Zac is now 3 years old!!! We're in Canberra for a week to celebrate.

Here is Zac's first (of three) birthday cakes made by Jacqui complete with curly candles! If only Zac could blow out candles instead of drowning them...



Amira, after 'giving' him a digger when she was born, opted to give Zac a matching grader for his birthday. Not many of us girls knew what a grader was until Zac explained it to us.



Zac reckons Amira is alright!!



I know it seems a bit ridiculous but we bought him a set of golf clubs. I was tired of feeling guilty as he played golf with a hockey stick - he has a beautiful golf swing! You can even see the golf ball in this picture.



My two sisters are evil. One bought Zac a set of electronic drum sticks (noisy) and the other bought bath textas (messy). Mum bought him a baseball bat (dangerous) so we pretty much had the trifecta. Zac wasn't complaining!



Then it was off to the dinosaur museum for the afternoon!



We weren't just in Canberra for Zac's birthday though. My grandparents finally had the chance to meet their second great-grandchild! They were pretty chuffed as you can see.





They gave Zac the Spiderman suit which was a huge hit. We were trying to get him out of it for the rest of the weekend. He terrorised all of Gungahlin. We had to keep explaining that Spiderman worked for GOOD, not evil!!! Ever wonder what Spiderman eats for lunch...? Worms!



Here we have the four generations of "the girls".



The rest of week was just as busy. Friday the boys went chasing ducks on Lake Burley Griffin, albeit in fairly slow motion, given that only one of them could reach the pedals on the paddle boat.



We spent a lot of time just hanging around too. He he he...



BBQing in the park at Mum's.



I did Michael a HUGE favour and rode his Paul Smart 1000 to the AutoItalia show on Sunday. I didn't want to do it which is why I am looking so cranky. (As if!!!!) Actually I was a bit scared. I hadn't ridden in 12 months. Don't tell Michael that!



After a quick change, here we all are enjoying the fine Italian machinery. Zac enjoyed the fine Italian gelati more.



I snapped this cute picture on the same day with Jac holding Amira.



Another cute picture, this time with her Dad.



Amira's hair is now growing back a shade of strawberry blonde! Uh oh...



I can't believe my baby boy is now three. And my baby girl is growing up fast too!
Thanks to my Dad & family for the feast on Sunday night, I think we were eating too much to get the camera out. We are catching up again tomorrow morning so hopefully some photos will be on next week's blog. And it was also great to see Duncan at the local pub. So goodbye to everyone in Canberra! We'll be back in June.

Amira is 3 months old! She loves sitting up to get a better view of whatever mischief Zac is up to.



Here he is proudly demonstrating his squadron of X-Wing fighters with guns AND bombs. Maybe the government should have considered them alongside the JSF...

I like that two of the three pilots are Lego Ladies. Gunny would like to point out that for obvious reasons we are a UAV-free household.



Amira is smiling at Zac yet again. This was her first proper go in her (Zac's) Jolly Jumper. She did some twirling around and a few small bounces, with lots of smiles at how clever she was! Thank you again Margaret!



Following in Love Actually's footsteps, Zac has taken up drumming. Jet's "Are You Gonna Be My Girl" still ranks as an all-time favourite.



Amira is turning out to be such a happy little baby. She just loves cuddles and attention. When I walk through shopping centres holding her over my shoulder, I get followed by clucky old ladies who chat away to her as she smiles at them. It's strange hearing people cooing and gooing behind you at first but you get used it!



Zac's listening to Amira's tummy to diagnose whether she was hungry or, ah.. not.



Amira smiles safe in the knowledge that if Zac drops her on the bed, it's a soft landing...



I think she's just happy to have such a wonderful big brother! We should all be so lucky.

Hooray for long weekends! And 4 day work weeks! Says me who's not "working"...
(This is a combined effort from both of us so the person in the 'first person' changes without warning. We apologise in advance for any confusion this may cause!)

I was photographing the kids together AGAIN. (OK that was me.)



Well Zac decided he want to be on the other side of the viewfinder for once. Here is his first try!



Apparently we had to duck to fit in the picture.



(My turn!) "Here.... is.... a.... flower!" For everyone who's heard Zac sing, you'll know he's very good at making up the words as he goes along. This book was no exception. There was even mention of Tayla playing cricket when he got to the picture of a ball.



We packed up the trusty Subie and drove out to Monarto Zoo on the Adelaide Cup Monday.

We gave thumbs up to the giraffe bones...



and pointed at the meerkats...



before climbing aboard the tour bus! Amira wasn't quite as excited by the whole affair as Zac and slept most of the tour.



These are Przewalski's Horse or the Mongolian Wild Horse. Now extinct in the wild, they were replaced by the Mongolian Lamb.



There was a 1 week old baby giraffe amongst the herd. It was running around and feeding by itself much to Kirstie's envy. On the other hand they're born with mum standing up and apparently it's a 2m drop!



(Me again!) Zac thought it was a hippo. He didn't believe us when we told him it was a rhinoceros until the tour guide backed us up!



It was perfect weather for just 'lion' around.... (Gunny refused to cop the blame for this one! All I can say is he set the standard with the Mongolian Lamb!)



Zac's favourite was the giraffes so to make the 60 min drive worthwhile, we went back for an encore.



Amira finally woke up!



Giraffes have a prehensile tongue. I'm not sure what that is but I think this one's demonstrating it in the photo!



We finally wore out the kids - mission accomplished. You can see Amira asleep in the little mirror strapped to the headrest.




After another hour in the car, the kids were well rested and mum and dad were exhausted. Quiet time with Buzz Lightyear was just the ticket. (We're back to Gunny on this one.)



Back to reality - Zac's T-rex needed a bath.



Grandma came over to hear tales of the Zoo and to give Zac his knitted footwarmers from Sandy (which were apparently received better than expected!).



Lastly, the Monkey has been named....

Thank you for all the suggestions however most of them (well 2 of the 3) were the names of our grandfathers.

As Amira will tell you, when you're tired and cranky, and sick of all the noises and bright lights, and you just want the world to go away so you can curl up in a nice warm bed, it's moments like these you need:



Mintie!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :) See y'all next time!

Zac's crusade to abandon daytime naps continues unsuccessfully. Of course it was a big weekend for him - Dorothy took him to Clipsal on Saturday and Gunny took him to see Walking with Dinosaurs on Sunday.



Amira is 12 weeks old! She's 'talking' a lot (some of Zac's answers are pretty funny!), rolling front to back and getting cranky that she can't quite roll back onto her tummy.

The weekend was pretty crazy - we farewelled Ling & Ryan at a hotel restautant Friday night, got home at 9:30pm (yeah we are real party animals these days!), and Amira slept until 6am the next day - our first "sleep thru"!!!! Of course I still woke up at 2am wondering what the hell was going on and was still putting the Vegemite in the fridge the next day. No, we don't usually keep our Vegemite in the fridge.



Everything is starting to go in the mouth now.



Cheeky girl! She likes the play mat I sewed for her. Kind of hard to believe I'm that domesticated, isn't it!



Here she is after her first haircut!



Amira is surprised to find herself hitching a ride in the clean washing! I'm surprised the washing is still clean...



Zac freaking out about catching girl germs!!



Time for a bath to wash the cootees away!



And this is what silence looks like....