I've left this post too long, and I can't remember how Zoe slept.

We did some baking in the morning, and made our first batch of Christmas mince pies. As usual, the shortbread pastry dough is going to require some tweaking to be workable enough for my liking, but I was fairly happy with the first batch.

We made a quick foray at the supermarket for more baking ingredients before it was time to leave for Tumble Tastics.

The weather was looking a bit dubious, so we walked to Tumble Tastics, and Zoe did lots of puddle jumping with her rain boots.

After lunch we made another batch of mince pies, and then headed over early to Zoe's Kindergarten Christmas party, as I'd said I'd help with set up.

The party went really well. I got roped into doing emcee duties with the local politicians for the raffle draw, before the kids performed.

The kids' performance was very cute. Zoe went home with Sarah and I stayed behind to help with the pack up. It's hard to believe Zoe only has 5 more days of Kindergarten. The year has gone by so quickly.

Zoe managed to sleep all night for a change, and instead, I had Smudge going mental on the doormat outside my room at around 2am. It's a conspiracy to not give me a solid night's sleep, I swear.

I'd organised another play date with Chloe, this time at our place. They were a bit late arriving, so we just hung out and watched some DVDs until they arrived.

The girls had a good time playing together, and I made some breadrolls for lunch and gave Kelley a bit of a one on one Thermomix demonstration.

They hung around after lunch until it was almost time for Kelley to pick up her older daughter from school, and we biked over not long after that to go to swim class.

Hampton Swim School was having their SwimSAFER week this week, and instead of normal classes, they had a bunch of different stations set up around the pool where they did different safety activities. It seemed pretty cool.

Unfortunately not long into her class, Zoe came over to me complaining of ear pain at the top of her ear. On quick inspection, it turned out that somehow a large ant had gotten trapped in her ear (fortunately it wasn't the ear canal) and had bitten her. I have no idea how it got in there.

I managed to fish it out with one of my keys, but it must have been hurting a lot, as she was very upset, and didn't want to go back to her class. I tried using some Stingose from Hampton's impressive first aid kit, but she was done and wanted to go home, so we did.

We biked back home, and I gave her some ibuprofen and a more surgical application of Stingose. Our downstairs neighbour, Deana, popped up with her baby daughter for a chat, and I think that served as a good distraction as well.

Meanwhile, a massive storm rolled in, with some very impressive thunder and lightning, and also what was possibly Zoe's first hailstorm.

It was a crazy loud storm, and Zoe handled it pretty well. She initially thought the hailstones were Mentos. I managed to catch some of storm on my phone, and I've uploaded a video to YouTube. I've never heard anything quite like an approaching hailstorm on nearby tin roofs before it hit locally.

The storm passed pretty quickly, as it was moving pretty fast, but with all the excitement dinner was a bit late.

Yesterday felt like a bit of a blur, probably because I had a late night the night before.

I was up pretty early. I had my chiropractic adjustment and did some tidying up before the cleaners arrived.

I popped out to OfficeWorks to do a test print of my Christmas card while the cleaners were here, and then went straight to my massage appointment.

From there, I went straight to the Kindergarten to chair the last PAG meeting of the year. It's hard to believe there's only a couple of weeks of Kindergarten left. The year has flown by.

We popped over to Bunnings and the pet shop to get some more kitty litter, before dropping in at Hannah Photography to pick up the photo on canvas from our photo shoot. Zoe had fun playing with Hannah's cat, Charlie.

Sarah dropped in to spend a bit of quality time with Zoe, and I used the time to tweak my Christmas card a little bit. After Sarah left, we did another run to OfficeWorks to get them printed.

After that, it was time for a late dinner and off to bed.

I started the day nice and early courtesy of the sun.

I finished off the unit of assessment that I should have finished last week, and get it into the mail. I made a start on the next unit, but was feeling a bit unmotivated, so I walked down to the post office to mail off the previous unit.

My current unit is all about the different styles of homes in Queensland since pre-Federation, and it's actually really interesting. I could spend a lot more time reading the course notes than I really should. It did cause me to look at the homes I walked pass with a new eye.

