Easter Weekend.

The Easter weekend this year is 5 days long here. Good Friday and Easter Monday were stretched further by Anzac day falling right at the same time and adding an extra holiday into the fray. So we've made it through the first few days quite well really. And despite mad panicking at the supermarkets due to the number of days they'd be closed for, we didn't even run out of food. Friday was a lazy one as Mum and Dad were still a bit jetlagged so we strolled up to the local pirate ship and had ice creams (as is our habit these days).

Ruairi did some running...

and some jumping.

Saturday our friends came over for a BBQ bringing the boys first Easter gifts- beautiful baskets with chocs and gifts which they had made and decorated themselves.

Then overnight the Easter Bunny sneaked into our house and garden and left colour-coded trails for each of the boys. Alfie had blue arrows to follow and Ru had yellow.

Each of the boys had his own basket to collect a few mini eggs along the way...

Alfie had made his of papier mache at school.

Both lots of arrows led to a fab table and chairs which just happened to be very cheap in a sale last week, and their eggs were waiting on top. Sadly both children and eggs were were long gone by the time I got to take a photo!

Next stop after Easter Mass was a trip to the zoo. We met a very friendly kangaroo who was quite happy for the children to stroke her. Never before have we seen them closer than about 5 meters away so this was a real treat.

Honestly, that's just a bit of rope behind them, not a fence or anything.

After a picnic lunch we wandered down to the elephant enclosure just in time to see a daily talk and display they do with their two female elephants. They take the older, steadier one walking round the park often in the day, but the younger one can only go out when it's not open as she gets spooked more easily- and one thing you don't want in a crowded zoo is a spooked elephant on the loose!! They do lots of tricks and excercises to keep them agile and to keep them from getting bored and it was amazing to see them painting with their trunks. Apparently they seem to love it and if they try to have only one of them painting the other one tends to try to pull over to get to the paints, so both were at it yesterday..

Grandma asked Ru if he could do what those elephants were doing and he looked at her as if she was completely mad. "No. I don't have a trunk" he explained.
We saw loads of other beautiful animals and Ru decided to try to be as tall as a giraffe by going up on his Grandad's shoulders.

By the time we got home I was feeling more than a little tired. In fact I was feeling distinctly sick and poor Mum ended up doing the vast majority of cooking of our Easter lamb roast. Turned out I had a bug and was very poorly for the night- and I hadn't even had any chocolate yet!  Upside is it's only a 24 hour thing and I'm pretty much over it now. Downside is that, as of this afternoon, I think I may have given it to Brian. Ooops. :o/