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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:
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 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?
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!).
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!