It was pretty hot again, and I didn't feel up for picking up Zoe from Kindergarten by bike, so I drove over.

I wanted to head out to the Brisbane City Council's regional business centre at Yeerongpilly to see if they had any plans for my apartment building. It turns out it was a bit of a wasted trip, because I could have requested the archive retrieval over the phone if the call centre person I'd spoken to had have known better. Zoe enjoyed collecting brochures from the counter anyway.

The return journey took us close enough to West End, that I decided to make a side trip over there to grab a few things from the food wholesaler I like over there. Zoe had a milkshake, so she was happy.

We got home from that trip and didn't have a lot of time left until Sarah arrived to pick up Zoe.

We had another bad night's sleep last night, with Zoe waking up at 1:30am. Her bedroom was 27-28°C all night. I've got a pretty good amount of data on her sleep habits now, and it's pretty safe to say that if her room is over 25°C, she's going to wake up between 1:30am and 3am. Time to get some more quotes for air-conditioning I think.

Zoe did have a bit of a sleep in this morning, which allowed me to get ready for the day before she got up. Given I had a Thermomix demonstration to get to, that worked out well.

I half-packed the car for the demo and dropped Zoe to Kindergarten by car, and returned home to finish preparing and practice before I headed over.

I was fairly happy with my delivery, given it's been a little while since I've done one. My main goal today if not a sale was to get a booking for another demo, as I've been weak in that area, and I was successful in the latter, so that was good.

Timing worked out well that I got to Kindergarten right for pick up time. We drove home, and I unpacked the car and got changed into something cooler, and we headed out to try and get some more whole wheat grains from the Indian supermarket that Anshu had shown me. As luck would have it, they were out of stock, so it was a bit of a wasted trip.

We headed home and Zoe watched a bit of TV until Sarah picked her up.

We did a rather huge amount of pedestrian travel today.

I had the car booked in for a service, so after Sarah dropped Zoe off, and she'd watched a bit of TV, we drove over to Newstead to drop the car off.

I'd packed Zoe's scooter in the boot, and once we left the car dealership, we headed over to the Teneriffe cross-river ferry, which is currently conveniently depositing passengers at Hawthorne. Even more conveniently, the ferry was waiting for us as we arrived.

I'd booked haircuts for us at 10am, and we comfortably made it to the hairdresser with about 10 minutes to spare.

After that, it was time to head over to Tumble Tastics, which was quite close to the hairdresser's. We ended up getting there about 20 minutes early, but that was fine.

After Tumble Tastics, we headed home for lunch, and the car was ready to be picked up, so after a brief rest, we headed out again.

This time, Zoe said she wanted to walk, rather than ride the scooter, so we headed out on foot, reversing our trip.

We were in no particular hurry, so we stopped for a little play in a park over at Newstead that we'd discovered in the morning, and then picked up the car. It was a very hot day, so it was nice to get out of the heat.

On the way home, I discovered that the Hawthorne Markets were on. I had some paperwork to drop off to Zoe's school, so after I filled that out, we walked over to her school, dropped it off, and then walked back to the Hawthorne Markets.

I bumped into one of my fellow Thermomix Consultants, Katia, and got introduced to one of her friends, who it turns out, was at the very first trial Tumble Tastics class we went to. She also had a daughter named Zoe. So my Zoe knocked around with this Zoe and Katia's kids, and we grabbed some dinner there. It was a nice night out.

I love the feeling of community that I have now. I don't think I've had this feeling of being so well established in a place, within such a walking distance, ever before. I am truly grateful for living in such a wonderful neighbourhood and community.

I met Kelley at the first P&C meeting I went to, and she immediately took me under her wing, and later gave me a bit of a tour of the school, and some tips on Prep teachers and whatnot. I then proceeded to run into her nearly every time I went near the school.

She has a daughter, Chloe, starting Prep next year, and an older daughter in Year 3, and she's fairly well entrenched in the school community.

I thought it'd be good for Zoe to get to know Chloe a bit better, so she's one more person she knows at the start of school next year, so we had a play date at her house.

