Eli

Eli the big schoolboy!

2012-01-25T17:49:00.000-08:00

After a nice long summer holiday the wait was finally over earlier this week when Eli finally started life as a schoolboy. He'd been looking forward to it, but not in an over-the-top excited-out-of-his-skin sort of way, more just because it meant that he was becoming a big(ger) boy. I was looking forward to it too, even though I was a bit stressed in the lead up - getting the uniform (which had been out of stock) just a few days before school was cutting it a bit close for my liking. Fortunately, by Monday he was all set in his new uniform and he was ready to meet his new schoolmates and his new teachers - Mrs Lowe and Mrs Shortt (and yes, Eli and I still laugh about those names). Here are a few photos of Eli in his uniform and on the walk from the car to his classroom...

I know that it is still early days, but so far the signs with respect to school are encouraging. Eli is keen to go back each day and he talks about some of the other kids and even claims that 6 of them are now his friends!

We've (now) been to GoMA too!

2012-01-25T17:16:00.000-08:00

The Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) opened in Brisbane only about 5 years ago, but it is incredibly popular and is apparently a lot of fun for kids (like Eli and I). So we recently headed off to find out what all the fuss is about...

The room that most people talk about is the one where you get a page of colourful circle stickers at the door and you can contribute to the art by adding stickers wherever you see fit...it is pretty cool. Eli particularly liked the handiwork of some of his contemporaries who had clearly seen fit to try and make a blue section on the floor...he also decided that he'd like to souvenir one of the blue stickers for himself - no point 'wasting' a perfectly good blue sticker in that room!

The highlight of our visit was another room though. One that was red with white spots which featured large inflattable shapes and some well placed mirrors. Eli had us going back again and again....here's some photos and a video (on it's side - sorry! let's just pretend I was being really arty!) of Eli enjoying the mirrors and spots!

Eli also liked some of the audiovisual displays - his penchant for funny faces and gibberish (see earlier posts) meant that he really liked this one!

All in all it was well worth the visit and we're glad to have caught up with the rest of Brisbane.

The big dig.

2012-01-25T17:00:00.000-08:00

Eli has continued his love-affair with palaeontology, partly spurred on by me giving him a replica fossil tooth (which he needed to excavate himself) for Christmas. Since that was such a hit, we've since bought a few more too, so he now has an ever-growing collection of replica fossils which includes teeth, insects and sea creatures...

Here he is, out the back of our house (this is definitely an outdoors activity), happily chipping away in search of fossils! He's very dedicated and will happily spend at least half an hour chipping and brushing away to unearth his treasures...if only real palaeonotological digs were that fast!

Oh how they've grown!

2012-01-25T16:32:00.000-08:00

It's only been about a year since we got our pet turtles, Zoomy and Swifty, but boy they've had a good time of it. Eli and I get them out on the back lawn as often as we can for walks and it is then that we notice just how big the turtles have gotten. Here's a photo of Eli holding Zoomy (his favourite for the reasons outlined below) on one recent excursion. He might not look big, but given that he was just the size of a 50 cent piece a year ago, he has certainly grown (I'm talking about Zoomy not Eli, but he has certainly grown too).

As I mentioned above, Eli really likes Zoomy. I think that is because the turtles have stayed true to their original personalities. Zoomy (who is now much bigger than Swifty) is still a very active explorer of the backyard and, as an added bonus, an active consumer of the grasshoppers we catch for him. Swifty, on the other hand, seems not to like the taste of grasshopper very much, and when we take him outside for a walk, he tends to just find a shady spot and stays put. I think the photo below of Zoomy and Swifty shows the differences in their personalities quite well...Zoomy is stretching out on the left and Swifty is all tucked in on the right.

Eli and I have to stay pretty vigilant when the turtles are outside, because not only are we afraid of kookaburras, crows and butcherbirds that might be on the lookout for an easy lunch, but we also need to keep picking up Zoomy and return him to the grass before he leaves our yard completely. Here's a video of Zoomy speeding around the backyard and through the hose that we sometimes put on for them.

Why I'm glad I'm not fluent in gibberish

2012-01-25T16:17:00.000-08:00

Eli and I were mucking around doing a few videos a few weeks back. With only a little encouragement from me, Eli put in some amazing performances inspired by his inner-anger and outer-gibberish...here's the result:

Surf, sun and sand fun!

2012-01-25T14:42:00.000-08:00

I bought Eli a boogie board for Christmas this year, so we made sure that once we got to Noosa that we made a few early morning and late afternoon visits to the surf beach (in truth we're probably starting to outgrow the sandbank trips a bit, so it is time to start tackling the waves).

As I had anticipated, Eli took straight to it and was even 'happy' getting splashed in the face (I was a bit worried that he'd use his favourite 'sensitive eyes' line). Here are some videos of Eli carving it up on the child-friendly Noosa swell.

Not every wave took him all the way to the beach and he did get spectacularly dumped on one occassion - fortunately Grandma was filming so we can all enjoy it here...

In addition to catching waves, Eli also really enjoys waiting in the shallows and get knocked over as the waves roll in. Here's a photo of Eli and I, waiting to get knocked over, without watching the waves.

Of course Eli still likes building sandcastles (some of which now include him as a feature) and having the occassional running race on the beach too...

...there's always plenty to do on our beach trips and we always come home exhausted.

Christmas 2011

2012-01-11T16:02:00.000-08:00

We broke with tradition for Christmas 2011, by not waking up at Noosa. This year, Tyden and Anne wanted to host Christmas at their new house in Brisbane, so Eli and I stayed over to ensure that we could wake up to see what Santa had delivered. Fortunately, Santa was also comfortable with this plan (I wrote him a letter explaining where we would be) and Eli woke to discover that Santa had brought him a reindeer as promised (this is what he'd asked for when he paid a visit to Santa at the shopping centre a few weeks earlier. As an aside, when Eli asked for a reindeer, Santa said "But it's much too hot here for a reindeer", to which Eli replied "A pretend reindeer, not a real reindeer!" Needless to say, I'm glad he set Santa straight).

There were heaps of presents piled under and around the Christmas tree and Eli and Alora were very excited...

After some initial gift opening, Eli sat down with Alora and educated her on how to play with her Prince, by showing her how his Star Wars figures could fight with him! Armed with no weapons or super powers, I figured that these battles might be a little one-sided for the Prince, but to Alora's credit she went along with this game for a lot longer than I thought she might (and she had the vision to keep her Princess well away from the action)!

The gift giving and opening was pretty chaotic (as always) with Eli, Alora, Oliver, Harrison and Charlie really cleaning up (in terms of gifts) and messing up (in terms of wrapping paper). All of the boys actually took quite a likling to the big pile of wrapping paper (we should have saved on gifts and just given them paper!) and all four of them spent some time wrestling around in it...

Eli has always been good at trying new foods and Christmas Day was no exception, as he asked if he could try prawns and crab for the first time. Here he is looking like a very big boy (in my opinion) with his first ever prawn - he liked it, but he liked the crab meat more as he devoured a leg - he even sampled some of the crab shell, just to see what it was like! Even better, he didn't have an adverse reaction to either of them, so maybe we'll see a bit more seafood on the menu now (not that I can afford to buy crabs all the time!).

We headed back home after a fun-filled day, so as is his want, Eli finished the day off with a nice snooze on the mat in our living room...you can't really have a better Christmas Day than that!

Eli meets Jaffa.

2011-12-12T03:44:00.001-08:00

Eli keeps telling me that he's a 'big boy' these days. He's always claiming to be bigger than his friends at daycare (even though he clearly isn't - most of them are at least a couple of centimetres taller!), which means that I'm constantly reminding him that 'it's not about being bigger, it's about being better'. Whilst I'm not sure that my advice is necessarily good in terms of tempering his competitive nature, he's at least buying into the idea that being big isn't the be all and end all of his (and everyone elses) existence.

Despite not being a giant, he certainly is trimming down and muscling up these days, and he knows it. So when I casually suggested on the weekend that we might go to Lone Pine and see if he can hold a koala (his favourite animal) he was very excited, not to mention 100% optimistic of being up to the task. So off we went to the zoo...

After grumbling in the very slow moving line for a little while, Eli's moment of truth arrived. It turns out that he was big enough, but the handler put him up on a seat just to make sure that he was high enough (koalas don't like being held too close to the ground) and strong enough (the koala sat on his lap). Here are some photos of Eli holding Jaffa, or should I say Jaffa holding Eli? I'm not sure which of them was holding on tightest.

It turns out that Eli was certainly better than some of the other people (adults and kids) that were holding koalas, because he sat perfectly still and listened to everything that the handler told him to do. (I'm sure that it helped that he'd also been well drilled by his ex-koala handler Dad too!).

He was very happy with the experience and he also enjoyed patting a snake, a kangaroo and a dingo too!

To finish off the post, here's a photo I took of the professional photo that is now on our fridge door...

Our last Tallowwood Christmas Party!

2011-12-12T02:27:00.000-08:00

I may have mentioned this before, but I still find it hard to believe that Eli will be starting school next year. Even more unbelievable is the fact that our daily routine of heading off to Tallowwood Childcare Centre will be relegated to the history books, but that's the reality we'll be facing in 2012. For what it is worth, I think Eli is certainly ready for school and it's more about me adjusting to the change than the other way around. I'm so used to dropping him 'down the bottom of the big hill' and I've really loved the closeness of his daycare centre to my work (on the same Griffith University campus)...but I promise not to cry!

Last Friday marked the end of an era as we attended our last Tallowwood Christmas party. Because Eli is one of the big kids now it also meant that he and his classmates from 'the big room' were going to put on a show for everyone. Everyone (adults included) was pretty excited as the big day approached and I made sure that I got down to Tallowwood early - just in time to see the customary jumping castle being filled with air - this alone had the kids excited, but thankfully one of their teachers, Mel, had them under control.

After some frantic and very energetic jumping, followed by some frantic and very energetic dancing to some tunes from a much loved kids performer called Brett Campbell, a nice refreshing ice block was the order of the day (we all enjoyed one!).

Then, after a bit of a delay owing to some of the big kids being difficult to locate in the crowd, it was time for the show. Over the preceeding weeks I'd pressured Eli into giving me some sneak previews of the performance, so I knew what to expect and I knew that he wouldn't disappoint - he's certainly not afraid of performing for a crowd (in fact I think he thrives on it!). The group performed 5 songs, which included a song about a dog called "B-I-N-G-O"...

...a couple of Christmas-time favourites - "Jingle Bells" and "Santa Claus is coming to town"...

...a lovely song about friends (beautifully choreographed with the kids throwing their arms around each other)...

...and finally, a song called "Mr Clickety Game". For the life of me I can't really explain what that song is about (knowing the words doesn't really help), but I hope you enjoy the video as much as I enjoyed capturing it.

In my opinion, Eli was without question the star of the show (look at that showstopping finish of his in the photo below, not to mention the fact that he's standing in front of all of the other kids!). After a big afternoon of fun, Eli and the rest of the "graduating" kids were presented with a certificate showing the date of their first day at Tallowwood. Eli's first day was August 7 2007...which seems like a very long time ago. We'll miss Tallowwood, but we're really looking forward to new adventures in 2012 (I wonder if Eli will sign up for the school choir?)!

Tree up for Christmas!

2011-12-12T01:35:00.000-08:00

Eli was super keen to put our Christmas tree up this year - 4 year olds are acutely aware of Christmas - even to the point that he remembered the little song he created around the icicle decorations last year. As it turned out, he pretty much did it all by himself (with just a little help from Grandma Susan) as I got a phone call and just watched as he got to work...

Not a bad job at all I'd say and you can tell from the last photo that he's pretty happy with his handiwork.

A big adventure on the world's largest sand island.

2011-11-14T21:57:00.000-08:00

We're just back from a great holiday on Fraser Island. For those of you that don't know, not only is Fraser the largest sand island in the world, but it is also one of the few places where rainforest grows on sand and it is also home to more than half of the world's perched dune lakes. It's also where I did my PhD, so it's a pretty special place I reckon. I hadn't been back to Fraser Island since I finished my PhD in 2002, but teamed up with the Hoopers again (after our successful Lord Howe Island trip in April) I was ready to return and was really looking forward to showing Eli some of the amazing places on the island.

