Trip to Adelaide

Finally after some planning, we managed to get us all on a weeks holiday to our hometown of Adelaide.  For Irving it was his first time there, and for some of us, we hadn't visited in 6yrs, so it became an opportunity for family and friends catch-ups as well as being a bit touristy and eating lots of good food.  I must admit that is the biggest thing that I miss Adelaide, so much good food!

So first stop, on our first day there we headed to the Central markets to top up on some groceries, and to show Arden and Irving some of our favourite places.

This place was excellent, if like me you like kombucha.  A few of us got spider kombuchas here.  Plus they had a kefir from WA that I had never seen here.....

A few of us headed to the zoo.  First stop was the pandas (there is one hiding down the back on the left of this shot).

Arden and Irving had a great time watching this echidna wander around.  Plus we saw a fenneck Fox which Arden was very pleased about.

After the zoo with Grandma, we managed a tram ride to the fringe, to catch up with friends and more family.  It was great riding the extension up North Tce, and to see the tram network growing since our last visit.

The following day saw us head off to Womadelaide for an evening full of music and dance,  It was a very full evening, with bell ringers doing performance art, cossack dancing, celtic fiddling, Carmen performed flamenco style.  All the best things of getting to Womad- very diverse cultural performances and styles.

Trying out some Cossack dancing.

We got to our favourite chocolatier!  Steven ter Horst with his amazing chocolates and cakes and now waffles!

A very poor shot of flying foxes (or fruit bats)  that apparently migrated to Adelaide not long after we left!  They make quite an impressive sight flying across the north-east corner of the city at sunset.

There was an exhibition celebrating local Kaurna (said Garna) culture called Yabarra as part of Fringe.  Probably my favourite bit was Arden's reaction to the river Torrens.  "That is a river!!!???"  After living in Perth for most of his life, the shock is quite understandable.  :D

We also made it to the art gallery, where they have currently arranged the gallery into a nice mix of multi-cultural Australia

Our apartments attempt at a pool was rather dismal....only somewhere without 6months worth of swimming weather would think it was reasonable to put the pool in the middle of the car park!?

A cute alleyway discovered on a walk on our final morning.

The beautiful Adelaide Arcade, has quite a few interesting collectible style shops.

We stopped here for coffee, in the Arcade.  I always hoped someone would do something like this to this part of the Arcade.

Stop off at the museum, examining some Kaurna artifacts.

Aboriginal Australian boundaries for the places that we've lived- Perth and Adelaide.

The Ancient Egypt Exhibit- which has scared at least two people in our family (one is me, the other, Willow).

Space travel exhibit

Crystals

Exploring Antartica

Checking out radiation.

Heading home to Perth again.

We haven't done much travelling, as a family, like this for quite a while, and it does remind me how much I love travelling and how lovely it is to go on a family adventure like this  with kids.  We're moved to Perth with this sort of idea in mind, and have stayed longer than planned, and it is interesting to know two different cities well enough to consider them as home.

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2025

I've made it a bit of a habit since this visit to Adelaide, to order icecream in cafes and by kombucha and make myself a spider.  My preferred kombucha here is Hippie, and their dragon fruit kombucha is delicious as a spider.  

Gabriel had to head home early on this trip and had his first experience of a house to himself.  Something that Arden has now just done recently too.

Summer Holidays

So we're still having our Summer break- school has gone back, but in our home, I'm totally anti organised work when there's a possibility of a heat wave. So we're all enjoying hanging out together. And despite the lack of daily planned activities we still seem to be busy!

Over January Willow and Gabriel had swimming lessons down the beach- as we do every summer, and as usual it was lovely. Early morning swim, and hanging out at the beach is very relaxing.

Willow had her 10th birthday- an Alice in Wonderland themed party which she enjoyed immensely. She did lots of the planning and cooking, and all was wonderful. I made a rose syrup heart shaped cake for her. Since Gabriel is currently avoiding grains, the cake was made with nut meal and coconut flour. It was very tasty and looked lovely covered in raspberries.


Plus there was my birthday, and my home made cake this year.





I am currently making my plans for class 5 and 3. Amazing how far we are through! Willow and Gabriel both received pocket knives to learn whittling this year. Both were very pleased to receive them....now we just need to remember to get them engraved. I've been reading we need to really start on greenwood, so am wondering a bit about that...will have to look into what types of woods are best in Australia. All of this is a bit new to me too! Gabriel wants to hand sew a kilt, as his sewing project, which I must admit sounds very challenging. But since he's enthused for the idea, I'm willing to give it a try. And I'm planning to use the Bible and the Celtic Wonder Tales as his texts this year.

Finally we'll be in the Fringe Parade again, though this time all of us. I've organised for some of us local homeschoolers to go in it. It's been quite a bit of work, but it's all starting to come together, and all the costumes and the float look fabulous. I think the day is going to be lots of FUN!

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2025

Funny reviewing this and thinking back on what we did and didn't manage to do.  We did experiment a bit with the woodwork, but we didn't have enough people in our circle at that time to guide with our inexperience, and we hadn't gotten into the idea of youtube as a learning tool yet.  My Dad would have been a great help for woodwork, but he'd died many years before.  On moving to Perth we found great woodwork lessons with Joy of Wood, and Irving and I currently take private lessons there, with another homeschool friend.

Some of our projects from last year are on this post.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2024/11/first-half-of-year.html

Some of Arden and Gabriel's woodwork.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2015/10/woodwork.html

Willow, Gabriel and my step stools.
https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2012/12/recent-activities.html

Plus Arden trying out the saw horse.

https://unicorn-pegasus.blogspot.com/2019/10/term-3.html

Sewing wise, I was still in my early days of improving handskills- I did have more experience in that area- but mostly in pattern layout and cutting, as my Dad always helped my mum with these things, and he (almost) always encourage me to watch and learn.  The kilt pattern we found was a bit beyond my skill level at that time, and none of our home ed circle had sewing skills.

So much to do, and so much we've done

Well it's Fringe time here, so we've been out and about seeing bits and pieces whilst it's on. Plus Womad came to town last weekend, so we headed out to that for a day too.

Fringe wise we saw a lovely puppet show 'The Grimstones', which I really enjoyed, and the kids thought was ok. Sadly the venue was lacking, and it was very difficult to see in some spots- we moved three times! And the music from some of the other shows, affected our ability to hear at times. Otherwise it was definately worth seeing.

Womadelaide, was of course, excellent. We saw a few really good bands, and enjoyed all the music generally, and had plenty of yummy food. Byron Bay organic doughnuts came to town again for it. And I ran into tonnes of friends, so it was a great social outing too. I really enjoyed Rachel Unthank and the Winterset, and Paprika Balkanicus were fabulous too.

Home wise we're doing some woodcarving which has been loads of fun so far. And we're in the process of moving house. So there's lots of packing to be done.