Falling Apart

After recently falling off my bike scrapping some skin off my knee and winding myself in the process, all was going well in the healing process until my breathing became increasingly painful. By Thursday it was obvious that I wouldn't be able to work the next day and needed to return to the doctor. She sent me off for an xray which showed I had in fact broken my 7th rib! Some strong painkillers and a few more days off work did wonders. First day back at work was yesterday and the rib held up well, a little achy by the end of the day.

On the topic of falling apart, I have a degenerative tear of my medial meniscus in my left knee and although it is mostly unsymptomatic, I decided to seek a surgical opinion. From this meeting it seems as though sometime in the not so distant future I will need to have an arthroscope to remove the damaged section.

Little Katy is in the wars too - just look at the fat lip she got the other day. As we walked out of the library, Katy discovered the pockets in her jacket and had proudly put her hands in them. Then as we usually do once leaving the library, the girls run up and down a concrete ramp and stairs. It was on the first race down the ramp that Katy face planted and with her hands still in her pockets, her lip bore the brunt of the fall. Needless to say there were lots of tears and a lot of blood....

Weekend in Sydney

Recently Ella received an invitation in the post for Aoife's 4th birthday party and was instantly excited! We decided to make a long weekend of it which fitted in really well with my inability to work. So last weekend finally arrived and off we drove to Sydney.

Saturday morning was party morning and everyone was excited except for perhaps first time party organiser mum Cath who was slightly nervous/stressed. However once the food was organised, balloons blown up, cake done and the kids began to arrive all was forgotten as chatting and giggling filled the room. First it was painting, followed by pass the parcel, then the much anticipated treasure hunt with the beautiful butterfly cake and very impressive rainbow jellies to top it off. Perfection...what more could a four year wish for??

Saturday afternoon was spent mostly recovering from such an effort. We did headed out on a small bush adventure with Aoife showing us her childcare centre. Following this all the girls were tired so they had some down time watching Charlie & Lola while Andy and Cath went out running.

It was off to Orienteering on Sunday morning at Pennant Hills. Aoife, Ella, Katy and I managed to lose pram bound Becky, Amy and Cath on the blue course. The weather was beautiful and course interesting enough to keep the girls entertained the whole way around. Back at the assembly area it was time to play and read with all the other children and have some more birthday cake!

We left Cath, Eoin and Aoife at the orienteering to venture into the choas of Ikea. What a mad place. The scene was set as we became stuck in a traffic jam on entering the underground parking area! And even though we knew exactly what we wanted it was still a stressful experience - there were so many people it felt like christmas shopping.

The afternoon continued by meeting up with friends from our Perth days in the local park. We chatted while our girls played with their boys. An ice cream van arrived which Ella quickly noticed. Luckily for her it also sold expresso coffee.

Monday Aoife turned 4! After coffee at Cath and Eoin's local, Eoin headed off to work and we drove to Blenhiem Park (the original spot for Aoife's party). The girls dodged the crocodiles and negotiated the wobbly bridge before swinging on the swings and flying fox then finished off with climbing, sliding and see sawing. A fantastic way to finish a great weekend with wonderful friends :) We look forward to playing with Aoife next weekend hopefully in the snow.

Gruffalo's Child

The Gruffalo said that no gruffalo should ever set foot in the deep dark wood...

But one wild and windy night the Gruffalo’s child ignores her father’s warning and tiptoes out into the snow. After all, the Big Bad Mouse doesn’t really exist... does she?

The Gruffalo's Child is a sequel to one of our favourite book's The Gruffalo. Luckily for Ella and cousins Mia, Josh & Makhaya, it came to the Canberra Theatre. Last year we saw the Gruffalo which Ella thoroughly enjoyed despite the Gruffalo sitting next to her and scaring her half to death. No such incidents this time around. Again the performance involved only three actors, two of which I remember from last year, and again it was vey entertaining not only for Ella but for me too!

Bunnings You Beauty

While Andy was away in the US, I decided one Satuurday morning to head down to Bunnings with the girls in tow to buy a few plants and generally kill some time. On entering the store, a Bunnings team member politely informed me that there was kids craft activities in the DIY section. So on our way out I thought we'd pass by to see what these activities actually entailed.

We were pleasantly surprised as Bunnings was celebrating National Fairy Day!! After donning their Bunnings aprons, the girls spent the next 45 mins having their face painted, decorating wands and butterfly wings and all for free! While the girls were busy, I got chatting to one of the ladies coordinating the activities who told me that every weekend Bunnings has some sort of free kids activity. Definitely something worth remembering for the future.

Now the above activity happened about 4 weeks ago so imagine my surprise last week when I suggested to the girls that they could help me with the cleaning, Ella said she wanted to use her Bunnings things which I took as she wanted her wand or wings. No no no not those things, you know mummy the thing you put over your head and tie up at the back - eventually a frustrated Ella finally got me to realise that she wanted to put on the Bunnings apron!

Bike Smash

Nat has been complaining she doesn't get enough exercise these days, so decided on Friday that she would ride to her work at Gungahlin (for those who don't know Canberra, Gungahlin is the northern extrema of Canberra, about 15km from Cook). I came home with Ella & Katy just in time to make dinner, when Natalie arrived at the bottom of the driveway, and staggered up from the mailbox like a drunken sailor. Turned out that she'd dropped her chain on Redfern St, and her pedalling inertia caused her to crash onto the road, right where passing cars would have been driving if they had been around. So, it clearly could have been worse, although Nat was too preoccupied about whether she had torn her brand new fluoro yellow cycling jacket (she hadn't) to worry about the physical trauma.

Nonetheless, Nat has struggled with her injuries since the crash, and there have been 3 distinct phases. The first phase, once the jacket had been checked, was dealing with the blood on her right knee, which hit the ground hardest. I made an emergency dash to a late-night chemist to buy the biggest bandages they sold and we put them on. It continued to bleed, but at least she could go to work on Saturday. Phase 2 was the bruising on her knee which, strangely enough, seemed to be exacerbated by digging the entire vegetable garden through with compost on Saturday afternoon. But the most intriguing has been phase 3, which occurred suddenly in Belconnen Mall this afternoon -- Nat picked Katy up, and suddenly discovered that her chest (which was a bit bruised from the crash) was so painful she could hardly breathe, let alone stand up. Since then she's been a little subdued; I think if she was riding the Tour de France she might have pulled out by now... We shall await the doctor's verdict tomorrow.

Icyteering

Although we were only 40min out of Canberra just past Bungedore, it was absolutely freezing and I'm sure we could have been in Antartica. Orienteering last Sunday was at Timbertops. Andy and I both ran short courses fearing that the girls wouldn't last in the blustery cold conditions. However they mostly enjoyed being outside and playing with the other little people.

All rugged up the girls headed off on their string course together with Abby and a-sick-and-not-so-happy Zoe. The chocolate freddo at the completion of their course certainly improved the situation for about 10mins!

Bill, Andy's US colleague who is in Canberra for 2 weeks, joined us finishing his first ever orienteering course even enjoying it so much he did the course again backwards!! Coffee and lunch at a new cafe in Bungedore was wonderfully warm!! Andy took Bill into the famous Bungedore Woodworks which seems to have increased it's prices even more - I mean who buys a table worth $50,000?

Melbourne

Last weekend the girls and I flew down to Melbourne for the weekend to catch up with Andy who was at another week long conference. The plane trip saw Katy in her own seat now that she is 2!

Leaving first thing Friday morning, we eventually met Andy at Spencer St Station at lunchtime. A quick bite to eat, then dumping our bags at Andy's apartment we headed off on the train to visit Nanji (Andy's nana) for afternoon tea. All the great grandchildren love to play with Nanji's collection of singing christmas toys - there's a chicken, duck and 2 dogs all moving to different christmas tunes! Our return trip on the way back to the apartment enabled us to catch a tram. In one day we had traveled by car, plane, bus, train and tram!

Saturday morning we were off to explore the Melbourne Aquarium. On entering the first exhibit is the Gentoo and King Penguins! Cleverly designed, the penguins have an icy incline to climb up / slide down and a deep pool of water to splash around in. Fantastic stuff.

Leaving the cold behind us we were in awe of the 'frozen in time' Great Hammerhead shark 4.5 metres long caught in 2010 by fishermen. The shark, an endangered species, is currently on show at the aquarium in a bid to educate and promote shark conservation. We learnt about different types of sharks, felt their teeth and their skin.

Next it was the Weird and Wonderful - colour-changing cuttlefish, spiky lionfish, camouflaged sea dragons, weird scorpionfish, armour-carrying crabs and we even found Nemo!

Although we hadn't really traveled any great distance, the Deck Cafe was the perfect spot for morning tea. We were treated to watching turtles and catfish swim about in the river pond. Round the corner was the hands on area. Ella was fascinated with the starfish. I was impressed with the 3 types of shark eggs on display - all of which looked liked unusual seaweed to me!

Down the ramp into the Reef section. A beautiful floor to ceiling circular coral atoll was the highlight of this area. And finally on to the Oceanarium - wow! Just in time for the dive feed. Those stingrays were huge and almost covered the divers like a blanket trying to get some food!

We had a quick lunch before heading back to the apartment for a much needed Katy nap. The afternoon saw us wander down to Birrarung Marr Park. Named by the Wurundjeri people who originally inhabited this area, ‘Birrarung’ means ‘river of mists’ and ‘marr’ relates to ‘side’. A large area with a great little playground where we met up with Tania and Sophie (or Melbourne Sophie as Ella says). Once the girls worked up their appetite exploring the playground, we headed into town for pizza. A lovely way to complete our weekend trip.

Sunday morning was an early start - as the skybus wasn't running that early, we caught a taxi to the airport for our 8.30am flight back to Canberra.

Science Time

One of the last things Grandad did with Ella before he left was an experiment from her '50 Science things to make and do' cards - Hanging Crystals. Seemed like an easy experiment - fill two glasses up with hot water (choosing two different colours), pour heaps of bicarb soda in, place a string from one glass to another then leave it for a week and watch the crystals grow.

So Grandad flew out, Ella waited and watched...

Day 1


Day 3

Day 4

Finally Day 6!

A simple fun experiment unfortunately I hadn't noticed that sometime after Day 4, the crystal formation on the top lip of the blue glass prevented the water from dripping down onto the plate. It was instead dribbling down the side of the glass, pooling onto the benchtop. On closer inspection, the blue food colouring soaked into our relatively newly sanded polished timber benchtop leaving a not so nice mark (see below) - doh!