Iona's 2nd Happy Happy!!!

Iona's 2nd birthday, or her "HAPPY HAPPY" as she calls it was a wonderful day! As you can see from the photos, the excitement of unwrapping began early, the showgirl paraded herself throughout the day eagerly putting on her party dress that had been saved for the occasion.

Cousins Tess and Tom arrived with Jules and Lenka for a birthday BBQ, the long awaited PINK cupcakes were demanded all day and when they finally appeared and the singing began Iona burst into tears and hid under the table! She had to be enticed out by Dunc for the blowing of candles.

Apart from that she had a wonderful time!!

Taronga Zoo...

It wouldn't be a proper visit for Gummy and Gumpa without a trip to Taronga Zoo!

Outings with Gummy and Gumpa - Cinema, aquarium

A rainy day in the school holidays found us leaving Iona at home with Fenna to slink off to sushi lunch and the film "Despicable Me" with the boys, Gummy and Gumpa. Here are the boys sporting their 3D glasses!

An outing to Manly Oceanarium while the big boys were at school.

Bathtime...

A special smoothie with Gummy...

Gummy's birthday...

It was great to have Gummy over for her birthday this year, especially having not made it back to the UK for her big one in 2009.

Water dragon with a dummy...

This was hilarious - Iona dropped a dummy over the side of the verandah and one of the many water dragons living in our garden picked it up and held it in his mouth for a good 15 minutes!! The Manly Daily published the photo when we sent it in that evening!

Here is Pumpkin in her element, hooning down the middle creek.

Chook pens and the team...

Iona always manages to step out in style when crossing the paddock to check on what Dad and her brothers are building. This day they converted the small feeding shed into a fairly snake-proof/fox proof night enclosure for the chooks. Arthur built a 2nd nesting box and the chooks took to laying eggs in it within 48 hours. A happy, tired team pictured with Dunc below.

Wildlife living in our garden...etc

Some of the critters that share our garden with us have been photographed this week and are shown below including skinks, geckos, turtles, water dragons, superb fairy wrens, kookaburras, ducks and ducklings (these have diminished from seven ducklings to one in just a few days due to crows plucking them out of the paddock sadly) and a tawny frog-mouthed owl! The most alarming one was the two metre long red bellied black snake which crossed the grass, slithered into the middle creek (which Pumpkin loves to run along!) and slid off down the tunnel and out of the property with ALL of us watching as it went! No photo of this but it is true!