Sydney Trip... Day Eight.... (We're home!)

We left Goondiwindi this morning at 8:30am after having my blood sucked.... we stopped at Taroom on the way home - which is just over halfway home.... (350km to Taroom - then 300km from there to Gladstone).... we fed Blake and then headed the rest of the way home... we got home at 4:30pm... unpacked the car... fed Blake and he's now in bed...

Jade is all bathed and settling in watching Dora... then we'll hopefully have her in bed just after 7pm....

The trip away was great... but we're really happy to be home.... :) (Jade is still asking when we're going to see the Elephants again... but we've said that once Blake is old enough we'll do another trip to Dubbo to take him to the zoo too....)

On another note....

Greg has finished school for the year.... tonight he has his "in-formal".... he went and bought himself a shiny new outfit for the evening... complete with skater shoes... which are currently a really nice white.... and I doubt they'll be a nice white after the first week!

Sydney Trip... Day Seven.... (Dubbo Zoo/Goondiwindi)

We got up this morning and headed back to the Zoo after another fantastic Farm Breakfast prepared by Robyn... We figured that it would be a much longer trip to the Zoo... but Yay for 3yr old attention spans! We pretty much went up to each exhibit - Jade saw the animal... looked for a little bit - then went "ok, what's next??"

Dubbo Zoo has these cute little electric carts that you can hire to travel around the zoo in - rather than taking your car around the circuit... I'm not sure why you'd want to use these instead of the car given they are hired out for something like 3hrs (could be 4hrs) at a time and for $69... the only reason I can see for wanting to use them is the novelty value... the kids would love them!

The first thing that Jade wanted to see was the Giraffe... she's fascinated with how big they are..

Jade loved the statue of the baby Giraffe... although she didn't believe that it was a baby because it was too big....

Hippos were next on the list of things to see... we got there at feeding time and I was hoping Jade would at least stay interested long enough to hear what the keeper was talking about.. I was wrong.... she came she saw... she wanted to see the Cheetahs....

The Cheetahs were sleeping... apparently that made them boring... so we didn't hang around to see if they'd spring to life....

Jade was convinced this was a donkey... and at the time I'd remembered the name of it... but now I don't... (I'm going to be so useless when Jade has to start doing school assignments... hehe) Oh - and any animal with long horns on their head was a "mountain goat"... didn't matter if we told her that they were Elands or Sheep... no no.. they were "mountain goats"... *sigh* Diego needs to increase the animals that he covers.. hehe...

The Tiger was sleeping too.... Jade wasn't overly thrilled with her Zoo experience at this point.... if she wanted to see cats sleeping - she could do that at home!!

Next was the Koala.... she thought these were cute...

Now for Jade's favourite stop of the day... the Tortoise... she loved these... this was one exhibit that she didn't leave after the first minute....

(and yes, this one is a statue)

Fascinated... they were HUGE!

We went to see the Tapir... which is another "Diego" animal... so she knew what this was when we got there... it was also pulling a "Blake" - so it was another animal to be dubbed "boring"

We found a play park for Jade... she happily played here until a group of school kids came through... then they were all just too big and a bit pushy for Jade... so we ended up heading off... we'd seen all she needed to see... and she was happy....

On our way back to the Farm we decided that given we'd done all we needed to do in Dubbo we'd head off to Goondiwindi as I need to be here tomorrow morning to do my blood tests... (yay Warfarin... :/ )

So we said our goodbyes to Doug and Robyn and packed up and left.... We highly recommend this place to anyone wanting to have a holiday with a difference... or if you're looking to head to the Zoo in Dubbo... this place is great to stay... especially with little Kids.... Doug's only aim is to make sure that the kids have a great time while they're there.... and he succeeds....

Jade, Doug, Blake & Robyn (oh yeah, and Blake is slightly awake!)

We headed off at 1:30pm for Goondiwindi... which is 500km north of Dubbo... we arrived at the Swagmans at 6:30pm.... so we made fantastic time.... all down to the fact that Blake slept the entire trip... (he did wake 20km outside of Goondiwindi - but we managed to keep him happy until we got to the hotel)

We got a spa room.... and Jade was all excited when I said that we'd put Blake in the bath as well.... at home he's still stuck with bathing in the baby bath.... and she'll understand that.... but she was happy to help cuddle him in the bath....

Look who's chubby!

Sydney Trip... Day Six.... (Dubbo Farmstay)

We got up reasonably early this morning, to a nice cooked breakfast... Rob and Jade went into the farm house to have breakfast and Rob brought me back an omlette and fresh vegies (tomato/mushroom etc)... They also sent me over a cup of coffee...

