You can download it straight into iTunes and hear exactly what cuts the mustard as far as this 7 year old gamer is concerned. The inaugural episode looks at Lego Star Wars.

I can remember when I was Buster Boy’s age how much fun it was to make recordings on my Dad’s tape deck, they usually only lasted a few weeks until the tape was full and I’d start recording over it again from the start of the tape. How amazing that this little snapshot of my son can not only be captured in perpetuity, but shared with our friends who are so far away. Living in the future is cooler than I could ever have imagined.

While the idea of the kids having a lemonade stand on the nature strip seemed incredibly cute, the pessimist in me thought that we would spend the afternoon placating disappointed children. Nevertheless we set about finding a recipe for fresh lemonade and getting to work in the kitchen. The lemons from our tree were amazing, the juice almost exploded from them as I cut them in halves and it took no time to get enough to make our lemonade.

While the lemonade cooled Buster Boy set about preparing his lemonade stand. With the help of the Troll Princess he made a sign, found some disposable cups and a tin for the money he hoped to make, and brought a table and chairs from the Troll Princess’ room to the front yard. By this time the fog had lifted, the clouds had parted and the sun began to illuminate our street.

Still feeling pessimistic I went inside to phone our next door neighbour and another friend who I hoped could come over and provide some custom for the lemonade stand. Both phones rang out. I managed to reach our friend’s wife who told us that he was still at sport with the kids for another half an hour or so, and while on the phone I heard the front door slam open and the Troll Princess holler “We’ve got a customer!”.

Sure enough, a passing car had seen the kids out the front, pulled over, and bought a cup of lemonade. The kids were ecstatic, Rach and I were a little dumbstruck. Then it happened again, and again, and again. Complete strangers pulled up to buy cups of lemonade, and were pleasantly surprised when they discovered that the lemonade was actually quite nice. Along the way the Troll Princess decided to abandon the heady world of beverage service to play with the girl next door, but Buster Boy remained resolute. Soon enough the lemonade had run out and I was sent to the kitchen to prepare another batch, and then to the supermarket to buy more cups.

It was fantastic seeing all of these people give some time and a few cents to take part in the kids’ endeavour, they represented a range of ages and without exception treated our kids with warmth and respect. I don’t think I can adequately explain how proud Buster Boy was of himself, the lemonade stand was his idea and he sat on the nature strip until the sun had fallen below Nail Can Hill before he would consider shutting up shop for the day.

The whole experience was an amazing reminder of how wonderful people can be, and what good things can happen if you trust your kids and let them make decisions for themselves. It would have been very easy to dismiss the idea of the lemonade stand, the thought certainly occurred to me, so I’m glad that it ended up showing the kids that they can be rewarded for working hard and believing in themselves.

And what you all really want to know, they made twelve dollars.

We’d waited at the bus stop for a long time with no sign of the bus and had assumed that it was extremely late as we’d arrived at the right time and hadn’t seen it drive past. That was when my phone rang. The call that we got from the school said that Buster Boy had caught the wrong bus and gone to West Albury. We both thought that seemed strange as he’s very good at remembering details, but didn’t dwell on it as we were more concerned with when he’d get home. We were told he’d been transferred to another bus and would be dropped at his normal bus stop soon. At that point we decided to split up, Rach stayed at the bus stop where Buster Boy gets dropped off in the afternoon and I walked to the other side of the block where he gets picked up in the morning.

After a short wait a bus rolled around the corner and pulled up at my stop, there was no sign of Buster Boy so I assumed that he’d got off at the other stop where Rach had been waiting. I rounded the corner and looked up the hill to see Rach and the Troll Princess, but no Buster Boy. At this point the concern really began to kick in.

I called the bus company to find out what was going on. It turned out that Buster Boy had been on the right bus, he’d told the driver that she’d gone the wrong way, so she assumed he should be in West Albury, which was where he was now headed. I was placed on hold while they got in contact with the bus driver to organise somewhere for us to meet. I was told to be in town in fifteen minutes, the bus would meet us at the last stop in town before it went back to Wodonga. We rushed home, grabbed the car, and raced to the bus stop where we nervously waited.

After what seemed an eternity a green and white bus lurched into the bus stop and Buster Boy hopped off and ran over to us for a hug. We looked for blotchy eyes, or tear stained cheeks, but saw neither; he’d held it together through the whole ordeal, only letting the tears fall once he was safely back with us.

Rach and I felt absolutely horrible. Buster Boy had been on the right bus, so we figured that we must have been late to the bus stop, and were therefore the cause of his distressing afternoon. It was made even worse when through his tears he started to apologise for not getting home.

What came next was rather confusing, Buster Boy said that he’d missed his stop because the driver, who he hadn’t seen before “didn’t go up the hill”. He told us that when the bus started going in an unfamiliar direction he went to talk to the driver, telling her the street that he lived in and even pointing it out as they drove past. Rach and I didn’t know what to make of this, we didn’t doubt what Buster Boy had told us, but we also couldn’t imagine why the bus would deviate from its route.

