Guess who is 9 - Birthday Boo

I went to bed last night as an 8 year old and woke up as a 9 year old... that also meant that I woke up to a pile of presents that were all for me!

I am 'one in a million' - that's what the card said!

Present Time!

Trying to guess what is inside

Yippee, just what I wanted

How to wear new skate pants!

The best present EVER!

How about that for a ginormous pile of presents!

Happy birthday to me and let the Festival of Boo begin,

Love Princess George

Mansions for Millipedes

Normally when we go geocaching we spend our time running around looking for actual geocaches.  Today when we went geocaching we were looking for earth caches - we were learning about geographical features of the area.  We figured that as we were learning about how the different rock formations were created we would have a closer look.  By the way, all of the different rock formations in the area were created by lava flows about a million years ago.

As we were looking at the tessellated pavement we found heaps of millipedes.  Now of course these millipedes all needed somewhere to call home so we went millipede house hunting.

There are so many places to look for millipede mansions.

There could be some over here.

This millipede mansion is so big it could be a 5 star millipede resort.

Just so you get an idea of what a millipede is looking for when it is investing in real estate, I will show you one of our favourites.  This was one of the best millipede houses we found; plenty of places to rest, lots of rooms in the little holes in the rocks.  What makes this millipede mansion so impressive is the swimming pool with its own and the garden!  Who wouldn't love to live in a mansion with a beautiful swimming pool set in a garden that has plenty of dappled shade so that you don't overheat if the weather ever warms up.  We estimate that this millipede mansion would be worth about a million millipede dollars.

Have you ever been looking for millipede mansions?  It is heaps of fun, you should try it some time.
Love Princess George

International Earth Cache Day

Did you know that today is International EarthCache Day?  Well I didn't know it was until this morning.  Here I was snuggled on the couch, wrapped in a blanket, munching on toast watching some trashy Sunday morning TV when mum declares that we NEEDED to go caching to celebrate.  Dad was still in bed, Milla was on the computer and I was really in no hurry to move so mum tweeted dad (yep, that's what you do when you are too lazy to go upstairs!) and convinced dad it was time to go on another adventure to find an Earth Cache or two!

"What is an Earth Cache?" I hear you say.  Well that is exactly what I said to mum when she was nagging convincing me to get off the couch and get dressed.  Google to the rescue and we found out that... an EarthCache is similar to a Virtual Cache in the way that there is no traditional cache container or a log book, but because of their purpose they differ greatly.

The purpose of an EarthCache is to share information about a particular geological feature of our planet Earth, and the object is to learn something about it. When you visit an EarthCache, you learn something interesting about the geology of the area. Usually the information is freely given but you have to do a bit of investigative work to answer proposed questions in order to claim the cache.

EarthCaches are created by Geocachers who have knowledge of geoscience and like to share it with the world. (from Geocaching Online)

It sounded pretty cool and I was almost convinced.  I have to say that I really do like to go caching but after such a crazy busy day yesterday, I was really tired and looking forward to a quiet day.  Well that was thrown out the window, a snack bag was packed, we were dressed and before we knew it we were out the door and on our way.  

Apparently there are plenty of Earth Caches around but we just haven't been looking for them.  There are even some close enough to home that we could have ridden our bikes there but we decided to go on a real adventure to Organ Pipes National Park.  There were three Earth Caches out there for us to find.

The first was the Rosette Stone.  It is hard to see in this picture but the columns of rock all start in the middle and then move outwards, kind of like the spokes on a bike wheel.  It is pretty easy to imagine that the huge rock formation is a giant flower!

The second was the actual Organ Pipes themselves.  Now I have never seen real organ pipes but I have seen pictures of them in movies and things, huge big pipes that stick out of the organ.  Well this rock formation on the other side of the creek was just like that.  It looked like huge pipes sticking out of the ground.  Each pipe was a hexagonal shape that happened when the lava began to cool and shrink.

The last Earth Cache was further down the path.  It was the sedimentary rock that has eroded away to be kind of bumpy.  It looked like a fun place to explore and climb but it was on the other side of the creek too so I couldn't get to it.


Can you believe that all of these crazy cool rock formations were caused by volcanoes erupting near here about a million years ago.  How awesome is that!  There was so much to learn about the geology of the area as we explored the park looking for the caches.  We really will have to remember to email the answers to the questions to the cache owner so that we can log them as finds.  Sure we could have done it from Organ Pipes but there was so much more to do.

Naturally there were puddles that just had to be jumped over, or should I say jumped in!

There were rock formations that looked like we could pull them apart.  We tried but it didn't work!

Best of all there were great places to just relax and enjoy being out in the sunshine.

So there you have it, an unexpected adventure and our first 3 Earth Caches found.  Not a bad way to spend a sunny Sunday morning.
Love AJ Pickle

Rest and Relaxation in the Country

When AJ was invited to a birthday party in the 'middle of no-where' and the invitation extended to the entire family, we figured we may as well join him and head to the bush for some rest and relaxation.  After a long few weeks of being cooped up indoors trying to recuperate, I was looking forward to getting out and hopefully enjoying some sunshine.    