We headed for the shops as I had been trying to track down disposable change mats for the last few days and never seemed to be able to find them... the one that I had was from when we were travelling with Jade as a baby...

We also needed new clothes for Jade as we've had a couple of "accidents" which has left me a few changes short of clothing... but I managed to get her some new shorts that are bigger than she's currently wearing - which is good cause she's pretty much out of size 2 and into 3's now... (pity she's so tall that she has to wear size 5/6 t-shirts because it makes buying clothing sets impossible!!)..

Anyway, we eventually got over to the Zoo around lunchtime, we'd decided that today we'd just get Jade all excited about what is at the Zoo, check it out and make sure that parking around the zoo isnt' an issue (so that I'm happy to travel around with Blake and feeding him etc)... We also went and did our shopping at the Zoo shop where I picked up a couple of t-shirts for Jade as well as a Tiger and a Giraffe toy for her.... (typical - nothing for me.... although - I looked at the polo shirts and decided that the quality didn't warrant spending money on them)...

Once we got home from the Zoo, Jade and Rob went to see Poppy again because he'd promised to take Jade out riding Shetty... (lets just hope this doesn't spark her wanting a horse once she gets home!!)

After the ride, Jade headed back to visit the Kittens again (we've got 3 cats.... we don't need anymore!)

While all of that was happening, this is how Blake spent his afternoon.... I think he went on to about 6hrs sleep.... once he woke he decided that he needed to have a fair bit of awake time, he spent about an hour and a half feeding - then he sat looking around to see what was happening in the world..... then a bout of hiccoughs... some more feeding.... and he's asleep....

Rob headed off to get dinner at 7pm.... (which is only 6pm our time).... before he'd hit the highway - Jade was fast asleep in her chair... so he had to find drivethrough dinner (KFC.... Blerk!) -- he'd phoned to say that she was asleep - so I turned off everything in the room - when he got back here he got her out of the car - put her straight into bed and she's not budged.... lets just hope she sleeps in until about 8am..and hopefully she'll have a lot of energy to do the Zoo in the morning... (yay for them giving a 2 day pass... best idea ever!)

Anyway, it's been a really long day... .so I'm just glad that I got all my blogging done... Sorry Mom and Dad that it took so long.... you may have noticed that Blake has started porking up since we left... Little Mr Fatface... :)

Sydney Trip... Day Five.... (Evening)

We arrived at the Farmstay at 7:30 Monday night...

The owners here are fantastic... Poppy waited for us to arrive because he knew that Jade would want to help him feed all of the animals.... this thrilled her so much and when she and Rob came back to the unit - she didn't stop talking for about 20mins about all the stuff she'd done...

The highlight of the entire evening was feeding the horses.... The Pony is called "Shetty"... This is the kid friendly riding pony... so this has made Jade's year!!

Sydney Trip... Day Five.... (morning)

Monday morning ended our Sydney part of our "Sydney Trip" if that makes sense... on Sunday night we'd decided that the best way to get Jade to sleep was to put shows on the laptop and let her just watch until she fell asleep... Rob and I were both asleep before she was (we think)... and the laptop just switched off once it's battery died....

This pic was taken Monday morning... Jade held up the whole leaving process as we didn't want to wake her... she's missed out on so much sleep this entire trip - so we figured we'd just deal with it....

Oh, and Blake was sleeping too... but he'd already been up for a 5am feed... which I can't complain about.. so we left him to sleep it off on the couch while we started to pack our stuff...

After we left Angela's place, we headed off to Blacktown to visit Mat and introduce him to his new brother... plus a catch up for Jade (as well as Rob and I)... Mat is moving to the States in a week and a bit, so it was our last chance to catch up for who knows how long.....

And, OMG, we're definitely glad we dropped in... we hardly recognised Mat... he's lost SO MUCH weight... he's looking so good... and he's definitely proud of himself... :)

As usual, Jade was quite taken with Mat... she loves having big brothers (almost as much as she loves having a little brother....)

Blake seemed to like him too! (sleeping!)

Aww!!!

Pity Greg wasn't there... else we could have had a pic of all of Rob's children....

Side on Skinny Mat pic....

After we left Blacktown (we could only stay for an hour as we were running so late) - we headed off to Canowindra to install a printer in a CardXpress machine... we were there for an hour and a bit.... then we headed off to Dubbo.....