Julian's Christmas lights outing

Would you believe that a Canberra house made it into the Guiness Book of records for the most number of Christmas lights?  331,038 lights in fact.

This is a great picture, it wasn't this magical on the night!  It's best captured on video as the flicker in time to christmas carols.

Here's another video, which is similar but a bit nicer done I think.




I hate to think what the electricity bill would be like!  It did say that it was all renewable energy on a sign outside the house.  Money was being collected (gold coin entry) for SIDS kids.  There were so many people there when we went, and we went quite early too, it was only just getting dark.  A very impressive display, and brought plenty of Christmas cheer for all the young children (and grown ups) as well.

The light has switched on!

Last week, Julian suddenly seemed to have a light switched on in his head, because one day he just started copying the words I was telling him!  That was around early December.

It's amazing but it feels like in 2-3 weeks his vocabulary has doubled.  Now he says things like fish, balloon (boon), egg, ant, all gone and all done on a regular basis.  It's really heartwarming!

I am wondering how long it will be before I can actually talk to him :)

Lunar Eclipse on 11 December

Stayed up till 1am to take this pic, and it wasn't really a great picture, but it was the best I could manage without a tripod.  Love the red moon.  I've never seen one, I don't think, but now I have.  It was great at 9pm then got cloudy around 11pm and then it cleared up just for about 15 minutes at 1am. 

Joke of the Day - Potentially vs Realistically

A boy asks his father, "Dad, what's the difference between potentially and realistically?"

His dad thinks for a minute.  "Ok, son, we'll have to show you the answer to this as a practical experiment.  I want you to go ask your mother, your sister and your brother if they would sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars."

So the boy goes to his mother and asks "Mum, would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?"

The mother thinks for a moment and says "Well, I mean I shouldn't, but I guess we have a mortgage to pay off and we could do with a holiday, so I guess, yeah I would sleep with him for a million dollars."

The boy then goes to his 21 year old sister.  "Hey sis, would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?"

"A million dollars?" his sister exclaimed.  "I'd do it for free!"

So the boy goes to his brother and says "Hey, would you sleep with Brad Pitt for a million dollars?"

His brother screws up his forehead.  "Well, it's a bit weird, but a million dollars is a lot of money.  I guess so, just for the money."

The boy goes back to his father and tell him his findings.  "So, Dad, what does it all mean?  How does this tell me about Potentially and realistically?"

"Well," says his father, "Potentially we're sitting on 3 million dollars here.  Realistically we're living with 2 whores and a queer."

Avatar

I introduced my kids to Avatar the other day.  And you know what?  They loved it.

So Erika calls it the Blue Papa movie.  Where the Blue Papa dies near the home tree that fell down and everyone is crying.  She asked Aunty J if she could watch the Blue Papa movie and Aunty J was stumped until she went to look at the recent DVDs watched and realised she meant Avatar.

So Erika's understanding of the story is (ie what I explained)

The people with the robot clothes and flying the helicopters are bad people.
The blue people are good people
The bad people made their home tree fall down and burned it
The blue papa died and everyone cried
Then the bad people came to kill the magic tree
So everyone came to save the magic tree

Piggy Bunny

Kids say the cutest things.  Erika calls this Piggy Bunny.

 Poor Piglet :P

Taronga Zoo's new tiger cubs

Being Family Fun day on Sunday, we decided to make a trip to the zoo and see the new tiger cubs, who are now 10 weeks old.  There are 3 of them, 2 males and one female.  We left really early in the morning to make sure we were on the 9:15am ferry and there were quite a few people there already.  I guess they all had the same idea we had.  And also, we wanted to avoid the hot weather, but the forecast did say a maximum of 24-26, with minimal chance of rain.

The tiger exhibit didn't open till 10am and there were signs saying that the cubs would be out from 10am till 1pm so they wouldn't get too tired.  So we didn't wander over that early.  We made our way there about 1015am.

But there was a HUGE queue!  Which I guess, was to be expected, since they were new.  And they were funnelling people through 30 at a time and letting them look for about 3-4 minutes, which was great - plenty of time and not too crowded so the kids and us could get some good views and pics if needed.  But the wait was horrible.  Lining up with toddlers for almost half an hour is not my idea of fun.

The zoo has gone some major renovations and the front entrance has been revamped and looks fantastic.

One of the startling things that occurred was at lunch, when I gave Julian a potato chip to eat, and he was holding it and an ibis came along and pecked it out of his hand!  He was startled, but didn't cry but he didn't want to eat any more chips after that.  Damn pesky ibises.  That was INSIDE the food hall too!

The baby elephants have grown up so much.  And the Free Flight Bird Show has changed a little as well, with black cockatoos including a Glossy Black (I think) being displayed as part of the show.  This time we had an Australian Hobby doing some fast dives which was new, and also the usual barking owl, barn owl, Andean condor (though I always like that one), Brolga and Galah.  Julian was asleep for the whole thing but Erika was awake.

The seal at the exit was cute as well.  Sitting there at the bottom of the tank checking us out.

The ferry back was on a catamaran instead of a ferry, which was nice!  Sat up top for a little bit, but the sun got to me after a while and I headed back down below with everyone else.  Weather was great though, and all in all it was a nice day out.