It's almost Christmas...can you feel it?

The last few weeks have been a little bit crazy but things have calmed now school is over for another year. One of my elves had their hard work acknowledged with an award at presentation night, the other elf had the honour of escorting Santa in his sleigh in the Christmas pageant. There have been work parties, Christmas parties for groups we are involved in, school concerts and get-togethers with friends. My calendar is exhausted (& so am I) but we are so lucky that we have so many friends, workmates and family who want to celebrate 2013 and the season with us!
It's starting to look a lot like Christmas here....

little elves decorating the tree

 

baking...cranberry bread

gifts for the special teachers we were lucky enough to have this year

 

my favourite decoration

Santa sacks at the ready, cards up, presents under the tree. I think we are prepared!

the WHOLE family is getting in the spirit

We are looking forward to some of our family arriving soon and the anticipation is rising. The food is in the fridge, the pizza oven in clean and wood chopped and presents are wrapped and under the tree (some are hidden too!)
There will be lots of small children, great food, laughs, sparkle.
I hope that all my blogging friends have a very merry Christmas too. Looking forward to more in 2014!

Kate x

P.S. this picture was shared by a friend of mine and it sums up how exactly how I am feeling today! Merry Christmas xx

Bricks to the Bush

Living where I am means that it is easy to think about the things we miss out on but sometimes our isolation makes us special and we get to experience things that not everyone gets the chance to.

Last year we had a life sized Lego Forest pop up in our Living Desert (which you can read more about on my blog here). This was a part of the Festival of Play to celebrate 50 years of Lego in Australia. It was very cool...

This year we have been lucky enough to have another Lego exhibition visiting us at the Albert Kersten Mining and Mineral Museum. The Lego Colosseum has been on display and there are enough bricks in this to make any young (and old) Lego lover's heart pitter patter!! 

This largest ever scale model of Rome’s famous Colosseum has been built entirely from LEGO bricks by Ryan McNaught, aka "The BrickMan". Mr McNaught has Master B's definition of the dream job being one of 13 LEGO certified Professionals and the only one for the southern hemisphere. If you have recently seen a big Lego something chances are Ryan was there!

You could spend all day wandering around, or if you are like me, on your hands and knees with the children crawling around marvelling at the detail and sheer Lego-ness of it all.



 


I loved the fountain

 








Look at that happy little face...in Lego heaven!

 

I think Lego brings out the child in many of us. We have probably played with it as children and many of us who are parents or aunts and uncles have vacuumed it up or stepped on it.

I feel lucky to have been able to see this exhibition and I hope it's one of many that visits us in the bush, reminding us that we all need to play.

Now I will hop off my Early Childhood soapbox...and go an pick up some Lego so I can vacuum :)
Kate x





Linking with Jacana for Totally Thursday

and they're off and racing...

It's spring racing season and we too have joined in the fun locally.

 

There are two race meetings where I live, one rather large and fun one around St Patrick's day and another that happened a week or two ago.

This race meeting is advertised as more of a family day so this year we put it to the test with some friends and their children too. It was so much fun!



Look at that fabulous view!



 We talked, we watched the fashions and the horses parading, we shared a glass or two and the children studied the form and 'voted' for which horse they thought might win the next race. We all left the track saying we would do it again next year!

Have you backed a winner in the last few weeks of racing? Do you get caught up in it at this time of the year in any way?

My methods of 'voting' are shaky to say the least and most often not to be trusted so I generally leave that part of the occasion to others!!!

Kate xx

Linking with Jacana for Totally Thursday