Tuesday, October 30, 2012

September Holidays

On the last day of school before the September holidays we had a visit from Aunty Bron and Ethan from Melbourne.  It has been a long time since we had seen them in person however they flew up to Brisbane for 4 days to visit us and we had a ball.  The kids were so excited to catch up and here's a few photos of our first afternoon/evening.  The last day of school was a dress up day and this is the cousins catching up.





Below the kids are using Aunty Bron's ipad for some games



Spag Bog for dinner....YUM.....


Story time with Aunty Bron on the ipad, an
interactive story but with 3 eager participants



Sunday, October 28, 2012

Movie in the Park - Hugo

Last Friday night our school hosted a "Movies in the Park" in conjunction with the Brisbane City Council and the kids were excited to see an outdoor movie.  We ordered some pizza's for dinner and brought along our camping chairs to sit on.  One thing I didn't think about was blankets given how hot Friday was however once the sun went down it was pretty cool.  We ended up putting our picnic blankets over us to keep us warm.  The movie was set in a Paris Train Station a long time ago and a washed up movie maker had a shop at the train station.  There were lots of interesting weird characters in the story however it ended up with a happy ending and the movie maker was honored for his life time achievement of movies after a young orphan boy found an old robot and put back together.  James loved the movie, Sienna fell asleep at the end and as for me...well........ not really my cup of tea but in the end it was a good outcome.  Here's a couple of pic's from our evening.




 

Saturday, October 27, 2012

Neurum Creek Bush Retreat - Bike Track

The thing the kids were most looking forward to was using the bike track at Neurum Creek.  The kids have been riding their power wings at home for the past 12 months as they outgrew their little bikes and I hadn't got around to replacing them.  This was the perfect opportunity to do so and I managed to buy James a bike at Kmart for $69 which was orange and black which he thought was very cool.  Sienna wasn't so fussed on the "girly" bikes so we left the shop without one for her.  Our friends brought along an extra bike for her to use over the weekend so that was great.

Apart from the fact the kids hadn't been on bikes for about 12 months, the bike track is made of very fine sand/gravel and it is nothing like riding on a bike path.  The kids were itching to go to the bike track the second we got there and of course as expected there were several accidents involving grazed hands and knees over and over again.  By the second to third day they had got the hang of just how fast to go and we were right but there were many tears before that stage.  On the last day I finally got around to taking some photos of the kids on the track and my camera card had completely filled up and even though I went through a deleted some pics that were doubles I only ended up getting a few of them mastering the track.


















Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Neurum Creek Bush Retreat Camping - Part 2

Here's a few more photos from our weekend camping trip.  One of the highlights from the weekend was the "Damper on a Stick" which was cooked on the open fire.  One of the very clever Mum's brought all the ingredients including the sticks and showed each child (11 or so kids) how to roll the dough onto the stick and then they had hold the stick over the coals and turn it every so often.  It took about 5-8 mins and was pretty tough work since the fire was very hot however it was a huge success and with the golden syrup and icing sugar it was to die for.  I know Julie Goodwin has a recipe for this in her first cookbook called "The Family Table" if anyone is interested. 







 An afternoon "slushie" to cool the kids down



Trying out our new popcorn gadget for the campfire

It was a big hit with all the kids and worked really well

Tuesday, October 23, 2012

Neurum Creek Bush Retreat Camping - Part 1

Last weekend was a 3 day weekend for us as Monday was a "pupil free day" so we took advantage of our long weekend and went camping to Neurum Creek Bush Retreat with 5 other families.  We had a wonderful time and with lots of kids all different ages James and Sienna had plenty of kids to play with.  We've been there a few times before but not for ages.  We will definitely be going back as it has a beautiful creek bed that you can just sit on the rocks, or stand in the creek (or in the case of the adults, you just bring your camp chair down to the creek and plonk it right down in the creek bed on the rocks which is what we did and kept very cool.  One end of the creek is lots of rocks and about a foot of water and then it moves into about a metre of water so you can just stand up in it.  We saw several catfish  and the kids paddled with kayak's and swam in blow up rings (along with the parents).   There are lots of photos so I'll do a couple of posts.