September

What a jam-packed weekend!
We were delighted to have HM, Richard and Emily up from Sydney to stay with us under our little roof. It was one final "holiday" for HM before Baby Number Two (and thus returning to the bottom of the food chain once again) and boy, did Queensland really turn on the sensational trademark blue skies and sunshine - not! Ahh Queensland, perfect one day, raining, cold and overcast the next. The weather was crap the entire time they were up here (except the day of their departure). However this did not stop us from traipsing from Gold to Sunshine Coast in search of fun.
First of all friday night was girls' night out.
Suppressing an urge to put a bib around HM's neck and cut up her meal into tiny, tiny pieces so she could chew it, I had the pleasure of gasbagging with her for almost 4 hours at 2 Small Rooms. To say our meals were ordinary would be an understatement however - my tastebuds were given an absolute flogging with each dish being either too bland, too salty or too sweet. Nevertheless, we had a wonderful time - hey, we didn't have to cut up anyone elses meal, pick up spat out pieces of food, there were no spilt drinks or overturned bowls of food, there was no one threatening to dive out of their high-chair (there were no high chairs), we didn't have to take anyone to the toilet or shovel our meals down a la cookie monster.
Our first stop on Saturday was A's Kindy for the Art Day.
Next stop Movieworld. The kids had a blast on all the rides at Looney Tunes World. A tried his hand at driving both a car (easily overtaken by speed demon Emily) and a

dodgem car (went around and around in

circles). He and Daddy even tried the rollercoaster.
Uncle Richard and Daddy rode the new Superman ride - twice!

On Sunday, we made our way up to Beerwah to Australia Zoo.
The exterior and main entry of the zoo were strewn with tributes to Steve Irwin - flowers, poems, letters - with heaps of people making their pilgrimage to the zoo to pay their respects. Overall I enjoyed myself - I got to pat a koala, kangaroo, baby alligator - but was disappointed with the lack of interest and at times, frank boredom shown by Emily and A. In fact, in the afternoon, there was nothing but complaints until we stopped at a playground where they suddenly perked up and really had fun. Surprisingly V seemed to appreciate the animals, at times more so than the older kids.
The main attraction - the croc show in the "Crocoseum" was interesting but was missing that certain Crikey! Steve Irwin factor.
What really amazed me was the shop (that all zoo visitors have to exit through) which was filled with a mind boggling range of Irwin paraphanalia. Amidst the buying frenzy, it was easy to see that love him or hate him, the man really was an entrepreneur and had built an amazing empire from a tiny reptile park.

There will be more pics shortly.