The girls seem to get along well, and Kelley's really nice. We have similar views in a lot of areas, and her husband works in IT security, so I think this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

After lunch, due to the heat, we decided to bike down to the Colmslie Pool together. Kelley has a bike adapter trailer thing that couples a normal kid's bike to the back of hers, with the front wheel slightly elevated.

Zoe made me very proud at the pool, doing a kneeling dive into the water and swimming half the length of the indoor pool. Her swimming continues to progress in leaps and bounds.

We had a good time at the pool, and then biked back to school so Kelley could pick up her other daughter. We just hung out at the pool a bit early for swim class, and then biked home afterwards.

Sarah picked up Zoe, and then I headed out for the second Thermomix cooking class I've had to help out with. This one was a bit more fun for me because we had a great number of consultants on hand to share the workload, and I wasn't on washing up duties this time.

Wednesday was yet another full day. It's no wonder I'm feeling so tired, and have a backlog of blogging.

Mel had asked me if I could look after Matthew and Olivia for a couple of hours in the morning. Matthew and Zoe get along fabulously, and the time worked well, so I was happy to help out.

Zoe seems to be going through a bit of a nightmare phase at the moment. I'm sure the heat isn't helping. Zoe woke up with a nightmare about Smudge dying at 2am. Her room was 27°C at the time. 2am seems to be the nightmare time. I got her resettled within about half an hour. I really think I'm going to have to look into air-conditioning her bedroom sooner rather than later.

So I was a bit of a zombie when Mel dropped the kids off at 9am. Fortunately Matthew and Zoe just went off and played together, and Olivia was happy to just hang out with me. She's such a sweet little 2 and a half year old. She kept calling me "Lucy's Dad" or "Sophie's Dad" or something not quite right. It was very cute.

Mel was going to stay for lunch, and I'd been feeling adventurous, and made some hamburger buns and hamburger patties throughout the morning, with everyone running amok around me.

I improvised a bit on the hamburger buns, using a mix of baker's flour and whole-wheat flour and buckwheat. The result still turned out quite satisfactory.

After lunch, Zoe and I headed over to school for the final Prep introductory afternoon. Zoe wanted to walk today. It was a "best of" day for the fine motor skills activities, and Zoe was rather chuffed to get picked as a leader for the gross motor skills activities.

One of the Prep teachers (the one I hope Zoe gets next year) who had remarked on Zoe's timidity on the first day remarked today about what a different girl she was now.

Walking home, there were a ton of ibis on the football field we walk past, so Zoe had a great time running across the field chasing them all. She's getting a lot better about walking longer distances now.

Eva and Layla came over for a play with Tanya in tow after school, and the girls had a fun afternoon. A massive storm rolled in, and so I went and picked up Anshu from the ferry terminal. Once the storm abated, Tanya left with the girls, and then Sarah arrived to pick up Zoe.

Anshu tagged along with me to the P&C meeting. Not the most fun "date night", but I was glad to have another opportunity to attend a P&C meeting before the end of the school year.

Zoe woke up at some point in the night. I have a vague recollection of a conversation with her, and lacking the willpower to get out of bed to put her back to bed in her own bed. The next thing it was 5:30am and she was sleeping sideways in bed with me.

Despite all that, I felt more rested this morning, which was good. We managed to get going quite early as well, without really trying. I had to be out at the Sleeman Sports Complex at 9am for a roadshow by the REIQ about the new Property Occupations Act, which kicks in on December 1 to replace the current Property Agents and Motor Dealers Act.

It also rained this morning, which doubly made it necessary to go to Kindergarten by car. We were actually running so early that we got there before opening time, which I've only managed to do a few times all year.

I ended up getting to the Sleeman Sports Complex about 15 minutes early. It was fun playing "spot the real estate agent's car".

I didn't learn anything earthshattering in the briefing, but it was useful to get fully up to speed on the new legislation. I just hope that being half way through a course that has covered the old legislation isn't going to be a problem.

I got home from that with enough time to just chill out for a bit (I ended up doing a bit of tinkering) before it was time to pick up Zoe. The weather was still a bit questionable, so I picked her up in the car.

