madeline's scitech excursion

last week madeline's class went on an excursion to scitech in west perth. scitech is a science and technology education (and fun!) centre for children - and adults too i guess. it has been open since 1988, and as usual it was way too much for their minds to handle when i told them i have been there on a school excursion more than once when i was in primary school. mind blown for them haha. she tolf me she had the best time and the photos prove it... here she is with her friend ella hanging out. this is  the lift your own weight chair, which has been there as long as i can remember.

another shot - with her friend briella. she was a bit taken aback when the information about the excursion went out, as i said immediately i didn't want to go. i have been on every excursion she's had since pre-primary, but i honestly couldn't be bothered this time. she was surprised, but not upset thankfully.

i was very jealous of their trip to the planetarium (previously the omni theatre) afterwards. i loved that place! and last time we went to scitech as a family i couldn't go in as alex was asleep (and not old enough to go in as the chairs are super steep!) and i wanted niques to get to hang out with them a but more while she was here. it is so cool in there, the seats are very steeply tiered and the movie is projected onto the dome. they used to play movies like speed (about the evolution of movement from bicycles through to modern day rollercoasters) and antarctica (exploration of the very southern points of the earth) but now it's used as a planetarium, which made me even more jealous. i'll have to go and check it out one day.

i am so glad that my kids get to have experiences like these - living in perth certainly has its advantages!

city with the pinkers

it's all over, everyone has flown out - and it's time to relax and chill a bit before school goes back next week. we took a trip to the city today with the pinkers and i had my first experience at sushi train. joseoh was just happy to have dom back to himself.

alex was thrilled to be next to nannaleah

and it was a good day. the food was delicious and we made quick work of a big stack of plates

a very big stack of plates haha.

we then explored a bit... walking around looking at random things and finding pretty places for photos, like this greenery outside woolies in the city.

this rainbow ceiling near typo

and the fountains in forrest chase.

we felt relaxed for the first time in weeks and it was so good to not have to worry about anything anymore. i feel like we can rest now and then get onto the next part - emptying the house and getting things sorted.

it can always be worse

(photo by ben merrick - found on facebook. showing the sheer size of the fire against the horizon from perth, taken tuesday evening)

just when you think things couldn't possibly be any worse... don't. cause they can. 

at 1:47 tuesday morning, we received a text message telling us to evacuate our home, because of the threat of an out of control bushfire burning in the perth hills. it had started in woorooloo and rapidly spread along to become a threat to the people in our area. we found ourselves packing our car with irreplaceable items, then moving to dougs mums house which was in an act and watch zone, compared to our evacuate zone. we arrived there at 4am, after filling both cars with fuel (in case we had to move again! not that we could go too far, the regional borders have been raised again to assist with the current lock down situation so we couldn't even go to my mums which would have been the most logical solution) only to have alex think we had arrived at grandma's for a play. it took hours to get him back to sleep again. 

i must admit i had barely thought of the fire until almost midnight, i had seen it started half way to my parents so had messaged them to check in, not realising it was headed our way! i'd even asked one of my nieces how they were... before finally looking it up and noticing where it stood in relation to us. bit silly of me considering the amount of smoke and dark skies it was causing over our way.

i won't lie. i was so freaked out when we got that message. what to do, where to go... the only thing i was truly certain of was what to pack as we had had a similar scare the summer we moved into our house, just not nearly as close. i carefully moved documents, jewellery, photographs, hard drives, baby books and other things to boxes and put them in the car - i had made a list and saved it, in case we ever found ourselves in this situation again, and i am so glad i did! before we left our home i asked doug to place his hand on the door and bless our home. i was so worried for what would be, but in that moment, i felt confident that our home would be okay. i was still nervous, but i felt confident in another way.

all day tuesday the light was crazy. a dark yellow haze fell over the area, it was so quiet, other than waking to the sounds of the choppers going back in to drop assistance retardant and water on the land. it started to rain ash everywhere and all we could do was wait and pray for the best. i kept praying and hoping and wishing that ll would be okay with our home and the homes of friends and loved ones within the area.

we returned home wednesday around noon, even though our home was still in the red evacuation area, we felt confident it was safe as our neighbours and a few others nearby were home. a few hours later, our home was moved into the yellow watch and act zone. we still await news from the school, due to being in a red/yellow emergency zone they have to have the school inspected and cleared to reopen monday. fingers crossed!

even now, friday night, (lockdown has been lifted a few hours ago with no further community cases coming to light - yay!) the fire is not completely under control. there has been erratic winds this entire time causing it to be unpredictable and out of control. it was more than 75kms in length at one stage, 85 homes have been lost and thousands of acres of land. but. the response of the firies and the public has been phenomenal. even during evacuation, people wore masks, socially distanced and gave the best of themselves. help has come from everywhere. hundreds of fire fighters were and still are fighting for people, homes and property. not a single life has been lost. 2 aerial tankers were sent from the eastern states to help. and people have prayed, for a miracle. rain is forecast for tomorrow and a few days after and i still hope it will give them the last of the relief they need to get this fire out. 

