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: