Eli the big schoolboy!

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!

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.

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!

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

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!

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

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!