day trippin

As you guys may or may not know, blogger had a little meltdown last week and had to have a little lie down... but we are up and running today so rest time is OVER :)

Recently, our little gang went adventuring to Ellenborough Falls, about an hour ( or so) drive to the biggest free falling waterfall in the Southern Hemisphere.
It was rainy and chilly but oh so fun to be out and about and TOGETHER.
So often, we fly through our weekends, months, lives and we get caught up in just getting through it. The tricky baby years, the tanty toddler years, the school years... and all too soon they are gone. I am madly trying to hang on to my three so I dont have to deal with them getting older but do they listen?? Not so much.

So every now and then, I try and find somewhere or something new to try that creates new memories that will hopefully last a lifetime... and if not, I take a stack of photos so they cant forget ;)

Ellenborough Falls is just beautiful.

See 3/4's of the way down the falls you can see something red?? Its a jacket on a person!!

The falls themselves are pretty spectacular but walking through the rainforest in the rain with three happy rainbirds was just bliss. Until rain bird number 2 ( Jared) noticed the mud. And the fact that his shoes were sandals and his feet were getting dirty. Amahli at this point, watching Jareds disgust, refused to go any further without being carried.

And so we plunged on, hopeful to make it to the lookout about 20 minutes on the mud track. Jumeirah and I talked about the different shades of green, from moss green, to dark green, to new green to wet green (?), Amahli talked about smooth trees and rough trees and spiky trees, Jared was all about the "dangerous" mud ;)

I , the other hand, was in sheer photo clicky Heaven... madly snapping away at the incredible greens and probably stopping at every tree to look at the moss... we finally made it to the Falls lookout.

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It was truly a sight to see... but the rain was now getting harder and we had to start heading back... which was when my husband realised he had a leech on him.

OH CRAP. I HATE LEECHES.

Seriously, hate them. I take a hundred spiders over a leech. Oh it makes me shudder to even type this... He put the leech on the log ( he didnt get a chance to start his sucking on hubbins finger) and the kids thought it was hilarious to watch it dance, trying desperately to attach itself to his finger again... And now, I put the camera away and walked without trying to panic the kids, back to the car as fast as I could, whilst now carrying Amahli ( and the camera bag and camera) ( and also stopping to check every 5 seconds how many of the blood sucking monsters were on me... * shudder*)

We were half way back when Miss Eagle Eyes spots another leech. This one was huge and fat and as she said " Its pretty!" so I was made to take his photo before being allowed to move on.

Once back and the car, I tore my shoes off and jumped in the car ( yes I am sorry to say, I was first in the car. The kids werent really worried :) )
Amahli was next and came up clear ( little buggar was carried the whole way she pretty much had nil chance of copping a blood sucker). Jumeirah had a couple on her shoes but she had sneakers so they hadnt gotten in. Hubbin had another one but nothing to serious and I was clear too.
Jared, still happy to be out of the muddy area, was last to get in. I pulled his shoes off and.....

Little Bastard ( the leech, not my son)

I tried not to panic, the blood was oozing and this buggar was getting a lovely big feed. I calmly told Jared he had a leech and not to worry. His comment??

"I not worried, Mum. He's got a lovely happy bed there and hes so cute!"

Nup, hes not mine :) Although when I asked him if he wanted to go here again he said " No Mum, its too dangerous and the mud is terrible".

Finally, with some salt I somehow randomly packed ( ??) we got it off and began home. Halfway home, I took each kid to the toilet before they all fell asleep. Lifting up Jareds shirt, another great big fat leech falls off FROM INSIDE HIS BELLY BUTTON. Could be awhile before we trek there again :)

But aside the horrors of mud and leeches we had the best day.
I totally recommend pulling out a map, plotting a day visit and setting off with your own gang. The bonding and fun times last forever :)

homemade printing

Today was wet and lovely and cool and my gang were keen to craft YAY!

Its rare that all three of them want to do something so I took full advantage of it and gave them a crafty painty activity that spanned the ages of 2-6 pretty well with only a few adjustments...

To start with ( and whilst Jared and Amahli were carrying on like loonies) I gave Jumeirah a few pieces of make up foam I had lying around my craft room to cut up into a few different shapes, nothing fancy, just triangles, squares and rectangles, and explained that we were going to make some patterns with those shapes.

She did this and we stuck some pins into the ends so it would be easy to pick up. I added paint to some old paper plates and she began to make some patterns on a page. I love the mathematical way she did this... creating repeatitive patterns with the shapes ( which was kinda the idea but I didnt want to push it too much).

Once Jared and Amahli saw her printing they too wanted in and so I gave them some great stampers I have had for years and some paint and they were able to print too. Not so patterny or mathematical but they really enjoyed this. Homemade stamps can be made out of anything.. old toilet rolls, cardboard, even carved into a rubber... might have a go at this one later in the week :)

Another exciting afternoon followed with us hunting 5 caches ( see yesterdays post about Geocaching) and finding 4 of them!! Its such a great way to get out as a family and see more of our lovely town. I am totally hooked on this :) And then to make it even more exciting, we found this!!! Its an official Michigan geocaching coin. I am so super stoked to have actually found something important! We are going to take it with us to the Hunter Valley in a few weeks and re cache it for someone else to find :)

I have no idea why blogger is loving this photo sideways.. stupid thing cos I cant fix it but you get the idea and cool it is ;)

And so today, before our hunt, I went and found some treasures to swap for our hunt. And it got me thinking... Maybe, if there are a few of you in the world that are going to do some of your own geocaching, we could do a treasure swap? So I would send a couple of things from Australia that you could use as your treasure and you could do the same!

Anyone keen????

Geo Caching: IM HOOKED

Todays photos are on the iPhone so they arent great but you get the idea ;)


Totally not what I was going to blog about today but Im still buzzing at how much fun this was with out gang this arvo :)

Somehow, in rest time today( Im trying to wean myself of day sleeps so I dont go to bed after 2am.. it was a killer today but I just managed :) ) I stumbled across a blog ( in a nutshell) that was talking about "Geocaching".... yeah I had no idea either. Sounds a bit nerdy to me....

But, after a little bit of research I got really excited.

Basically , geocaching is an World wide treasure hunt :) For free, you log into the geocache website, whack in your country, postcode or state, and up pops the co ordinates to go find hidden treasure!! You do need a GPS so we took daddys phone with us, but it was so kid friendly and so much fun we have a few more planned for this week and hope to do it more.

I was kinda shocked that Port Macquarie had about 300 Geocaches hidden around the place, but even more surprised that we actually found the first one we looked for! And so, as soon as Daddy got h ome today, we told him about it and he set up his phone with an actual App for it ( you dont need it but it helped) and off we went!

You have to be careful of "muggles" ( people who dont know what its about and some who would probably wreck it if they could see what you were doing) and so Jumeirah was hilarious whispering " Wait Dad! Theres more muggles coming!" and then whistled very strangely as the people walked past. Funny girl.


She was in command of the GPS and really enjoyed following the compass to find the spot to start hunting. Its not easy to find, I guess thats the point. It cant be too easy or it would be found by anyone. You have some clues so that did make it easier. And then, to my complete surprise, we found it! And 91 people had been there before us!

Once found, we opened it and filled in an already very full log book and took a treasure out and replaced it with one of our treasures ( we need to get more but we took a keyring)




I TOTALLY recommend you check out the website, get your hands on a GPS and go hunt your own caches :)
I would love to hear of your adventures!!
I would also love to see some photos of your hunt so if you do go one one sometime soon, post a photo on the Mumma Made It fan page so we can all see it!

Get out and GET HUNTING!!!