Walking Book

Cyp bought a walking book for Brisbane when he first got here and we've done a few of them, but G & G have been putting it to better use. Well, the weather has been better - it is no longer extremely not alternating with downpours.

On Wednesday we decided to go for a walk in the Toohey Forest, which is about 11 km away from us - across the river. Cyp has wanted to check it out, but he had to work.

It was a good walk as it was paved for a good portion and Rowan was sleeping in the stroller. He refuses to nap at home, but immediately passes out in the car. When he woke up, Ellis got the stroller and Rowan got the backpack - as he was traveling on my back, no pictures of him.

There are lots of pictures of grass trees - they only grow about 1 cm a year I thought that Grug http://www.grug.com.au/ was made from one of these trees, but apparently he was made from a Burrawang tree which when I look in wikipedia is a very different sort of tree. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Macrozamia_communis

So, we kept going on about - "oh look, there's Grug again." when in fact we were wrong.

Ellis did really well on the walk - I'm sure he must have walked about 2 km.

We went home, had lunch and then G & G went out to get gas. They decided to go back to the Bot gardens but instead took a tour of the Western Freeway as they missed the tricky turnoff to the gardens. I stayed home and got more frazzled playing referee with the kids. G. Neil tried to phone us using his new phone but couldn't manage (turns out it wasn't activated yet) but did send a text to Cyp who misinterpreted it as "help we are lost in the Bot gardens." Cyp phoned me to pass along the message and I was like "oh well, they do have John... (our GPS). G. Doreen is very impressed with John (aka John Cleese who is the voice on our GPS). He has yet to be wrong in her presence and he doesn't get angry when I blatently ignore him. He alway says "Turn around when possible." in a calm voice - over and over again. G. Neil insists on bringing paper maps everywhere which he tries to show me and G. Doreen - we choose to trust blindly in John.

Hannah came over to babysit solo and dad and I went to pick her up at the train station. We were on a bit of a tight schedule as I had made reservations at the yummy Thai place, but we only had about an hour to eat (as they were booked pretty solid). So I phoned home after picking up Hannah to let Cyp know we were on the way. I heard a "hello" then a bunch of static with Cyp sort of talking in the background.

"We'll be there in about 5 minutes - can you program the GPS and just come out? I'll send Hannah in but won't come in again as I don't want Rowan to see me leaving again - it will just upset him. Can you hear me? I'm assuming you can - something weird is going on with the phone. Ok bye."

Dad and I got home and sent Hannah in. Then we waited and waited. Eventually, mom and Cyp came out - "what were you doing?" I asked in my impatient voice - "didn't you get my call?" Turns out that Ellis had the phone and was playing with it, so no they did not. I had been talking to Ellis.

Dinner was yummy again and then we went to the Kangaroo Point Cliffs - pretty amazing view of the city. We walked along (dad was impressed with the water fountains, which are everywhere in this city), then took the stairs down the cliffs and watched the climbers for a bit. It started to rain fairly hard so we ran back the car and drove to Mt Cootha (think Little Mountain) near our house so they could see the extent of Brisbane. It's sprawling, but pretty flat. Got home to a tired Hannah (who had coped alone - good for her, I can't).