8 Year Old Weekend

Well, Evan turned 8 yesterday, or... today in Canada, and we've had a great weekend so far.

For Evan's birthday we went to the local waterpark and had lots of fun on the slides and pools. (Ok, we had fun, that is, after Oli and I decided to break the rules about the height restrictions, which the lifeguards didn't seem to care about, and when kids weren't cutting the line in front of us...seemingly common at that park.)

Then, when Adam was done work, we headed out to a restaurant in Fortitude Valley which is recommended for its gluten-free options. Evan ordered his favourite...gluten free pepperoni pizza, and the rest of us had fabulous meals as well. We'll definitely return to Giardinetto Restaurant another time for gluten free or other. The service was quick, friendly and the food was excellent. In fact, Adam and I shared a salad and pizza, and we don't remember the last time we had such a good pizza (I don't even really like pizza). Oli had ravioli with a creamy garlic sauce, and I could have eaten it all up!

Here's a pic of Evan on the stroll in Fortitude Valley on the day he turned eight.

Today, we summited another of the Glass House Mountains. Our brave little hikers scrambled up to the summit of Mount Tibrogargan, the legendary "father" of the the other mountains. For about three hundred meters, we were really scrambling... I'll let the photos do the talking. Our little hikers outdid a fair number of adults, in fact one young guy who saw the kids on the way up dubbed them "legendary". Yes!!

After our hike, we had a picnic which a lace monitor lizard decided to join. When I first saw it, I thought it would be shy, like the one that ran into the bushes when I saw it in Noosa, but this one had decided to join us for lunch. It made an absolute bee line for us, to the point where we were scrambling for the top of the picnic table (see pics). It then picked up all of our scraps and hung around for a good 1/4 hour. Though it looks relatively harmless, it's claws are significant and we didn't want to take chances. An Australian woman who walked by had a good laugh about us being on the top of the table though, as she said that the claws are for tree climbing, which apparently monitor lizards are great at.

Now, for the funniest part of our day... we are still laughing about it. After our picnic, we were still thirsty and quite tired of the pretty warm water in our hydration packs. So, we stopped at the IGA in town and picked up some "juice boxes". That's what we thought they were until we took a sip of the thickest juice syrup we had ever had. It was disgusting (except to Oli, who loved it). Then I started reading more carefully and realized that it was juice concentrate...add to 2 litres of water. Oops.

Our last stop was in Kilcoy, in the hinterland. On the way there, we ran over - not on, - a snake. It fit right between our wheels and reared it's head up as we passed. It may have been a black-bellied snake or a rough-scaled snake. We're not sure. Either way, I'm glad we didn't see it too close up. That makes our second Queensland snake - the other was the carpet python we saw in the tree in Noosa.

As for Kilcoy (rhymes with killjoy)..not a lot going on there, but Adam did get some great shots of some beautiful birds. The birds in Oz are absolutely amazing, starting at about 4 am. We'll talk more about that in another blog.