The beautiful Blue Mountains

It's been a while since posting - not much creative happening lately, just getting by!! We've just enjoyed a lovely, albeit cold and wet, week at Blackheath in the Blue Mountains with some special special friends. We had quite a few wet days, but thankfully the place we were staying in was huge, and, more importantly, centrally heated! So, even though we were indoors a bit more than I had hoped, the kids still had loads of room to race about, and friends to play with so they were pretty happy.

We did manage to find some great wet weather things to do in the mountains - like visiting the Selwood Science and Puzzle shop at Hazelbrook with rooms of hands on games to play and experiments to have a go on;

a play centre at Katoomba which seems to be advertised nowhere except in the Yellow Pages;

and my crowning glory was finding out about a free Reptile Show at Scenic World. Everyone was very taken with getting to see and touch lizards, snakes and even a crocodile - it was surprisingly squooshy!

Steve the Reptile Man was just great with the kids - even pulled out his guitar for a few songs in the show and was excellent at engaging the kids and making sure everyone had a good look and touch of the animals. Emma was pretty excited to get to hold the crocodile in front of the whole crowd in the show - the rest of us got a quick cuddle after the show.

We did get out for a walk one day at Perry's Lookdown, and were keen to spot beautiful flowers growing in the bush. 

On the one really sunny day we had we made the trip to the Mount Tomah Botanical Gardens which I was strangely obsessed with, having never been there before. We did an adventure quest with the kids which took us around the gardens and made the excursion a real winner for the kids. They started out asking where the play equipment was, but once we got going following the clues and seeing new things they got right into it. I think they thought the best part was rolling down hills and filling their lunch boxes with gravel from a path - go figure!

We had a quick but very windy visit to the 3 Sisters in between rain showers on our last day - and Lucy discovered it's fun to play with Mum's hair while in the backpack! It looks quite sunny and nice in this picture, but it was blowing a gale, and even hailed later that afternoon! Between Nicola and I we were managing 7 children, and I think a few tourists had a little giggle as we tried to take photo's of each other with our kids. I think we did alright in the end!

A big hit amongst the kids was the enormous box of blocks that our friends brought - many towers were built and knocked down and it was great to have a seemingly neverending supply of blocks.

All in all a fun week despite being a bit less active than I hoped. I was all keen for some more bushwalking with the kids, and had even researched appropriate walks on www.wildwalks.com. Oh well, next time. 

Tomorrow is my No. 3 girl's birthday, and I'm looking forward to sharing some more fun stuff that I've done for her, so until then.....