Birthday girl!

Alicia turns three today - hooray!

Quite uncharacteristically, she slept in this morning, and we almost had to pile the presents on top of her before she would wake up. However, once she'd rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and collected her wits, she was quite pleased with her haul of presents.

As I write this, she's currently spending the day celebrating with her childcare friends, but we're all off for a special treat tonight - dinner at a lovely little Italian restaurant! The actual party will be held on the weekend - stay tuned for more photos as they are developed.

Fairy cake thief

In addition to being extremely lazy renovators, the Melbourne branch of the Bird family are, alas, also quite slack when it comes to birthday cakes. Nonetheless, Daddy valiantly decided to make at least a token effort, and made some fairy cakes in preparation for Alicia's birthday, so that she could take them into childcare and have a mini-birthday party with her friends.

The batch turned out OK, aside from the icing, which ended up looking like lumpy, deformed globs of melted butter mixed in with a bit of sugar. Luckily, the hundreds and thousands helped to mask the worst of this culinary abomination.


In addition, it appears that we have an infestation of crabs. One of the cheeky buggers even made off with a fairy cake! Luckily, Lucas caught him in time and "rescued" the cake.

Caribbean markets

The Birds (plus cousin) recently had an outing to the Caribbean Markets in Scoresby. Set in scenic, beautiful parklands, with lots of fun activities for kids - a boat ride, a train ride, a bungie tramppoline, even a chair lift! The actual markets themselves did not appeal particularly strongly to the (possibly over-refined) taste of the grown-ups, but we had a fun day nonetheless.

New stools

Out wonderful new kitchen bench was only missing one thing (or three things, to be precise) - a set of stools! We recently amended this oversight, and you see here Lucas modelling the new stools. He now refuses to eat breakfast anywhere else.

First day of Auskick

Today was Lucas' first day of Auskick, and he had a blast. It was a bit chaotic, with parents and preppies running around everywhere, but eventually the kids were sorted into manageable groups, and taken on various drills and exercises. Lots of fun, and Lucas was already well ahead on his kicking practice.



PS. As you can probably note from the photos, Lucas is now officially a Saints supporter. Or at least, he is until he outgrows his $90 football singlet that Mummy and Daddy foolishly agreed to purchase for him!

Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary

Last weekend we all took a nice long drive to Healesville Wildlife Sanctuary. Set in a lovely area, plenty of natural habitat, with lots of native wildlife to gawk at. Standard story, and although the Bird kids have seen more than their fair share of zoos in their lifetimes, they're (so far) still happy to see new ones.

Highlight of the visit was the "Birds of Prey" show, where various quite large and ferocious-looking hunting birds swooped and brushed over the audience for their amusement. They had a Tassie devil too, but despite Daddy's best efforts at cajoling, he flatly refused to make the signature half-growl half-wail noise that they're famous for. Maybe next time...

More child labour

Not content with enslaving our five-year old son, the evil Bird parents have now conscripted their two-year old daughter to help with the gardening. Muh-wah-ha-haaaah!

Seriously though - she saw us weeding and pruning (our garden is a little messy after eight or so weeks of complete neglect - renovations and all, you know...), and WANTED to help. Really.

Child labour

Well, we've been living in our lovely new house for a week or so now, and we've finally gotten around to cleaning up the windows of our brand new sliding doors. Prior to this, these doors were still sporting a rather ugly (but useful at the time) chalky-white zig-zag that the builders had drawn on to stop themselves from accidentally walking into the glass while construction was going on. You see now why we were so insistent on not doing the renovations ourselves, I hope!

Anyway, Lucas insisted on helping, so here he is!

Playing with the neighbour

Alicia shown here, playing with her good friend Maya, who lives next door (actually, behind us on the second half of the split block), and is only a couple of weeks older than she is! They're both finally warming to the concept that they can have more fun together when they actually share their toys - fun days ahead!