Happy Birthday Daddy!

We were all up at 4am to head up to the coast on Greg's birthday. He had to work, so the girls and I dropped him at the shop and kept ourselves occupied until it was a civilised enough hour to arrive at the caravan at Mooloolaba to spend the day with Grandma and Papa. Much better weather this time around and we had a super time, helped rearrange the caravan and caught up with other friends as well.
From there we went and picked up Daddy after work to visit Uncle Shane in his new unit (top spot with amazing views at Kings Beach), and then to Currimundi Lake for a swim and then dinner with ice-cream to follow. Such a great spot for little kids to play, and the girls did enjoy sharing the huge ice-creams with us. A long and happy day enjoyed by all.

Progress??

I know it doesn't look like it, but on the days that Greg has managed to do some work on the house, we've seen quite a lot of progress. Rewiring is nearly done at the end that we need, walls have been knocked out, sliding doors installed, painting etc. - so much, and yet so much still to do. I was sitting on an upturned milkcrate the other day and noticed this view looking into the room that will be our bedroom in the interim. You can see from the lounge room through the doorway that's being built in, into the bedroom with it's wires hanging from the ceiling, plaster missing etc. - not the most encouraging of sights!!
The second image is of the nearly opened up wall between the kitchen and dining room - it's since been plastered and finished off, and looks much better. Greg's doing a great job, but I sense that he'll be very glad when we're in and it's a bit closer to being finished...

An evening on the town

We try to have 'family dates' as regularly as we can - particularly at the moment with Greg hardly seeing the girls at all, so our most recent was an afternoon together last Sunday when we caught the Citycat into SouthBank, spent the afternoon with our picnic afternoon tea and playing on the playgrounds. It was great to see the parklands being so well used, and we had a great time on the Citycat too - the other passengers were highly entertained when the girls took to dancing out on the front deck!

Morning with Grandma and Papa

Greg wasn't feeling well last Thursday, but still had to go up and open the store by 6am, so the girls and I drove him up there - nothing like a 4.30 start to kick off the day! After leaving Greg at the store for a few hours until reinforcements arrived, we headed up to Mooloolaba to visit Greg's parents who are caravanning there for a month. We had a great time playing in the waves, digging sandcastles etc. despite the rough conditions and huge tide which left little beach to actually play on. Here are the tired but happy girls devouring their apples afterwards. Grandma also had an impromptu dip in the surf as well, but I did promise that I wouldn't put up those pictures :).

Australia Day

I've done my posts backwards - that's what you get for doing things a week late! Anyway, Australia Day was a tad more memorable this year, as my Dad finally became an Australia citizen after about 29 years, so we all trooped along to the local ceremony at Bracken Ridge to celebrate with him. On top of the bag of goodies (native plant, McDonald's cookies - hardly Australian!!, and Vegemite - not even the Australian owned Marmite!!), there were the local miniature steam trains running in the park on that day. You can imagine which aspect of the morning the kids were most excited about! So we had a trip on a train afterwards before heading off for a celebratory Australian style lunch - and swim of course.

Out on the town

Mum and I took advantage of the public holiday last Monday and headed into town on the train with Ellen, Olivia and my nephew Lachlan. We had a fantastic time, played and explored in SouthBank, wandered through the gardens and fed the Ibis'(although I'm not sure that was supposed to happen, but the kids did drop a lot of their morning tea!). Then we wandered down to the ferry terminal and caught the Citycat around to Riverside for another short stroll and an early picnic lunch before heading home on the train again. It was such a fun day, and so inexpensive too - $6.10 for all of us!
The girls are clamouring to repeat it again soon...although I'm not so keen when everyone is back at work - a quiet city is so much easier to navigate with 3 kids!
As you can see, Ellen was rather taken by the statues of a mother tying her daughter's shoe laces at Riverside, and spent quite a while checking it all out.