Hello again! This post is basically a picture dump from the month of March... enjoy!
Early in March we went to the Melbourne Zoo with Steve, Michelle, Gemma and Archer. This really brought back memories of when Ella was young. We used to have a zoo membership and we would take her here often. I fondly remember a trip to the zoo when Ella was about 14 months old and my mom was staying with us. Ella fell asleep in her pram long enough for us to have lunch in the zoo restaurant, complete with a glass of wine. What a win that felt like at the time!
This zoo visit was slightly different, with four kids and no one napping in the pram anymore. It was fun having older kids at the zoo, they really got excited about seeing all the animals. We had a pretty thorough visit, it was a great day as the weather was a bit cooler so all of the animals were very active.
The kids all got a copy of the zoo map which they were pretty happy about, and the girls especially were trying to read it to decide where to go next throughout the day:
The lemur area is my favourite. It is in an open space and you are not separated from the lemurs by a cage, so you feel like you are really experiencing their world.
I haven't ever seen a gorilla up this close before!
And of course the butterfly sanctuary! Back in March we still had to wear masks indoors (which is no longer the case) as you can see in the photos.
Ella was dying to have a butterfly land on her, thankfully she got her wish right at the end:
Archer and Ollie:
Gemma and Ella:
Throughout March both kids had a cold, and Ollie was a bit sicker with a temperature for a few days. This meant a couple of days off work staying home with him. It was a little stressful taking carer's leave so soon into our new jobs, but it did mean we both got to spend some rare one-on-one time with Ollie. And he wasn't too sick to join me for a babycino at our local café!
We have far more spiders and other insects around this house than we ever have had in Melbourne before. I'm not sure what it is, and most of them freak me out, but seeing a praying mantis on the window was pretty cool. The kids got our their insect book to read about it:
We spent a day around South Wharf, as we had to get the car serviced nearby. This was actually my first time in the CBD, or the "downtown" part of Melbourne. We had a beautiful day starting with brunch along the Yarra River. The kids are getting to a point where they are not super annoying to take out for meals anymore. Haha. I love my kids but they are not always the best dining partners, and previously taking them out for meals felt like more work than just staying home, and therefore a pretty big waste of money. Things are slowly changing as they get older!
After brunch we went for a walk along the river, checking out the swans and some cool bridges.
Next we took the kids on the Melbourne Star, Melbourne's version of the London Eye. We were super lucky to have clear blue skies and a gorgeous view of the city and surrounds.
Because of covid, everyone is in their own capsule which was nice. A full rotation takes about 30 minutes, which was a little long for the kids. Luckily we had some colouring books to keep Ella occupied:
The kids were pretty impressed with this lego model at the end:
I started running again! Michelle signed up for a half-marathon and I jumped on board, excited about having a running goal again. Pre-kids, Andy and I used to sign up for races all the time and I would love to make them a part of my life again. (Spoiler alert: the race was last weekend and although it was a much slower time than my pre-children half-marathon times, I was still pretty proud of myself for doing it!)
On the last weekend in March Michelle had to go on a school camp, so Steve brought the kids down to Hays Paddock and we all had a good old Aussie sausage sizzle in the park.
Gemma and Ella pretended they were at camp too, making a pretend campfire out of sticks.
And this last picture I just really loved, Ella happily swinging on a swing in the sunshine... what could be better than that?!
Oh, and I turned 40 in March. Bleh. I'm still in denial about that one.
Since I am so behind on the blog I'm just going to hit publish and hope that there aren't too many typos in here. Apologies in advance if there are!
Comments