Home Again

I really like Australia. Melbourne and Tassie were great fun, even though I ended up with a nasty cold on day 3 of our trip and was pretty slow the second part of our trip.

As it seems to happen on trips/changes of scenery FFM had some big changes and lots of words suddenly appeared. He also suddenly got a lot more independent (OK, totally stubborn). The word 'No' uttered from an adult mouth appears to translate directly into toddler speak as, 'Please feel free to go ahead and continue doing that dangerous/offensive/naughty activity that you are doing.'

He also responds to any question with the word 'No', although we figured out it's just a response and that he simply doesn't use the word 'Yes' yet. No is an all purpose affirmative or negative response... It's great fun to listen to him identify every conceivable form of transportation that he sees and make all kinds of animal noises as we drive by farms. There was a trade off, albeit not quite an equal one, a single two-word combo has made an appearance 'more please' although it sounds more like 'mor peas.'

I also decided (again) that while it's really a US thing that I DO like it and think that if you're going to travel in tightly packed public transportation you really should shower and use deodorant. Please.

Gone

We'll be away until after Easter, so no more blogs for a while. But I'm sure I'll have a picture or two to share when we get back.

We're off to Melbourne and Tasmania, or Tassie, as Aussie's fondly call it. They all say Tassie with a wistful, dreamy look, even if they've never been there, so it must be a really wonderful place. We've been looking forward to this trip since before we left Brisbane, and it's finally here!

To further your expanding knowledge of Australian geography, Perth there on the left, Melbourne is the red dot and Tasmania (Tasmania is an entire state, Melbourne's in the state of Victoria where the bushfires were) marked by the yellow dot. If you were to drive from Perth to Melbourne it would be the equivalent of driving from Las Vegas to Pittsburgh. I'm very glad we are flying.

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.