Cold Saturday on the Hume Weir

I am sitting out on the balcony at 4pm, Phill and the kids have taken the boat out for a second time.  We took it out this morning.  It's freezing here, the wind is coming straight off the snow fields which are close by.  Yesterday we got the kids good quality spray jackets and we all got new lifejackets.  We weren't as prepared as we could have been, none of us had beanies or gloves and I didn't bring my thermos for hot drinks.  We had trouble starting the motor but finally it fired up and off we went, haltingly, and once out in the middle of the dam it stalled.  Phill would get it started only to have it stall and this happened several times.  (We have oars luckily as while I could have swum back with the kids the cold would have knocked us for six).  After a while of wondering if we'd bought a lemon Phill finally twigged that he had the hose from the petrol tank to the motor around the wrong way so it was blowing instead of sucking (???)  In the meantime it began to rain and we all got wet, but soon we were on our way and what fun we had, we motored right up to the bridge and tied up to a tree and put some lines in but it was so cold we didn't stay long and came home and easily got the boat back onto the trailer all four of us working together.  We drove into town and got hats, scarves and gloves for everyone and I think they are a lot warmer out there now, I watched from the balcony and videotaped them taking off.  Phill let Emily have a drive and she was more than competent, she got the boat up to quite a clip, and I loved seeing Josh know his way around a fishing rod just the way his dad taught him.  Josh LOVES fishing with a passion.  We are going to have such fun with our litle boat, especially when the weather warms up.  We just need to get properly equipped and organised.
It was so good to see Emily and while we are all making an effort the old family dynamic, both good and bad is still there of course and we will need a lot of help to turn that around so it's more good than bad.  We had to get her away from there, being with them was doing more harm than good.
The cabin is shabbier than I remembered and not very clean considering the star rating and the price, we won't stay here again, the lake views, we have absolute lake frontage are the best part about it.  I didn't sleep well last night, I really don't like being away from home now I am getting older, especially when we now have a lovely home to be in.  But the kids are having fun and it's good to see them loving the outdoors in spite of it being mid Winter and raining!
I have lots of photos but the internet connection here is through a stick and is dodgy at best.  I will post them when we get home tomorrow night.
We tried to bbq on the verandah last night with our "new" little portable bbq that we got from Vinnie's and got a new gas bottle for yesterday.  It needs different hoses or something, we'll fix that up when we get home, I ended up doing steaks and sausages on the stove.  Pizza tonight and home tomorrow thank goodness.  There aren't even electric blankets on the beds, but the reverse cycle a/c is nice and warm.

I got the photos to upload!

Very slow though, more tomorrow.  See the wake behind our super fast boat?