their primary school age children on the Distance Education system.  Routines wind down and families get to spend time together.  The first few days of school holidays the kids usually laze around and catch up on sleep and food and have time to just be.  Then Andrew will find a few lambs to mark or some stock work to do and the kids either help with the stock or help me in the kitchen.  After about a week they are always keen to start socialising with their friends in the district who are also away at boarding schools.



The country tennis party is very much alive and well, someone always has a tennis day during school holidays and the whole family love them.  Catch up with friends, play some tennis, teenagers socialise and play tennis, younger ones roam around the place playing and exploring.  The Day usually finishes off with a BBQ and a few more social beverages.  We have been including netball on the sporting activities here at 'Westfield for the past 5 year, with 3 daughters who are avid netball fans we decided to play some mixed netball.  The kids love it, everyone mixes in together, the girls enjoy being more skillful than the boys for a change and the adults love watching.  We did have an adults game a couple of times, loads of laughs but the bodies are a little less willing lately. The photos are from the tennis/netball day we had here in the September holidays.



The only drawback is that the old 'ant bed' (type of clay) court requires maintenance.  The court has to be rolled by pulling a very heavy roller over the surface after rain. Only bonus is that it burns more calories than the tennis!