We took the vehicle barge from River Heads to Wanggoolba Creek and our first stop was at Central Station, right in the middle of the island, where Wanggoolba Creek cuts through beautiful rainforest.

We decided to do a hike and the kids opted for the walk to Basin Lake a 5.6 km return trip. It's fair to say that the kids don't have a good appreciation of what a kilometer is, because the other walk we suggested was significantly shorter. To their credit, Eli and Addie walked pretty much the whole return trip.

We got to Basin Lake just as a large tour group were about to leave, so we cooled our heals for a little while before exploring. We found heaps of sundews around the lake, many of them with small insect snacks trapped in the sticky fluid on their leaves. Eli and I also couldn't resist looking for frogs on the emergent reeds around the lake and we were lucky enough to find a few. The one in the photo below is the Cooloola sedge frog (Litoria cooloolensis).

After managing a nice long walk and having a spot of lunch at Central Station, we headed to the eastern beach and drove up to Happy Valley. Once we were unpacked, we headed down to the beach to explore. There are lots of small creeks that run out across the eastern beach of Fraser Island and I can remember exploring the one near Happy Valley when I first visited the island with my family back in the mid-1980s, so I was keen to have a look around. I particularly remembered catching small freshwater shrimp in this creek, so armed with a net and an enthusiastic Eli (who just wants to catch anything and everything at the moment) we set off and started looking. It turns out that my memory had served me well and Eli, Addie and I caught about ten shrimp, some of them quite large, from the little pool at the foot of a small waterfall. Eli was very excited and fortunately, he was also willing to let them go once we'd had our fun.

After our spot of fishing, we ran around on the beach and up and down the creek, with Jeff, Paige and I on duty and keeping a watchful eye out for dingoes and vehicles on the beach. One dingo did come and smell out our beach towels, but it didn't give us any trouble.

The next morning we set off early for Eli Creek! I'd been priming Eli for this location for a few weeks before our holiday started, not just because it is 'his creek', but also because it's just such a fun place to visit. To the local indigineous people, the word Eli means sandcrab and I think that's a nice description of my Eli too.

Eli and Addie were keen to explore the creek and armed with their boogie boards they were all set to jump in and go with the flow too. For personal and aesthetic reasons I took a lot of photos at Eli Creek - Eli actually started to get sick of requests to look and smile at the camera - so here are just a few of the many...

After a few trips up and down the creek other people started to arrive and we didn't realise how special it was to have the creek to ourselves for a while until we passed by Eli Creek again later in the day when there was several large visitor buses and probably about 15 or so other 4WD's - and this is not the peak tourism season!

The next stop on our list of must-sees was a visit to the Maheno shipwreck. We also saw a small plane come in and land on the beach, which is not something you see every day (unless you are on the beach on Fraser Island!).

As the tide was coming in, when decided to venture inland to continue our adventure. We stopped at Lake Allom for a spot of lunch and did the short walk around it before stopping at the platform and looked for turtles.

Not content with just viewing them, Eli wanted to get into the lake and swim with the turtles. Here he is, muscling up the courage to go into the dark waters of Lake Allom. And here's Uncle Jeff, almost being drowned by Eli, on the way back to the shore.

Now if you ask Eli about his trip to Fraser Island, he won't tell you about Eli Creek, or rainforests, or lakes or dingoes. Instead, he'll likely tell you about march flies and his ant colony. March flies are large biting flies (the female flies feed in mammalian blood) that are both annoying and painful and they're particularly abundant on Fraser Island during the summer months. Their presence meant that we were all constantly swatting at them in the hope that we'd get them before they got us. Now normally we don't really give a second thought to a swatted fly, but for some reason Eli was very keen to collect the dead march flies and take them to an ant colony out the back of the house we were staying in. He figured that the ants would like a feed and he was right. He actually stimulated a bit of a feeding frenzy in the backyard. One day, after delivering about 15 march flies to the colony, he started worrying about whether the ants would keep eating all night, or whether the cane toads would come and clean up what was left. After puzzling about this for a while, he decided to build a ring of coconuts around the ant colony to protect them (and their food) from cane toads. He also noticed that live march flies would land on the coconuts a lot, so he figured that the ants could supplement his supply by catching their own while we were away from the house each day. To his great delight, the march fly remains were still near the colony each morning (just a collection of wings and hard body parts). Here's a photo of Eli near his fortified ant colony (the large black dots are march flies) and a picture that he and I drew to record it as a highlight of the trip.

A trip to Fraser Island also wouldn't be complete without some dingo photos, so the next morning I snapped a few pics of a male dingo that we saw quite a few times, just near Happy Valley. He certainly wasn't concerned by us in the slightest, so Eli and I (in our 4WD) got a great look at him as he wondered from the surf up into the dunes.

After our dingo-spotting excitement we set off for Lake Wabby, a water table window lake that is slowly being consumed by a large sand blow. There are two ways to approach the lake and we decided that parking on the beach and walking through the forest and over the sand blow would be fun. We also hoped that the 6.5 km return distance wouldn't be a problem...Eli and Addie were great walkers once again and they stopped at maps to figure out what the best track would be to take. They were both pretty blown away (figuratively not literally) by the sand blow and Eli started a trend in rolling down the steep sections...

Here's the view back to the east from the top of the sandblow...

And here's the view (and a couple of sand rollers) towards the west and Lake Wabby.

Here's a contemplative, glare-affected and very sandy Eli, after a bit of rolling session...plus a few pics of us going up (slow) and down (fast) the steepest sectio of the sandblow towards the lake.

It was a hot long walk, so we all jumped into Lake Wabby to have a swim with the catfish...

The following day we headed down to the southern lakes and after a big of a drama getting off the beach, we finally made it to Lake Boomanjin, the largest perched dune lake in the world. And it's not just big, it's also impressively stained with tannins. Here are some photos of Eli and I venturing into a very full Lake Boomanjin, where their feet were yellow, their legs were red and their hands were orange...

After our swim, it was time for some lunch (inside the dingo fence again!). I really like this photo of Eli about to tuck into his cabana and cheese rice crackers and when he saw it he said 'hey, one of my eyebrows is up!'

We decided to finish off the day with a hike from Central Station to Pile Valley, where large Satinay trees (Syncarpia hillii) grow. This walk took us along the banks of Wanggoolba Creek again and it was a nice cool walk.

Our final day on Fraser Island included a visit to Lake McKenzie (Boorangoora) which is where I did most of my PhD research (and it's a rather nice spot for a swim too). It was really strange re-visiting this lake - it brought back a lot of good memories - and I really wanted to have brought the inflatable zodiac so I could head off and explore some of my less accessible sampling sites...

Despite my creative photography, there were (as always) heaps of other people here too, so it felt more like a public pool than a wilderness experience, but we did at least spot one of the more permanent residents near where we were swimming...

On the way off the island, on the barge back to River Heads, I did some exit polling of Eli and Addie to see what they thought of their Fraser Island adventure. For most questions I gave them three options to chose from - here are the questions and their answers...

1. Which was your favourite lake? Eli -- Boomanjin; Addie -- Boomanjin
2. Which was your favourite creek? Eli -- Eli; Addie -- Eli
3. Which was your favourite animal? Eli -- Ants; Addie -- Shrimp (despite the fact that we'd seen fish, dingoes, goannas, land mullet and skinks!)
4. Which was your favourite hiking adventure? Eli -- Lake Wabby; Addie -- Pile Valley
5. Which was your favourite place? Eli -- Central Station; Addie -- Central Station

In addition to these responses, both Eli and Addie liked the bumpy tracks and driving on the beach and critically, both correctly answered 'Uncle Jeff' when asked the question 'who bogged their vehicle in the soft sand?' (no prompting required from me). There was also concensus around the fact that 'Daddy/Uncle Wade' was the best driver (a point reinforced when I drove the Hoopers car through the aforementioned soft sand).

From a biological (control) perspective, Eli was unanimously nominated as the person who killed the most march flies (and it wasn't just us that benefited, Eli has some very grateful ant friends now too!). Addie was voted the person who found the most lady birds (fortunately using non-lethal collection methods). All in all, and as voted by Eli and Addie, everyone enjoyed their Fraser Island holiday!

Deconstructionism.

2011-10-25T20:32:00.000-07:00

Sometimes when it comes to Eli, destructive and creative forces collide. A recent example of this (that I clearly contributed to), relates to an electronic toy car of Eli's. He and I both found the song it played to be rather annoying (why does a car need to play a song anyway?) and after a while it no longer worked very well...so, Eli decided that he wanted to pull it apart and use the bits to make robots. The problem was that this car was reasonably well assembled and couldn't just be pulled apart. So, to solve the problem, I handed Eli a hammer and sent him outside...

He really enjoyed this job (no surprises there) and now that it is broken down into it's component pieces, the 'annoying yellow car' is now ready to be turned into robots. Eli's plan here is to sticky tape the various bits and pieces onto cardboard boxes. And thanks to his handiwork with the hammer, he now has wheels, gears, wires, springs, screws and assorted bits of yellow body parts to complete the task.

Overall, I think this is a good way to accommodate Eli's creativity and his willingness to destroy things...having said that, I have had to hide the hammer now as I don't want to encourage the reckless destruction of toys too much!

Lump

2011-10-25T17:27:00.000-07:00

Having recently called Eli a 'lump', when he was hiding under his sheets, I recalled the Presidents of the United States of America song of the same name. Since Eli liked being called a lump I mentioned that "Lump lingered last in line for brains..." and then he wanted to know what on Earth I was yabbering on about. As a result of the ensuing conversation, I have now unwittingly introduced my little mate to a whole new genre of music. He was pretty keen to hear the CD and he now also likes "Peaches" and "Dune Buggy". His favourite song is still "Lump" though, because it is such a good song to dance along to, as you can see in this video.

Collector-gatherer-miller?

2011-09-24T23:05:00.000-07:00

Eli is always busy. For those of you that have spent time with him recently, you'd know that one of the ways he occupies his time is by adding to his 'collection' (see The Bone post too). His 'collection' largely consists of sticks, bark, leaves, berries and nuts and when he's done his collecting locally, his collection usually resides in his wheelbarrow out near the back door.

Eli used to just load up the wheelbarrow with whatever he'd found, but recently, and with no prompting at all from me, he has started to 'process' some of the berries before adding them to his barrow of loot. He's taken to smashing off the outer husk of his nuts and berries (using a stone from the garden) which means that he's got a nice little collection of nuts and the area where he has set up his mill now has a lot of accumulated organic debris (spread far and wide mind you, not piled up neatly like his collection pieces).

Here are a few photos and a video from a recent collector-gatherer-miller session...note his bone and the post-processed berries to the front right of the photos.

The bone.

2011-09-23T19:52:00.000-07:00

Eli wants to be a palaeontologist. I know this because he frequently tells me (and yes, I am impressed that he can say palaeontologist!). He lives up to this claim quite well too, because he's often busying himself out in the back garden looking for bones. What's even more remarkable is that he was busy digging a few weeks back and he actually did find a bone. It's obviously one that a dog had buried (we don't have a dog, but the neighbours do) and it looks like it has been in the ground for a while now.

Regardless of its origin, Eli was thrilled to have dug up a bone in our backyard! He was carrying it around like a trophy and he proudly brought it inside with him. Of course I told him that he couldn't bring it inside, but he was so excited by his find that he would occasionally forget that rule. In the end he declared that the bone was going to be part of his collection, so I agreed that he could keep it so long as it didn't come into the house. The compromise we struck was that he could keep it in the garage...near where my own collection of bones is (so I only have myself to blame).

Here are some photos of Eli sporting his trophy bone, near where he unearthed it.

At work with Daddy on Straddie!

2011-09-23T14:45:00.000-07:00

We've just come back from a big 'work' adventure. I'm currently helping the International Water Centre coordinate a visit to Queensland for 19 Indonesian water managers (via an AusAid-funded program) and part of the scheduling included a visit to North Stradbroke Island (Straddie). The trip included some time to have a look around, but there was a strong focus on a couple of sessions about conceptual diagrams and their use in science communication and reporting (more on this later).

