Outdoor Store

We just returned from a very quick errand at an outdoor store. Compared to Colorado, they are much less numerous here, and considerably smaller (and very pricey since it's pretty much all US stuff anyway). After a nifty parallel parking move I fed copious amounts of change into the hungry parking meter for my maximum allotted 1/2 hour and F and I ran into the shop. Oh, our little boy was SO excited. Tents, boots, rope, TENTS. TENTS. And the ramp to test boots, that tied with the tents for the coolest thing he'd seen in weeks. Now, back in November we got in trip or two to REI, but perhaps the scale was just to big for him or he was distracted by the slide shaped like a canoe. But I do believe we've got an outdoorsman in the making after all.

Joondalup

That's one of those cool town names that's just fun to say.

Joondalup's part of greater Perth, about 25 minutes north of where we live. I poked around this morning and discovered they were having a festival this weekend. With the fair fall weather and the lazy heads around here partially due to the time change (we fell back an hour last night but Mr. Man was still up at his regular time) a short and low key trip north sounded good. With our slow start this morning it was about all we had time for before needing to squeeze in an afternoon nap.

It turned out to be a decent fair for a suburban event. First up, the bizarre petting zoo. FFM was intrigued by the half dozen caged furry, fuzzy, noisy creatures. Especially this one...

...which then suddenly squirted him with water (out of the blue bump). Other 'animals' rumbled/vibrated, had cyclops eyes that periscoped up and down, and one had a high pitched screech that escalated when you pet it.

Lunch was across the street from the kiddy rides, and it was all we could do to keep FFM off the 'Dragon Wagon' roller coaster. He made do with this ride, the BIG TRUCK RACE, which was much safer for his 1.75 years of age. He's in the white one.

The horns honked, the steering wheels turned, it was bliss for our vehicle obsessed child.

Faster, faster!

Other highlights were the singing, dancing duck (person in costume), the BMX bike show, and some Chinese acrobats. The duck sang "If you're happy and you know it" and FFM dance boogied.

During dinner I peeked out the patio doors and instead of being blinded by the setting sun, now that the clocks have changed, I now catch the end of the sunset. It was quite colorful tonight and I tried to catch it by frantically running upstairs to grab the camera and the better view off the balcony. Two shots, within less than 5 seconds of each other. Blurry since I was in so big a hurry to catch the last rays I didn't bother with changing any camera settings or even trying to stand very still.

Lovely Eggs

I love these eggs. Someday when I live where the power is not 220v I will own a sewing machine, have loads of spare time, and I will do crafty things like this.

Dad, I think it's time for a Jeep please

Back in Colorado we enjoyed doing a bit of off-roading on the weekends. Since we've left Colorado we've had a Ford Focus, a Toyota Camry, and now a Holden Commodore (think a large GM sedan). Not much off-roading for us these days. FFM, however, has started his own extreme off-roading right here in our very own playroom. His preference is what is known as rock crawling, not at all what we used to do. More like this...His looks like this...

ANY obstacle that's on the floor is fair game. And if there isn't one on the floor, he'll get off the tractor and will pull some down so he's got something to drive over. Then he very carefully pulls up to the obstacle and with intense focus nudges over it. Then he very carefully backs over it.

Any wheeled vehicle can become a 4x4 off-road monster... And even soft pillows make great obstacles...

The beach ball was a bit of a challenge, it kept rolling away. FFM really really tried to drive over it, though. As soon as we get back to CO we'll send him to Justin P for an apprenticeship in building super off-road machines.

Onto other funny things, he's been doing this since about the time he could walk, but now that he's getting really tall he's almost ready to make it all the way in without any help. So far, he hasn't figured out that he can climb OUT, only that it's cool to climb IN. This kid likes his nap.

FFM and friend D playing at the park. They were cracking up and Katie and I peeked around the corner to find this.

And today, fresh out of the dress up trunk, off roading again in a very manly cowboy hat.

