Corin Forest

Lilly has been intermittently watching the tobogganing luge from the winter Olympics, with across-the-lounge room commentary I can do that! And so, in a coincidence reminiscent of a Muppet movie, Saturday saw us ballet dance classing, and then off to Corin Forest.

It was a nice day trip (about 45 minutes from Belconnen). The GPS said the coordinates are E149 4' 39.362" and S35 27' 11.922" (since the map location didn't show up in the search list.) Google maps has a great satellite view

Little Miss 3, and the camera

Lilly has a Fisher Price digital camera. It was a present from Gabriel - at his birth.

Now little Miss 3 is wandering the house flash-photographing everything. Some of her photos are quite impressive.

All the photos shown were done entirely by Lilly.















The last photo shows me, at about 10pm, removing said camera from the photographer who was supposed to be in bed sleeping....

Getting ready to go

It's our last weekend before flying to Brazil on Wednesday. We are at the point of knowing we have to pack and not wanting to really start. Well, I'm not really wanting to start packing (I hate packing) Flavia has put out piles of clothes on top of large suitcases, in preparation for my eventual capitulation.

So today we went to Philip to buy a learn-to-finger-pick guitar book. It was recommended by the guitar teacher (I'm now doing continuing) and looks pretty flashy. Then back to Belconnen for lunch and minor shopping - chemist, photos, carry-on bags. We promised Lilly a trip to the park, which is why at 3:30pm this afternoon, we went to Lake Ginninderra park -- the John Knight memorial park, which is the developed part of the larger park area.

It was ridiculously cold and windy, but I was obstinate, and a little cabin-fevered, wanting to be outside for a few minutes. We took a kite we'd bought a few weeks ago, and flew it off the walkway bridge to the lake. Lilly was quite interested in the kite, until she noticed the "crocodiles" lurking below the bridge -- some floating rubber barriers. Then the conversation turned to what the crocodiles were doing, and how she could see them through the gaps in the bridge...

Sadly, we don't have a photo, but next time we're out there (which won't be for a while) I'll make sure we remember to photograph the place. Canberra seems to lack official photographs of the parks, which is a shame, since the area is quite lovely.

Home brought soup for dinner, and we've all been dosed up on lemon, ginger, honey tea. I'm hoping the jaunt doesn't come back to bite us in a few days' time.

Painting by footprints

So last weekend, instead of cleaning the house, gardening or doing anything that we ought to have done, we painted.

I begin by noting that the amazingly large paper is courtesy of work, and a never-ending-demand for posters. I also note that Mum is still staying with us, and as an ex-pre-school teacher of many years "doing something interesting with a three year old" takes on a whole new world of meaning.

Enough context. We got up, we wandered around the house finding the paints -- we used squeezie-marker pen type ones, that were supposed to be not too hard for small people to use. I believe Flavia has photographic recall of every object we've ever bought, and where it currently resides. She managed to find and unearth the paints based on no more than my statement "We got some squeezie paints for Lilly a year or so ago, you know, the ones you can hold. Do you know where they went?" With my GPS-like description of the materials in question, and less than one minute, we had the paints. And so with two A0 posters stuck together, we filled the lounge room.

In the end, it was much more fun to finger paint than it was to use the paints as markers. Yes, that's me in the trackies and ugg boots. Lilly is performing her first ice-skating based masterpiece. At this point in time we have (I think) finished breakfast. Flavia has very generously not shown any identifying features of anyone except the artist in the photo.

This weekend we might add some more paint, and put the work-in-progress up on one of our walls.

And the flame grows...
Today Mum started blogging. This takes us from Flavia, Its just a way to put pictures up to me, and now Mum, who is very excited. I am looking forward to the news, and hoping that once we all separate back to normal households in a month or so, we will keep the blogging active.