Since Eli has never been to Straddie before, I thought I'd try and bring him along. I was a bit anxious about it, given that I had to work and make sure he was happy and staying out of trouble at the same time, but I had some great reinforcements on hand, with Cameron and Emily willing and able to play with Eli when I couldn't be with him. It turns out that I needn't have worried at all, because Eli got along with everyone really well. In fact, he was a real hit with the visitors and even before we boarded the ferry to head over to Straddie he was already being cheeky - tickling people and running around like a lunatic!

Once we arrived at the Moreton Bay Research Station we went straight into a Conceptual Diagrams session - as you can see from the photo of Eli, he was still pretty hyped up and happy being the centre of attention, so after a while Cameron took him for a walk down at the beach (so he was no longer a distraction to all of us!). He also spent a lot of time scavenging in the garden around the Research Station for Banksia cones and he was very, very excited when he found a coconut (which we then had to lug back to the house that we were staying in!).

It was a big first day and Eli didn't get to bed until 9pm and he was totally knackered. I think he was asleep within a couple of minutes of me reading him a story (which is very unusual), but that was a good thing, because the next day was going to be even bigger.

After the theory of the preceeding day, Thursday was all about getting out and about, with a big sand modelling session on the beach in the morning. Here, the group worked in four teams to model their catchments and water issues, essentially converting their drawings into 3D models.

Eli got into the spirit of things too, by building his own sand model down near the water. His model featured a dam, with frequent water releases causing downstream flooding...he was also looking into the effect of dredging...

After completing the models, we had a bit of a break before each group spoke about the issues confronting their catchments and some possible solutions to the problems...

After each presentation Eli was invited (and actively encouraged) to destroy each groups model - as you might imagine, he took just a few seconds to demolish models that had taken an hour or so to build...thankfully everyone enjoyed it!

After a busy morning of building (and for Eli, destroying) sand models, it was off to Point Lookout, for lunch and a bit of free time to have a look around. It was a beautiful spring day and Eli and I made the most of our time (with a drink and a gelati) while the group went for a walk around part of the Gorge.

After our stop at Point Lookout, we all piled back onto the bus and headed for Brown Lake. With a captive audience, I took the opportunity to speak about the groundwater extraction and sand mining issues on Straddie, but by the time we were approaching Brown Lake Eli noticed that many of the group were asleep. I asked Eli if it was my talking that had put them to sleep...and of course he said 'Yes, you were boring'.

Once we arrived at Brown Lake, Eli took great joy in using the microphone on the bus to wake everyone up again. I then spoke a bit about the formation and ecology of perched dune lakes and the issues with visitor impacts and powerboating on Brown Lake. Eli was one of the few to wade into the lake and he even caught a firetailed gudgeon - it was already dead actually - here he is standing in the tannin-stained waters, holding his catch aloft!

I'm not sure if Eli was inspired by my performance (or just bored by it), but after I'd finished speaking he then gave the visitors a lecture too...

The following day, on the way back to the ferry, Eli took a photo of everyone in the bus (after he'd told them 'Don't fall asleep!')...and then Eli kept some of 'the boys' awake on the ferry ride home...

It was a massive (and successful) trip and fittingly, a very tired Eli fell asleep in the car on the way home...tempted as I was to tell him to wake up (to give him a taste of his own medicene), I was happy for him to get some well earned rest.

The sleepover.

2011-09-12T02:29:00.000-07:00

Tiger (yellow) and Sue (blue), the budgies from Tallowwood (Eli's daycare centre), stayed over at our place last weekend.

After learning that families could look after them on weekends, Eli has wanted to take them home for a while now and as you can see from the photos, he was very happy to have them stay with us...

He also tried to make them at home by talking to them (in budgie language!) - I was a little bit worried that he was going to pester them too much, but then I remembered that they probably like it loud given that they see heaps of kids running around past their cage every day of the week. They were pretty chatty actually and no trouble at all...and Eli has already said that they can stay with us again next weekend...

Even bright pink jumping castles are fun!

2011-09-11T23:41:00.000-07:00

It was our friend Edie's 3rd birthday last week and to celebrate, her parents hosted a great birthday party. Having good inside information is always good when Eli is concerned, so I'd sold the party to him on the basis of the promise of a jumping castle (I think Eli would like to live in a big jumping castle and bounce around all day every day!).

True to form and after just a little bit of pre-empted shyness on his part (he told me in the car that he was going to be shy), Eli quickly gravitated to the jumping castle. He was a little bit put off by the colour, but thankfully he doesn't need everything to be blue these days (and at least he was wearing blue!).

Eli spent most of his first session on the jumping castle crashing into the walls (and, on occassion, the other kids), so after a while I got him to focus on seeing how high he could jump...He was content with that challenge for a little while, but then he set himself to trying to jump out the front of the castle completely...Needless to say, I spent most of the time at the party watching the jumping castle closely, especially when Eli and a few other boys decided that it would be fun to begin wrestling...

Mercifully there were no (major) injuries and Eli and Edie (and all of the other kids) had great fun jumping!

Collage crazy!

2011-09-03T23:14:00.000-07:00

Eli absolutely loves collage. He's always talking about what he's done in collage at daycare, and at home he frequently occupies his time with cutting and pasting. At times like those I feel very grateful that he's a meticulous kid (no fingers lost to date!) that doesn't like being dirty - otherwise we would have a few run ins around his creative flair.

To further encourage his creativity, coupled with the fact that he is always asking me 'What can we make now?', we recently made a trip to the local art and craft shop for supplies and inspiration. What followed next was highly predictable. We got home and Eli opened all of the new collage materials and set about 'being creative'. Together we made a few caterpillars, a bug for grandad (for Father's Day), a robot, a hedgehog, some monsters and...

...a very big mess.

Whilst Eli doesn't like being dirty himself, he's more than happy to make our living room look like a bomb has gone off (perhaps this is just more creativity on his part?) and it took us ages to clean up the off-cuts...of course, it was still thoroughly worth it and thankfully, we still have a few bits and pieces that Eli didn't use in this one mega-collage session.

The visitor.

2011-09-03T22:55:00.001-07:00

On the way home from the shops yesterday, Eli and I saw a white kookaburra. It had swooped down for a swim in the creek and was shaking itself on the railing near the bridge. It is pretty strange seeing a white kookaburra - from what I understand they are uncommon but not unheard of - so Eli and I did a u-turn and went back and watched him some more. We're pretty sure that he's part of the very big kookaburra family that routinely wakes me up at sunrise each morning...

Later that day, when Eli was playing out in our front yard, we had a visit from the white kookaburra. It perched in our Poinsiana tree, and watched Eli intently (in the hope that he'd disturb some tasty grubs with his digging and garden rumaging).

It was a pretty windy afternoon, so the white kookaburra's feathers were being blown around a bit and Eli and I thought that he looked similar to how Grandad looks when Eli messes his hair up (which happens almost everytime we get together!).

After Eli had finished playing in the front yard, the white kookaburra disappeared, but I have a funny feeling that we'll be seeing him around...

3 @ 2!

2011-09-02T13:21:00.001-07:00

Eli's three boy cousins turned 2 this week! We headed over to their place to help celebrate their birthdays and here they are, Charlie, Harrison and Oliver, captured on one of those rare occassions where they are all still and facing more or less in the same direction (courtesy of the high chair restraints!).

Eli always enjoys a visit to his cousin's house as he and Alora get along really well. Some might say a bit too well, because they always seem to be running off and 'getting married' when they're together...and when pressed about what they've been up to, Eli is always very shy and quiet (not like him at all!).

Eli has always been pretty good with the boys too, but now that they're all up and about, he's really starting to enjoy their company. It has been pretty interesting watching how the boys have grown up and just how different they all are and how Eli interacts with each of them accordingly. Oliver is a speedy and rough and tumble sort of boy (just like Eli), and the two of them enjoy rolling around on the ground together - a bit like the photo below. I suspect they'll be wrestling in no time.

Harrison is a little more sensitive, but is always up for a fun game and I have noticed that Eli is a little more reserved around him (which is just as well, because Harrison tends to cry if things don't go his way). Charlie might just be the smartest of them all, because he is a very finely tuned 'Grandma spotter' and he'll immediately seek out refuge from the chaos, with either of his grandmum's, as soon as one of them comes into his line of sight. Eli is generally pretty gentle with Charlie too.

After playing for a while, Charlie, Oliver and Harrison were all happy to get into the swing of opening their birthday presents. Like most two year olds they were just as happy playing with the wrapping paper as they were with their gifts...

Eli had a great time celebrating with his cousins and I can see how he's really going to love playing with the boys as they get bigger and more mobile. I really love this very cheeky looking photo of Eli, captured when he was looking at me but incredibly mindful of the 'ticklemonster' to his right that was creeping up to get him!

And finally, here's the best I could do in trying to capture the boys with Grandma and Grandad and then with their sister and Mum and Dad.

Massive Saturday!

2011-07-23T13:44:00.001-07:00

Occasionally I forget that Eli is just 4 years old. I decide that he won't get tired and that we can pack a million exciting things into a single day and he'll manage beautifully. And so it was yesterday, when we agreed to go to Alora's 5th Birthday party, followed by a daytime visit to the Mt Gravatt Show with Grandma and Grandad, followed by a short stop at home before hitting the show again at night to see the motor cross bikes, the monster truck and the fireworks.

Eli and I started our Massive Saturday with Alora's birthday party. There were almost 30 kids there and the theme was 'Princess and Prince', so Eli dutifully, but not too enthusiastically, wore a knight in shining armour costume that Grandma had picked up for him. Aunty Anne and Uncle Tyden had some great games organised, so with some encouragement and creative input from me (I just couldn't help myself), Eli made a great crown (it seemed like a very fast transition from Knight to King!).

The other game was a running race (separate ones for boys and girls) to retrieve swords, with fewer swords available than there were runners. I was a little bit worried about Eli in this event, because he does not like to lose and many of the boys were older and bigger than him. I needn't have worried though, because he was fast! In every race he came in second (and with a sword), so he was happy. He was also happy to hear that a few of the other parents had commented to me that he was very fast - there's nothing like a bit of positive reinforcement!

The only downside to the sword races and the insanely large number of swords on offer (which meant that every kid went home with one), was the fact that a large number of sword fights broke out after the races were finished. This concerned me a little bit, as I know how wildly Eli (and others like him) swing swords. This concern does not explain why I then asked Eli if he could procure a sword for me - which he dutifully did - and what followed was, in retrospect, entirely predictable. Once the kids noticed that I had a sword they attacked me and I occasionally would fall to the ground which just encouraged them even more. Eventually, I lay on the ground, being prodded and poked from all angles, and invariably a princess or two would also jump on me. Fortunately, we all got through these battles without any serious injuries, although someone did make my shin bleed...

At this stage of the day we weren't even half done and Eli (and I) were already pretty tired. Grandma and Grandad thought that Eli would fall asleep in the car on the way back home; I didn't, and I was right. We got home, refueled with some food and drink and then headed off to the Mt Gravatt Show. I knew this would be a hit with Eli, because we talked about it a lot and he remembers last year's show very fondly. In fact, what he most often talks about in reference to the Mt Gravatt Show is the fact that we missed out on seeing the motorbikes last year...hence the evenings activities which we'll get to soon.

As soon as we arrived at the Show we headed to the rides and Eli and I smashed around on the dodgem cars. Eli was also keen on the clowns (where everyone wins a prize), so he did that a few times too. I'm not sure if he was tired or overwhelmed, but he wasn't too excited about staying in this area, so we then headed off to pat some farm animals. Eli was fascinated with the depth of the wool on the sheep and we enjoyed saying hello to all of the sheep, goats, ducks and chickens. Eli decided that he'd like to hold a chicken, so he carefully scooped one up.

Grandad generously offered to buy Eli a showbag, so after some discussion and negotiating (by me), Eli selected one that he'd like, which featured Martians and had a bag and a beenie. He was so excited that we just sat down for a while and looked through all of the goodies in the bag and he promptly whacked on the beenie and the bag and asked 'Can we go home now?' We could and we did, but that's not where this story ends.

