Hannah and Kiernan's surf lesson on Wednesday, March 4th went well. The waves were much larger than Saturday and the wind was blowing pretty good, so it was much harder for them to stay up on their boards. They both still got up a few times. I managed to snap a few pictures of them. It was low tide, so this means lots of beach for Lydia to run around.
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Ocean Grove Beach, March 4, 2015, BIG waves
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| Warm-up games |
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| Hannah kneeling, Kiernan underwater! |
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| Hannah on her way to standing, Kiernan coming up |
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| Hannah falling, love sports mode on my camera! |
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| Lydia dancing on the beach |
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More dancing
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Kiernan up while Barry and Lydia watch
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Kiernan riding a wave
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| Lydia drawing shapes in the sand |
On Friday, the Ocean Grove Primary School had their annual Apple Fair fundraiser. The school alters their schedule for the day, so the kids went to school at 8:45 instead of 9:00 and got out at 2:30 instead of 3:20. The Apple Fair went from 4-10pm. Kiernan enjoyed spending tickets on chances to dunk the teacher, play in the bouncy obstacle course, and lucky jars. Lucky jars are filled with candy and small treasures. You pay $2 and draw an apple, then whatever number is on the apple is the numbered jar you get. We came home with about 6 lucky jars. Very cool fundraising idea! Hannah enjoyed the bouncy obstacle course and lucky jars. And Lydia liked the bouncy castle and apple bowling. Yes, bowling with an apple and plastic pins instead of traditional bowling.
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| Ocean Grove Primary School Apple Fair, March 6, 2015 |
On Saturday we went to several beaches looking for shells. No luck! So many beaches around here are shell-free or just a few. I just need to ask locals to tell us which beaches have shells. We did some exploring while we were on the beaches. We all get a kick out of watching the cargo ships. We also stopped at a playground in Point Lonsdale. Fun for everyone! We also went to pick strawberries for probably the last time. Sadly, the season is pretty much over here.
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| Learning about rocks, Point Lonsdale, March 7, 2015 |
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| Container ship, Point Lonsdale |
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Playground at Point Lonsdale
Can you spot Hannah??
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Sunday we drove to Healesville Sanctuary, which is in the Yarra Valley. Healesville Sanctuary is a zoo that specializes in native Australian animals.
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| Healesville Sanctuary |
We ate lunch in the Harvest Cafe, and had a koala watching us through the glass.
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| Mountain and animal hospital in the background |
Kiernan and I went to a live talk called Tales from Platypus Creek. Healesville is known as a world leader in platypus care and breeding. It was really interesting and he loved it. They had a giant carnivorous eel in one tank that they fed a fish too. They also showed us turtles and some shellfish. The platypus was most interesting. This platypus was named Wilson, and was busy attacking the zookeeper's wader strap and this object the keeper had in the water. We learned many facts about platypus. I encourage you to Google platypus. They are amazing venomous mammals!
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| Platypus |
Healesville has an exhibit called the Land of Parrots. There were so many beautiful birds and many opportunities to feed them. Red-tailed black cockatoos are huge parrots and can live to be 100 years old!
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| Feeding a red-tailed black cockatoo |
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| Kids turn to feed the cockatoo |
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| Lydia's turn to feed the bird |
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| Flying fox bats, Healesville Sanctuary |
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| Rock wallaby |
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| Spoonbill |
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| We just told them we were headed to the chocolaterie! |
After we left the sanctuary we went to the Yarra Valley Chocolaterie and Ice Creamery in Yarra Glen, Victoria. This place was in what seemed like the middle of nowhere, but there were hundreds of people here! Crazy! They had so much chocolate to choose from, and the lines for ice cream were super long.
We were getting quite hungry at this point and couldn't live on chocolate alone, so we stopped at a little pizza place in Hurstbridge. Great pizza and milkshakes. There was a flock of cockatoos eating bread someone had thrown out for them just down the street from the pizza shop. We watched them for awhile and the 2 cats that were stalking them.
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| Lydia and a giant milkshake |
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| Sulphur-crested cockatoos |
We got home at about 9:00pm, but no worries because Monday was Labour Day, so no school or work! We spent Monday just relaxing. Barry, Hannah and Kiernan went to the beach to boogie board, but only lasted about 30 minutes because Kiernan got too cold.
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Whose feet are cold? Not Hannah's!
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Kids are fighting a bit of stomach bug/cold virus, so each has missed a day of school and we are going through the Kleenex. Getting better everyday and ready for another fun weekend ahead!
Sarah
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