I'm handwriting this while I begin my journey to the soccer courts today. I have decided to skip the driving and instead do train to tram. It will take me about 1 hour and 20 minutes door to door. Why would I do that when it only takes me about 35 minutes by car? Because that is 30 minutes of not worrying about the stupid turn my GPS tells me to make that I can't seem to find. Then I'm stuck holding my breath while it re-calculates only for it to tell me I just missed my next opportunity to turn. It has become rather stressful so I opted to skip.
Besides, it is just me today. Seth and Lilly are going to a birthday party. The little girl is the little girl of Seth's co-worker and is turning three. Their family is French as we still haven't started hanging with the locals yet!
Let's back track to last Tuesday, November 4th. This was the Melbourne Cup - a horserace. A state holiday [imagine moving the Kentucky Derby to Friday and giving the entire state the day off]. ford employees had Monday off also and we had talked about doing an overnight camping trip but the weather wasn't very nice. So we settled for a day trip that turned into an afternoon trip.
At noon we piled into the car and headed southwest for about an hour. First stop was Serendip Sanctuary and lunch at the picnic area. We then walked on a few of their little paths. They had kangaroos and Wallabies in large pens you just walked through them and stayed on a path. These two types of animals were separated which was good because I wouldn't have known the difference between the two. Then there were several buildings where we could sit and check out the different ducks and geese. We even saw a magpie goose which looks just like a magpie with a longer neck and legs. The park closed at 4:00 so we had to move along. I don't think we saw all the paths but there was a bit of construction so I'll be interested to go back and see what else they do with it.
Load back into the car and the next destination is only several kilometers away. Our second park destination was call You Yangs Regional Park. This place said no cars admitted after 4:30 so we figure that it won't close but since we are in, we are good.
After a snack we set out on a 3 km hike. the sign said it would take 1 1/2 hours. I thought no way! We can't be that slow. I didn't read any info but the first half of the hike was all uphill to a look out. So yeah, it took us quite a bit of time cause we stopped at the top for a while. I carried Lilly in our hiking pack on the way up and we made her walk back down. She was a bit mad but she got over it.
On the way home Seth and I agreed to find an 'Old McDonalds'. Businesses around Coburg would be closed and we were tired. It was all for the convenience.
Thursday Lilly and I went to our first play group! There were about 7 families there. The ones I talked to were all Aussie - finally hanging out with the locals! I even got a phone number to meet someone at a park. Then at story time the next day, one of the 'mums' remembered me and invited me for coffee!! So, I only had a hot chocolate, still felt like I was one of the cool crowd!
Then there was the weekend and not much happened. Seth got a couple new computer games sent from the states (thanks, Alan and Pennie, especially for the hot chocolate!) so he played a lot. We made it to a shopping center (a mall) but didn't get much accomplished there. And that brings me to the soccer game, which our team won and I scored one more goal!
In order to make this up to date as of me typing. Today is Monday and I went to another play group. This one was structured although there were only 2 children. Lilly enjoyed it and the group is designed for those children who don't get into 3 or 4 year old kinder (pre-school). There has been such a boom in the children population the council can't keep up. There aren't enough kinder programs or even day cares to keep up with all the children.
Ok, I'm going to see if I did the layout for this entry correctly. Hope it isn't too confusing. I didn't really edit too much.
Have a good one!
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