Google Was My Friend Again:)

Quite a few months ago now Google saved me a lot of money when I stupidly put my camera SD card into the DVD drive on my iMac. It turns out I'm not the first person to do that and it was easy to fix and I didn't have to take my computer to the Dr. Yay Google! On Wednesday I took the kids to the beach and the zoom on my camera stopped working, I could still take photos but when I tried to use the zoom it would give me an error message. So you're not going to be bombarded with 56 beach photos this post ... only 10;)

When we got home I Googled the error message and the first few pages I looked at said the camera would have to be sent away and the repairs would probably cost more than buying a new camera:( Then I looked at this page which has a list of about 7 things you can try (which won't damage your camera) to unstick the zoom and the 1st one on the list worked:)  I know a lot of people have digital cameras these days and if you go to the beach at all you're likely to get a grain of sand in the zoom and have the same problem.  I've bookmarked this page should it happen to me again.

I have a confession to make ... I'm a very bad Dog Mum:(  It was Beryl's 1st Gotcha Day on Tuesday and I didn't tell anybody.  We were going to go to the beach to celebrate but it was a lousy day, wet and miserable so she had a special breakfast and extra treats and cuddles and I hopefully made up for it by taking the kids to the beach on Wednesday!

This is what the kids spent most of Tuesday doing

Frankie is under the green jacket!

And this

First time cuddled up for the year:)

But when we got to the beach the tide was right in and there was no beach!

No beach to play on here!

So I thought we'd go check out the sand dunes.  We found this cute little shelter someone had made

And the kids had a lot of fun exploring a new place and tearing up and down sand dunes and hills

Beryl is there in the middle of the photo, no zoom now!

We went down into a dense pine tree plantation with a sandy 'road' going through it and they chased a rabbit in there.  I was expecting Beryl to get impaled on something or get lost but it wasn't long before they were both back with me, safe and sound, whew!

Beryl at the top of the pine plantation

Lots of sand!

And native tussock grasses

The sign near where I park my car.

And people still drive on it!

I expected all that tearing around the dunes for a good hour would have laid them both out for about 12 hours but after a couple of hours rest they were both pestering me for another walk!!  I think I've created a couple of monsters, lol!