Adelaide Christmas Pageant

Yes I am a little slow in putting this blog up especially since the Christmas Pageant was 2 weeks ago now, but spare time with 2 young children is difficult to find sometimes!!!

In Adelaide we are lucky enough to have a wonderful Christmas Pageant every year, which every South Australian child looks forward to whether that be watching it on television, or by lining the streets of our wonderful city and watching the beautiful floats in the anticipation for Santa arriving to his Magic Cave.

A month ago I promised Harrison that I would take him to the pageant and have a wonderful day with just me and him, a month ago, I could not have anticipated the hottest November on Record ever.

40 degrees was the forecast, and if it wasn't for that promise I made, there normally would have been no way we would have left the comfort of our lovely home!!!!! I am so glad that I left Mitchell home with Graham, because I could have never taken him out in such horrendous heat!

We got up early and caught the train into the city with Rachel and the kids, and one of Harry's kindy friends, we were lucky to have secured some VIP seats in erected scaffolding stands - its a shame though that there was no shelter from the blistering sun.

Here are just a few of Harrison's favourite floats:

And then of course along came Santa:

Some of us trying to avoid the sweltering heat from our spot in the stand:

And then our attempts to get cool after it all finished, was to jump in the fountain in Victoria Square - the only way all the kids (and adults) were able to cool off! It was so hot that I got in as well and how wonderful that cool water was :-)

A new little hobby.....

I have found a new little hobby to do with my boys that involves us getting out and about to places you wouldn't normally go to. It is called Geo-caching and the only way I can describe it, is that it is a suburban treasure hunt.

Basically you go to the website (http://www.geocaching.com/) look for where the items are hidden in your neighbourhood and you go and search for it. Most people use handheld GPS units to find the treasures, because you are given coordinates to point you to exactly where the items are located, but me being a little poor these days, I am using 'Google Earth' and printing off maps for each location. Some are easily found and some are not.

The photos below are from Harry and I finding a cache called 'Civil Cults', with this one you had to work out a long division maths sum, which gave you the actual coordinates of where to find the item.

I say treasure hunt, but really most of these contain little junky toys, Harry found a packet of Domino's in this one, but you can be lucky and find special coins that are worth a few dollars or 'travel bugs' which are items that are meant to travel around the world - so when you find one, you take it and put it into another cache in the hope that everyone keeps it travelling. There are websites that follow their movements.

Most of my friends think I am a little crazy for doing this, but hey maybe this takes me back to my Girl Guide days, but I love it - think ill have to hint a little harder to get a GPS for Christmas.