Holidays and a birthday

Well these school holidays are whizzing by...

A few days ago we celebrated Neil's birthday with a morning stroll around

Mount Coot-tha Botanical Gardens.

little girls and ladybirds....

Mount Coot-tha is only a few minutes drive from our house,

it's the mountain where Neil likes to run up and down for a bit of exercise!

 It's a real treasure trove of tropical and native plants,

 and you always spot something different on each visit..

This time we made our way to the Japanese Gardens

and then followed the Children's Activity Path around part of the parkland.

In true Sibs style she skipped and danced around the place.

instead of the easy stepping stones (on the far left) we had to negotiate the trickier ones.

We then had some birthday cake and thermos flask coffee and hot chocolate under a tree next to the lake.

Each time we visit there is a water dragon who roams around this area

...and after a while we spotted him with a moorhen following him around.

I showed Sibs a few things on the computer yesterday and above is her handywork.

She wanted to put  her version of the photos on the blog, so here it is.

(One of the shots had a party hat on the head of the water dragon

but I managed to persuade her that that wasn't such a good look!)

These school holidays are about spending some quality time with my girl and hopefully we're doing just that.

Mornings are lazy and relaxed, then for the first few days there was vacation ballet school for a couple of hours. We followed ballet with a library trip on Monday, a play with a friend on Tuesday and yesterday I took her out for lunch. We have also had dinner guests for a couple of evenings.

 Today is serious chill out day - no plans.

 Time to be able to do things like say 'yes' to the request of "can I make the coffees?"



Time to be able to enjoy a proper morning tea tray.

Talking of trays....here's Neil's birthday breakfast and then evening tray.

The compulsory breakfast in bed tray, and then the grown ups 'child in bed now let's chill' birthday tray!

The olives are from the wonderful place where we olive picked during the Easter break and we managed to find some real Italian Parma cheese to go with the Prosecco - a little taste of Europe across the waters.

Happy Birthday Neil, and Happy Holidays us.

Off now to make a lemon cake - we have an abundance as they were on offer at the markets.