Easter basket and Scarlet's sweater

Now that Miss S has finally gotten her package, I can reveal the finished project online! Just in case her mom was checking, I didn't want to ruin the surprise...

Here's hoping it gets cool enough in Brisbane for her to wear it this 'winter.'

A felted entrelac Easter basket for FFM. All the ones here were so very very pink and fluffy that I thought I could whip one up in slightly better colors. Not wanting to spend much on yarn I ended up with stuff that felted moderately well, but he's quite happy with it. After I finally got the handle sewn on today he promptly filled it with tiny cars and hauled them around the house.

Happy St. Patrick's Day 2009

Take one toddler who loves to dress up, add some green, and voila, it's a festive holiday.

FFM has learned to 'smile' at the camera...that's the funny scrunched up face.

So go out and sing some songs, have a pint of Guinness or a glass of Irish whiskey, and I'll hang tight to the little leprechaun tearing up the playroom here.

HELLO YOU SHOULD COME VISIT

Qantas is running a fare sale from the US to here (it's not quite as good the other way around).

Certain dates, $299 one way from LA to Sydney, Brisbane, or Melbourne. It's a little further to get to Perth, but if you sweet talk me I might just meet you part way. This price makes me a little ill, since normally we buy tickets that are considerably more expensive than $299 (even considering that's only for the middle leg of the trip).

Hurry, sale ends on Friday.

http://www.qantas.com/ (make sure you are on the Americas site).

Knit 1....

Last night I hosted a girls night in with a crafty theme. Some ladies scrapbooked, some worked on kids crafts for an upcoming party, and several learned how to knit. Kelly, the scrapbooker, snuck in with her camera and captured some really intense looks of concentration from the neophyte knitters.

A front door/back door analogy for front/back of stitches worked for Katie who then got knitting away.

Kirsty had a dish towel knitted by the end of the evening! She's a natural and even moved on to purling and decreasing. And check out that posture, if only I could sit up that straight.

Jen started on pink yarn and the fuzzies kept getting all tangled. We switched to less fuzzy teal yarn and she took off! Judit told us stories of all the jumpers (aka sweaters) she knit when she was 14.

It was heaps of fun, next time we'll start on pattern reading and start a project. And maybe I'll get some K1, P2 in, too ;)

End

I'm a little behind, but I'll blame it on my current location. I was greatly saddened today to learn of the demise of a famous Colorado publication, the Rocky Mountain News. It was my newspaper of choice and was Colorado's oldest continually operating business. It nearly reached it's 150th birthday, had it made it until April 23rd it would have marked this amazing anniversary. Can you imagine a business in the west that predates the civil war? It's a terrible blow to Denver, and really brings us face to face with the reality of print media losing ground to tv/blog/internet news.

Sadly, the fish is dead.

We've got a tiny little fish tank with a couple of guppies in it. FFM greets said guppies every day with a hearty "ISH, ISH, blublublublublub!" He's very very very good about not banging or poking the tiny tank and has never dropped anything in it even though if he stood on his tippee toes he probably could.

Thus I was utterly horrified when my otherwise generally well behaved child (currently when he knows the rules he's really pretty good) tried to drop an unidentified object into the tank. I was distracted and not really paying attention, but out of the corner of my eye I saw the tippee toes, the outstretched hand, the small grey object. I, of course, screeched at my poor unsuspecting child who promptly dropped the object back on the floor. Only then did I tune him in and notice that he was saying "ish, ish, ish."

Sadly, at some point between when I checked on them last night and when FFM found it today, one of our two guppies made the leap from the tank to the floor. FFM was picking the poor dried up little fishy and trying to put him back in his home.

After the initial sadness (and slight gross out) I enjoyed a moment of FFM's developing logic. He figured out, all on his own, that that fish belonged in that tank even though, as far as he knows, it's never been anywhere outside of that tank before.

