Model trains, scooters, and Bob the Builder

Andrew, Simon, and I are in Kalbar, enjoying a few days with Grandma and Grandpa. On Sunday there was a special exhibition (with guest appearances by Bob the Builder!) at a train musuem close by in Ipswich. Grandma thought Simon would love it, which he did. Then on Thursday we will go to Brisbane for the launch of Steph's latest biography of Bruce Dawe. Today we're back to the train museum, as we purchased an annual pass. This museum is one of the best children's museums I've ever seen. It was amazing and I'm excited to return, as we barely scratched the surface. Simon could have spent all day watching the model trains. I shed a few tears as I missed my dad so much and wished he was here to enjoy it all with Simon, fellow train enthusiast. So today will likely be another day of thinking about and missing my dad, as we are surronded by diesel engines and interesting facts. A heap of photos of the day, as well as some of Simon racing up and down Grandma and Grandpa's verandah on his scooter and finally, my 29 week old belly!

Revisiting photos from our trip last January

I have been doing some computer housekeeping and came across pictures from our trip this past January. My thoughts have been on my father a lot recently and I'm really missing him. I never did blog about our trip - it was very emotional but powerful and healing. I feel it was a really important part of the journey of grieving my dad. It is still sometimes hard to believe that I will not see him again on this side of life. My hope continues to lie in the promise that Christ sealed for us with his resurrection, that although he is a suffering saviour, he will indeed rescue us from the separation of death and I will again be reunited with my loving father.

Simon says the sweetest things...

Here's a few of the cute things Simon has been saying lately.

After I was away all day at a doctor's appointment in Brisbane:
Simon(with a HUGE smile on his face and after shouts of utter bliss and joy): Missed you, Mama, missed you. Love you, Mama, love you. (over and over and over again). Could anything make me more happy? And then he said it again the next morning when I came into his room.

Upon waking up in the morning:
Me: Simon, what do you want for breakfast?
Simon: Chocolate!

Me: Who's Mama's sweetheart?
Simon: Boy! (He often calls himself boy.)

At my friend Lisa's house. He sees a car he likes.
Simon: Mama, buy this car.
Me: We can't buy this car. This is Sunny's car.
Simon: Mama, take Sunny's car home.

Before going to sleep.
Me: Night, night sweetie.
Simon: Night, night sweetie.
Me: Love you, sweetie.
Simon: Love you, sweetie.
Me: No more talking. Sshhhhh!
Simon: Mama, Sshhhhh!

He's talking so much now and making complete sentences. I love discovering the new words he is saying.

He loves me singing songs to him, especially "I'm dreaming of a white Christmas". He calls it "Christmas song" and I have to sing it whenever he is going to sleep. After discovering the cartoon, "Caillou", on You Tube a week or so ago, he's been constantly asking me to sing songs to him about Simon doing the things he sees Caillou doing, like taking a bath, going swimming, seeing firetrucks...

And he's started to call himself "Nimon" but not always. He uses Nimon, you, and me interchangeably now, when he's talking about himself.

A very productive week.

The last few days have been incredibly productive at Chez Steggall-Lewis. Andrew and Simon have gotten stuck into the many building projects we have on our list for this summer. It's gorgeous to see how enthusiastic Simon is to work with his dad - if it involves tools the boy has amazing concentration and attention. I have loved watching Simon wandering around after Andrew, ready to help out. Andrew found some wood for a real bargain at the dump, and so he and Simon have been busy getting it ready for our new bedroom closet. My excitement about how organized this closet will allow me to become has thrown me into an organizing/cleaning spree and I've managed to clean out the one closet we have in our house (it's pretty amazing how much stuff you can cram into a closet!)and sort through my kitchen cupboards.



Simon transitioned from the floor to his own "big boy" bed this week, and he loves it. So I took the opportunity to rearrange his room and organize his clothes and clothes for his little baby sister. What else have we been up to? I've washed and stored our winter clothes and planted petunias. And we had our good friends over for french toast Friday morning, which was great fun, especially as Nathan rode over on his bright red scooter which Simon loved riding around our backyard with Andrew. Ever since, he's been begging me to sing the "motorbike song" which is just me making up lame verses about riding a motorbike fast.





Anyway, this avo after church Andrew and I were both really tired... we felt a long nap like our little boy, who has been back to sleeping through the night and has extended his afternoon naps to one and a half to two hours. I guess we have been busy around here!

Back to our Tuesday morning routine - garbage truck day!

I finally snapped some photos of Simon at his look out post, waiting for the Tuesday morning rubbish/garbage truck to come by. This has become one of the highlights of every week. Isn't he a cutie!

Camping on Bribie Island

Our second camping trip with Simon. We chose Bribie Island because it was only an hour and a half away and we'd never been there before. We had a great time as a family but for our next camping trip, we'll remember to buy/borrow a bigger tent and make sure we have a mattress that fits inside of it! The mattress we had borrowed from our friends was WAY too big, but after one very uncomfortable night sleeping on the ground, we managed to stuff the way too big mattress into our tiny tent by making "bunk beds" out of it. Andrew took the top level and Si and I slept on the bottom. Much more comfy but even less room in our tiny tent, and remember, I am almost 26 weeks pregnant. In the end, we opted to return a night early and avoid another uncomfortable sleep and sore back! Ahhhh, and did it feel good sleeping in our bed last night!

Other than that, it was really fun exploring a new place and just being around a completely different kind of people than we're used to up here. It made me again realize what a small sector of the population we encounter on a daily basis- our area is unbelievably affluent- and it puts life into perspective when you encounter people from other walks of life.

Although we were camping 200 meters from the beach and the weather was unbelievable, we actually never went for a swim, at the beach or the caravan park pool. Simon just isn't digging the ocean these days and instead is up for as much playground time as possible. That and doing anything that involves throwing, kicking, or catching a ball. The caravan park had a mini golf course which Simon took to immediately. Three hours later, Andrew remarked, "We've got to do something else!" Our boy sure does have concentration and persistence when there's something he likes! It's great Andrew has such patience playing with him. Which he did a lot of this weekend as there's just no place to go when camping in a campground, where we could take our eyes off of Simon for a sec.







I realized when packing away our campsite that we actually hadn't taken any pictures of "camping", just of more swings and balls. So we snapped a quick shot to record this memorable event.

And here's a few playground/mini golf pics as well. When I first meet Andrew we'd travel around looking for different skate parks for him to skate - funny how life changes. Now we're chasing playgrounds, especially ones with swings! If there's one thing nice to say for Bribie, they have great playgrounds and we managed to find and play at six in the three days we were there. I was only wishing we would have brought our bikes with us, as the island is perfect for cycling and we could have ridden from park to park, with the beautiful Pumicestone Passage in the backdrop.

Pictures from our day with D and Eileen

The week of Andrew's birthday, his brother David and his lovely wife Eileen came up to the Sunny Coast for a work retreat and so we were lucky to see them a couple of times. They came up here and we hung out at the river, went to the best gelato shop this side of Italy (Simon has discovered he shares his Papa's love of icecream!), and watched our budding soccer star in action. We loved hanging out and the many great photos that Eileen took. Oh, and finally a chance to see my belly at almost 24 weeks.