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Hello, I am 1 today.

Oooooohhhh, cupcakes are GOOD!
Hey, Dad, can I have some of your cupcake, too?

We did a small party today, just the three of us. Granny Annie and Eric arrive on Thursday and we'll celebrate again (plus it's my birthday then, too!). We opened a few presents today but are saving most of them for the big event later this coming week. Ripping presents open was a big hit. Note to all other new moms-if you can, partially de-package presents so your kid doesn't have to wait 20 minutes while you undo the million cable ties and plastic packaging. A very smart mommy taught me this years ago and boy was I glad I remembered to do it.

After cupcakes and presents we went to Roma Street Parklands, a really nice park right in the middle of downtown. FFM has been having a great time on little slides at Gymboree and T wanted to see. There were only big slides but I told T that as long as he kept a hand on FFM it would be OK. After doing a couple of short trips down the bottom half of the slide it became apparent that our new 1 year old was ready for the big time. Watch the slide show, the pictures are from a couple different trips so if you're paying attention you'll see different people in the background.

That's right, no hands. He's a big boy now, he's just got to figure out how to get to the top of slide by himself! The dad sitting on the bench next to me was laughing hysterically, it was that funny. He was amazed FFM was just 1. Literally he sits at the top of the slide, lets go, gives a little scoot and slides ALL the way down. It's was a bit thrilling the first time, I will admit, but young FFM grinned from ear to ear every single time.

Didgeridoo duet

Did we do the haircut?

I've got a few pictures from this month to share with friends who have asked. For Katie, and others, who have asked about the haircut. Yes, we did a fringe/bangs trim and probably should hack away at the rest of it soon. We swallowed hard, it's difficult for us brunettes to part with all that silky blond hair, and a couple weeks ago did a pretty awful job of trimming FFM up. He does look much better, though, and it's nearly creepy how much he looks like T as a toddler. Color is all wrong, but for YEARS T had the same hair cut that we just gave FFM. The first day after the cut I got the willies and I've only seen it in pictures! Hopefully Penny can scan an old photo of Travis sometime this summer and I'll post it.

Before:

After:

And for Deborah, who's been posting some great swinging shots of her own, we finally found a toddler swing here. All the local playgrounds only have 'half' buckets, with a chain across the one side, so we don't do much swinging anymore. Sometimes we'll put FFM in backwards, with the chain to his back, so he can swing without sliding out, but it's not really stable enough to really get a good swing in. We went up to Redcliffe this weekend, a northern coastal 'suburb' of Brisbane, and they have a playground every km or so along the beach. Every single one had a proper bucket swing. Yahoo-eeee!

Going for a stroll. He can't get enough of this these days. The wagon gets a heavy workout.And just for Travis (who really likes that sort of thing,AND he's the one who remembered to take a picture, AND this isn't just my blog after all you know). This is what the first day of winter looks like in Brisbane. Winter solstice here was June 21, when most of you were having your summer solstice. It was a gorgeous day. You see me wearing jeans, but it's mostly to give my summer clothes a break since I've been wearing them since we moved here. It's still in the 70s most days, although it does get down to the 50s or sometimes 40s at night. Lovely, lovely weather, I'm enjoying winter :)

Quote

Quote of the week from T:

"You know when people ask us the best advice we can give new parents? We should tell them to get their company to rent them apartments for the first few years so when they get messy you can just move."

This as we are having family dinner and the table, tile floor and all grout, sliding glass door, and all three of us are covered in veggie pasta. We are also remembering the polka dotted milk spit up floors, rugs, sofa, etc in the last apartment....

Fraser Island

And we're off again! To Fraser Island this past weekend. Notable for being the world's largest sand island, this UNESCO World Heritage Site was something I really needed to see for myself. So I dragged FFM and Travis along and off we went. It's about 4 hours north of Brisbane plus a short ferry ride. There are no paved roads on Fraser, so you are required to have a 4x4 for any travel around the island. Boy did we learn why! On Saturday Travis was tickled pink to rent a 4x4 pickup and bump all around the island. And it was bumpy!

'Camping' and hiking last weekend, off roading this weekend, we are truly feeling like we're getting back to our roots. It was good for us to get out of the city and into our element - especially during our long discussions about upcoming job choices for T.

Some of the sights of Fraser...it really is a big island, we only covered a tiny bit of it! The entire thing is sand, now covered by trees and vegetation, but no rock or coral anywhere. Just one giant sandbar.

Lake McKenzie, one of the larger lakes on the island, is a "perched lake". One of the really interesting things about Fraser Island is that there's freshwater on it. How does the water now just slip through the sand you ask? Well, some plant material clogged up the sand and made it less permeable so the water stays in the lake. Being a freshwater lake you get the best of all worlds: no salt + nice beach. Travis showed FFM how best to touch the water, explaining that you can't just look at a body of water, you really need to touch it if at all possible. The water was wet, but not very cold.

Our next lake, Lake Wabby, was pretty cool, too. It's the only lake on the island to have any fish in it and it's a window lake. Window lakes start when a depression in the earth is lower than the water table, causing the water to pool. To top it off it's also a barrage lake, which is a lake formed by a sand blow blocking in a depression. All these funky lakes are another of the reasons Fraser Island is a World Heritage Site. Here's the sad part about Lake Wabby, the sand blow/dune is moving in on the lake at a rate of about a meter a year, so in a few decades the lake will be gone. What's going to happen to all those fish? Bummer this is the ONE lake they ended up in. (Side note, all this fresh water flows to the sea in some nifty sand filled creeks that you can wade or tube down if you go on a hot day. It was nice the day we were there, probably about 65F, but a little chilly for splashing around if you ask me.)

Family self-portrait at Lake Wabby. Dontcha just want to pinch those cheeks?

Wreck of the Maheno on Seventy -five Mile Beach (which I hear is really only 65 miles/100km but either way it's a LOOOONNNGGGG beach). In the early 1900s it was a luxury liner, then a hospital ship in WWI. After the war it was sold to Japan for scrap, but during a cyclone (a clockwise hurricane for you northern hemisphere folks) the tow rope broke and the ship grounded on the beach. After a number of attempts to dislodge it, they gave up and just left it. It was used for air force target practice in WWII. There are perhaps 5 decks below the sand and less than two above.

This is our off-road limo, a Toyota Hilux running on distillate (diesel). Note the snorkel above the hood (looks like a seal looking at Travis), which takes air into the engine above blowing-sand level. We strapped FFM's car seat in the back and took off. He loved it and took several naps on severely bumpy roads. This is on Seventy-five Mile beach again. It is a sort of freeway/runway with 4x4s driving up and down and planes landing and taking off. Speed limit is 80km/h, you must follow all normal road rules (including using your indicator/turn signal), and cars have to yield to planes. Seriously.

Sand formation called The Pinnacles. This is baby sandstone in the making and has over 75 distinct shades of sand in the pile. We did not stop to count them but you'll just have to trust the 4x4 guy who told us we should check it out.

Driving home on the beach.

We did see ONE Dingo, Fraser is famous for them, and as we were watching the sun set after our bumpy day one wandered across the beach down below us.