The women we met at the riding school were lovely, friendly and obviously very much into horses. They chatted to Caitlin about homeschooling and asked her about her experience with horses, then I left her there for a few hours to help them out. The other kids and I debated whether to go and do a forest walk while we were up there - LiAM wanted to go back home, Amelie wanted to walk, so we decided we could walk after we picked Caitlin up. Back home the kids continued playing on the PS3, and I pottered around and did some more tidying, a bit of research for our trip and so on.
A few hours later we headed back up the hill to get Caitlin. She was very happy, and so were the women she'd been working with. She'd spent the 3 hours helping them with their every day care of the horses, and they'd let her do everything that they were doing - it is exactly the type of experience she was looking for.
From there we drove around the to the Toolangi Forest Discovery Centre - I've been meaning to go there since I first heard of it, about 8 years ago, and we've never made it. The Discovery Centre was closed 'until further notice' but the bush walks were still available, so we meandered off on the Yea River Walk. It was beautiful - lots of tree ferns and tall gums, and quite cool walking in the forest even though it was a warm day. Amelie was a little frightened of the wolf spider holes in the ground, so she kept close to me except when she was exploring the ferns. The river was small and pretty when we reached it (on 2 occasions). The kids pretended to be horses and jumped over any logs or branches or dips in the path. LiAM made a crown of fern leaves for Amelie and put it in her hair - she happily became 'The Princess of the Jungle'. All the kids were very tired by the time we made it back to the end of the loop - Caitlin was nearly asleep on her feet.
Yea River |
Princess of the Jungle |
Taken by LiAM |
At 6 I took her in to Guides and then came home and finally got to the dishes I'd been planning to wash all day. We had a quiet night - the kids watched some Kung Fu Panda and played a few games and I went to bed as soon as I could, I was quite tired myself after our fun and unexpectedly busy day.