We took him home, comforted him, and tried to reassure him that it would be OK to come home on the bus again. Buster Boy wasn’t convinced, so we agreed to leave any further discussion until morning. Despite that, Buster Boy told us again, more than once, that the new driver had gone a different way and that’s why he’d missed his stop. The certainty with which he told this story had me wondering where on earth the bus could have gone.

This morning we made a note to put in with Buster Boy’s bus pass, with his bus number and the stop where he gets off in the afternoon. Buster Boy wasn’t happy about coming home on the bus again, but realised that he wasn’t going to win the argument. We walked to the bus stop and Buster Boy obviously still felt some anxiety about the return trip, in honesty I did too.

By this stage I was almost convinced that there’d been some unaccounted for change of the bus route yesterday, but couldn’t imagine how or why. I rang the bus company to say thanks for the way they’d looked after Buster Boy, but hoped that I’d have an opportunity during the conversation to ask whether the bus had taken a detour for some reason. The opportunity didn’t present itself, I was left wondering.

As the time for the bus grew near this afternoon the sky remained grey and the rain poured down. Nevertheless, I went to the bus stop about twenty minutes early and stood beneath my umbrella, still with a slight pang of guilt, thinking that perhaps the bus had been early yesterday and we’d missed it. Today the bus pulled up on schedule, and my heart leaped as I saw Buster Boy tearing down the aisle to be first at the door. As the bus came to a stop I could see the driver talking to Buster Boy and as the door opened I caught the tail end of the conversation.

From what I could gather she was telling him that he should have said that this was his stop yesterday when she asked, and that had she known she would have come this way. Buster Boy was right, she didn’t go up the hill. She must have asked the kids on the bus as a group if any of them got off at Chambers St, the other kids from his stop weren’t on yesterday and Buster Boy wouldn’t have known the answer, so she took a short cut.

After a big hug, Buster Boy told me that he’d shown the bus driver his note, and what’s more he’d told her that she needed to go up the hill today. I was proud that he’d overcome this morning’s anxiety and taken some control of his situation, but the best was yet to come. As we walked down the hill towards home, hand in hand, Buster Boy looked up to me from underneath the little hood on his wet weather jacket and said, “Dad, you were right. It is OK going on the bus in the afternoon”, my heart soared. One of the wonderful things about kids is how quickly they can regain their confidence.

We got home to Rach and the Troll Princess and plenty more hugs. I retired to the kitchen to put make some hot chocolates and share what I’d heard with Rach. Her relief was palpable, quickly followed by a sense of absolute disbelief that a bus driver who was unfamiliar with all of the kids on her bus would change her route. Personally, I’m just glad to know that on this occasion we hadn’t failed our little boy, and that whatever worries he had have been well and truly dispatched.

Over the past few weeks I’ve seen the hashtag #C25K popping up in my twitter stream, but I only recently decided to investigate what it meant. Turns out that quite a few of the people I follow had begun the Couch to 5k running program. C25K is an interval training program and although that’s hardly a new concept, its popularity has meant that a bunch of helpful resources have been created to assist you to get off the couch.

This morning I downloaded a music mix that was designed to accompany the C25K program, with the beat changing up or down according to whether you should be jogging or running, from Podrunner Intervals and loaded it onto my iPod, found my barely used pair of sneakers and headed out the door. I’d be lying if I didn’t admit that the first transition from a brisk walk to a jog felt like it was going to make my lungs explode, but by the time I reached the cooldown part of the workout I was actually disappointed that I had no more jogging sections to come.

Three times a week for the next 9 weeks I’ll be following the C25K program, if all goes to plan I’ll be able to do a 5K run in 30 minutes, which seems like quite a feat at this point in time. The concept of ‘getting fit’ always seems rather nebulous to me, the beauty of C25K is that there’s a well defined goal and an obvious way to get there.

Update: Second session finished. Buster Boy woke me up just after 6 and I se out with all of the other nutters. Part way through I started to worry that my usually dormant asthma was about to make a comeback, but it turns out it was mostly my under-developed lung capacity that was causing the problem.

There’s a squeak there Mum. You better get some WD-40 to fix it.

All that time in the shed is beginning to pay off.

Step two is to go to the back corner of the yard behind the garden shed, on in my case behind The Hut. Here you should find besa blocks, old sections of fence and spare planks. The saw horses will probably be handy too.

The next stop is the front of the shed, where you can collect screws, cable ties, a drill and a saw.

This is where the noisy stuff begins. Cut off the top and bottom of the fence palings, then screw some extra planks in the middle to reinforce it. This is the platform that the tank will sit on.

The hose fittings should now be installed in the tank. Most tanks will come with some crappy little stop cock, but throw that away and get a proper one that you can attach a garden hose to. This is where you get to break out the hole saw and copious amounts of silicon

I attached a half inch hose fitting, because that’s the type of hose that I have, but I think that 3/4 inch fittings and hose would give you better water flow – that might be a later upgrade.

