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Today, 13 June 2011 marks the Queen's official birthday. As a family we started the morning with a drive to Grants on Sherbrooke. This place has been recommended by friends of ours. It is only about one driving hour from our place and hence the closest bird place we are aware of.
Prior to leaving we had to get a huge bag of sunflower seeds. Was a good recommendation as well as the birds there were quite picky but loved the sunflower seeds.
Overall a great place to be, although we arrived a bit late, i.e. after the tourist buses. Still, we got to feed some Rosellas and Sulfur Crested Cockatoos.
The experience was great, apart from the fact that Sydney's finger got picked by one of the Cockatoos. No wonder she preferred to feed the smaller Rosellas.
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First of August marks the Swiss Independence Day. This year we decided to participate at the parade that the local Swiss club organizes. We learned about this parade too late to order lanterns (lampions) from Switzerland. Searching for them on the internet was not successful either. Well, the next step is to turn this into a handcrafts exercise. We decided to make the lanterns from Papier Mache.
Tyler and Thomas had a great time working through the mess of layering paper snippets around balloons. Only a few layers were needed to create a sturdy basis for a lantern. Once thoroughly dried we entered the next phase of painting them. Sydney was all excited, she participated and loved the painting with her brother.
To finalize the lanterns, Thomas built some handles and organized electronic candles.
The day of August first was fantastic; it was dark early and a one after one a group of Swiss found their way to Federation Square. There, the club had organized that the Swiss flags were flown together with the Australian banner. we walked along the Yarra with drums and lanterns. After a quick stop to sing a few songs, we moved on to the Swiss club, where the little ones got a refreshment (and the older ones bought some Lemon Lime and Bitter).
All in all a fantastic evening together as a family.
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Okay, this was the day. We picked one of the last days when Tyler was with us to get our Christmas pictures taken.
The day turned out to be quite overcast and on the cold side. Oh well...this was our only chance with everything aligned, i.e. the photographer, the kids here and up. So we had to get there. We spent about one hour to get a lot of pictures taken. We should get them soon and can then pick one for a Christmas card. Stay tuned!
In the aftermath Thomas had to use his new application on his iPhone to take a panoramic picture of the environment.
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Tyler's last day in Melbourne for a while. We decided to spend a little bit of time at the Enchanted Maze at Arthur's Seat. The timing was good, we arrived around noon and spent ninety minutes walking through mazes, petting animals and sliding on inner tubes.
This was plenty of time (and fun). On this day we not only were welcomed with nice sunshine but there were also hardly any people there. As a consequence we had the park almost to ourselves.
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Sydney has been looking forward to the weekend. She knows that the kids "carnival" opposite from Costco is open over the weekend. So she keeps asking to go there over and over again.
When there she wants to do go on the trampoline. These two movies show her excitement on the trampoline. The first movie shows Sydney at the very beginning on the trampoline before the cords have been tightened.
The second move shows her after the tightening of the cords. Sydney is trying to backflip. Soon she will learn how to pull her knees up so that she can do flips by herself. I am sure we will be going many more times.