Surfers Paradise

The photos from our trip to Surfers Paradise, Australia, have been sitting in my machine for a while. The holiday was fabulous although we did get caught in our of Queensland's worst storms in 25 years. There were lots of news about power outages and flattened homes. We were at Dreamworld when it all started. Suddenly, the sky darkened and the rain just lashed down like a crazed person. We managed to make it back to our service apartment late in the evening when the rain stopped. In spite of all the raining, we also managed to visit the David Fleay's Wildlife Park and saw 2 platypuses. It was quite amazing! As platypuses are nocturnal, they are housed in a darkened room so we can watch them in action. Unfortunately, that also meant we didn't get any photos :(


We also saw some koalas -





We visited the Carrera market. It was hot there but the many interesting things made the kids not want to go :)

My little girl even tried out the reverse bungee thing -

We caught and held captive a little green grasshopper for a week (sorry for that, little greenie). As a parting gift, it molted and left behind its exoskeleton.

Cinderella

My girl just did a drawing of Cinderella. She is displaying it on the wall in my room aka "Art Museum".





A piece of news - our hammies had another brood - 5 this time :)
The previous batch of babies were all named after cars - Suzuki, Ferrari, Chevy and Ford. Thinking of names for this next batch. Any suggestions?

Pipe cleaner creepy crawlies

During our visit to the Jacob Ballas Children's Garden, we learned to make some little creatures using pipe cleaners. Here are some of our creations -






Isn't that cool?

Visit to the Singapore Botanical Gardens

After many days of rain, the sky finally cleared on Saturday - just perfect for a visit to the Singapore Botanical Gardens.

We found a GIGANTIC tree -



We also spotted a dragonfly -



Not sure what flowers these are but they sure look nice -



The kids also had fun on the spinning dish -

A week later...

Here are the hamsters at about 1 week old -

4 more baby hamsters

Mommy ham just gave birth to 4 more babies on 17 August 2008, the night Singapore won a Silver medal at the Olympics. Here is mommy ham showing off her babies -

Our July baby hamsters

Our 6 baby hamsters born on 4 July 2008 are now up and running -

Lapbooking resources

Over the past few months, I have been exploring the wonders of lapbooking and have discovered a wealth of resources on the internet. I have listed a few of these free lapbooking resources in an article

Great Lapbooking Resources For Free

Hope the resources will prove useful to all lapbookers out there.

Fleabag and Charlie

We have just finished reading a wonderful book

Fleabag

by Helen Stephens

The illustrations are so adorable!

We are also starting on the famous Raold Dahl bestseller -

Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

It is a long book, but we are enjoying it a great deal.