Ahh the lovely Gold Coast of Queensland!   Now that I've finally recovered from the ordeal of trekking to the Gold Coast with three little boys, meeting mum & the 30odd other homeschool families for our Sea World excursion I thought I'd pop on and post some pics! It was a LONG day, but the kids had a fabulous time so that sorta makes up for the stress on me... at least mostly... and in hindsight ;)  

Our crew for the day was Me, Frodo, Sam & Merry plus Mum and the boys cousin L.   She scored big getting to skip school to go have fun with us at Sea World ;)   Blogger is being a booger and won't let me rearrange my photos... ok... I'm being a noob and I can't work out HOW to rearrange them lol.  So they are totally not in the order of our day (which is how I planned to write this post *sigh*)  But here we go...

The hand you see here is Mr Samwise... And that large thing is a very big manta ray!  Before I even confirmed by reading the handy sign posted nearby, he ran up and stuck his arm in the water up to his armpit... that child has no fear I tell you! lol.  I am fairly certain he molested (in the non pervish, cute 5yo way of course) every single manta ray and funky flat shark looking fish in that entire tank before we left.  He loved it!

Here is our crew at the entrace to Penguin Point.. Little Merry totally thought he 'penguis' were awesome.

Our 'school' group had a special treat after the Imagine dolphin show.  Here are the three main stars of the show doing their thing... the kids were fascinated.  After the show, one of the trainers came out and shared some of the methods they use to train the dolphins.  My boys were ... less than attentive *sigh*.. ah well, I enjoyed it hehehe.

When it became obvious my three rat bags were not going to behave themselves, we moved away from the main group so they could enjoy the dolphin talk.  And LOOK at what happened... the kids sat on the rock edge of the pool and the dolphins swam up and just stared intently at them.  I tell ya it was unreal.  The dolphin in the picture was *maybe* 2metres away from them.  And the boys... were utterly silent.

A very out of order pic of Sam with the 'penguis' as Merry calls them :)  They were quite cute, and funny little things.  We also hung out watching the polar bear play for a bit (NOT in the enclosure with the penguis I must add lol) but didn't get any shots of him. :(

And we had a peek at the Sesame street beach show of the day :)  I have a spectacular picture of Sam on the scaled down model of the Endeavour (the ship Captain James Cook sailed on to map the coastline of Australia way back when)  but apparently it has been eaten by blooger. (typo intentional ;) 

Like I said.. after a couple of days, and several midori illusions lol, I can say that it was a great day out!

There is just something special about watching a 7yo get excited about a trip to the library, even if it's the tiny library extension at the mall.   Today we had some errands to do that required both dh & I to be there, so we all piled into the car and popped up to the local shopping centre.  We were almost there when Frodo pipes up from the backseat... can we go to the library mum?  dad can take care of Sam & Merry and you can take me?    We've been busy with moving & cleaning & unpacking for the last two weeks and he's asked a couple of times to go... so how could we say no? :) Strider & I formulated a plan to meet at X location after we were finished with our book browsing, and Frodo grabbed my hand and off we went!  

He tried very hard to be quiet hehe, but he was just so excited!  Of course he requested books on Egypt straight away lol.    Egypt is a long running fascination.. starting way back when he was playing Luxor (a computer game) yonks ago.   It hasn't let up either,  we own numerous neato Eygpt books and several others that have bits on Egypt in them...so I suggested some books on Archaeology since that's where we are in history, that idea was a big hit.   We came home with an archaeology book, one on Mesopotamia, Ancient China, a few Magic Treehouse books (he loves those :D )  and a mystery book he picked out himself.  There were a couple of story books as well, and two National Geographic mags that had ended up on the sale trolley that I intended to buy.. but they weren't supposed to be there so we checked them out instead.  

After we had quite the little stack of books, we took them to the counter and he handed over his very own library card (huge source of pride to him) and then he asked the librarian if she had any bookmarks lol.  He picked up his haul of books and off to meet dad we went.   We did our business, and ended up grabbing dinner out...  Sushi is WIN!  The kids were not in a sushi mood though, so they had McCrap.   I felt compelled to give them fruit when we got home to make up for that lol... and yogurt too ;) 

ps.  I realize I'm rather crap about photos lately in my posts... I sorta know where the camera is now, so I'll attempt to have a little more visual excitement from now on.  If anyone is out there ;) 

We finally have our wireless adsl set up, thank the Gods... dialup was sending me mental.  Now I can loaf around and waste time on the net as per usual.  Wait.. I do more than that, honest! lol    My net time is my sanity saver... I have 3 little boys underfoot from dawn till dusk, so half an hour with a cuppa and hanging out on my fave message boards is just the thing :)  

I really don't have a damn thing to say at the moment, just wanted to show my face.  

Wait.. I do have something to say... we have found  a decent treadmill on sale and we're going to put one on layby tomorrow :)  I'm going to commit to using it for half an hour a day to start with and work my way up from there.  I have/had a gym membership, but honestly since my abrupt trip to the US late last year it has just seemed like a huge chore to find the time to go work out.   We won't have the treadmill probably for about 6weeks or so though :(  Which sucks because I'm feeling motivated by finding it and want to USE it dammit *sigh*