Zoe wanted to watch Megan's tennis lesson again, and I had to be at home for a 3pm video chat, so I left her with Jason and popped home.

After my video chat, I went around to Jason's and helped with a bit of painting before heading home to start on dinner.

I had enough for Jason, Megan and Megan's little sister, so they came over for dinner as well.

I got Zoe down to bed at the normal time, but her bedroom is ridiculously hot. I'm not terribly confident I won't get another uninterrupted night's sleep.

I felt pretty exhausted this morning. In fact, I felt exhausted before I flew to Sydney for the weekend. It hasn't gotten any better.

I managed to get on an earlier (by an hour) flight back, which gave me a comfortable amount of time to unpack, put away the laundry and generally tidy up before picking up Zoe from Kindergarten.

After I picked her up, we popped over to the supermarket to do some grocery shopping and escape the heat, before heading home.

I had a crack at making sushi for dinner tonight. It turned out so-so. I'll tweak it a bit more next time.

Zoe seemed pretty worn out by bedtime too, and went to bed easily. I'm looking forward to a long night's sleep.

I'd made plans with Kelley, the mum of Chloe, who is also starting Prep next year, to go on a day trip over to the Redcliffe lagoon for a swim and a picnic. Despite it raining overnight, and it being overcast in the morning, I was confident we could still make a good day of it.

Then Zoe threw up rather spectacularly before breakfast. At least she had the decency to do it in the kitchen on the tiles, so it was easy to clean up.

At that stage, I wasn't sure if it was a gastro bug or what, so I canceled the play date to be on the safe side. Zoe kept breakfast down, and after doing a bit of craft (we made a really awesome little castle out of a tissue box and some toilet rolls), I decided it was okay to venture out.

Zoe's Kindergarten is doing some sort of Christmas production, and she was asked to provide a plain green t-shirt for it. Big W was apparently selling such t-shirts for the bargain price of $3, so I thought we might as well head out there. Zoe was keen to take a bus. We've never tried a multiple bus excursion before, but I figured it would be a good way to pass the day. There was a bus due in 10 minutes of hatching this plan, so we hastily headed out the door.

We took the usual city-bound 230 bus from Hawthorne, and had to change for a Carindale-bound bus at Woolloongabba, which struck me as a really inefficient way to travel, but it was what Google Maps said to do, so we did it. On the bus to Carindale, my friend Steve called me up because he had an hour to kill, and we arranged to meet up at Carindale for a coffee.

By the time we got there it was pretty much time for an early lunch, so we grabbed some lunch in the Glasshouse precinct of Westfield and Zoe had a play in the play area. I also tried out the selfie stick I'd picked up a few weeks ago. Zoe thought it was pretty cool.

After Steve departed, we bought the t-shirt, and headed back to the buses. It was nice to just wander around Carindale without a particular agenda for a change.

Having been the first time we'd traveled to Carindale by bus, we got on the 204 bus going in the wrong direction, and I didn't realise until we reached the end of the line. We had a brief wait for the next bus to leave going back the right way. I had a bit of a chat with the bus driver, who had a granddaughter about Zoe's age. I learned that 6 bus drivers a week get bashed, which seems rather dreadful. I also learned that they've been told it causes less fuss to just let passengers travel with a Go card with insufficient credit, so I'm not sure why I'm bothering to auto top up mine.

With the unplanned extra delay, we got home running late for swim class, so we drove to swim class, and Zoe had her swimming lesson.

After a brief side trip to the Hawthorne Garage to grab some stuff for dinner, we headed home, and Zoe watched a bit of TV while I put dinner on.

Bedtime was nice and uneventful.

I was up and about very early again this morning. I started the day off with my chiropractic adjustment and got stuck into the last part of the current unit of my real estate licence course.

The cleaners were about 15 minutes late arriving, and I had to race out the door as soon as they arrived to have a one-on-one with my group leader.

That went okay, and I got home and did some more of my coursework before heading out for my massage. I was feeling really sore after my run and my yoga class, so I really needed it this week.