The Coolest Video This Week

I know sometimes video takes a lot of time to load, and then you have to adjust your volume, and sometimes it's a real pain...but this is really nifty folks. And it doesn't have any toddlers in it at all.


Fun facts:
The video was shot all stills - roughly 3225 still photos for the entire video, using one camera, hanging from the ceiling for the main body of the movie.
* It took 4 weeks before shooting to create an animated computer generated storyboard for the video, with 3d dummies for the characters.
* It took only 2 days of shooting for the live actors on set to re-create the 3.5 minutes computer sequence, frame by frame.

The Coolest Trick This Week

To get the stain out of your carpet left by the green crayon that fell onto the floor behind the curtain, you promptly forgot about, and then proceed to melt into a puddle, use WD-40. Then clean up the WD-40 with soap and water. Thank you to Crayola for having an entire stain removal guide on their website.

Uluru

You know us, a long weekend and it's tough for us to stay put. This past weekend was a holiday weekend and we headed out to the Red Centre (or Center, depends who/where you are). The three of us flew from Perth to Ayer's Rock, or Uluru, about 450km/280mi southwest of Alice Springs.
More than 80% of Australia's population lives along the coastlines, most of it in the half dozen major cities. Going to the Red Centre is really going beyond, towns are sparse and smaller, ranches are big, and the sky is huge. It was great! The downsides were the heat (104-111F) and the flies, but that was simply the time of year we chose to go.

I'm not joking about the flies. This time of year we weanies (and even some locals) need fly nets to be comfortable any time we went outdoors. The flies don't bite, but they do tickle your ears, nose, eyes, and any other exposed parts. They're small, so it's not bothersome on your less sensitive parts like arms and legs, but it's annoying on your face. FFM wore his 'special' hat all weekend and didn't fuss at it once.

After the Sydney Opera House, Uluru is probably Australia's most recognized icon. The red sandstone formation stands 348 m (1,142 ft) high with most of its bulk below the ground, and if you want to walk around it, it's 9.4 km (5.8 mi) around. Uluru is famous for it's color changes, as the light hits it differently at different times of day and at different times of the year it is all shades of red and purple.

The area around is flat with some low, rolling hills so the large red lump of sandstone is impressive for it's uniqueness in the landscape. All of a sudden it just pops out at you.

We considered doing the hike around, but the weather this time of year is just too hot for a 5 mile hike with our little 20 month old furnace. We did a short walk to the water hole and even that had him really overheated. It's so dry that the sweat evaporates off your body immediately so you don't get all drippy.

Looking at the waterhole I'm amazed at the lack of fractures or joints. This rock is smooth. All of Uluru is like this, which is in stark contrast to the red rock I'm used to seeing in the Western US.

The surface was textured, which the Uluru website tells me is from the chemical decay of the minerals in the arkose sandstone.

After our trip around and to the cultural centre we went home for naps and snacks. Later we went back for sunset viewing.

Hey, I DID go on this trip! Travis took about six of these pictures, and the ONLY one where FFM isn't trying to leap out of the picture is this one with a posse of Asian tourists sharing our lovely backdrop. *sigh*

At sunset Uluru glows red in the surrounding desert.

Heading home I spotted a herd of camels grazing on a ridge. Camels are not native, they were imported in the 19th century and were outback transport until railways and roads were established.

Kata Tjuta, also called Mount Olga or The Olgas, is another rock formation about 25 km (16 mi) from Uluru. It's a different type of sandstone and so has eroded differently, leaving lots of large lumps instead of one large monolith. Both Uluru and Kata Tjuta have great cultural significance for the Anangu Aboriginal Tribe who are the custodians of both sites.

We stayed at the resort a few miles away from Uluru. After getting our fill of geology and Aboriginal culture our afternoons were spent at the hotel pools. FFM gibber jabbered to his many new friends each day and we learned that if you're covered in pool water the flies don't bother you.