March 22 - Teddy Bear Picnic and a bottle of Wine

Lilly's Kinder had a teddy bear picnic. They were able to bring their stuffed animals to class and they had lunch outside with their animals. They also made bear drawings and ears. Each kid got their nose painted with some whiskers. When the parents pick up the children, the teacher calls them one-by-one out of the classroom. Each child that came out gave a loud roar. It was very cute.



Lilly's face looks like she smeared a little chocolate around her lip.

The Kinder does various fundraisers throughout the year and one of them is an Easter Hamper (aka Easter Basket). Everyone was asked to bring in something to donate to the hamper (candy, mugs, toys), then all the families were asked to sell raffle tickets. I don't really know anyone to sell the tickets to so I just bought the pack of tickets. When I picked Lilly I was told that we won the biggest hamper. Oh goodie, all the chocolate I could ever want!! Unfortunately, no one put any Reese's of any sort. Sigh!



If you look closely, you can see the bottle of wine to the left of the large rabbit in the back. Too bad the hubby is not here to share it with me!

March 20 - See you soon?

If you haven't heard, Seth has gone back to Michigan. Sounds bad doesn't it? He is there for work, back in Dearborn doing testing. I don't know how long he will be there. We'll say three months for right now. It might be longer. It might not. So if you see Seth, give him a hug from Lilly and I. I'd say give him a kiss but that might be a bit strange. We'll miss him.

March 13 - Lilly's first Soccer Practice

We found out about this great Futsal place that is only about 15 minutes from our house. On Saturday mornings they have an hour long session for 3 and 4 year olds. They spend most of the time doing drills and then a 10 minutes scrimmage time.



I know what you are going to say, she shouldn't be using her hands. They do this relay every week! Run around the cone (they call it a witch's hat by the way) with the ball on your head. The kids enjoy it, I guess that's part of the point.



Lilly absolutely loves it. She always has a huge smile on her face. She does pretty well with following directions during the drills. Once you put all the kids out there chasing the ball down, she sort of just runs around. She did have the opportunity to score a couple of times this past week, but she got too excited and kicked the ball back towards the other end. Oops! She'll figure it out one of these days!

March 7 - Moomba Festival

Let's go back a day to Saturday the 6th. I was on the computer talking to a cousin and Seth was watching a video. I made the comment that it was getting very dark. All of the sudden it sounded like a huge bucket of golf balls were being dropped on the roof. We looked outside and sure enough golf ball sized hail covered our balcony. After a few minutes of that the rain and wind came. It rained for several hours. We went to a friends house that evening but we didn't think much of the weather besides seeing quite a few trees down.

Our friends had the television on and I sat and watched part of the news. This storm had brought so much rain that parts of the city were flooded. They had to close one of the major train stations because the hail had broken a few windows and it flooded. A major sports stadium as well. They showed pictures of the Moomba Festival and it was completely deserted and there was a foot of water everywhere. Talking to a friend later she said they had been caught in the storm at the festival with their young children and it had been a scary experience.

Anyway, we decided to try to go on Sunday to this festival as there were supposed to be a lot of children's activities. If I hadn't watched the news the night before, I wouldn't have known there was a storm and flooding the day before. Everything was cleaned up and running as normal.

So I'm not sure about the origins of the festival. We didn't see the entire thing, but it was a lot of fun. They had rides, a petting area, craft tents and face painting tents. The rides required paid tickets but everything else we did was free.

At the craft tent they were making the flowers attached to the wooden people in this picture. You can't really tell what they are, but that's what they are supposed to be. It was a little difficult for Lilly, cutting felt and then plastic. I did most of it but she liked one of them enough to bring it home.



These butterfly things were walking around and Lilly was scared of them. Once she saw one she was completely stressed and crying but we did what we could to get her to see it was just a person.



The last thing we saw were these cubby houses. They were built by various organizations to be auctioned off to raise money for a group that builds additions on houses for teenagers (or something along those lines). Anyway, several of the cubbies were two stories. One had hook up for water and electricity. They were pretty cool. We did buy a ticket for one that was being raffled. Although if we had won it we would have had to park in at a friend's house. The one we are standing in front of had a ladder to the upstairs which is in the back, more of a balcony. The inside was decorated as if it was a camping cabin. Very cute!

February 25 - a little play at the park

I just wanted to throw this picture in here because it cracks me up. Lilly still likes the comfort of the little kid swings until we get to this park. Then there is this monster contraption that is just crazy. It swings around in a big circle and I've seen kids holding on in all different ways. The kids wanted to sit in the swings and have us push them around. But I wasn't real sure about that and just encouraged them to sit on their bellies and push themselves around like this. It worked but they were looking for more of a thrill!

February 20 - The Symphony

The Melbourne Symphony plays several free concerts in February in a nice park. We've never been to the music venue but we have passed it several times. We met our friends in the park and took a picnic dinner. We sat towards the back where there was a spot of shade (it was a rather warm day) and in a place where the kids could have a little run.



This was not a view of what we could see. We could mostly see the back of the promotions tent. We weren't there to watch the Symphony, we were able to hear it just fine.



We thought we would leave early due to tired a tired child but we ended up staying until the very end. Lilly fell asleep on the tram ride home and it was a very long tram ride due to an accident. Sorry, I was holding Lilly and didn't get a picture of the accident.

Valentine's Day

For Valentine's Day Seth got me a favorite - Mrs. Field's cookies! It wasn't a giant one, but a one person sized cookie. The weird thing was that the icing was different. It tasted different and made it not nearly as good. But don't you worry, I ate the whole thing :)!