Lots of birthday cheer!

This weekend was another busy weekend for the MacPurdy's. Saturday morning was swimming class, and then I had my sewing class in the afternoon. I hope to have my skirt finished next class!! So far, so good. While I was at my class, Rej very kindly picked up Darryl and the kiddies and brought them to their place. Clo had her birthday BBQ which meant lots of food and great company! Thanks for the wonderful time guys. It is always so nice to catch up with the gang. And Rej and Clo had their friends from Canada visiting so it was nice to hear so many Canadian accents in one room!!! :)

Happy Birthday Clo! Hope you had a wonderful day. Your belly is super cute!

Ah, well done Amy. The cupcakes were yummmmmmy!

And then we had another birthday party on Sunday!

Breagha was invited to a 3rd birthday party for one of the girls in her daycare class. It worked out nicely as Cassie (the birthday girl) has an older brother that happens to be in Shamus' class! Shamus and Harrison (Cassie's brother) are best buddies so Shamus went to the party too.

The birthday girl.

The girls getting ready for the birthday cake! They wore their princess outfits!

Present time!!

The kids had a really great time.

So, lots of birthday fun!!!! We had another super weekend!

Did you know we live with Superhero's?

Oh, it's true!!!

Here is supergirl! She fights the "baddies" (Aussie slang for bad guys) and saves earth! Breagha is happy with the dish towel tied around her neck and a superhero mask! Off she goes to fight the bad guys!

With her side kick..."Stop, you baddie!!"

Now, we don't only go around with the dish towel tied around our neck....we have the full costumes! Batman and Supergirl live in our house!! We're very lucky to be protected by these 2 superhero's. :)

Poor Dad had to be the bad guy and was tossed around by Supergirl and Batman. He was sent to jail for robbing our pillow.

Look out bad guys...we'll find you!!

The kids love to play superhero's. I don't know what it is but Superman, Batman, and Spiderman will never get old.

Boy, do we live for the weekends!!!

We really do. It's kind of sad but true!! Darryl and I are both happy with our jobs but the days can be busy and long so we are always glad to see Friday roll around! (especially Darryl because his office has Friday beer!) Shamus understands that we work from Monday to Friday so he also loves when it's Friday!

We had a wonderful Brissie weekend. The weather has been sunny almost everyday for about 2 months. A bit of rain on one or 2 days but that is it. It's been wonderful. I will really miss the weather when we do leave!

Saturday morning was swimming. The kids are doing really well. Shamus can now swim a bit on his own so it's quite exciting to see his progress. And Breagha is great at putting her face in the water. They both are so happy during the class and that makes us so happy! We were hoping that we could transfer the swimming class in the pool to the ocean but it hasn't happened yet! We went to the beach on Saturday afternoon and the kids still don't show much interest in the water! They just like to play in the sand. I did ask my coworker about it today (her daughter is 5) and she said her daughter is the same. And they're Aussie so I guess it's normal!

Sunday we had Dan and Amy over for a BBQ and it was great to catch up! And to hear that they set their wedding date! Verrrry exciting! Then we all went down to to New Farm Park to burn some energy off the kids! :) I think Shamus talked the ear off Dan. (For the record - Shamus talks...alot) We are very lucky to have friends that can handle being around kids! And our friends here are all so good with Shamus and Breagha so we are thankful for that.

Sunday evening was spent with Purdy and 30 Rock. Ah, that's a funny show!

That is basically a typical Purdy weekend. This weekend is my 2nd sewing class. I'm making a skirt and hopefully it will turn out looking like a skirt! So far I'm really enjoying it. And Breagha has a birthday party to go to on Sunday. This is Breagha's first party invite from a daycare buddy so she's pretty pleased about it. And it's a princess party so I need to find an outfit for her!

27473 words about Melbourne! Give or take a few.

Melbourne is nice. Look at the pics!

