Floriade

Every year in Canberra they have a flower festival called Floriade. Every year since we moved here I have wanted to go but have never been able to. The first year Nate went on a day I was working and last year we were in the Philippines. I was excited to be in town this year and not working. I knew I especially had to go since this will be our last spring in Australia (have I mentioned before we are moving back to the US? We are! At the end of November). Liam's whole school was going on an excursion to Floriade so Jonas, Adele and I went and met up with him for a little while.

There are flowers everywhere planted to make different shapes (butterfly, shooting star, rainbow, etc).







I could have walked around all day looking at the flowers. Jonas was not so interested. Luckily they had a Kid's Corner with a petting zoo (even though he wouldn't touch any of the animals) and play area.







They also have a garden gnome painting contest. I heard some other Floriade go-ers talking about it and they said you buy the unpainted gnomes from somewhere, paint them however you want and submit them. They had a large display of the best from each age group.

Submarine Birthday Party

We finally got around to having a birthday party for Liam and since Jonas' birthday already passed as well we made it a combined party. They have most of the same friends anyways so it worked out well. Liam wanted a submarine party so we turned it into a submarine/underwater party.

We made a submarine pinata:




Had sea animal cupcakes -complete with fondant animals:

ha ha, just kidding. I just bought some little plastic animals to stick on the cupcakes.

Played pass the parcel and some other games:

There were a total of 20 kids! (2 had to leave before this picture was taken)

Note to future self: only invite the number of kids you think you can handle!!!
I let Liam invite 6 kids from class, a bunch from church and 4 who live out on our street that they play with all the time. I figured maybe half of the people would be able to come but all but 2 came! It was a bit out of control at times but I think they all had fun.

165 photos later...

we finally got one!

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a 6 week old to lay still, look at the camera without any funny facial expressions, eyes open, arms out of shot with enough lighting on their face? 165 photos should give you a clue. It took us 3 "photo sessions" to get this shot and even then I was nervous we would get to the US Consulate and they would say there was something wrong with it. Happily there were no problems (at the Consulate anyways...we did get a flat tire while we were in Sydney).

Here are a few more out takes...

Passport Photo Rejects