Into Sydney

Today was a Thursday… kinda cold, kinda overcast, kinda threatening rain. So glad we went to Manly Beach yesterday!!

But today, had wonderful adventures in store… First, the Older celebrated a birthday while we were here and instead of a present, we sent him on an adventure. In case you don’t know- he LOVES all things coffee. He hopes to open a coffee shop with curriculum and educational resources for the community (and the homeschooling community)- it is his dream. So when I was searching for things to do in Sydney and The Coffee School popped up, the plans began…

We jumped on the free bus, road to the train station. Took the train to Sydney’s Central Station and walked with him down to class. It was actually kind of him to allow us to come with him- as we needed to get to Sydney, and he was the master of the train schedules.  He was pretty pumped about the whole thing, but when he saw all the professional coffee machines, he was over the moon. So we left him to make coffee- lattes, cappuccinos, macchiato, long black, short white, mocha. May have more later…


We, however, headed deeper into the city for another adventure. Our dear friends, the R family(can't wait to see you) sent us a link to an amazing display at the University of Sydney. Could we find it? Yes, we could!! Could we find it before the rain came?? Barely!

University of Sydney has a beautiful campus. Lots of old, English looking buildings- could some of our homeschooling friends do a little research and tell us the period and style of the architecture of these buildings? Ha ha

And in one of them was a Lego replica of the Roman coliseum- no kidding!! It was incredibly detailed and if you know Lego creators, you know they have a great sense of humor! One half was as the building stood today-crumbling, grassy floor, with tourists, ‘gladiators posing for pictures’ and the popemobile sitting outside. The other half was built to replicate the building as it was in its ‘glory days’- gladiators fighting each other, crocodiles, even Caesar teasing a bear with a lego steak. There were vendors outside, people wearing togas and even the cages under the floor for the animals.  It was so fun!

 The front was pretty cool, you can see where they old and current split is on this picture.

The back had tons of fun little scenes with gladiators and tourists.


Essie took many pictures, so some are a little blurry, but she had a blast! Hope you enjoy some of them.

See Nero in the corner? You can just make out the bear's head.

The gladiator fighting the alligator (or is it a crocodile?) was not fairing too well. 

actually, none of the gladiators look like they were having much fun....

but, the tourists look happy ...

the fountain was beautiful! 

The vendors were selling and soldiers were lining up....

It was really awesome!

After a train ride back home, navigated on our own, probably because the Tall One has a keen sense of train timetables as well - and a short ride on the free  shuttle...some of us were pretty tired. <smile>

But, TADA we made it home safe and sound.

Games galore..

So, we have settled in to our ‘home away from home’ and as our Traveler goes off to labor for the day, we have some down time to rest, read, write, play games and hang out- it has been wonderful. I can’t wait to share some more of our ‘out and about’ adventures, but first we wanted to share some really awesome games we have discovered!

Essie and Beej love Monopoly Deal. This game brings the board game down to a modified card game. Trade, deal and make monopolies to win this fun game.

Uno and Skip-bo are tried and true favorites at our house….

 

And several years ago someone got Quarx for his birthday. It is a fun little game… you simply count the spheres. Sounds easy, but speed is a factor and so not surprisingly accuracy sometimes suffers. This game incorporates math skill as you have to also lay down the number cards to add up to the number of spheres. It does a great job reinforcing adding some bigger numbers for the little people.

But our hands down favorite is Bananagrams.

Recommended by a dear friend (Hi Katie) we purchased it just before we left… we have played it over and over. If you don’t have it yet, definitely put it on your list!!

This word-based game has you competing against each other to use all of your letter tiles to make your own, unique scrabbleish/crossword puzzle. As you use all your tile, everyone ‘peels’ a tile from the ‘bunch’ until there are not enough tile for everyone to choose another.

The first person to then use all his/her tile makes everyone else ‘bananas’ because they win!

 

This was The Tall One's winning hand!

Please tell us which games your family enjoys...