Flinder's Street Station. One of my favorite Jet songs mentions this station. I couldn't get the song out of my head every time we passed by here. Good thing it is an awesome song :)

mmmmmmm Krispy Kreme

The kids had there fair share of sugar on this trip. Your welcome Tooth Fairy... you can pick up their teeth at your earliest convenience. These lollies were from a shop that hand makes all there candy (in view of the public no less). I never knew until I saw it first hand. They put sugar in candy!

We were all very impressed with the Melbourne Zoo. The kids thought these were pretty neat. A Meerkat just like Timone from the Lion King? No Pumba though :(

Shamus corrected Stace (very "matter of factly") when she had the nerve to call one of these Lemurs... a Coati. In Stacey's defense we did see a Coati in Tikal, Guatemala and they do have stripes on their tails.

Ninja Pig. You would be standing there one minute and then, out of no where, the pig would just materialize underneath you in a puff of smoke! Imagine that! Thank God he was friendly.

Akidnas... Australia's version of the porcupine I suppose.

It was a long day at the Zoo but at least there was a playground to break up the walking.

Yeah! Playground! WoooHoooo! .... yeah... wooo.... heh... ooooooo..... whew. Good times.

I am in awe of big animals especially cats. It is really sad that these beautiful creatures are endangered. I also got some pics of Snow Leopards, Lions, Puma and a Mountain Leopard. I won't bore you with all the pictures.

This guy was putting on quite a show!

The primate exhibit was awesome!

He looks comfy!

This is what I paid my admission for. This silver back was so cool. He climbed, effortlessly, up to the top of this 13meter tree stump. You can't tell from the picture but man was he high of the ground.

Then he stood up straight as if saying "that's right... this is my house, beeeatch!" Amazing creatures.

The city from the St. Kilda Pier. We went out to watch the penguins.

Our wonderful hosts.

This was on our trip along the Great Ocean Road.

Loch Ard Gorge. This was my favorite place on the Great Ocean Road.

There were lots of sheep farms along the way. The lambs are so cute...and tasty :P

The Twelve Apostles. Well, really there are only seven now. Eight when we were there but another one crumbled just a few days ago.

That is one wet family. It rained the whole day as we traveled the ocean road.

This reminded me of the occasional time you would see a group of white tail deer in the fall in Nova Scotia. Except this was Kangaroos in the spring in Victoria. Close though.

More to come... Maybe. This post took forever.

RiverFire - Fireworks Video...Thanks Rej

Just FYI for anyone who wants to see how great the fireworks are here during the Riverfire Festival. Rej did a video so click on the below link and you can see some pics and then the video.

http://clo-and-rej.blogspot.com/

Great job Rej. Your camera does great videos!

We do promise to post our Melbourne pics next. Really!

Hope everyone had a great week and enjoy your weekend. The kids are back to swimming class tomorrow morning and then I start a sewing class in the afternoon. Should be fun. I'm going to attempt a skirt. I need to make my Mama pride so wish me luck!

I bet you thought this post was going to be about Melbourne!

Sorry... but really, Melbourne is a city. It has buildings, cars, streets, people, crazy people and noise. Now you know all about it. Just kidding... we had a great time and I would have posted about it tonight but something pretty neat happened here today. The lower part of Queensland State (where Brisbane is located) and the State of New South Wales was blanketed with a dust storm from the interior. It grounded flights and caused havoc with public transport, especially in Sydney where it was at its worst. Check out the pictures below. These were taken by a coworker of mine at lunch today.

I must say thought it was cool to go outside. It seemed as if your were stepping into a sci-fi film or onto Mars. We will post some Melbourne stuff next.

Back in Brissie!

Well we just arrived home from Melbourne safe and sound. We had a wonderful trip. Our hosts were fantastic... Thanks so much Steve, Cari and Jesse. The weather was, overall, pretty good. We got a bit wet on the Great Ocean Road but it was well worth it.

We will post a more in depth post in a couple of days. I'm going to soak in the last couple of hours of my holidays... and probably call my mom.

cheers

D