On Saturday, I said to my other half (sometimes known as "Mr Greedy"), "We've done nothing for a few months except scrimp and save, do chores and survive two vomiting viruses. Let's go somewhere nice tomorrow, like Seaworld". (For those of you overseas, this is a marine fun park place about an hour's drive away at the Gold Coast).So....the next day, we packed our picnic lunch, our sunscreen and hats, and all the other things you need to take kids out for the day and off we set. After paying the exhorbitantly high price of entry for three of us (G was free), we went in. All the rides and entertainment was then free, which was great as the girls wanted to go on their favourite things (eg the carousel) over and over again. 
We couldn't find E's togs when we were packing the car, so put her in spare shorts and vintage crochet top (a recent welcome gift from my buddy, Le) so she could have a splash in the waterplay part. She just loved it - ran around the squirty thing in the centre getting squirted about a million times, laughing her head off the whole time. I love to see her running around as she is such an indoor girl. Every so often, I looked up at the sunshine falling down on us and called her over for a bit more sunscreen.
The starfish in the rockpool were a huge hit for both girls who just loved being able to get up and touch them (and a range of other squidgy and hairy things). I found the nearby shark/fish/coral reef tank thingy like a meditation - so surreal watching the sea creatures swim past the huge glass window. It reminded me of snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef at the Whitsundays in my youth - an experience that was the closest I ever got to a psychodelic trip, being not the druggie type of girl.
E. has outgrown Sesame Street but was completely entranced with meeting the Cookie monster.
By the end of the day, I must have been a bit tired and emotional, as the dolphin show (which I have seen several times) made me all weepy. I just felt overcome with how beautiful and graceful they were and that they can be bothered at all with we humans, let alone soar through the air to bring us joy. I know it is sort of just a silly trick but I found watching them really moving. The best part was before the show when we were walking to our seats and a beautiful dolphin swam up quite close to us and just floated in front of me, looking at me peacefully before moving away again. I took a second photo after the one above but he/she was already half submerged.
Today we are back to the day to day stuff - packing the school bag, finding the school hat, buying the bread and bananas. Man.... it was good to have a day that was just fun.