Now that you’re finished with the sharp tools it’s officially time to start drinking beer.

The besa bricks can now be placed in a pattern on the ground designed to support your newly built platform, the tank placed on top and the collection hose run from the top of the tank to your water source.

While you can connect your collection hose right to the drain pipe, having kids means that we still dispose of some nasty biological stuff down the laundry sink that we don’t really want in the tank.

And now the final result.

Summer time lawn, here we come.

The problem that immediately sprang up was how to keep the seed damp while it germinated, seeing as how Albury is still on anti-lawn water restrictions. The obvious solution was to invest in a grey water setup, one of the myriad things that have been ‘on the list’ to do forever, but never materialised. Mrsdave sent me to Bunnings with the idea of one of those wheelie bin style tanks in mind, but things didn’t turn out quite as she’d expected.

The plan was to grab a small tank from Bunnings, drop it home and then head to The Rock Yard to get the loam, what Mrsdave hadn’t considered in the plan was my ability to sniff out a bargain. The glorified wheelie bins, holding a meagre 100 litres cost $80, while a 500 litre tank was available for a mere $99. There was no question about what to do, the value equation was inescapable, I had to have the 500 litre beauty.

The first problem that this exposed was the fact that I hadn’t packed any ropes or tie downs for the trailer, expecting to be carrying a wheelie bin home. Still, I was only a few blocks from home, what could go wrong? I sat the tank in the trailer and slowly proceeded home. The trip was uneventful until I drove over the freeway overpass that connects East Albury to the rest of town. The freeway, with sound barriers down each side, caught the wind much like a long valley would and as I drove onto the bridge a gust of wind blew my newly acquired water tank across two lanes of traffic. It’s moments like these that you appreciate the comically large hazard lights button that European cars have, I hit it, pulled up and jumped out of the car to retrieve my wayward tank. Thankfully my fellow motorists enjoyed the sight of me running around after a plastic tank enough to avoid the onset of road rage, I put the tank back in the trailer and creeped back to the Dave from Albury Compound.

The second problem that I encountered was that Mrsdave was expecting me to return with an upright rectangular thing on wheels, not a big, squat, round thing. Mercifully the presence of our children restrained Mrsdave from fully verbalising her feelings. However, once placed in situ with the benefit of an attractive looking tank stand, Mrsdave agreed that the larger tank was indeed a good choice.

It turned out that it was actually a very lucky choice, as our first attempt at capturing the water from our washing machine revealed that it uses close to 100 litres of water when we do a medium wash and rinse. That was actually quite a shock as it’s not something we’ve ever given a great deal of thought to. So by the end of the day we had close to 400 litres of water in the tank, ready to water the new lawn.

Watering the lawn wasn’t as easy as I’d imagined either. I didn’t expect much in the way of water pressure, but I did hope it would be enough to seep out of a soaker hose. That was right for about 10% of the soaker hose, but for the most part it was a no go so I had to find another solution. Another trip to Bunnings, a pair of watering cans and a short piece of hose later and we have ‘a system’ now. Fill one, empty one; fill one, empty one; there’s a lovely zen quality to it.

So now we wait for 5-12 days see how successful this latest gardening effort goes. Hopefully the lawn will be established enough to survive whatever summer throws at it. In the mean time I’m going to pipe the drain from our evaporative cooler to the tank, perhaps even add a second one as an overflow and continue to enjoy the new found sense of achievement that our home is bringing me.

Buster Boy and the Troll Princess had been excitedly looking forward to the trip, Buster Boy because of his memories of last year’s trip, the Troll Princess because Dora rescued a snow princess once (actually it’s been dozens of times, DVD repetition is the bane of a parent’s life). We hired some gear in Mount Beauty and headed up the mountain, trying all of the usual distractions that you throw out when trying to avoid the kids feeling queasy on a windy road. As we passed the sign marking ten kilometres from the village I switched to ‘who can see the first snow?’ as I knew we were nearing the area where we’d start to see it on the road side.

Well, I thought I knew. Higher and higher we drove, with no sign of snow on the roadsides or in the nearby scrub. In fact we drove all the way into the village before we saw any real piles of snow anywhere. We made our way to the aptly named Windy Corner, where the toboggan slope is located, and braved the icy squalls and grey skies. To our delight, all of the kids took to the slope with gusto, although they were far less keen on dragging their sleds back up the hill.

After plenty of trips down the hill, including all of the Dads, and then Mums, racing each other (Mrsdave won, I disgraced our family) we retired to the nearby shelter for some lunch. It was great to be out of the wind and snow for a while, and there is something sublime about communal food.

We headed out again to build some snow men, but the entire enterprise soon devolved into a snowball fight. We didn’t have long though, as the wind picked up even further, chasing us back to our cars. After a relaxing drive back down the mountain we reconvened at the Dederang Pub for a few quiet ales before going our separate ways. All in all, a fantastic day, made even better by sharing the experience with good friends.