Lucas and the Christmas Dinosaur

Santa's here!! Weeks early... even the tree isn't up yet in the courtyard.. nevermind. Lucas drank it all in and loved every minute.

As soon as the procession started and passed us, we dashed inside to take a short cut so we could sneak in right behind the mini parade. 

Even though we got a sneak peak at Santa sometimes, it was mainly Rudolf's butt all the way. Who didn't care?! Lucas :) He was so excited. We walked the whole way back and forth following and seeing the onlooker's faces. It was really nice.

The tree wouldn't stay for a pic, so lucky..... er.. yep, luckily the weedy dinosaur from Australian Geographic was there. Bonus!

 Riley hid, he'd had enough.

 Later that day, all of a sudden I was ill. The two boys made a maddening mess, played so well together, came and stroked me on the head and I read them books. They came running whenever I banged Riley's metal drum (no bell handy!) and were the best behaved cheeky rascals all weekend.

 Itching for boys camping trips already :)

Mr Cheeky - Butterfly Whisperer

 Drumming class with his home made steel drum.

First time catching his own butterfly. It's now opened the gates to lots of gentle catches. He's a bit of a Steve Perryman/Irwin bug catcher this one. Just the other day he put some toys into the house we'd made for the cicadas. (Obviously they'd get bored in there and need something to do!)

"LOOK MUM! LOOK MUM! It's the REDDEST RED ROCK so far!!!" He says as well as an insect scientist, he wants to be a rock scientist ;)

We were lucky enough to have some visitors from overseas visit last week. We took them and Riley down to the fish ponds. Leah loved the lizards.. caught courtesy of Steve of course.

I liked the 'washing machine hole' and imagined back in the hand washing days, I'd sneak down here to get a load done in the rock pools

... and Riley's best moment was with Dad, having a hold of all the lizards he caught and feeling really responsible and grown up. :)