After an early dinner and with an eye on the Show program, Eli and I headed back out to enjoy the nighttime entertainment. We settled in on the hill, all geared up to watch the motorbikes, the monster truck and then the fireworks. Eli was pretty excited! The motorbikes were up first and they were pretty awesome, getting lots of air and pulling all sorts of incredible stunts. Eli was awestruck, he just kept saying 'Wow!'

Next up was the Monster Truck, called Scruffy (it was painted to look like a dog). It was incredibly noisy and Eli just couldn't quite get his head around the idea that it was going to smash the four cars that were lined up. Significantly less wow's from him this time, but I think he was just too shocked and amazed to offer up any noises...

And then the fireworks started! Eli has never seen fireworks up close like this before, and he loved it. The soundtrack helped to hide the loud bangs, so he wasn't the least bit frightened or concerned. About half way through he asked 'Are these real fireworks?' and I said yes and pointed out the trailer in the middle of the field that was firing the fireworks up into the sky. He was amazed.

At the end of the night I asked Eli what he liked best, whether it was the motorbikes, or the monster truck or the fireworks. He said 'I loved all of them'. Mission accomplished.

"The best campfire in the world"

2011-07-08T21:03:00.001-07:00

After joyously receiving a huge bundle of gluten-free marshmallows from Grandma Susan when she visited us in June, Eli has been chomping at the bit to toast some on a fire. He also recently saw marshmallow toasting on a Shaun the Sheep episode too, so he's been suggesting this activity for a while now. In fact, Eli has been so keen that he's developed his own ideas on how this should happen. His plan has simply been that we should invite Ethan (his best friend from daycare) and a few other friends around and have a campfire in our backyard to toast some marshmallows. As appealing as that idea sounds, it is not only illegal, but the idea of me trying to prevent third degree burns across a diverse bunch of hyperactive four year old pyromaniacs isn't my idea of a fun afternoon....so, I've been trying to think of alternative approach. After a bit of research I eventually decided that a visit to JC Slaughter Falls - a picnic area near Mt Coot-tha that has wood-fired barbeques - might be just the ticket. When Eli heard this news he thought it was a great idea, so off we went for a bbq lunch with a marshmallow dessert.

The first highlight of the day for Eli was the fire (like a moth to a flame). This is the first time that Eli has been around a fire - let alone helped start and feed one - and he loved it! I'm sure that his enthusiasm rubbed off on me, because it wasn't long before we had a raging fire going and Eli proudly declared "This is the best campfire in the world!". Although comments like this go some way towards supporting my decision of not letting him near any fires until now, I must say that Eli did a really good job around the fire and he was cleverly cautious in that he'd ask me to throw the various bits of plant material that he'd scavenged onto the fire!

After a quick bbq sausage for lunch (Eli didn't eat much because he was much more interested in dessert), we grabbed some sticks, skewered our marshmallows and toasted them over the hot coals...

And here's a series of photos of Eli inspecting and taste-testing the end product...

I think he liked it.

Out for a walk.

2011-07-04T03:19:00.000-07:00

It's been a bit of a dark and cold winter in Brisbane, so when the sun broke through the other day Eli and I thought that it might be nice if we let Zoomy and Swifty have a bit of a walk in the backyard.

Even though they've both slowed down as the weather has cooled, Zoomy, true to form, was pretty keen to get out and about and explore as soon as he was released onto the grass. He was certainly aware of our presence but didn't seem too bothered and he even looked at the camera for a few photos...

Throughout their stroll Eli and I took turns 'watching out for kookaburras' - to avoid a less than favourable end to the adventure.

After about 10 minutes, Swifty finally relaxed enough to poke his head out, look around and join Zoomy for a stroll.

Squeeky feet

2011-06-22T22:54:00.001-07:00

Never one to collapse in a heap at the end of the day (I don't know why though given how active he is) Eli is often up for a game or two in between bathtime and bedtime. A few weeks ago he was particularly wound up and he discovered that he could make squeeky sounds on his bedroom floor if he pulled some of his crazy dance moves... In fact, his feet and arms and body were so fast it was hard to capture his routine with still photos...

...so I reverted to video to capture the movement and the squeeks.

After a pretty long dance/workout session, he didn't really seem ready for bed (and probably could have done with another bath!)...

...but not too long later, after the customary 4 books, a bit of idle conversation, a drink of milk and brief conversation about lights out, he finally dropped off to sleep.

The soft toy monster

2011-06-22T20:14:00.000-07:00

Everyone knows how much Eli likes his soft toys and yes it is true that he has heaps of them - many of them were hand-me-downs from Christy in fact - so he and I are frequently wrestling and rolling around with them on the floor. On one such recent occassion and after taking enormous pleasure in completely burying me under a menagerie of soft furry animals, Eli decided that he'd like to be buried. I started by covering his body, but he then insisted that I cover his head too, just so he could launch himself out of the pile like some sort of crazy soft toy monster...as follows:

C'mon Eli, get your skates on!

2011-06-18T16:18:00.000-07:00

Winter has arrived, earlier than normal, in Brisbane. We've recently been treated to the coldest June day (maximum of 12.6 degrees celsius) since 1916 (depending on which media reports you believe). If that wasn't unusual enough, we've also got an open air ice skating rink in King George Square, right in the centre of Brisbane. It's all part of a winter festival, so there's plenty of European food and drink on offer too. Thanks to our proactive Aunty Anne, we had tickets to go skating on the ice a couple of weekends ago.

It was Eli's first time on ice (mine too, as it just so happens), but we fared pretty well. In fact we all got onto the ice at one point or another during the session - Grandma Susan too! - and we managed to stay on our feet - the same wasn't true for some Brisbanites - there were some pretty heavy falls around us! Alora and Eli enjoyed some time on the seal 'skating aide', but Eli actually preferred to be standing up, skating along and pushing it.

It was a really lovely winter's day in Brisbane (maximum temperature around 22 degrees celsius) so not only was I in shorts and shirt (which attracted quite a few comments from some of the people on the ice that had worn there most wintery clothes), but there were also plenty of puddles on the rink by the end of the session - another incentive to stay upright for Eli and I.

We skated for about 40 minutes, by which point Eli and I were both hot and bothered, probably a combination of physical exertion and nervous energy (neither of us wanted to get cold and wet), but it was great fun. Here we are, Eli and I, hot and bothered and not at all wintery.

To finish off the adventure, Eli and Alora also had a tube ride down the big ice-slide, which was also a big hit with the locals.

It was a great day of skating in front of City Hall - I think the location they chose was great - and it made me want to go to a genuinely cold place with an outdoor ice skating area sometime.

The curse of Mr Bean.

2011-06-18T15:44:00.000-07:00

The ABC has recently been showing re-runs of Mr Bean (for those of you that don't know what it is, it is a classic Rowan Atkinson tv series based largely around physical comedy) and we caught the tail end of one recently. Eli had never seen it before, but he was immediately transfixed and thought it was just hilarious. When I mentioned to him that I have a lot of Mr Bean episodes on DVD (yes, that's my sense of humour that he's inherited) he wanted to watch them all, straight away!

So, we've been watching a fair bit of Mr Bean lately (fortunately Grandma Susan quite likes it too) and Eli reliably cracks up at least once or twice per episode - these photos show him watching with anticipation and then laughing at one such episode.

Signifying his complete indoctrination, Eli has now started to remember bits and pieces of Mr Bean episodes while we're doing other things and he will just start laughing, for no apparent reason (in between fits of laughter he'll explain what he was thinking about). A couple of nights ago I actually had trouble getting him to sleep, because he was remembering a particular episode and was laughing hysterically...have I created a monster?

Super fun at Seaworld!

2011-06-17T15:09:00.000-07:00

Eli and I have been plotting a visit to Seaworld, on the Gold Coast, for ages, but we'd held off until Grandma Susan arrived for her visit. So, armed with plenty of enthusiasm and treated to a beautiful winter's day, off we went. As soon as we arrived we spotted some dolphins showing off in the shallows, which we all agreed was a pretty good start to the day!

There's so much to do at Seaworld that we needed a plan. We wanted to see some of the shows, but also wanted to make sure that we saw all of the sea creatures that Eli was excited about, ranging from sharks to stingrays to dolphins to penguins...here's a photo of Eli and I hatching a plan whilst looking at the map, complete with Eli's excitement about all of the things to see...

Our first activity was to feed the stingrays, yes, that's right, feed the stingrays. We bought some assorted stingray food (which consisted of all sorts of yummies ranging from prawns to fish and the odd squid) and then Eli and I offered up the treats to the stingrays in the feeding pool...pretty exciting stuff and as you might expect, Eli wasn't at all fearful, but he did lose interest if his offerings weren't gobbled up straight away.

A quick shirt change later (Eli still doesn't like having his clothes wet, even if it is just a drop!) we were hot-footing it off to see the dolphin show - which was pretty awesome. We particularly enjoyed the amazing jumps the dolphins were doing...

...not to mention the jumps the trainers were doing too, courtesy of the power of the dolphins - you can see one of the trainers in the photo below and he must be about 10 m in the air after diving down with the dolphins and being launched (off their noses) into the sky...like everyone else in the crowd, Eli thought that would be a pretty good job to have...

From dolphins we turned our attention towards the sharks. There's a great shark pool at Seaworld, which you can view both from above (hence the compulsory shark fin shot below) and below. As you can see from the second photo, it's not just a pool for sharks and we enjoyed seeing all of the fish too. I really liked the eagle rays swimming towards us in the underwater photo.

After stopping to refuel with some lunch, Eli and I revisited our detailed investigation of the map and learnt that Eli was just tall enough to ride the Flume Ride. He'd already seen it when we fed the stingrays and he was very excited to be able to go on it. Grandma Susan opted out, despite Eli telling her that there was nothing to be scared about, so Eli and I joined the queue. It was great fun going on a ride like this with Eli, travelling in a log-shaped boat along a waterslide, through a volcano, up a long ramp, into a castle and then whoosh!

If you zoom into that photo you can see what Eli really thought of the super-fast drop. Even after doing it he made that same face and said that he was scared, but that he also loved it and wanted to do it again (and again and again). Fortunately, the queue had grown enough (Eli really doesn't like queues at all, but then who does?) that I was able to convince him that we didn't really need to go on it again - and we still had lots of animals to see anyway!

Our next stop was for the polar bear, but he was just a brownish-white lump of fur lying on the ground, so we didn't stop for long. Fortunately, the new penguin display provided us with much better viewing opportunities, again both above and below water. It was amazing watching the King Penguins (Aptenodytes patagonicus) swimming in the water, especially since you could see the air bubbles that had been trapped in their feathers. Here are some shots of them diving down into the deep dark pool of their enclosure.

We were also able to get pretty close to them above the water - it was actually really cool (pun intended) to see them from just a metre or so away.

The penguin enclosure also had quite a few Gentoo Penguins (Pygoscelis papua) and we were treated to a pretty close look when three of them clumsily waddled up to the part of the enclosure we were standing at...

Armed with fresh memories of the excellent penguin exhibit, coupled with the knowledge that I've foolishly established a bit of an unwritten (until now) tradition of getting him a soft toy every time we visit a zoo, Eli decided that he'd like a penguin. It was pretty funny hearing him rationalise his decision and the justness of the purchase - according to Eli he'd been a good boy all day and he is spoilt, so he deserved it (as a side note, Eli can now finish the following dialogue, "Eli, you know what you are? You are....spoilt"). Can't really argue with solid logic like that, so here is with his new penguin, just before the final pirate show of the day.

We had a great time at Seaworld and no doubt we'll be back again (maybe when he's a bit taller so we can enjoy more of the rides!).

Surf's up!

2011-06-17T14:39:00.000-07:00

After a work-enforced hiatus, we're finally back and blogging. Of course this means that we have to re-trace our steps back in time a little, because we certainly haven't been idle for the past 2 months...

So, let's go back to Easter, when Eli and I spent a week at Noosa owing to a quirk in timetabling that had made three different public holidays collide at the end of April. We enjoyed our typical fun in the sun, with plenty of runs on the sandbank, but this time we also hit the surf beach with a bit more gusto. On one day in particular, we jumped in the boat and headed down towards the main beach at Noosa (the road traffic was horrendous, so it was good to approach the beach by boat!), with our boogie board in tow. We moored at the park, crossed the main street and hit the beach.

Eli and Alora were pretty keen to catch some waves, but in typical Noosa style there wasn't much on offer. We did however, manage to get them both onto a few small waves, as you can see in these photos:

For those of you that know how much I like catching waves (mostly just bodysurfing without a board), these are promising signs indeed. I think next summer is going to be big!

LHI - A great place to turn 4!

2011-04-18T04:22:00.000-07:00

We've just come back from an amazing holiday on Lord Howe Island (LHI). For those of you that don't know about it, it's a small island (~12 km long and 2 km wide) about 2 hours south east of Brisbane, out in the Pacific Ocean.

Map from www.lordhoweisland.info

The island represents what is left of a large (now extinct) volcano and it is so isolated that many of the plants and birds are found nowhere else on Earth - Eli even mentioned, more than once, how Lord Howe Island was not on Earth and that we'd go back home, to Earth, later in the week. LHI is also the southern most reef in the Pacific Ocean, courtesy of the East Australian Current - but I'll spare you the details. All of these things make LHI remarkable, but it now also lays claim to being the location of Eli's 4th birthday! If that doesn't whet your apetite to read on nothing will. This megablog re-tells the adventures of our week on LHI with our great friends Jeff, Paige, Addie and Ashford.

We flew to LHI direct from Brisbane and even the approach to the island was pretty spectacular...

Once we arrived we arranged our transport for the week - bicycles. Eli had a pretty good deal, with a comfortable seat right behind mine with no capacity for contributing to the peddling. I liked the extra weight for some of the speedy downhill sections, but uphill was a different story - did I mention that I lost 1.5 kgs on this holiday?

After settling in and hiring some snorkeling gear, we headed off to Ned's beach - one of the most popular visitor spots on the island. Mercifully, with a visitor cap of just 400 visitors on the island at any one time, even the popular spots were never crowded. One of the main attractions at Ned's beach is fish feeding (which I'm not really a big fan of), but just a short swim off from the shore the underwater life was amazing. Having already been 'primed' on the wonders of algae from our trips to local creeks and rivers, Eli quickly took a liking to the diversity of marine algae - he especially liked the sea grapes - and they formed the focus of his beach scouring activities (and my snorkeling) for the rest of the week.

The next day was Eli's birthday, and despite having already received lots of gifts already, Eli was
lucky enough to get a few more as soon as he got up. He was pretty excited and he spent the rest of the day (and the rest of the week actually) telling anyone that would listen that he is 4! He particularly liked telling Addie, who turned 4 herself just one week later. It is amazing what a difference a week makes (to Eli!).

Paige had been signed up to climb Mt Gower, the tallest peak on the island, so the rest of us headed off for a hike to a different beach (Middle Beach this time) and passed through some wonderful forest types. We all really liked the huge fig trees (the locals call them Banyans) whose aerial roots touch down and become strong supporting structures. Sometimes we felt like we were looking at dozens of trees but it was typically just a single tree.

Our hike took us to the aptly named 'Clear Place', where Eli was keen to remind us all that he was 4!

We then back-tracked slightly to go to Middle Beach, for some rock pool and snorkeling adventures...not to mention Eli's other love, which is to find and explore caves along the shore front.

Jeff and I tag-teamed our snorkeling/child-minding duties and the kids had a ball finding rocky shore creatures and the "millions of snails" attached to the rocks (which Eli removed and flung into the ocean). Eli also loved wandering along the beach looking for "treasure" and we also made plenty of sandcastles (although none remained constructed for very long, as Eli has more enthusiasm and flair for deconstruction). Here are a few of the underwater shots I took at Middle Beach...

After a big hike/swim/ride we headed back to our cottage, where I had a couple of very willing helpers when making Eli his chocolate birthday cake...

And here is the finished article, complete with 4 candles. I think Eli really enjoyed his birthday on LHI - it certainly was a bit different and full of adventure - just how he likes it.

The day after Eli's birthday, Paige bravely took on the challenge of wrangling the kids while Jeff and I took on Mt Gower (thanks again Paige!). Mt Gower is 875 m and the 4.5 km hike doesn't sound too bad, but I was wondering what I'd gotten myself in for when I read that the return trip takes 8 hours! It turns out that for some sections it is more of a climb than a hike - thankfully there are ropes and the weather was kind (I can't imagine trying to do it in the rain).

The hike started with some rock hopping before we got to the first rope section - an 80 m climb which took us up to the green ledge you can see in the first photo. We had to wear helmets due to the risk of rock falls (although Dean, our guide, admitted that if rocks were to fall the helmets would probably not save us!).

The views just got better and better as we ascended...

Some of the rope sections...

Near the top of Mt Gower, Dean called some of the circling Providence Petrels out of the sky. This species is now found nowhere else on Earth (they were eaten into extinction on Norfolk Island). Dean told us that any loud noise would attract them down to the ground and they're not very graceful - they simply crashed into the trees and slammed into the ground, before righting themselves and wobbled around screeching. It turns out they nest in burrows and are quite territorial (against other Petrels, not humans). We weren't so much in awe of this display - it was more like complete and utter disbelief that this species still exists given how apparently stupid and clumsy they are...

At the top of Mt Gower we had an incredible view of LHI and we were also treated to a sighting of the island's woodhen, which was once considered to be the rarest bird in the world (before being recovered in a captive breeding effort on the island). The woodhen is flightless and looks a lot like the kiwi (from New Zealand).

The descent was much faster than the climb, albeit tougher on our knees!

Over the course of the week we had plenty of opportunities to enjoy the view of the lagoon (western side of the island), both in the morning and as the sun was setting. It's certainly spectacular scenery and it looks different every time you see it.

The next day we went for a bit of a bike ride, before deciding to spend some time at the main surf beach on LHI - Blinkys Beach. Here Eli and I had great fun running around on the sand and making sandcastles, while the Hooper clan went for a hike to the top of Transit Hill.

In the afternoon we headed to the lagoon, which was out of the wind, for some more exploring...

The next day we headed back to Ned's beach and while Jeff, Paige, Addie and Ashford went for a hike up Malabar Hill, Eli and I stayed closer to sea level and enjoyed some more fossicking for treasure along the beach and in the rock pools. Eli also found another cave to explore, complete with a stunning view out towards the Admiralty Islands.

After a bit of exploring Eli found a sea urchin stranded on the beach, which was still alive because we noticed that the spines were moving. With no hesitation (he was largely unfazed by the spines), he decided to pick it up and return it to the ocean. I'm not sure if it survived, but the thought was nice.

The next day we went for another hike, along Settlement Beach, up over a big hill and down to North Bay. I was a bit worried about this adventure before we left, because I didn't know how well Eli would go with the long walk to and from our destination. It turns out that my fears were misplaced - Eli walked pretty much the whole way (no doubt buoyed by the fact that Addie is a great walker!), scaling what must have been a couple of hundred steps (at least) to get the crest of the hill and then down as many again to the beach. What a trooper!

We had North Bay to ourselves (until a boatload of lazy people arrived later in the morning) and we all had fun looking around on the beach.

Eli and I found a nudibranch, which again we returned to the ocean and there were also several different types of seabirds that weren't too bothered by our presence.

The underwater life was pretty different in this part of the lagoon - lots of seagrass and sponges close to shore, with some branching corals and more fish a bit further out.

The highlight for me was spotting a turtle resting under some coral and then getting a video of him swimming away...

After getting cold and wet in the rain, Eli and I decided to go for a short hike to Old Gulch, an incredible little embayment on the other side of the island. Here we saw lots of different seabirds and heaps of coral rubble.

On the way back to our bikes, parked at the southern end of Settlement Beach, we took a bit of a sidetrack up to Kim's Lookout (which meant that we had even more steps to climb!). Here's a photo of Eli and I celebrating our climb (with the Admiralty Islands in the background) and then one of our view of the island to the south, looking towards cloud-cloaked Mt Lidgbird (left) and Mt Gower (right).

We spent our last full day on LHI at our favourite spot at Ned's beach. Eli and Addie enjoyed feeding the fish in the shallows and then they hopped on their spyboards - which are basically just glass-bottomed boats for one. The spyboards enabled the kids to have a good look at the reef and all of the fish, although I do wonder what Eli saw since he basically just wanted me to find more and more sea grapes for him!

Here's a sample of what we encountered on our snorkel/spyboard exploration of the reef...

After Eli and Addie were back on the beach, Paige and I had one last snorkel. This time we were joined by half a dozen Galapagos sharks. The largest was about 1.5 m long and it was hard (impossible if you do the math) to keep your eye on all of them. Paige and I enjoyed it, for a while...

As you can tell from this post, we had an exciting, adventurous and non-stop holiday and Eli has had great fun telling everyone about our trip since we got home. I wonder where we'll go next...

Posturing.

2011-03-23T03:58:00.001-07:00

As you will have seen from my recent art-related post, Eli is coming along in leaps and bounds in terms of his talent with a pen in hand. Given that I haven't posted any photos of him drawing, I thought I would, just to show how good he is at holding the pen and sitting up nice and straight whilst being creative...

Just to prove that Eli's not completely angelic and still has some time for activities that don't involving drawing, I came into the living room (not long after taking these shots of him drawing) only to discover him adopting some less conventional postures on the couch (see below)...I'm sure if he knew what yoga was he'd be claiming that that is what he was doing...

Finally, a little top-down control.

2011-03-23T02:18:00.000-07:00

Apologies, right up front, to fans of Eli and his antics, because this is another turtle post. In my defence, enough people have commented on how funny our 'non-shrimp-eating' turtles are, that I think it is only fair that I defend their honour and update their status to predators in our tank now that they've been exerting some top-down pressure on the crayfish (apologies for the top-down term - it just means that the turtles have eaten a few - but I am a food web ecologist after all). As you may recall, we recently bought 10 'feeder' crays and much to my distress, the turtles hadn't fed on any of them. Some have actually grown quite a lot, by virtue of their apparent fearlessness and hunger for the turtle food, as you can see in some of these photos.

But that all changed on Tuesday, when we got home and discovered Zoomy tucking into a crayfish tail!

Eli and I have since checked the tank to see how many crayfish are left (by lifting up the log most of them live under) and we think that the population has been cut by five, which means the turtles probably won't need quite so much frozen food tomorrow morning (although they always seem hungry!).

As an aside, I am, perhaps a little ambitiously, actually hoping that this experience will teach Eli not only a few things about life and death in the animal world but also a few things about subtraction...one can only hope. At least he hasn't been distressed by the loss of a few crayfish, we both actually found it highly entertaining!

Eli's art (r)evolution.

2011-03-10T12:39:00.000-08:00

Last year wasn't Eli's greatest, artistically speaking. Sure, he scribbled a lot with a blue pencil and he learnt to write his name, but other than that the cupboard was bare. He just didn't show any interest in craft - he was more inclined to use his energies being 'crafty'. Part of the 'problem' had been Eli's reluctance to get messy - so he really just wouldn't go near paint.

Some of his more colourful (ie not just blue) and creative 'pieces' from his 2010 period look like these:

Somehow (and I have no idea what has lead to his changed worldview when it comes to paint) he has now decided that he does like to paint, and use glue and use scissors - 2011 must be the year of artistic creativity! Either that or he's just catching up to the kids that were doing all of these things last year. Regardless, there has been an explosion in his productivity (we usually come home with one or two new pieces of artwork every day!) and a measureable improvement in his skill (in my opinion). He's been experimenting with new media, using pens and paints and most remarkably of all his palette now reaches beyond blue...

If that wasn't enough, Eli now holds his pens and brushes correctly, so he has some newfound control that has really come out in his most recent pieces...

Since we're only into March and the changes in his enthusiasm and skill levels has been so dramatic, I'm expecting some big things from Eli by the end of the year.

The 'feeder cray' miscalculation.

2011-03-09T14:35:00.000-08:00

A couple of weekends ago we re-visited our favourite pet store to top up our supply of frozen turtle food. While we were there having a bit of a look around (it's just like going to a zoo, minus the admission fee, so we always make the most of our visits!), we decided that it might be a good idea to buy some live food too, so off we went to the aquarium section. Figuring that our two turtles would really like munching on small crayfish ('feeder crays'), we bought 10 of them and headed home.

Now this calculation of mine turned out to be wrong, for a couple of reasons. First, the feeder crays really liked their new lodgings and after looking around for a little while, they started making themselves at home by hiding in the nooks and crannies around the logs we have in the tank and by excavating small burrows in the gravel. Here are some shots of the feeder crays becoming familiar with their new surroundings...

Second, although it is true that our turtles were interested in the new arrivals, it was soon clear that they didn't quite know what to do with them, which leads me to reason number three - it turns out that live food with claws are quite good at defending themselves, so our turtles soon learnt that the feeder crays did not represent an easy meal. These shots show what a typical early interaction between the crays and the turtles looked like - the turtle approaches carefully, often from behind, before retreating hastily after being nipped!

Fast forward a few more weeks and we now have turtles and feeder crays as pets. Although our turtles have grown, so too have the feeder crays, and, coupled with their feisty personalities I think it is now pretty clear that they're not going to get munched anytime soon.

The outcome of this miscalculation of mine isn't so bad though, because feeding times are now even more exciting to watch. Not only are the turtles desperate to get as much food as possible before it is intercepted by the feeder crays at the bottom of the tank, but they also have to watch out for the occasional nip!

I'm still hoping that the turtles will eventually get the idea and maybe even team up to 'take care' of the feeder cray problem, but for the moment (and while they're still small enough to hide out in the tank) the feeder crays seem to be content in making a home for themselves in our tank. Stay tuned...

Tallebudgera Creek - Top and bottom!

2011-03-01T17:38:00.000-08:00

Earlier this week Eli and I went on a field trip. The intention was for us to watch horses walk through some creeks in the Gold Coast hinterland - part of a project I am involved in which aims to investigate the impacts of horse riding in streams in protected areas. Eli, a big fan of both horses and days off from daycare, was primed to help me out with my work, so off we headed to the upper reaches of Tallebudgera Creek.

We arrived to meet Jo and Pete, some of our colleagues from the Department of Environment and Resource Management (DERM), only to find out that the horses weren't coming - apparently the weather was just too hot (we were expecting a 35 C day) and the riders weren't prepared to saddle up their horses and cross the creek (despite the obvious benefits to the horses in walking through a nice cool rainforest stream).

Thankfully, Eli wasn't too upset about this change in our plans - he just said that 'we saw some horses on the way here' and was happy enough with that. Jo and Pete drove their 4WD across the stream a few times, so at least we could examine the impacts of something crossing the stream, and then they headed off to another site. As for us, well we wanted to make the most of our trip so we stayed behind, got into our togs, and started exploring!

An added incentive, at least from my perspective, was that I'd just bought an underwater camera and wanted to test it out. Here are some pics of the bits of Eli that were immersed...

Of course an underwater camera is also good for photographing stream habitats too, so please indulge me for just a few more photos...

We spent about two hours in the stream, picking up cobbles and looking at aquatic insects, throwing the occasional rock into the deep pool (we are boys after all!) and enjoying the cool clear water.

Eli and I particularly liked spotting these bright blue damselflies, the Arrowhead Rockmaster (Diphlebia nymphoides) and the Sapphire Rockmaster (Diphlebia coerulescens), respectively.

And here Eli is becoming acquainted with a newly emerged adult mayfly, his first.

After talking up this field trip adventure with his daycare teachers, we had to find a few things that we could take home with us that Eli could present as 'news' the next day. Although we collected a lot of live aquatic insects, including a very hyperactive whirligig beetle, Eli was happy to return them to the water. For his daycare presentation, Eli collected some red leaves that had fallen into the stream and I picked up a few exoskeletons (like those pictured below) from recently emerged aquatic insects (that would hopefully make the journey home in one piece).

After a couple of hours in the water we were getting a bit pruney, so we hopped out and had a nice picnic lunch. Eli was pretty keen to stay at the creek, but I pitched to him the idea that we could go down to the mouth of Tallebudgera Creek, near the ocean, for a swim - and he leapt at the chance. About 20 minutes later we were in the water again, this time for a swim and run around on the beach.

Here are a couple of funny shots of Eli in the Tallebudgera Creek estuary - in the first he is mostly underwater and in the second you can see what his hair looked like immediately after the underwater shot.

All in all, and despite the lack of horses, we had a great day. Another difficult day in the office for me...makes me wonder what Eli thinks I do for a job now?

Australia Day 2011

2011-01-26T15:14:00.000-08:00

Australia Day (January 26) took on some new significance for us this year, for two reasons: 1. Eli is now aware that we live in Australia, and 2. Eli is always excited about days off from daycare - I call them weekends and public holidays, he just calls them 'home days'.

To celebrate Australia Day this year, Eli declared that we should "eat pavlova, with strawberries and passionfruit, for breakfast". For those of you that don't know, pavlova is a dessert, so I had to negotiate with Eli on this matter and re-schedule our pavlova eating for later in the day. One of the sweeteners in my negotiating was that we could play some cricket in the backyard first - a very Australian thing to do - and Eli was more than happy to launch my bowling into the garden, and as you will see in the video, over the fence (which is 6 foot high) and into the neighbour's yard too!

After our cricket session (and the retrieval of balls hoisted into the neighbour's yard), we decided to take Zoomy and Swifty for a walk in the backyard. We ran the hose from our rain tank for a while and then let the turtles wander around while I kept a watchful eye out for kookaburras, butcherbirds and crows that would probably enjoy turtle for their breakfast. True to type, Swifty just sat in the water, all tucked into his shell. Zoomy, on the other hand, was keen to explore and I frequently had to catch him and return him to the same section of lawn as Swifty.

Around lunchtime we had a visit from Addie, Ashford and Uncle Jeff - and in addition to having an Australia Day bbq, Eli and Addie had a great cool down (it was a nice hot sunny day) running around and getting sprayed by Uncle Jeff!

True to my promise from earlier in the day, Eli enjoyed finishing off his Australia Day with a mini pavlova, with strawberries and passionfruit. Now I know that I'm a long way from being an executive chef, but I did try to keep it patriotic and on theme by a) representing the colours of the Australian flag using the bowl, the pavlova and the strawberries, and b) representing Australia's sporting colours using the green and gold of the passionfruit. A fiting end to a fun-filled day.

Zoomy and Swifty

2011-01-25T16:22:00.001-08:00

I've been wanting to get some pets for Eli, of some sort or another, for a while now. Our tadpole rearing adventure towards the end of last year had postponed my plans a little, but by last weekend I'd run out of excuses and my enthusiasm was back, so Eli and I went off to our awesome local pet store. I'd primed Eli by telling him that we were going to get a couple of turles and he was very excited about it, although on the way there in the car he announced that "maybe we can get a couple of turtles and a dog!". I quickly defused that suggestion and we didn't even stop to look at the dogs when we arrived.

The pet store had lots of short neck turtles for us to choose from, and thankfully, we were able to pick two that look a little bit different (at least I think so). We also bought all of the other necessary bits and pieces to keep our new pets...I think getting a dog might have actually been cheaper!

Here's our new tank, all set up - the turtles are in there, but they're pretty small so you can't see them in this photo.

Once we had everything set up I asked Eli what he wanted to call our new pets. He said, calmly and confidently, "Sophie and Sally". Whilst they are perfectly fine names, I just didn't think they suited our turtles, so we discussed it some more and decided to name them a bit more descriptively, trying to capture their personalities. So, now we have a turtle called Zoomy (the lighter coloured one) who is a really fast swimmer and generally a bit more active, and one called Swifty (the darker coloured one), who swims more gracefully but is generally quite timid. In the photo below of Eli holding our new family members, Zoomy is the one with his legs out, while Swifty is tucked up into his shell.

Here are some photos of our new pets becoming familiar with their new home.

Feeding times are already really good fun to watch and I'm keen to try some feeder crayfish or feeder fish sometime soon - just to make these little guys work for their meals a little bit more!

Bait boy and the great fishing adventure!

2011-01-10T15:46:00.000-08:00

On the morning of Grandad's birthday (January 4), we decided to try our hand at fishing. Eli has always been interested in catching fish (I blogged about it last summer) and he was pretty excited as we headed out in the boat towards North Shore.

It turns out that his excitement was well justified, because we got some big bites as soon as we cast in our two lines. In fact, Eli and I reeled in his line and found, to our surprise, that we'd caught a shovel-nosed ray (Aptychotrema rostrata). He (Eli, not the ray) was ecstatic - as you can tell from the look on his face in the second photo. I actually really like that photo, because Eli looks like a big game hunter, posing next to his latest prize.

Amid all of the commotion, we pulled in the other line (and another shovel-nosed ray) - two fish from two casts is a pretty good way to start a fishing trip! After taking our photos, we released our rays back into the water...

The bites were still coming and Grandad and I were losing a bit of bait (presumably to more shovel-nosed rays!), so Eli took on the role of 'Bait Boy' - he'd run between us with prawns for our hooks and aside from the occassional dropped prawn (and later a few that he wickedly threw into the water!) he kept us going with his supply of bait.

Just as we were about to leave North Shore, I pulled in a small whiting (Sillago ciliata), which Eli enjoyed holding and releasing.

As the tide was coming in pretty fast, we decided to leave North Shore and head to a quieter spot on the river for some boat fishing.

Before long we were getting some pretty good bites again and Eli started winding his line in. After struggling a little, he asked me to help and before we knew it, he'd landed his first ever yellow fin bream (Acanthopagrus australis). We landed a few more bream, like the one I'm holding here...but as you can see from the photo, Eli was starting to lose interest and we were all ready to head home for some breakfast, so we pulled up our anchor and headed for the beach house.

We landed a few more bream and a moses perch (Lutjanus russelli) in the canal - what a fantastic fishing adventure. Based on this experience Eli will certainly be keen for more fishing action down the track - I just hope that he's a good luck charm and that our success (with bites and catches) continues...

Into the waves...

2011-01-10T14:54:00.001-08:00

You can't really go to Noosa without going to the beach. Having said that, it is sometimes a hard sell to get Eli to the surf beach because he often prefers to go to his 'favourite place' on the sandbank. So, to get us to the surf beach I really had to convince Eli that it would be worth it. Fortunately, in addition to the promise of some waves, there are a couple of other ways I can pitch the surf beach trip to Eli. First, we're always a chance of spotting a koala (one of Eli's favourite animals) on the short walk to Little Cove - here's one we saw (and pointed out to others, including Grandma and Grandad) on our first trip to the beach (the photo is particularly for Eli's Aunty Anne, who still has not seen a koala in the wild!). On yet another trip we saw a large goanna basking on the side of a tree - Noosa Heads is such a great spot for wildlife.

The other appealing feature of Little Cove are the sea squirts (also known as Cunjevoi, Pyura stolonifera) that Eli loves to touch and make squirt whenever he gets the chance. Even though the tide was a bit high and the waves occassionally smashed into us, Eli was desperate to do some 'squirting'...here are a few photos of me holding onto him while he happily squirted away.

Little Cove is great for kids, because the surf is never too wild, there are no troughs or rips and there are always some critters to look at around the rocks. It's been Grandma's favourite beach for a long time and after a visit or two on these holidays, Eli declared 'It's my favourite beach too'!

Despite the poor surf conditions for most of our holiday, I was still keen for Eli to try out the boogie board again. He was really into it, kicking with his legs and enjoying the small rides he had. Hopefully we'll have better surf conditions next time - I'm keen for Eli to have a really good ride (and the odd spill) - I'm sure he'll love it.

After a busy session of board riding and sea squirt squirting, here's Eli enjoying a snack on the rocks at Little Cove. Life is so tough...

One very full river.