 

all good things must come to an end

on saturday morning this was posted on the wa premier mark mcgowans facebook page. what a huge achievement for our state. massive. something we could all be really, really proud of. i was stoked, it's been incredible here, such a blessing to live life virtually as normal, with barely any restrictions really, other than the hard border in place and any people arriving from an international destination having to quarantine. i had even said to doug just that day how lucky we were, with all the outbreaks and mishaps causing them, we'd still somehow managed to survive without a single one. it's obviously luck i said, because all it takes is one slip up and it's over. maybe i had a premonition, because the very next morning, it all came crashing down. a locally transmitted case of covid-19 was diagnosed, a security worker, working in one of the designated quarantine hotels. cue insanity.

we were sitting in church, our very first two hour session since march last year. our stake president was there and was the final speaker of the meeting, saying how grateful he was for the freedom we have, that we were going back to two hour church, that the temple would be reopening next week... while all of us in the congregation were eyeing off the messages that were flying around the chapel, about the lockdown that would begin at 6pm that evening for 5 days, outlined in the press conference that had taken place during our sacrament meeting.

funniest bit was, our kids were due to go back to school today... they took great delight in watching my friends kids go back in the wheatbelt, while we in the perth, peel and great southern regions have been delayed until next week (we hope!). masks are now mandatory (thankfully we'd had the foresight to buy some for all of us a few weeks ago, to protect dougs mum if the need arose) and we will be wearing those during lockdown if we have any reason to leave the house. 

my favourite part so far has to be when, at 6:07pm sunday night joseph announced to me, ""mum. lockdown sucks! i had no idea how badly 7 minutes could affect someone haahah. kids mate.

a lot of people have a lot to say about all of this... but i have one thing to day. our premier has acted immediately. he has put the welfare of his state above any thing else and i am so happy with his response. the person who has contracted the virus has been so many places that he can't afford not to act. being in lockdown for 5 days to again reach the goal of so many months of freedom is a very small price to pay. i am only too happy to do my part. 

wa. let's do this!

 

boxing day in the city

after a huge day with heaps of people about, this is how our littlest babe spent the morning well past the time he would normally be causing a ruckus. he was absolutely exhausted...

but got over his grumps quickly when madeline let him listen to bts on her new ipod. he was so proud of himself.

due to the insane people that came along with my husband in marriage (his extended family - and don't worry i have already told them this...) we went into the city for the boxing dale sales. oh my word. i would rather die than do that ever, ever again. there was some adorable photo ops for the kids, but the place was nuts.

this made me laugh so hard, joseph refused to move away from the "nice" door and madeline was very unimpressed.

so an argument broke out...

but she finally got her way. she is nice too. the nicest kid i know.

joseph was bored as anything and kept telling me - and i am writing this down so i can remember it in the future and hopefully laugh about it, but oh. my. gosh. favz and josh and doug went into culture kings and stayed in there browsing and buying up a storm (on favz credit card thankfully) for three freaking hours. oh my goodness. i nearly died. oli and i were outside sitting in the mall with alex who was grumpy as anything, but got a full nap in in the end, because they took that long. people have divorced their husbands for less. and after all that, they bought so much stuff, and nothing for me. i see how it is. 

london court my all time favourite place in the city was decorated festively and looked amazing.

there was still cute displays up all over the place and it was fun (for the first hour hahah) but i was sooooo glad to go home. never again. not in a million years would i go to the city on boxing day. case closed.

 

peninsula farm

today madeline's class went on an excursion to historic peninsula farm, situated on the maylands peninsula. it was a pretty cool day for all of them considering their focus in society and environment this term had been learning about history - "the olden days".

they arrived at the farm and learned all about the original owners, the hardey family - who had a lot of children... girl after girl after girl until they finally got a son. who was then shipped back to england for a proper education at a young age and didn't see his family again until he was something like twenty years old!! i was horrified by this of course, but have to admit that some days,  the idea has merit. haha.

we then played olden days games (like skipping and horseshoe tossing) out the back of the house, before having a tour of the house, with it's low doorways, attic space and big cellar. it's pretty awesome!

