You should have seen the size of the post I wrote last night.

You should have seen the effort I put into well crafted words.

You should have seen the disappointment when we had a blackout, literally a minute before finshing!
I still have lots of photos & I still have several words to say, so you still get to see how the Pumpkin’s Birthday Long Weekend played itself out. We’ll start with birthday day, Thursday…

Bub got heaps of lovely presents, all of which she appreciates, but I’ll show you two here. The first (above) is some books. Pumpkin loves books. Pumpkin even pretends to read books! Occasionally Pumpkin even eats books!

This present is one that is not a great deal of use at the moment, given that 1 year olds don’t understand how to pedal! She’ll grow into it though, it will last a long time & most importantly, I couldn’t not buy it! So retro, so solidly made, so red!!!

The big part of the day for the bub, however, was heading to the [Zoo](http://www.taronga.org.au/)! We gave her a “Zoo Friends” pass for her birthday, so I expect she’ll spend a lot more time there over the next little while!

Here we are waiting for the bird show. The view was fantastic, the weather was exceptional & Pumpkin was well behaved. If only she cared about the birds. Feet, cameras & people were far more interesting, at least until the Andean Condor with it’s 3 meter wing span turned up…

He kind of demanded attention!

I’m committed to spending more time with the penguins & seals when I go next. So cheeky, so friendly & so cool!

Pumpkin is more committed to spending time with Calippos in the future. It was a minor tactical error to give her a suck to begin with. We awakened an animal who LOVES to eat ice blocks & HATES to share anything!

[Taronga](http://www.taronga.org.au/) is on a fairly steep hill, so we were happy to take the sky ride back up. Pumpkin was certainly happy with the view & the chance to stand up & shout!

But our day didn’t end there! That night we spent time at Nanny & Grandad’s house. I didn’t get pictures of that.

More importantly, I got to spend time at my [new favourite chocolate store](http://www.cocochocolate.com.au/) (tied with Adora) [Coco Chocolate](http://www.cocochocolate.com.au/)!

There are lovely block chocolates with flavours such as “Organic Coconut, Lime & Dark Chocolate,” “Caramel, Pinenut & Sea Salt,” “Orange, Lemon & Geranium” & “Cardamom & Cinnamon Dark.” This place if flavour central!

The “Organic Rose & Black Peppercorn” hot chocolate was awesome (as is the bar chocolate of the same name) & you can rest assured I took home a bunch of chocolates to trial & savour over the coming weeks!

SO that was day 1. Good food. Good times. Can you believe that there are 3 days to go!