another first for the baby (toddler) book

A little while back Gunnar had a great big adventure... he went to the movies!  When Patrick was out in the field for 2 weeks, I took him to Target and bought him all kinds of movies for us to watch to pass the time in the evenings.  His favorite is Despicable Me.  He loves the minions (or 'guys' as he calls them).  He gets so excited when he knows they are about to come onscreen.  He laughs hysterically during the scenes with Vector.  And he even quotes some parts (his favorite - he screams NO! and slams his hands down on the table when Miss Hattie does the same in the movie).  It's all ridiculously adorable.

So, logically, we decided to take him to see Despicable Me 2.  We were a little nervous about him sitting still and quiet for the whole thing.  Especially because in the theatre here there are assigned seats!  Crazy!  We went in hoping for forgiving people sitting around us.  Luckily, we had a whole row to ourselves.  He sat in Dad's lap for most of it, chowing down on popcorn.  He loved having his sippy cup in the cup holder.  It was cool to see him really pay attention to what was going on.  He loved the sequel just as much as the original.  It wasn't until about 75% of the way through that he started to get a little antsy.  But he kept himself entertained by going down the aisle, moving all the arm rests up, and then going back and putting them down again.  He even rode a few like horseys.  All while still watching the movie.

The best part  was seeing his excited little face when he realized what we were watching.  Oh, and that we didn't get kicked out for being a nuisance.  All in all, a great afternoon!  Can't wait to take him back for something else!  Maybe Epic, or Monsters University (we'll have to get Monsters Inc to catch him up).

first aussie adventure

I can't believe I haven't blogged about this yet.

Many weeks ago we took our first road trip, and headed to Brisbane to visit the Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary.  We had so much fun we bought year passes.  Highlights included playing with kangaroos, feeding a sheep (Gunnar), holding a baby chick (Gunnar), watching sheep get wrangled (and one got sheared!), seeing a real live platypus, and tons of other awesome aussie animals, like wombats, dingos, tasmanian devils, kookaburras, and koalas (obviously).  Oh, and some sweet road signs.  Enjoy these photos:

adventures close to home

We've been here for over 2 months now, and we have finally ventured to the most beautiful park just around the corner from our house.  We have been meaning to go, and meaning to go, but time seems to slip away every weekend.  See my last post.  We actually only stopped by so Pat was sure how to get there in the morning, where they were meeting for PT.  We got out of the car, started walking around, and quickly discovered what we had been missing out on.

There is a seriously awesome park, with the coolest toy/ride ever.  Think seesaw, mixed with carnival swings, mixed with the bicycle ride from ET.  Guns is a little small for it, but we held him on and spun him around a little and he LOVED it.  Shocking.

We saw tons of birds... our favorites were crazy turkeys flying way higher into trees than I thought was safe, and the laughing kookaburras, well, laughing.

We found a beautiful waterfall, and a trail through a rainforest.

We can't wait to go back for lots more play time, and picnics!

We were a little bit more adventurous 2 weeks back, and we hiked on a nearby mountain.  We were told that it was easy enough for kids, so we tried out our new pack.  The pack worked great, and Gunnar loved riding in it, but it was a bit more of a hike than we planned for.  I'm fairly certain if this trail was in the US it would be closed.  Some points are literally, straight up the mountain.  Lots of loose rocks, and jumping from jagged boulder to jagged boulder.  We survived, and enjoyed a nice picnic at the top.  On the way back down we actually came across a woman who had fallen and was injured pretty badly.  We continued to the bottom, waited for the ambulance to arrive, and Patrick escorted the paramedics to her.  It took them over an hour to get her from where she was to the end (not even 0.5k).  Here are some photos from the trip: