Crabs galore

Isla had her last week at school before the holidays. Some corellas (a parrot type bird) visited our garden:

Monty doesn't like magpies much!

A Noisy Miner bird visited Evie in a cafe:

We've got a few plants in our garden now.

Some lemons are starting to grow on one of our lemon trees:

Isla made a grass head during her first week at school:

Evie's cosmos seeds only took a few days to germinate outside:

Isla and Evie did some face and body painting:

We have a few hermit crab pets at the moment:

This week, we have been doing A LOT of swimming at the public pool. It is heated and the learning pool is undercover but also outdoor. Isla learnt to swim! She can swim without any floats and is learning to hold her breath for a long time and kick really well. We are really proud of her learning to swim on Tuesday. We celebrated by spending lots of time at the beach looking at crabs! Isla, Evie and I also had a wander around our local shopping village and found a brilliant book shop that holds events with famous authors, for example the author of the Rosie Project books. We also found a great newsagents that sells lots of our favourite children's magazines. 

Here are some of the crabs:

We went on a little camping adventure at the weekend - camping on the beach!

We were lucky enough to see a large number of humpback whales not far from land. They put on a great display for us, with fin and tail flapping as well as a lot of breaching. It was amazing!

You can just see the giant humpback whale fin (white underside) to the left of the picture:

We went to our first Aussie birthday party. There was a jumping pillow, and a climbing wall:

Lots of kangaroos and a possum

A couple of weekends ago, we took a trip into the hinterland. Just around the corner from our street, we spotted some roos:

When we arrived at Maleny Botanical Gardens, we loved the views over the Glasshouse mountains:

A staghorn fern epiphyte:

Ahh! A snake! It slithered off into the undergrowth and then up a tree. It was a common tree snake:

A banana tree:

Isla with a macaw on her head!

Beautiful rainbow lorikeets:

Back at home in our garden, we found a cane toad in the evening:

The next day was Father's day again! The girls gave Andrew some lovely cards, a fridge magnet Isla made at school, and a peanut plant! We had a lovely relaxed day morning at the beach and then played at home.

Last week, Evie and I visited a new playgroup. We were really lucky that they had planned a visit to the kindy next-door, where some animals were there for the morning. So we were able to stroke some friendly lambs, hold a guinea pig and a duckling, and pat an alpaca too. Evie was thrilled and now thinks that going to kindy means stroking lambs all day long.....

She also helped by watering my plants and enjoyed playing in the sandpit at home:

Friday was a day off for everyone! It was Noosa show day. We decided to go to Australia zoo. We saw some very active and cute wombats:

Learnt about which snakes we need to keep an eye out for:

A prowling tiger:

We bought some roo food and enjoyed feeding Pebbles. She was really friendly and very soft to stroke. 

This weekend we went camping to Boreen Point, which is a camping ground beside a seawater lake. We set up our tent and then  hired two kayaks to investigate the lake. Isla had a go at kayaking and could kayak herself around really well!

We had lunch at the Apollonian Hotel, which had originally been in Gympie (a town inland which was built on the gold rush) but was moved to Boreen. It was a grand historic hotel with tropical gardens.

In the evening, we had a camp fire. While the girls were getting off to sleep, Andrew spotted a possum sneaking past him! We all came to have a look. The possum was really tame and happy to eat some bread we threw for it. It had really bushy fur and looked like a cross between Pob and a kangaroo!