2011-01-09T18:38:00.000-08:00

Our Noosa trips are never complete without visits to the sandbank near the mouth of the river. Unfortunately, due to the high tides and high river flows (from all of the rain we've been having) there really wasn't much sandbank to enjoy on most of our visits. This photo shows Eli at his 'favourite place', a small depression between two banks of sand dune vegetation. He always races to this spot when we come to the sandbank (and declares that 'this is my favourite place') - I particularly like this photo because it makes him look like he's on his own little island, complete with a catamaran in the background.

The fact that there was so little exposed sand on most of our visits also led to some confrontations between some of the sandbank inhabitants, most notably the terns, seagulls and bar-tailed godwits that had taken up residence and the young upstart (Eli) that occasionally took great joy in making them take flight.

On several occasions, there was so little sand at Eli's favourite place that we had to bypass it and stop at the North Shore instead, right near the mouth of the river. Here Eli enjoyed the stingy sand (it was quite windy) and he even went for the windswept and wistful look whilst gazing out into the water...

We eventually made it out to the sandbank one day when the tide was low enough for us to have a good look around and to our delight, there were heaps of soldier crabs. Eli loves running into the middle of the 'clouds of crabs' and he picks as many up as he can. Alora is a little more reserved in her appreciation of them, but she's starting to come around to touching them.

These final two photos are from down along the river where we enjoy picnics and fish and chips in the park from time to time. We'd scheduled, and then cancelled and rescheduled, fish and chips in the park a number of times before the weather held off long enough for us to finally do it, towards the end of our holiday.

A little bit too excited about Bindi (in my opinion)

2011-01-09T16:59:00.000-08:00

On the second-last day of 2010, and fuelled by excitement generated by the 'as-advertised-on-tv' promise that Bindi the Jungle Girl would be there (NB Eli was excited, I was not), we decided to brave the crowds and head to Australia Zoo. It was packed, but we were determined to get a good seat in the 'Crocoseum' to watch Bindi 'sing and dance' (and, from my perspective, to see some animals too!)... For those of you not aware of Bindi Irwin's talents, here's a taste of what you've been missing...

Despite my reluctance, I eventually agreed to go with Eli and Alora up to in front of the stage where Bindi was performing...just look at how excited Eli was...I'll be sure to pull this photo out again when Eli turns 18, just to embarrass him - there were a few boys there, but not many.

After Bindi's show, the real stars came out and I don't just mean Terri, Bindi and Robert - we actually saw a great animal show which featured a snake (which swam next to its handler) and lots of different birds which were released into the Crocoseum or, in the case of the Jabiru, flew in from his enclosure! And then finally, after what seemed like an eternity, Graham the crocodile took centre stage.

Here's Graham leaping for his lunch...

And here he lunges for some tucker which he devours (after a customary death roll or two).

Thankfully, Eli likes the animals a little bit more than he likes Bindi (although that popularity contest is still a bit too close for my liking) and he was pretty excited about the prospect of seeing his favourite animal, namely 'koala, horsey, elephant, cassowary, emu' - that's what he always says when someone asks him what his favourite animal is, although the way he says it is something more along the lines of 'koalahorseyelephantcassowaryemu', which tends to confuse people just a bit.

The animals and the enclosures at Australia Zoo are great and we did manage to see all of Eli's favourite animals. Eli was delighted and he was really taken with the Blue Macau's too, so much so that when I asked him what animal did he like best at the zoo he replied 'koalahorseyelephantcassowaryemu and the parrots'.

Eli is impressed that Cassowaries are considered to be dangerous...

We were all pretty tired after a big day at the zoo, but we thoroughly enjoyed it.

Christmas Day 2010

2011-01-09T16:16:00.000-08:00

I must have missed it during the year, but it turns out that according to Santa, Eli had been an extraordinarily good boy during 2010...he absolutely cleaned up on Christmas Day, so much so that we were still opening some presents at 3pm in the afternoon! Admittedly, we did take a few breaks along the way. Here's how the day unfolded...

First thing in the morning (although thankfully not too early, despite Alora getting up before 5am!) Eli, Alora, Oliver, Harrison and Charlie explored the contents of their stockings. Santa clearly does his homework, because the contents of Eli's stocking were overwhelmingly blue and included some plush toys that Eli loves - a blue horse and a blue Penicillin, yes, you read correctly - a blue antibiotic!

After breakfast, Grandmop, Grandpop and Aunty Bam arrived and we got into the serious task of distributing gifts...Eli and Alora were my helpers for this very important task - I read the gift tags and they were my 'runners', taking the gifts and telling the recipient who the gift was from...it was all a little bit exciting to start, but we soon got into the swing of things. Alora got a bit distracted from the task once she started opening some of her presents, but Eli, to his credit, kept on going, delivering the presents to everyone, all day. Maybe he'll become a courier, or a postman, one day?

Here are some shots from the morning - Grandad, Alora and Eli getting into the spirit of Christmas and Eli, Charlie and Oliver helping Grandma opening one of her presents.

One of Alora's gifts was a keyboard with a microphone, so around lunchtime we were all treated to a show. Eli was on the keyboard first, while Alora, quite seriously, sang us a song (she actually had to stop singing at one stage because Eli's keyboard playing wasn't up to scratch). Then they switched and Eli assailed our senses as he yelled a long string of gibberish into the microphone. Not everyone can be musically gifted...

No Christmas Day at Noosa would be complete without a trip out to the sandbank. This year there was plenty of water around (and not much sandbank), but Eli and Alora still had a great time, especially once Grandpop declared himself to be a hungry crocodile! I don't think I've ever seen the two of them run so fast.

After some previous run-ins revolving around a certain blue ball (from a very old post a couple of years ago), it's great to see that Eli and Fudge are now great mates. The two of them often run around together on the sandbank. I actually think that Eli might just be starting to become the leader of the pack...it probably doesn't help that I call him 'Blue Wolf' every now and then...but it seems so fitting.

Fun in the inflatable...pool.

2011-01-09T15:30:00.000-08:00

Another summer holiday and Christmas spent at Noosa. Eli and I arrived there first this year (even before Grandma and Grandad), and Eli quickly made the most of it by enjoying a swim in the inflatable pool, which had, somewhat miraculously, survived the winter intact (albeit deflated). Armed with even more confidence and bravado than last year, he jumped around like a lunatic...here are some photos of some of his spectacular landings off the top of the slide (apparently just sliding down into the water is a bit mundane).

Eli loved it and once Alora turned up the pair of them went a bit crazy with their splashing around. They really are good partners in crime these days and a lot of their games revolve around them teaming up and 'getting' one of the adults...typically Grandad.

As if jumping around in and on the pool isn't enough, one day Eli ended up with the hose at his disposal. As you will know from some earlier posts, he loves a good waterfight, so long as he's on the drier end of the hose... He absolutely loved it and was out to spray anyone within striking distance. Grandad made a hasty retreat into the house, but Uncle Shane was up for the game and Eli's second cousins, Madeleine, Tyce and Brittany got caught up in some of the crossfire too.

Here's a short video showing Eli chasing down and hosing Uncle Shane...

Never lose control of the hose...

2010-12-19T21:53:00.000-08:00

After a recent hot and humid Friday, Eli and I headed home with the promise of a cool-off under the hose in the backyard...

Now on previous occasions I'd held the hose or at least controlled the flow of water, but this time I passed the hose to Eli when the nozzle was on 'jet' mode (just to see what might happen).

And didn't Eli love it...he was giggling uncontrollably initially - and he thought it was particularly funny shooting water over the fence into our neighbour's outdoor dining area... After some time I managed to convince him that the neighbours didn't want any more water in and around their house, so he took to spraying the fence and some of the fruiting lilly pilly's in our yard.

As you might imagine, Eli also needed some 'encouragement' to ensure that the house (and me and my camera) didn't get a good hosing down. Somewhat inevitably, he then accidentally got himself in the face - and after that he was a little bit more subdued and focused on shooting the water up into the sky and 'making rain'.

Eli in the egg.

2010-12-13T12:02:00.000-08:00

Not much pre-amble required for this post. The other day I was upstairs cleaning and when I came back downstairs this how I found Eli, sitting on the couch with a stack of his animals, inside an 'egg' - our upturned dirty clothes bag. He then started giving me a biology lesson, telling me that he (and his baby animals) were stuck in the egg...

Tree up early!

2010-11-23T15:37:00.000-08:00

Look, I know we're early and I'm sure this will backfire horribly (because Eli already thinks that Christmas is upon us and we've still got more than a month to go!), but since Grandma Susan is here at the moment, we thought it would be fun to whack the Christmas tree up now.

First we had to head to the shops to get some decorations - we didn't have many last year - and Eli was very excited to cruise around looking for all of the blue, and often extremely delicate, decorations he could find. Thankfully we didn't break anything and we ended up with a blue-dominated, but not excessively blue, collection.

As soon as we got back home, Eli was into Christmas tree construction mode...

Once the tree was up, Eli was straight into the decorations. On my prompting, he posed for an 'icicle earring' photo, but it wasn't long before he just wanted all of the decorations on the tree.

Grandma Susan and I couldn't keep up with the pace at which he was delivering decorations to the tree, but we eventually got all of the decorations up (aside from a few that didn't come with hooks). Eli was so enamoured with the blue icicle decorations that we bought that he composed a short song...

The finishing touches to the tree included some fairy lights and the hanging of the remaining balls (I had to make a second trip to the shops to get these last few items).

As you can imagine, Eli really loves the tree and declares, quite often as he walks past it, "I love our Christmas tree!". I just hope that he'll still love it after a month and a bit of waiting for Christmas day. I thought I'd finish this post with just a few of my 'arty' shots of the tree at nighttime...

The new blue Mongoose!

2010-11-23T15:26:00.001-08:00

After bike week at Eli's daycare centre a few months ago, I decided that Eli was probably ready to graduate from his red tricycle to a 'big boy bike' with trainer wheels. When I put this to him recently, he agreed heartily, on the proviso that his new bike would be blue.

Since we've got Grandma Susan visiting at the moment, I thought it would be good to get a new bike for Eli now (an early Christmas present from me) and after some searching, we were lucky enough to happen across a suitably sized, and suitably blue, mongoose 16".

I wanted to get a bike that Eli will be able to use for quite a while and I think he'll really enjoy it. So far his 'rides' have been restricted to the garage, but I'm sure we'll soon be out and about on the local bike paths...I think the next task for me will be to dust off my bike too.

As you can see from the video below, Eli is already a competent rider - here he turns the sharp corner in the garage with just one hand on the handlebars...much to my chagrin. And yes, I'm already fearing how his fearless attitude and unconstrained gusto for life will manifested itself out on the bike paths.

Making the most of the rainwater tank

2010-11-23T15:12:00.000-08:00

All of that rain in October has our rainwater tank full to overflowing. So, now that the weather is warming up, we've started using the water (and not just for growing our tadpoles). On hot days Eli loves running through the hose or sprinkler...and I have to admit that I enjoy hosing him too.

Like all good hose sessions out our place, things got a little out of hand (but enjoyable so) once Eli picked up the hose and started wielding it...Grandma Susan and I made hasty retreats out of the range of his attacks.

This session, out in our front yard, came to an abrupt end, as Eli thought it would be funny to spray water onto the road and towards some unsuspecting pedestrians...thankfully, but disturbingly at times, I can read his mind, so I turned the tap off before he sprayed a family that were passing by...

A future Socceroo?

2010-11-08T21:42:00.000-08:00

For the past four weeks Eli and I have been attending a 'Soccer for Juniors' program at a local school. The goal (pardon the pun) is to get kids interested in soccer and to develop some of the skills that will help them down the track. Eli's class was supposed to be a class for 3 year olds, but there weren't enough youngsters enrolled, so the 3s and 4s got rolled into one class. Despite some size and age differences, those of you that know Eli well will appreciate that he certainly holds his own.

Here are some videos of Eli weaving through some obstacles before burying the ball in the back of the net. He even easily beat me (and I used to fancy myself as I bit of a goal keeper)...

Overall it is a really fun course and Eli has learnt how to trap, dribble and pass (NB these are legitimate soccering terms not toddler ones). Not sure if he's destined for greatness, but he kicks well and enjoys a run on a Sunday morning (and so do I), so I think it's been well worth the investment.

Some notes on raising tadpoles...