As the kids all ran wild playing 'Hunger Games', we sat around eating, drinking and chatting.  Some of us even managed to curl up on a picnic blanket and have a nap.  

In a place like this, it is no wonder we came home relaxed.

The perfect place to sit and relax.

Since we were in Kangaroo Ground, it only seemed appropriate that a mob of kangaroos hopped around the property.  I think they were looking for a way to avoid all the noisy kids that were running wild.


We did get some sunshine during the afternoon and it was a great day out for everyone.

Famous (kind of) from a long long time ago!

Way back in the days before we were blogging, when we were just little little kids, we went to the United States to live.  Well we didn't end up living there for long, but we did have an awesome holiday.  One day we will even sit down and write the stories about all of the crazy adventures when we were there but in the meantime, I thought I would show you a photo of where we lived that is being used on tourist link, a tourist website.

Look how little and cute we were!

Beden's Brook, the creek in the photo, was just down the hill from the cottage where we were living.  We would go for a walk down to the creek to look for bugs and frogs whenever we had the chance.  It was great living by a creek, even when a flash flood went through and washed away all the sticks and rocks that we used to build with.  I loved seeing how far I could throw rocks and to see if I could make a huge splash.

We had a great time living in New Jersey and visiting so many really amazing places.  Hopefully one day we will get a chance to go back and revisit all of the fun places.  If you want to see any other photos from our time in America, you can see them on our Flickr pages.
Love AJ Pickle

PS - If you look really closely at the photo, you can see Skanky Bear - Milla's favourite teddy that travelled all the way to New Jersey with us.  Skanky visited Philadelphia and New York with us but who didn't come back to Australia.  I think Milla still misses Skanky Bear :-(

Hunger Games

Have you read the Hunger Games series or even watched the Hunger Games movie?  I have and I have to say the books were awesome, so was the movie!  I'm not the only one who loves the Hunger Games, it is the most popular game to play at school.  The Hunger Games are so popular that some of my friends organised a Hunger Games birthday party.   

We all had to go to this big property in the bush where the games were held.  We split up into teams to represent each of the districts and then off we ran, up and down the hills and through the bush, trying to zombie-afy one another.  (Instead of killing one another and being out of the game, anyone 'killed' became a zombie and tried to create even more zombies.)   

We all had water guns, weapons made from paper or sticks we found as we ran through the bush.  I managed to get the coolest water gun from the stash at the cornucopia to use in the games.  (Hey Santa, I think a water gun like this might just make it to the top of my Christmas wish list!)

There was so much room to run wild, even little sisters and brothers were allowed to join in the games.  It meant there were more players to make into zombies!

I just have to say, that was the coolest birthday party EVER!  I had an awesome time and managed to survive the games without becoming a zombie.

Love AJ Pickle

Lucky Me

It isn't every day that I realise that I am so lucky but on a day like today - International Day of the Girl, it is important to realise that I am really really lucky.  I am lucky to live in Australia, in a country that values education and equality.  Did you know that if I was born in many other countries in the world, it is unlikely that I would be going to school.  Around the world, 1 in 3 girls don't get the chance to go to school.  In some countries, I might even be married already, to someone that I didn't even know.  I might be living in poverty and be exposed to violence.

Today I will remember just how lucky I am to be able to read, to be able to learn, to be able to go to school and live in safety.

Love Princess George

PS  If you want to learn more about how important it is for girls (and boys) to get an education you should head on over to Because I am a Girl.  

Record Attempt Update

So we joined in the fun for another attempt at creating the world's largest conga line on ice at Icehouse this morning.  Naturally being a part of the conga line, mum couldn't get her camera out and get some happy snaps.  Luckily the folks at Icehouse took heaps of photos and mum found this one on Facebook to prove that we were there.  Dad doesn't look too happy but he really was having fun!

Unfortunately we weren't all able to hold the conga line for the full 15 minutes (and I don't think there were enough people in the conga line even if it didn't keep breaking) to break the record but I did have fun. 

What I did learn is that trying to break a world record is seriously hard work, especially if you have to listen to this song over and over and over again!  

That said, I will go back next time that they try to break the world record.  Everyone always says third time lucky!

Love AJ Pickle

Conga Line

If the holidays have to come to an end and we have to go back to Melbourne, it is a good thing if there is something extra awesome to look forward to.  Luckily we have found something to do that will be heaps of fun, and could even break a world record!

We are going to Icehouse to try and break the world record for the world's longest conga line on ice!

We were at Icehouse last year when an attempt to break the world record happened but there were only 202 people taking part.  We had heaps of fun then and I am pretty sure that we will have heaps of fun again tomorrow.  Perhaps you will come down to Icehouse and join in the fun too.
Love AJ and Milla