i especially loved their food jars all set up. it looked really cool. seeing how the families lived all those years ago was a really awesome day. my favourite part was at the end of the day when they had all the children seated together and showed them a whole bunch of items from this time period and asked them if they could identify any of them. us mums knew some of them but not all, and the kids only got one i think! funnily enough, i remember a similar experience at my own school with olden day studies. i loved learning about earlier times and still do. antiques and shows with period times are the best.

madeline loved making windmills with her group the most and loved the whole day so much. she insisted that i needed to sit with her on the bus which was the cutest thing ever... i really thought she would have wanted to sit with one of her little friends, but no - she wanted me. i felt very loved.

first time at the drive-in

can you believe i have made it to age 35 and had never once been to the drive in movies? it took running into a friend we hadn't seen for quite some time, (who had her grandsons staying with her for few days during the holidays - they are similar ages to joseph and madeline) to finally make it happen. they had planned to go and asked us to come along.

(sorry for the terrible shot - purely so i have a record of how it's set up)

i loved it! i baked a pile of stuff that afternoon to bring along so we would be well fed - (i mean i think i probably could have fed our friends and the car on the other side of us as well if i had wanted to) which the kids gleefully shared with us adults before settling down to watch the movie.

(side note, if you plan to really enjoy your night, ensure the movie isn't complete trash haha. the evening movie was angry birds 2. oh my goodness, give me strength.)

her royal highness madeline waiting for the movie to begin.

alex loved it too, but seemed a little confused as the night went on as to why no one had produced a bed for him to go to sleep in. he snuggled with both of us, but was not very comfortable at all - just wanted to go down for a proper sleep. also noted for next time.

it was such a cool night. i will 110% be coming for another movie at some stage. i excitedly told dougs dad all about it and he was so keen to come look. he told me all about the drive-in's he went to when he was younger (as did my dad when i told him! haha) and was loving it. i hope as time goes on he gets well enough for us to make it happen. there are so many things we still want to do with him. ❤

scitech!

dougs sister is off back to america tomorrow and today was our last day with her. so i did something that's completely against everything i stand for and took my kids out of school for the day so we could all go to scitech together. i haven't been to scitech since i was in school myself and barely remember anything about the place - but i do know from everything i have read online that the school holidays are absolutely not the time to go. apparently it's bedlam and you can barely move in there, so considering how many times the kids have asked me if we can go, i decided today was the day.

they have so many cool things to look at and do. so much to learn and so many activities to try. you could easily spend a whole day wandering around looking at everything. this one in particular was a air cannon, which created a push effect on the pieces of metal that make up the target, looking as though something was really banging into it!

this wall was part of the emergency services area and the kids loved having a go at getting up it.

and as i found on my way to the bathroom, they have a double mirrored hallway, creating an eternity effect... (kind of wondering if they ripped this off from our temples? haha!)

there was even a lookout area in the "cafeteria" to the far end of the building... which allowed some amazing views into perth city. you could look right up and into some buildings. they also have a live bee hive inside the building (all boxed in with clear acrylic caging so you can see everything), with an entry from one side, so you can watch how bees create their hive and honey. i loved looking at that!

i was a bit bummed that i couldn't go into the planetarium (formerly the omni theatre when i was young) to see the stars and planets show, but there is an age restriction. so baby alex and i checked out the gift shop then sat outside and had some snacks while the others checked it out. maddie made it even worse when she wouldn't stop telling me how amazing it was, but there is always next time. i love the stars, i'll definitely have to check it out sometime kid free.

we had a great day and are going to miss aunty so much! 

kings park in the holidays

we are so so lucky to live where we do. surrounded by amazing weather all year round, awesome things to do (and so many of them are free!), beautiful things to see and gorgeous parklands. after our morning at the subiaco library, we took the kids over to kings park for a picnic, a play and a bit of a stroll.

we headed out over the path towards the treetop walk, because in all these years we have never done it... and now i seriously regret not going to look at it sooner, it is a-ma-zing. seriously, look at these views. kings park is situated above perth city, looking down from west perth and has views for dayssss.

like this one, of my favourite building in perth, the old swan brewery. i seriously wanted to have our wedding reception here, but it was wayyyy out of our price range.

everyone looking super excited about todays adventure haha

more views of perth city from the path down to the treetop walk

so, here is what we were walking around on: a walkway built to be amongst the tops of the trees and then a suspended glass and steel arched bridge that reaches the highest point. it's all completely pram accessible, so it was easy to get through.

some of the beautiful bush on display as we walked about

a rare picture of doug and i 

and all of us in the water garden rotunda at the base of the treetop walk. joseph looks like he has had enough, while alex was overexcited.

we had the best family day we have had in forever, nothing to worry about - just time with all of us together, having fun.

perth, we love you!