School friends, fossils, cousins

George has got new sunglasses. He had been asking for some. "I need some widdle glasses" were his exact words.

 

Max noticed that the anvil on the playground equipment matched the anvil on his school uniform.

 

Here is a furry caterpillar we found.

Here is Max after school with some of his friends: Connor, Jack C and Jack R. 

 

We had quite a few visitors at our place on Friday night - the above boys and some of their siblings.

There was some jumping on the bed

 

Some guineapig cuddling

 

And we were invited over the road to Seth's place for birthday cake after dinner

The next day we had Holly and Pia over for a sleepover. 

Walking to the park

 

Pia gave the lizard to George and he put it down on the ground. It got away. We couldn't find it for hours. He was discovered sitting in the woodchip in the garden bed, blending in perfectly so he was almost invisible. We were so happy to have him back.

When Holly and Pia went home we decided to go fossil hunting.

This whole area was once the bottom of an ancient ocean. Halfway down this hill there are exposed layers of fossilised sea shells and coral. They are 11 million years old - from the Miocene era.

We walked down slowly, stomping to scare away any possible snakes.

 

 

 

Max and his uncanny luck with sighting animals, peered into a crevice in the fossil rock and announced that he could see "a little face". Sure enough there was a tiny little reptile of some sort in there. 

Max said he had seen a long body, so maybe it was a baby snake. It was too deep in the rock to see clearly, and we did not dare try to grab it, in case it was a poisonous snake. We were also a bit nervous that if it was a baby snake, it's mother might be lurking somewhere and might want to protect its baby. 

Reading later in the nonfiction reference book "Reptiles", Max's favorite book, we learnt that the mother snakes abandon their babies when they are still in the egg, so we needn't have worried.

We didn't find any dinosaur bones, not this time anyway.

Climbing back up the hill we found this beautiful spider. It was probably 9cm across its legspan. We had damaged its web on the way down so it had some repairs to do. We do not know what kind of spider this is.

 

Here's the view from the top of the hill, and Max and George are having fun picking up strips of crunchy gum tree bark and whacking it against the fence to shatter it.