Floriade, Take 2

Liam has been on school holidays for the last 2 weeks. I took all 3 kids to Floriade one last time. I figured that I waited long enough to finally see it so I better go as often as I can. I'm really glad we went again because the "kids corner" that had a petting zoo and soft play area last time now had a reptile area and sand play.


When Liam was there with his school the week before they saw some bamboo that you can run through. He took us there and led ud through the maze.


There was a nice rock near a little stream - the perfect photo op I thought. All I asked was that they sit on the rock and look at me. Obviously Jonas has trouble sitting still...


He also wanted to show us his favorite gnome - a skeleton. There were some new ones since last time. Here are a few of the good ones:


We finished off the day with a trip to the always awesome "castle park":

Last Picnic

We went on a little picnic at Cotter Dam with our friends the Fishers. We brought food to barbecue and then spent some time by the river.

The kids ran around kicking balls and trying to catch butterflies in these bug nets. It was a nice, relaxing day.

Jonas found this spray painted face on the tree and exclaimed to us all that is was an Aboriginal painting. We tried to explain the it was just spray paint but he insisted it was from the Aboriginals. So here they are with an "authentic Aboriginal" painting.

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