After that, I had enough time to grab some lunch and race over to pick up Zoe from Kindergarten early to take her to Prep for her third introductory session. We introduced ourselves to the Mum of a little boy who was also heading to school and recognised Zoe in her Prep t-shirt.

The session went much better than the first one, probably because we were less rushed getting there on time and Zoe was well and truly with the program by now.

After school, we went back to the uniform shop to return one dress too many, and then ducked over to the supermarket to get some stuff for dinner. I'd arranged for Megan and her sister and Dad to come for dinner, as Laura was out of town. At school, I ran into Eva and Layla's Mum, Tanya, and Justin was out of town for a funeral, so I invited them over for dinner as well.

Five kids in a small apartment was quite the zoo, but everyone had a good dinner, play and bath (I need a few more towels to deal with that many bathing guests). Zoe was pretty tired, and with all the excitement I didn't get her down to bed until a little bit late.

Unfortunately, I didn't quite get the unit of study completed that I was working on today. I'll have to try and finish it off over the next couple of days.

This morning was a bit cooler on account of it being overcast, so I managed to leap out of bed and go for a run. I realised afterwards that it's been quite a while since I've gone for one. I mustered 7 km this morning before blowing up, mostly due to a lack of willpower to keep slogging on in the heat. I was happy I lasted that long.

I made up for last week's lost progress on my real estate licence course and knocked over a unit and put it in the mail. I managed to get through the first two parts of another unit, and hopefully I can finish off the third part and get it into the mail tomorrow.

I also did some productive procrastinating and may actually have a successful backup of daedalus currently getting written out to virtual "tape". Who would have thought the TCP keepalive interval would be the cause of all the problems?

I biked to Kindergarten to pick Zoe up, and then we went to the post office. I thought we should get Zoe's school uniform shopping out of the way, so under protest, we headed to the uniform shop on the way home from the post office.

For some reason, Zoe hadn't been excited about the prospect of going uniform shopping. Every time I'd asked her if she wanted to do it, she'd declined. Once we got into the store and were trying on uniforms though, she wanted to wear one home on the bike. So that's the uniform shopping out of the way, we just have to get some shoes, which I'll leave until the last minute in case her feet grow.

After we got home, Zoe watched some TV and I had a crack at making a herb and garlic pull-apart that I've been wanting to try and make for a while. It's smelling delicious in the oven as I write.

I'm looking forward to closing out the day with a yoga class.

I've felt exceptionally flat today, despite having a good night's sleep. I'm blaming the heat, or treking around Saint Helena Island in the hot sun yesterday.

We biked to Kindergarten this morning for drop off, and I left the trailer there. I was feeling pretty flat just after biking there and back in the heat.

I'm trying to rig up something to bring to Kindergarten one day, which uses a Raspberry Pi and the MaKey MaKey. I spent the day fooling around with it, and not much else.

I biked back to Kindergarten to pick Zoe up. Zoe and Megan wanted to have a play date, and Jason had to run some errands, so we biked home, and he dropped Megan off.

The girls had a good time running amok, and I made a start on my first batch of fruit mince for mince pies of this Christmas season.

Jason came over to pick up Megan, and Sarah arrived not long afterwards.

The REIQ was offering a one day "Starting an agency" course, which seemed too good to pass up. Unfortunately, being on a Friday, and not wanting to cause Zoe to miss out on Tumble Tastics, I had to get a nanny in, instead of just sticking her in day care for the day.

After getting some recommendations from friends on Facebook, and doing price comparisons, I went with Nanny's R Us.

They had to do a last minute swap, but everything worked out fine, and even with a 30 minute late start due to traffic, I got to my course on time.

The course was well worth it, and I got some useful information that I'd been lacking to date. The course instructor also happened to be the trainer who is marking my next four units of my real estate license course, so it was nice to meet him in the flesh.

The course finished a bit earlier than the advertised time, so I used the time to run some errands I was planning on doing on Monday.

