Fur Seals

Flinder's Chase National Park, Kangaroo Island,

Did you know we have Australian fur seals? I didn't, I thought they all lived in Antarctica or something. But we do and here they are on Kangaroo Island.

Josh at the look-out.

How cool is this arch, and the board work is pretty nifty too. But the smell when you get here!!!! It is pretty stinky!

I don't know how the seals get up on the rocks without hurting themselves.

Here's a big guy

This looks like a Mum and it's pup.

Happy in the sun...

Happy family times! (But by the end of the day Hayden told us he didn't want to see any more seals!!)

Glenelg!

My family and I lived in Glenelg till I was ten years old and we spent a lot of our times on the beach. It has a lot of great memories for me. It has become so much more developed since then, you can big hotels and waterslides in the background here, but it was still a great place to visit.

The water is a lot flatter then the Queensland beaches, but so sparkling and clear.

We just loved it.

It was a really cod day for summer, so I have my jumper on. Three days later it was about 43 degrees!

Here are the boys, so keen to hop into there water!

Can't go past the lolly shop!

We had to get a gelatti! Hayden is trying out Banana and Mark had a Bacci which is chocolate and hazelnut. Yummy!

Hayden in front of the tram, he would of really loved to have a ride, but we ran out of time.

So good to back again and the Orange Spot bakery, which we used to go to all the time, was still selling custard tarts, frog cupcakes and kitchener buns. So yummy!

Seal Bay, Kangaroo Island

The last time I came to Seal Bay, I have a vague memory of walking over a huge sand dune, then seeing some seals on the beach. These days it is much more fancy. Look at this huge boardwalk down to the seal area!

My boys saw this as a great opportunity to have a race.

 

Look at these cool bones, they look like a type of dinosaur's! They are of of young humpback whale that caught on the beach.

Kangaroo Island had three types of seal on the island. Australian sea lions, Australian fur seals and New Zealand fur seals. The sea lions prefer the sandy back where as the fur seals like rocks (pictures of the fur seals coming soon).

 

How cute are these little sea lions! They stayed together the whole time we were down.

How cute is this photo of a Mother and baby.

Here you can seethe beach with a whole lot of seals. It took a while for us to work out which were the makes and which were the females.

 

Here is a seal coming out of the water.

It was such a lovely place to visit.So beautiful.

 

Here is just a random picture of the clouds, they were like little cotton balls that day! :)

 

The Best Beach in the World- Stokes Bay, Kangaroo Island

This must be one of the best beaches I have ever been too.

The last time I went to Kangaroo Island, I think I was like ten. So this trip I am trying to remember the places I have been, but it is all very vague. I did remember the awesome beaches though.

So in the morning I was reading a guide book of Kangaroo Island and choose the North coast to go and explore. We arrive here at Stokes Bay and all we see are rocks. So we are thinking, 'ok cool, no swimming but we can have fun with the rock pools'. But there are heaps of cars parked everywhere and I am thinking where are all the people from these cars?

Then we see a little sign "Beach", this is starting to look really cool...

So we go up this path that winds its away around all these rocks...

A little cave...

And it comes out at the most interesting beach.

 

Part of the beach is those huge rock pool you can swim and snorkel in, it has quite a few different fish and is about waist deep. Then the rest of the bay is a normal beach where you can swim in the ocean and catch the waves, which Hayden just loved.

Mark tried a little fishing, but didn't have much luck.

It was such a warm, beautiful day.

 

 

In this shot you can see the rock pool, with the normal beach behind it, with the big hill that comes right up to the beach. How magical is that?

 

It was such a great day, we had to drag the kids home. Wishing I could be there right now!

Christmas cupcakes

While we have been really trying to be healthy this year, Christmas is a great time to have some fun baking. So for the boys school Christmas party we made some reindeer cupcakes.

Here is one of them. I just made chocolate cupcakes. Used pretzels for the horns, mini marshmallows for the eyes and jaffas for the nose.

I like everything to look neat and cute. 

The boys had a lot of fun 'helping' and they got a bit carried away.

They did a whole tray of these *sigh*. While I made a comment to them about how they never let anything be nice and pretty, this just encouraged them further!

Hope you having crazy Christmas fun at your house too!

Christmas Decorations- Gone Crazy!

This year I have been working as a teacher aide at the boys school. One day when I was helping in Prep I came across these cute Christmas decorations and thought it would be a lot of fun to do with my boys. I love doing craft and it can be hard coming up with things that boys would like to do. However the boys used their creativity in a different way then I expected!

This is the first one I did, I call it the classical gingerbread man. Hayden called it 'boring'.

 

These are some of the ones he created. On the left we have the 'crying girl' gingerbread man. on the right the 'ninja bread man'.

 

Here we have the 'robber' gingerbread man (Hayden painted a gun in his hand), Seth decorated one he calls 'the gingerbread man who ruined chirstmas' (see the evil grin).

 

We really got into them and created a whole stash!

 

While the boys creativity went in a different direction then expected, it was still a lot of fun. Though I made sure I kept a few decorations that looked pretty.

Merry Christmas everyone!