Melbourne with the kids

It’s day 5 for me in Melbourne and the kids finally arrived yesterday. It’s obvious that they love it here – they’ve been beaming in delight ever since they reached, even with the jet lag and all. They both happily declared that they’re staying in Melbourne with my sister and not coming back.

Traveling with kids is intense because there are so many things to look into and we’re not the most organized people in the world to begin with so there’s a fair bit of scrambling to be done. But the look on their faces makes it all worth it.

First order of business was to visit the Collingwood Children’s Farm. Right next to the farm was The Abbotsford Convent, which I presume is a real convent. I can’t be sure because we didn’t see any sisters (except mine – ok that was bad, I know) or nuns but the place did look rather convent-ish.

Within the premises was a cafe with a really nice band so we sat down for a cup of joe and some creme brulee. I’m going to have to stop eating cakes with my coffee but they always look so tempting. At the rate I’m eating cakes here, no amount of shredding is going to help me when I get back.

The Children’s Farm was very cool. It’s a real farm but they opened it up for kids (and adults) to visit and experience a bit of animal farming. And it was a total hands on experience, not the sort where you have to observe the animals from behind the fence. They got up close with goats, ducks, geese, chickens, peacocks, sheep and cows.

And this has to be my favorite picture of the day because at the precise moment the photo was taken, Kirsten turned to me and said “mommy I want to touch the lion.” I used to teach them that lions had a lot of bushy facial hair and when she saw the sheep, she was all “BUSHY FACIAL HAIR! LION!”

Today we all learnt that lions and sheep had something in common – facial hair.

We rounded off the visit with a cow-milking session. They brought out Heather to the barn and all the kids took turns helping Heather to prevent engorgement. Having gone through some engorgement myself, I know how much of a pain it can be so we all milked Heather with tremendous gusto.

Ok I didn’t actually get to touch it but my sister said it was warm and squishy and extremely therapeutic. Sort of like a stress ball, except warmer and squishier. The next time I get stressed, I’m going to milk a cow.

Have a good Monday, you guys! We’re heading up to Mt Buller this morning to make snow angels, back with more tomorrow.