Zoe's future primary school had a "family fun night", which started at 3pm, so I'd asked the nanny to take Zoe to that and met them there at 5pm. It was a pretty good night, and Zoe had lots of fun on the rides.

My friends Chris and Kelly were holidaying on the Gold Coast with their daughter Alyssa, and I made plans to catch up with them at Movieworld on Thursday.

The day went super well. We timed our arrival for right on opening time, and quickly found them. Zoe and Alyssa got along really well.

The highlight of the day (for me) was that Zoe managed to be allowed onto the Scooby Doo ride in the morning. I think technically she was still a tiny bit under the height restriction, as a different attendant didn't let her on again in the afternoon.

Zoe was initially too scared by the dark in the queuing area and wanted to leave again, but the attendant talked her into going on the ride, and we had a great time. It's my favourite ride so far, in terms of length. Zoe turned around and went on it again straight away.

The other ride that we got heaps of mileage out of was the Hall of Justice ride, which Zoe has been on the first time we went, but the second time was too scared to go on. This time, her and Alyssa probably went on it 10 times in a row.

It was a really great day out, and I even got to go on the Green Lantern ride with Kelly, which was all over surprisingly quickly.

I expected Zoe to fall asleep instantly in the car on the way back, but she stayed away chattering away and playing with the Scooby Doo toy that Alyssa had bought her.

We got back with enough time to do a couple of post office runs and pick up Anshu from the ferry terminal, before Sarah arrived to pick up Zoe.

I felt absolutely trashed this morning. I was completely oblivious to Zoe coming in and sleeping in my bed at 1:20am. The first thing I knew of her being there was at around 5am when she woke me up.

We eventually got going in the late morning. I wanted to go check out a wholesale kitchen place I'd heard about, Kitchen Discounts. Like every other wholesale direct to the public place I've found out about recently, this place was also awesome. Zoe and I had a great time browsing the store.

We had lunch when we got home, and then started pulling apart the old garbage disposal, which ended up being a bit of a job. They really weren't kidding when they said it wasn't serviceable. It had some weird screws that I couldn't undo, so I drilled them all out, and we got as far as pulling the motor apart. It was definitely leaking, the bottom of the grinding plate had corroded through.

It was then time to head to Zoe's future primary school for her second Prep introductory session. Zoe scootered to school with lots of time to spare so we wouldn't be late, and I made sure Zoe was fed and watered, and things went much better than last week.

The format was pretty much the same as last week, just different fine and gross motor skills. Zoe participated much better than last week, so the challenge will be to have a smoother early departure from Kindergarten for next week's session.

On the way back home, we stopped off at the park for a play, and then continued home in time for Sarah to pick up Zoe.

Yesterday was just full of annoyances.

Zoe had a brief wake up at 11pm. I think it was a bad dream.

I woke up at 5:30am with the light and decided to get up and get things going. Zoe on the other hand, decided to sleep in until 7:20am.

We got going to Kindergarten on the bike. The sky looked really ominous, and sure enough, it started to rain by the time we'd gotten half way up the Hawthorne Road hill. I figured we should just cut our losses and turn around and go in the car instead.

So we eventually got to Kindergarten. It was Grandparents Day, and all of Zoe's living grandparents and great-grandparents were going to make an appearance.

I got home and made a start on the current unit I'm working on for my real estate licence. After finishing Part A, I took a break, and doing some cleaning up, caused the garbage disposal to trip the earth-leakage circuit breaker, killing power to my unit and killing a multi-day backup of daedalus that I had running.

I discovered the garbage disposal has been leaking water under the sink, and that was probably what caused the circuit breaker to trip. The model I have isn't serviceable, so it needed to be replaced. After some calling around, Bunnings were the cheapest, so I picked one up and proceeded to spend the rest of the day installing it.

After much swearing, I got it installed successfully. It was not how I wanted to be spending the day.

I got it finished with enough time to clean up before driving over to Kindergarten to pick up Zoe.

Zoe wanted to watch Megan's tennis class, so we stuck around for that, and then popped into Megan's for a little bit before heading home.

Dinner was quick and easy tonight, so we used the extra time to go out for a babyccino before bedtime.

