Archie's Baptism

In early April we headed off to Dubbo for Archie Bannon's baptism. Aunty Kate is godmother along with Aunty Tanya and Uncle Craig.

Archie is running around now and has a gorgeous mop of curly hair. Poor little fella wasn't feeling well that day so he was very cuddly.

After the ceremony Nate lead the kids on a "chase me" expedition under the pews.

Here are the kidlets at the baptism party. We stayed with Megsy, Nige and Nate in their new Grangewood abode. Nate and the girls enjoyed hanging out together. I took Toby and Elise to see Nanny McPhee's "The Big Bang" at the movies which they enjoyed.

We saw Mich & Tim. They showed us their big block of land where they are building their dream home complete with lap pool. Busy year for them with the twins on the way.

Here is a play dough creation of Elise's which amazed us and a cute picture of the girls playing dress ups together.

A picture of us on a recent trip to Wiggly Playland (Gisele gets freaked out by costumes!!)

Life has been busy with my colour course. Every spare minute is spent painting or cutting up magasines. I have been learning a lot.

We are off to the Central Coast next weekend for mum's 2nd anniversary.
More pictures soon.

Our holiday in the West

We had our 1st trip to WA as a family for Mark and Dani's wedding in March. After our long flight, we headed straight to Kings Park in the city to let the girls run free. WA is 3 hours behind NSW so we had a lot of time to kill before dark. Our accommodation for the night was walking distance away.

You can see from their faces they were delighted to get off the plane!

The next morning, after being up super early for the sunrise in Kings Park (4am starts are not fun!) we got in the car and drove south to Denmark (4.5 hours). We wanted to make the most of the opporunity to see the south west and get out of the city for a while. By going south, we missed the biggest storm in Perth for 15 years- pretty glad about that. Apparently there were landslides in Kings Park close to where we had been staying.
The girls travel well in the car-after all, they have been in training from a young age.

Here they are running on the riverbank at Denmark.
Our accommodation for the next 2 nights was a farmstay at a place called Avoca Farm Chalet.
There were a lot of animals to visit, chooks, ducks, goats, highland cow, ponies, doggy and guinea pigs.

(L) Mother Duck & Little Duck (R) Hello Wilbur & Lucky

Inside the chalet

L&R) driving the tractor - I remember that being fun as a kid!

The next morning we drove into Albany to have a look around. The weather was a bit bleak but we managed to see some sights before the rain arrived.

Here is the ship the Brig Amity which transported the 1st white settlers to WA. Sean's idea to visit the boat of course. We were able to go below deck (above) and steer (below).

We had our 1st lunch at Middleton Beach, Albany (we found we needed 1st & 2nd lunch in WA because of the time difference!). There was an interesting protest of socks attached to a fence. A hotel was demolished 3 years ago and nothing has happened with the development of a new hotel. The locals think it is an eye sore so they are "socking it" to the developers. Elise was fascinated with all the socks.

Gisele's favourite activity is to run up and down ramps. Here she is at Middleton Beach..

That afternoon/evening we went to visit Sean's Aunty Judy, Uncle Greg and his cousin Alison and the kids- Damon and Sharni. They live on neighbouring properties near Denmark. Greg and Judy have an alpaca farm and Alison and Steve have a horse agistment property.

Elise and Sharni (below) became best buddies once they warmed up! We all had a great time seeing all the animals and having dinner with them all.

Next day we were off to discover more of the great southern area on our way up to Busselton

Near Denmark is Greens Pool. The water is crystal clear and it has really interesting rock formations.

We all enjoyed splashing our feet in the water. It was a gorgeous sunny morning.

The next stop on our drive was the Tree Top walk near Walpole. It was a very windy time with a storm coming but very exhilarating to be up 40m high. The trees were swaying widly and we had bark flying in our faces but we did not feel deterred. The Valley of the Giants is a red tingle tree forest.

(L) On our way up (L) Stopping to look around (Gisele not so impressed)

Look how high on a bouncy bouncy walkway

Here we are in the forest on the ground

Here is Gisele having a good nap on our way to Pemberton. At Pemberton we stopped for 2nd lunch that day. We were thrilled to drive through some incredible forests in the south, although Gisele slept through most of it.

We arrived at Busselton late afternoon. We were staying near the beach and so were able to enjoy a spectacular sunset over the water. We were in Busselton for 2 nights and this amazing sunset was on the 1st night, the next night was a fizzer so that made us appreciate that 1st sunset even more.

We stayed in Busselton so we could do the jetty walk and enjoy the underwater observatory. After arriving in Busselton we discovered the jetty is under renovation. There were big chunks of it's 1841 metres missing. After 140 years I guess it needs doing up....we will have to walk the jetty next time!!!

The following day we drove through some of the Margaret River. We went to Ngilgis Cave which Elise said was "amazing. Gisele was fascinated too, especially when the guide told the girls that there were fairies in the cave. Elise was pointing them out to us along the way.

We had a yummy lunch at a winery. We found a cafe at Hayshed Hill where we could eat outside under the peppercorn tree while Gisele slept next to us in the car. Sean had a pear, pecan and gorgonzola pizza which was delicious.

For dessert we headed to the Margaret River chocolate factory for a decadent hot chocolate.

In the Margaret River there was a Cow Parade exhibition (reminded me of my cow collecting days). There were artistic cows in lots of locations - the girls loved to spot the cows and have a picture.

Above (L) Alien cow. (R) Country & Western cow.

Elise with ocean cow.

(L) Holy cow (R) Ute cow.

On our way back up to Perth we stopped for the morning at Donnybrook. Here was the largest FREE kids playground in the southern hemisphere. Some anonymous person died and left $2 million in their estate to create and build this playground. The girls were just a bit excited about this place.

(L) Elise with apple and pear. (R) Gisele on slide.

(L) Check out the playground (R) Check out Gisele's face looking at playground.

Next stop that day was Gnomesville. One lady started a phenomenon by placing some garden gnomes along a road out near Dardanup. Since then thousands of gnomes have come from all over the world to join them. The gnomes seemed to be scattered as far as the eye could see. A lot of them seemed to be established as a memorial to a friend or relative. It really captured the imagination of many. Below were some that caught our attention.

(L) the bikini gnome remimded me of something mum would have made in her pottery classes. (R) Elise and rocketship gnome.

Bagpipe gnome.

(L) Indigineous Gnomes (R) Hiding amongst the leaves gnomes....

We said goodbye to the gnomes and headed back to Perth for the wedding celebrations.

The lovely owner of the cottage we stayed in decorated the bedroom especially for the ages of our girls. They were very excited about their room and went to bed without any fuss because they were excited to sleep in this room!!

While in Perth we went to Louisa's baby shower. Here is a picture of us at Como Bowling Club with Elaine, David, Grandma & Grandad Edmiston.

The day after the wedding we had a lovely morning at Burswood Park on the Swan River. Our whole time in WA we did not sight one single swan - they must have all migrated or something???

We had a great time. WA is such a beautiful state. We hope it won't be long before we can go back again!!