A fun day with family

Went to Joondalup for the day while the car was being serviced. Jonathon and Jack went to Timezone for an hour or so while I shopped happily!

Met up with Dad and Jane to have lunch at the food court.

Looked around at some of the new shops. Found some amazing scrapbooking paper at Kmart. 162 pages of grungy, arty, awesome papers! Got a new spiral booklet, containers for alphabet letters, glitter paper, tags, loving!!!!

Went to the cinema to see Bedtime Stories with Adam Sandler. The bug-eyed guinea pig is the star of the show! So funny!

Visit to Sci Tech

We caught up with our French friends, Genevieve and Simon. Jack and Simon met in Kindy. We caught the train to the city. The city station has changed so much. Now, a lot of it is underground. I would have got lost on my own! It still looks great. In one place, historic, in another, high tech.

Sci Tech had changed heaps too. The science displays always fascinate me, because I really don't get science at all! The concepts are just way too advanced for my thinking. But it is fun to explore! In one display, the boys had a go flying over the city in a simulated plane. That was pretty cool!

The train on the way back home was packed to the rafters, and people either had a mobile, a big, fat novel, or an ipod of some description.

Even more of our day trip!

After Gingin, we drove to Lancelin, a little seaside town. We went out to the sand dunes, and thought we could use Jack's boogie board as a sand board, but we have since learned that a sandboard is curved, and so the boogie board thing didn't really work. But it was worth a try, especially for seeing those pure white dunes!

And a whole lot of expensive vehicles! (If you look carefully, you'll see lots of little sandboarding tourists on the hill in the background!

We had planned to go fishing, but we were all exhausted after our adventures, and Jack was feeling quite sickish, so we headed home.

More of our day trip

The Gingin Observatory also has a Gravity Discovery Centre, with many displays to demonstrate the force of gravity. It is educational (particularly for science buffs) and fun too!

You can also go on a night tour where you get to view the night sky through massive telescopes. I haven't been on one of the night tours at Gingin, but I did go to the Observatory in the hills (hmm, can't remember exactly where, Toodyay, maybe??) in my uni days, and that was a LIFE CHANGING EXPERIENCE! To see the moon, Saturn, and Jupiter up close for real (as in, not in a book or photo) was awe-inspiring!! It brought me close to tears and was real lump-in-the-throat stuff. If you are ever near an Observatory, book in for the night tour (they are only at certain times of the year). You will not regret it!

The faceted dome building is a work in progress and has a fascinating display around the walls of the evolution of our galaxy, earth and its inhabitants.

The Leaning Tower in Gingin was built to lean on a slant, it is not slowly collapsing! You can get a certificate for climbing it. We did! You don't actually get a sense of the building leaning when you climb it, but in wintry weather, I imagine the winds must howl around it and make it tremble! All I know is it is 13 stories high and you definitely get a sense of that! I can't even show you a photo showing the slant, because you would have to be way over on the other side to get that angle.

Every now and then, there is a glimpse of flowers in the natural surroundings. Beautiful!

The cafe has hot food until 3pm, and yummy cakes! (Always on the lookout for those!)

You can spend a good two hours there, looking at everything.

Also, not too far up the road, there is a honey farm where you can buy all types of honey and even honey ice-cream. Yummo!

The Leaning Tower of Gingin

We went for a day trip to the Gingin Observatory. We have been before, but there were some new buildings this time.

The boys were so excited about climbing that tower. Me, not so much. But climb it we did. Here are my boys on the way up.

Then at the top.

Looking down, you can see the shadow of the tower. It is the tallest leaning tower in the world! We each dropped a water balloon down a pipe to the sand below. Jack and Jonathon watched them burst, but I couldn't look!


This is when you realise they built this place in the middle of nowhere!

On the way down. A 37 degree day and the wind was vicious on the tower!

And back on ground level. Legs are like jelly!

(You can tell a man designed this thing!)
Two days later, and my leg muscles are still sore from climbing up and down the tower. Never again!

Sun and surf

Jack had been begging to go to the beach all holidays, but it really has been too hot. Finally I gave in and took him, on Friday, to the Lagoon. We stopped for some hot chips, an ice cream, and a bottle of water at the Beach Cafe.

The sand was beautiful and warm, and the breeze was in.

The water was pretty rough but Jack likes it that way; the more waves to catch, the better! He is really into Baywatch at the moment, so he was showing me his Baywatch moves, including slow-mo running to the water! He's a crack-up!

It is a pretty place to be!

Shopping

On Thursday, Emma, Jack and I picked up Jonathon from his work and went to BCF (Boating, Camping, Fishing) to look for fishing gear for Jack.

Jack sussed out the rod he wanted. (This is serious men's business!)

Can you believe these pink fishing rods? The label is LipStix!

After BCF, we went to IKEA (LOVE IKEA!!) I was on a mission to get some goodies to make my new furniture look glam, because after taking down all the Christmas decorations, it was a bit bland. First stop was the cafe, for a delish hot chocolate and yum apple slice. Funky curtains!

I'm loving how my sofa table looks now! (Although I still have to get a frame for the print, but they were out of stock.)

The candles were a Chrissy present from my education assistant, Emma (a different Emma!), and they smell divine! The AVENY vase (which yes, looks a little like a beer bottle, but is actually tall and elegant) was $22.95 down to $6.95!! So many bargains at IKEA at the moment, especially with decorating accessories and prints. I got some other things too, mainly shelving and boxes, but haven't set them up yet.