2010-11-08T21:06:00.000-08:00

We've been raising some tadpoles (of the striped marsh frog, Limnodynastes peronii) for the last few weeks, rescued from our front pond after one of the heavy downpours and subsequent peaks in frog activities in late October.

Eli and I have really enjoyed watching them zoom around the tank and feed on the 'lettuce ice-cubes' that we've cooked up for them.

Since we collected two egg masses, we've got a lot of hungry mouths to feed and we soon found that the tank wasn't big enough (and that I had to change the water every day!). So, to mark the move of the tadpoles from the tank to their new lodgings (Eli's blue clam shell swimming pool), Eli and decided to get some footage of his favourite waterproof Hot Wheels car in with the tadpoles. You'll notice in the video that I found this activity more exciting than Eli did...I guess I'm still a boy at heart too.

NB. I should stress that no animals were harmed in the filming of this video.

The tadpoles are now getting used to their new lodgings and some are celebrating with the arrival of tiny hind legs...and I'm really enjoying the fact that I don't have to fish them out and change their water every single day. We haven't got any more adventures planned for the tadpoles at the moment, but after filling the clam shell, Eli was wanting to set up his car track and launch some of his cars in...I decided that we shouldn't do that.

What boys do when the rain won't stop.

2010-11-01T23:06:00.000-07:00

October was wet. Very wet. Rainfall records were broken and opportunities for fun outside were seriously down on what Eli and I had hoped for (and are used to). Not to be deterred (and because necessity is the mother of invention), we looked for new ways to entertain ourselves.

On one particularly wet and miserable Saturday, we started playing with some of Eli's matchbox cars and a track with a loop that he got last Christmas. Before long we were setting up car jump challenges for Eli's favourite blue car. The first challenge required his car to jump through a red diamond (a flaming ring of fire, whilst tempting, was deemed to contravene the saftey regulations that I've instituted for the living room). Eli was in charge of releasing the car at the top of the track, perched up on our couch and I was the vehicle retrieval crew/cinematographer positioned at the bottom of the jump zone.

Here are some shots of Eli's car mid-flight, with an expectant starter (Eli) perched on the couch watching the action unfold...

Not content with just one diamond, Eli soon pushed the envelope (and my skills as an engineer) as we advanced to even more daring jump challenges. This one pictured below, with a series of diamonds to negotiate, was not quite as easy and certainly more prone to accidents, which occassionally excited, but generally disappointed, Eli (like all 3.5 year olds, he loves to win and doesn't tolerate failures very well).

After some slightly teary disappointments (but spectacular crashes from my angle), Eli much prefered this softer option, whereby the car would fly through the red diamond before landing between the legs of one of his favourite soft toys...

Armed with some additional building materials, when then constructed a blue structure for the car to jump through (after making it through the red diamond). Eli liked this jump challenge a lot, both because of the colour and the vastly improved success rate (I think he reckons that I might just be cut out to become an engineer).

To finish off the session, we had a lights out spectacular, with the only light being Eli's torch, perched on top of the blue structure we'd made...not great video or photographic viewing (so I'm not posting it here), but it was pretty good fun.

After all of these engineering and death-defying stunts, it turned out that we'd spent the whole day inside and didn't go completely bonkers (which was certainly on the cards at the start of the day). I'll have to keep this sort of thing in mind (and swat up on my engineering) just in case this rain keeps falling...

Up the tempo!

2010-09-28T16:59:00.000-07:00

When we got home last night Eli declared that we should make some music. He grabbed his guitar and he told me to play either the harmonica or the keyboard. I chose the keyboard, but not being blessed with any musical talent, I decided to play with some of the features on the keyboard that really don't require any knowledge of music at all. My favourite game is to alter the rythym, bass and chord volumes for the pre-programmed tunes and if you add in some changes in tempo, well it creates the illusion that you are being musically creative (at least Eli and I think so).

Anyway, after playing around for a while and noticing that Eli played his guitar and jumped around according to the style and speed of my background music, I filmed a short piece of him strutting his stuff as I upped the tempo - here are the results for your viewing pleasure...

Bring on summer!

2010-09-27T19:10:00.000-07:00

It has been a while between posts of our adventures at Noosa, but now that we're into spring and enjoying some warmer weather (and since I've often been accused of being a fair-weather friend), it's time to get back to the beach. So, that's exactly what we did last weekend. We paid our customary visits to the sandbank in the river and although we had to contend with high tides, Eli managed to entertain himself by climbing over the vegetation covered dunes and running and jumping into the water.

Here's some of the dune vegetation, with North Shore in the background.

Eli enjoyed jumping into the water, especially when waves created from the wakes of boats came ashore.

On Sunday we had better weather and it was much warmer. Eli was up for plenty of fun...

...and he'd brought along some toys from some previous sandbank trips...

It was another beautiful day on the river.

The high tide provided Eli with some great opportunities to jump off the dune grasses and into some waist deep puddles.

This particular puddle is Eli's favourite spot on the sandbank and he thinks that he owns it. In fact, he took great pleasure in telling me that he was going to chase away another group of people that had arrived at the sandbank and were starting to show some interest in this spot. He was delighted when they passed through without stopping on his turf. I'm not sure how, or when, I'll be able to convince Eli that he doesn't own the sandbank, but I'm thankful that he didn't have to deliver on his promise to chase the other people away...

Here's a happy Eli after reclaiming his territory!

After some great fun at the sandbank, Eli finished the visit off with some sprints along the freshly dredged beach on the canal.

Eli writes Eli!

2010-09-01T23:13:00.000-07:00

Eli has recently really taken to drawing. He's always enjoyed it, but has only just recently opted, without prompting from me, to sit and draw at his table quite a lot (and I must say that I've been very thankful for his interest in this partly sedentary activity).

Now if I had to characterise Eli's works of art I'd have to say that they are predominantly a) blue, b) scribbly, and c) did I mention that they were blue? Here's a typical masterpiece...

Eli's favourite media are crayons and pencils - in fact I think he'll be a sketch artist and not one that works with paints, because he still claims that "painting is too messy" by virtue of his obsessive compulsive perspective on cleanliness. Having said that, he has just graduated to washable marker pens (which tends to mean that I am met with requests to wash his hands more often) and has recently also expanded on his style, most notably by mimicking an aboriginal dot painting that hangs on one of our walls.

Finally and very significantly in my mind, he's also recently mastered writing his own name. Here's his first legible effort at "Eli", with limited coaching and no physical assistance from me. Pretty impressive for a 3 year old I think - although Christy and I did grant him a short and rather angular name to work with...nevertheless, I think this is a pretty solid effort.

Three times one!

2010-08-29T22:17:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we celebrated the boys' (Oliver, Harrison and Charlie) first birthday with a party in the park.

Happy Birthday dear Oliver...

...Harrison...

...and Charlie!

Of course no trip to the park would be complete (for Eli) without a kick of footy, so here are a few pics of him showcasing his skills...

After a run around and a sausage for lunch, it was time to cut the cake! Not many things come in threes (aside from triplets of course), but Anne and Tyden cleverly sculpted a birthday cake in the shape of cricket wickets, with one stump dedicated to each birthday boy.

The fun and games didn't end at the park (at least not for Eli and Alora), because we went back to the house and started unwrapping all of the gifts (while the boys had a nap!).

After bath-time, Harrison, Charlie and Oliver came downstairs to check out the loot...

We all had a great day. I can't imagine what next year's birthday bash will be like, but I'm sure Eli will enjoy it immensely...

Cycling at Sandgate

2010-08-08T18:05:00.000-07:00

After a bit of a strange winter (weather wise), we have finally been treated to some typical winter-time conditions over the past week or so. To make the most of them, Grandma suggested that we should go for a bike ride down at Sandgate. So, after buying a (blue) helmet for Eli in the morning, we headed down to the bike path. Although Eli rides the bikes (tricycles) at daycare a lot, this is the first time he'd had his own tricycle out and about on sufficiently flat surfaces. He was pretty excited...

Grandma and Grandad had wondered how long this ride would last (Grandad said we'd be lucky to last 5 minutes!), but having seen Eli riding at daycare I knew that it would be a) a fast ride, and b) that Eli would take us a long way. It turned out that I was right. Eli sped off as soon as he hit the bike path and Grandma and Grandad actually had to jog to keep up with him (I think they were particularly concerned about the water's edge being so close - lucky Eli is a competent rider!). It was actually pretty funny watching them trying to keep up with Eli, but I'm sure the run was good for them too.

Eli rode for 1.5 km, from where we parked the car up to the jetty, before we stopped for a while and turned around for the return trip. He was a bit more restrained (ie tired) on the ride back to the car, but a round trip of 3km meant that Grandma and Grandad were tired too (and thankful for his restraint).

It was such a nice day down by the bay and Eli had a great time on his tricycle. We'll have to do it again sometime soon, although I might need to ride my bike too, just to keep pace with him. Come to think of it, I might need to put some training in, because at his pace he'll leave me in his dust by the time he's 7 years old (if not before).

Showtime!

2010-07-25T23:18:00.001-07:00

It's that time of year again. We've made it a bit of a tradition to get along to the Mt Gravatt Show and this year Eli was particularly excited. I'd talked up the prospect of going to the show and riding the dodgem cars all week, so by the time the weekend rolled around Eli was almost bursting with excitement. We met Alora, Grandma and Grandad at the front gate and then Eli and Alora were off, with a real sense of purpose, making a b-line for the rides.

After some careful consideration, Eli decided that he and I should drive the blue dodgem car. Unfortunately, the guys running the dodgem cars told us that the really blue one was a bit slow, so we had to settle for a purple and blue number. Eli didn't seem too distressed with this change of plans, just as long as we 'crash into Alora and Grandad'...and I was only too happy to hold up that end of the bargain.

Next on the agenda was the clowns - I think Eli even broke his previous speed record for putting all of the balls in the clowns mouth as fast as he could. I'm not sure if he's speedy strategy always pays dividends, but since every player wins a prize it's not too bad...now I just have to keep those water bombs away from him until summertime...

After a short break away from the rides, Eli and Alora took us back into the thick of the action. They both wanted to have a go on the jumping castle and Eli showed us how good he is with ropes...just look at that concentration and determination as he scales the climbing wall!

One of the real hits, from Eli's perspective, of this year's show was the mouse circus...he was absolutely transfixed by it and took a fair bit of convincing when it was time for us to move on and let some other kids have a look...

Time for a break from all of the action and I finally, after several failed attempts at previous fetes and shows, convinced Eli to try some fairy floss...happy to report that he liked it, but not as much as I did. And yes, I know that it is strange that I want Eli to eat fairy floss...

After a short lunch break, Eli and Alora started playing with some of the toys from their showbags. Eli was quite taken by the blue racing car in his showbag and he raced around with it, with Grandad in tow.

Another fun day at the show...I wonder how big it will be next year...I'm already thinking that there will be more dodgem car requests and I expect that we won't be able to get away with skipping the fireworks either...

In the jungle

2010-07-25T21:02:00.000-07:00

We recently celebrated Ashford's (Addie's little brother) 1st birthday. Jeff and Paige had arranged for a birthday bash up in the rainforest, so I primed Eli with the promise of a trip to the jungle...

Eli really enjoyed the drive up the range, pointing out all of the big trees and the fact that the road was very windy, but by the time we arrived he really just wanted to get outside and kick a ball around...

Once everyone had arrived we went for a bushwalk to the lookout over Purling Brook Falls. Jeff, Murray, Joe and I were joined by five little monkeys standing on the wall - Archie, Addie, Eli, Niamh and Liam...as always, Eli was in the thick of things...

The view down to the waterfall was spectacular and I managed to snap a few quick photos in between reminding Eli that he shouldn't climb on the fence...

Back at the party, Ashford enjoyed opening some presents before it was time for him to blow out his candles.

At the same time, Eli enjoyed blowing on his 'blowout' (that's apparently what these things are called)...

After more running around, kicking balls and playing with sticks that he'd retrieved from the rainforest, Eli eventually found a vine that was just perfect for swinging on. This little video shows Eli and Addie doing their best Tarzan and Jane impersonations...and before long we had a line up for Eli's vine swing...