Long Awaited Canberra Update And More

I know.. I know.. I just couldn't get myself into the whole blogging thing lately..

Ok so weekend before last we went to Canberra. We left on Saturday morning (after stops and starts) and had a nice drive down. Josie played with her Nintendo (we remembered to charge it this time), I slept a bit.. and we stopped for lunch at McDonalds where Josie played in the playground. It was fun.

We got to Canberra in the afternoon, checked into the hotel (Formula 1!) and went immediately to check out Floriade.

It was just beautiful. I am not too much into flowers per se.. I was excited about taking some nice photos of Josie with flowers, and I wasn't disappointed. The photo ops there were lovely. I even managed to snare some nice macro shots of tulips and the like. Flickr has been updated with all the photos. Check it out.

We spent a few hours there, until we were all knackered, and then went to dinner with some friends of Uncle Mat's. Peter, Jennifer and their kids took us to this fabulous chinese place that had amazing food!

After that we retired back to the snazzy Formula 1 hotel where Josie had a room with Granny and Tony and I had a room to ourselves and of course Mat & Wendy. If you have never stayed at a Formula 1, its quite an experience. Its very cheap, but the room was clean and neat. The reason its so cheap is cause amenities are quite scarce. And the rooms are quite small. But if you are not planning on spending a lot of time in a hotel room, this is the place to be. The room had a queen bed with a bunk above it, and a sink and TV in the corner. Also in the room was a bathroom, but all it had in it was a shower and a toilet. There was no sink (that was out in the main room). The bathroom was made out of fiberglass (??) and basically reminded me of an airplane toilet.

Anyway, we spent the night quite comfortably, and then the next morning we checked out, and headed off to Pancake Palace (?) for breakfast where we all gorged ourselves on pancakes. After that we stopped briefly in the Koko Black chocolate shop where we bought some choccies and then headed off to Questacon.

We took Josie to Questacon a few years ago, but to be honest, she was just too young to really get her feet wet so to speak.

This time was very different.

We spent many hours at Questacon and Josie just loved it. If we had something like that in Sydney, I would have a yearly pass to it.

There was just SO much for her to do. Things to push, things to pull, things to poke and prod. There was an entire section devoted to younger kids where there was a water area with water equipment that carried water along pipes and turnstiles. Josie got drenched, but she had an absolute ball there. And at every step there was something else she could get her hands on. It was a 5 year old's dream!

Eventually, exhausted, we dragged her out, and headed off home. We got home around 9pm or so, Josie was already asleep and absolutely knackered.

And the next morning Term 4 started.

Term 4!

The final term at preschool. She starts Kindy next year. Big school! *CRY* I am more stressed out about this than she is obviously.

So that covers Canberra.

Last weekend was pretty eventful. I had Friday off and on Friday night, Josie slept at Vika's place and Tony and I went out to dinner at a russian restaurant. It was great! Live music, great food and lots of it! It was like going to mums for dinner.. except we had to pay for it ;-)

On Saturday, Tony picked up Josie from Vika's and took her to dance class and afterwards we all went to Coogee for lunch. After Coogee we dropped Josie off with Granny and Vika, Becka, Becka's friend Daniella, Tony and I went to see Harry Potter & the Order of the Pheonix at iMax. Absolutely fabulous! Especially the 3D bit at the end. It was a great night.

Sunday was a long day with two birthday parties (one in the morning for a 1 yr old and 1 in the afternoon for two 5yr olds), where I got branded with a few temp tattoos (which I still have). After the parties I was absolutely done so I decided it was time we went for a swim, so we met Vika and Becka in the afternoon for a quick swim at the local pool before they closed. It was quite refreshing.

And thats that! Go check out the photos in Flickr and have a look at the Floriade set.