Sunday 14th January 2024
Today, our oldest son turned 3. We didn’t have a party for him today because many of his relatives were unavailable, so we spent the day doing family things with my family and next weekend we’ll do stuff with Kayla’s family members.
When Charlie woke up, we put 6 Wiggles balloons in his bed as well as a giant Gold number 3.
We then went into the living room and let Charlie open his presents. He was quite overwhelmed. He wanted us to get Alex to open the smaller presents, but Alex is still too small to open presents well, so we left Alex asleep. Charlie got so many presents because Kayla has been wanting to build a big toy farm for Charlie and I bought lots of cool retiring 2018 Duplo sets before he was born that I was saving to give to him one day.
As well as the presents pictured above, I remembered I had a second-hand Thomas The Tank Engine Duplo set from 2005 that I’d got for a good price a few years ago, so we added that into the mix. Unfortunately, Duplo has changed the colour of the tracks between now and then (plus they were black when I was a kid) but he doesn’t seem to mind the difference.
I hope he likes it because these old Thomas Duplo sets are crazy expensive and he’s probably not going to get any more unless I get lucky at an op shop.
The new train parts are quite cool, they include these flat-coloured pieces that go flush with the tracks, which make the train react as it passes over them. This includes pausing to refuel, stopping, reversing, turning on its light or sounding its horn.
A Family Day Out at Fairy Park, Anakie
After we were all ready and had packed up most of the new toys, we went to McDonald’s for lunch and got a family box. Charlie had lots of chippies. We were also planning to go to McDonald’s again for dinner with my family, but figured Charlie wouldn’t be against having chippies twice in one day. This was the only place with a drive-thru between our route to our destination Fairy Park, so yeah our hands were tied here.
The first photo I took of at Fairy Park in Anakie Victoria was of myself in front of the very impressive toilets. I snapped this photo for my workmate Emma but accidentally sent it to a different Emma from the company next door and she ignored it til Monday when I realised I sent it to the wrong person.
The theming of the toilets really elevated my expectations of this place, and I’ve gotta say, Fairy Park Anakie massively exceeded my expectations. Here’s my proper review of Fairy Park.
Charlie had a good time looking in the windows of all the little houses and seeing the animatronic displays of various fairytales. There were lots of familiar ones and a few German ones that we were not familiar with.
Above is the Three Little Pigs.
Thumbalina
Fairy Park is a very hilly attraction. The photo above of Kayla looking at memes kind of demonstrates the landscape. We regretted bringing the pram.
The top of the mountain was very windy. Charlie found it a little scary and had to hold onto his hat so it didn’t fly away.
On our way back down, we got a photo in front of these apes which have been here since the 70s. Charlie wasn’t a fan but I appreciated their enthusiasm.
Charlie wasn’t very sure about Puff The Magic Dragon, which played music, had light-up eyes and made sounds. But we eventually got this cute photo.
After looking at all the attractions on the mountain, we went to the Fairy Park Camelot playground and wow. It is one of the most interesting playgrounds I’ve ever seen. I don’t think the layout was quite as good as it could have been, but the aesthetic and features were amazing.
The thing I didn’t realise, was that if you go down a slide, you have to backtrack up to 30 metres to get back up to the top area. Above is a very confused little boy wondering why his dad is in Jail. He went down a slide and I kept directing him to a staircase nearby but it had a locked gate. I thought he was dumb, but it was actually me who was dumb and ended up in jail.
This bigger slide is the one that’s 30 metres away from the nearest stairs. I’m too fat to fit on the slide, so it was a bit tricky to guide Charlie back to me but instead, we ended up at the little kids’ area nearby with Mum and Alex.
After a few slides and some seesaws with random other kids, we left via a food kiosk and Charlie got some more chippies and an apple juice Pop Top.
When we got home from Fairy Park, Charlie played with his new farm toys for a while until it was time to go to dinner.
Maltby Bypass McDonald’s
We went to the Maltby Bypass McDonald’s in Werribee, which was geographically the closest restaurant with a playground and high chairs. This is quite a new McDonald’s so everything is very modern.
This included the newer style of McDonald’s High Chairs that features the scary red Happy Meal box character. Whilst nowhere as iconic as the bulky brown high chairs of the 90s, I suppose they are more hygienic in a post-covid world as they do not have a tray table on them, which no doubt got feral back in the day.
Charlie wouldn’t go into the playground unless I came too. Luckily there were no other kids there as I don’t really like going into these things when other kids are there.
Charlie quite enjoyed the McDonald’s playground whilst we waited for our food to come.
Oops, I forgot to take my shoes off…
The playground has a pretty good view of cars entering and exiting the car park.
Man, these Happy Meal characters are nowhere near as good as the McDonaldland gang.
We got the 6-person Family Box with a few upgrades, a Happy Meal and a few extra bits including McDonald’s Onion Rings which were not that great.
We tried to get Charlie to try chicken nuggets again, but he didn’t go for it. He just wanted chippies.
The Happy Meal toy was an old one – Spot It! Fashion, we have another from the set which was camping themed. These little games are actually pretty neat, any combination of 2 cards in the deck will result in 1 common image between the cards and you have to be the first to identify the common picture. The toys that were meant to be here were Sonic the Hedgehog-themed, but since Australian McDonald’s toys are mostly cardboard rubbish now that goes straight into the bin, this is actually better as it’s a game that makes sense to be cardboard.
Afterwards, we went back to my parents’ house for a little birthday party. We had an iconic Woolworths chocolate mud cake. Charlie got more presents as well including a Bluey V-Tech Laptop from Aunty Kate and Uncle Adam and my parents got him some clothes and a Bluey puzzle. My mum wants the record to state that he gets lots of presents from her all the time so she didn’t want to go wild for his birthday. Given how much space his presents from us alone have taken up, we’re totally ok with clothes and stuff.
Charlie’s Childcare Birthday Party 16th of January
My office is actually in the process of moving office, so I’ve been working from home lately. Luckily too, as Charlie had a little birthday party at childcare at 2:30 pm which we were requested to attend. We sat on little chairs and Charlie held a world globe and walked around a big picture of the sun on the floor whilst everyone sang a song. For each trip around the sun that he did, Kayla and I had to tell a story about Charlie at that age.
Braybrook Hotel International Buffet – 20th January 2024
The following Saturday, we caught up with Charlie’s Nan Tan, Poppy Steve, his parents, Aunty Em, Aunty Jess, Uncle Travis and cousins Hayley and Zac for an all-you-can-eat buffet at the Braybrook Hotel. Again, this is a place with a playground.
Here’s a review & food photos of Braybrook Hotel International Buffet.
Kayla made a big plate of different food for Charlie but he wouldn’t eat anything so I had to go get him some chippies.
Alex probably tried more different foods than Charlie did. He likes tomatoes and watermelon.
The Braybrook Hotel International Buffet has a free face painter on Saturdays. Charlie chose a superhero and it was the one character I couldn’t recognise. I asked the painter and she said something like “some bird” and I thought she meant it was a woman character… which made Googling who it might be very hard.
It turns out he was The Falcon, a male Marvel character. I now get what she meant by bird… I thought the face painter was just being sexist.
Cute photo of Kayla and Alex and his rapidly flapping hands.