Again, I failed to start the day with a run, despite that being my intention. I think I'm officially out of the running habit now, so it's going to take some work to get back into it.

I'd decided that since I'd just finished the dispute management unit of my real estate licence course, that it might be educational to go and sit in on some residential tenancy dispute hearings at the Queensland Civil and Administrative Tribunal, so I donned my suit, hopped on a bus and rocked up at the hearing rooms in the city.

As they only publish their daily hearing list the night before, I kind of had to wing it as to the suitability. As luck would have it, Tuesday's list looks way better than Monday's list.

I ended up sitting in on one residential tenancy hearing, where the respondent was a no show, but they still proceeded with terminating the tenancy due to massive arrears. The next two were public housing hearings, which weren't relevant to me. One, where the respondent did show up, was particularly messy.

I didn't get as much of an educational benefit out of it as I would have hoped, but I did get to see how the process worked, so if I ever wind up there it won't be totally foreign to me. I may go again another time for the heck of it.

I caught a bus back home with enough time to bike down to the post office to collect some mail before biking to Kindergarten to pick Zoe up.

I'd switched Zoe's swim class from Thursday to Monday this week to free up Thursday for a trip to Movieworld to catch up with some friends visiting from Adelaide, so we biked directly to swim class, getting there a bit early. We hung out and had a snack before her class started.

One of Zoe's friends from Kindergarten was having a class at the same time, so Zoe got to say hi to her before their classes started, and then Eva and Layla arrived for classes after Zoe's. Zoe got to hang out with them individually, because they had back to back classes, and Justin and I got to have a chat. Zoe had a great old time playing with a bunch of kids, and we didn't end up leaving the pool until 4:30pm. It was a really nice afternoon.

I forget what time Zoe woke up, but I'm sure it was earlier than I would have liked.

I've been wanting to do some baking for a while to get away from Zoe snacking on store-bought processed snacks, so I thought I'd have a crack at making some "40 second cookies" using a combination of macadamia nuts and almonds. I also tried milling some whole wheat into flour, but I didn't do it up front, I did it after I already had the nuts in the bowl. Long story short, it was a total fail. The dough came out too moist, and the wheat didn't mill down completely, so when I baked them they all just ran together into a large tray-sized slab of cookie. I cut out a few "cookies" with a scone cutter after they'd baked, and Zoe liked them anyway.

I had a few packets of water beads that I'd acquired recently, and we had a few errands to run. I got Zoe to put a few of the water beads in some water before we did the baking, and then headed out. After we got back from running our errands, they'd started swelling up, but not to their full size.

We got ready for TumbleTastics early for a change, and Zoe scootered down to TumbleTastics with a good 15 minutes to spare. It was nice to not be in a mad rush for once.

After TumbleTastics we came back home, and had some lunch, and the water beads had swollen up to their full capacity. Zoe had a bit of a play around with them.

The big highlight of the day was our local Councillor, Shayne Sutton, had her Hocus Pocus Halloween in the Park event, which started at 3pm. Sarah had bought an Incredibles costume for Zoe, which she was very excited about. She'd managed to break the elastic strap at Kindergarten on Wednesday, so after lunch I did a bit of a repair job on it.

Zoe was dying to wear her costume, and I needed to grab a few things from the supermarket for dinner, so I let her wear her costume to the supermarket. She thought that was pretty awesome.

After we got back from the supermarket, we headed down to the park, a little bit early, so Zoe had a play in the playground.

Once things kicked off in earnest, we did the rounds, picked up candy from all the stations, and went on the various rides. It was a good free outing. I do like Shayne Sutton's family activities. She spends her allotted funds well.

I never got into Halloween in a really big way when we lived in the US. I'd carve a pumpkin every year, for the novelty value, but after Zoe was born, I realised how much fun Halloween was for kids. One of the things I miss from the US are all the traditional holidays. Halloween is getting quite big in Australia, but it's just not the same in mid-spring, which lately seems to be becoming an extended summer.

Sarah met us at the park to pick up Zoe, so I left them to it, and headed home to start dinner.