What do elephant eggs look like?

I've been meaning to come and blog, but just couldn't get myself to actually come up with anything remotely interesting to blog about. I guess that is the "problem" when you are on maintenance and you have less of the drama of the intense phase of the treatment. But we are not complaining, we like that we have quieter days too. We are still busy, believe me, and when I look at my to-do list then I sometimes wonder why I couldn't have more hours in the day, but it is a different busy. It has more ordinary stresses rather than being stuck in hospital all the time or dealing with complications.

Now during the weekend I was busy filing some of Bianca's hospital documents. I like to keep her blood test results, her next appointment documents and so on all in one file so that I don't somehow misplace it. And so as I was filing I decided to read through some of the stuff that happened so long ago. I think there were a few times that she was really really sick and we just didn't know the full extend. And as I sat there reading all I could think about is that this is her story. This is my daughter's life summed up for the past nearly two years. Okay, fair enough, the blog is too and so are the beads, but this is from the doctors in their big medical words (like panhypogammaglobulinaemia) (remember that word for the next time you play hangman) and descriptions of why she was admitted to hospital and so on. And it feels so unreal that there once was a time when I had no knowledge or understanding of blood test results, and suddenly we live our lives according to that, we don't make decisions without that, we can see some good results, we can see some not so good results.

But I'm rambling. This morning I realised we had ants in our kitchen that is on the second floor and they somehow found their way through an electrical plug point in the wall. I mean how on earth did they find our kitchen? So I'm hoping they will soon get bored and go someplace else (now wouldn't that be nice).

After my ant discovery we all got ready and then left for the Zoo. It was the Camp Quality Summer Camp reunion gathering. On the way it was raining quite a bit and I thought that going to the zoo on such a day wasn't really the best plan, but by the time we got there, the rain started clearing up which was great. The kids absolutely loved it and I must say that Caitlyn totally surprised us as she was so good at the zoo (we sort of anticipated running after her, but she listened so nicely).

Interesting fact - some of the parrots (the Mackaw type) at the zoo have the same intelligence as a 2 year old. We found ourselves nodding our heads when the lady was explaining about how they have to work with these birds i.e. if you have more than one (and they have 3 in the enclosure), then you need to give them all the same, otherwise there will be "arguments" (that sounds so familiar).

We walked through the Kiwi Enclosure and wow, that was so cool. We got a really good view of it. Afterwards we took the kids to a free show they had at the show with a "secret agent" theme. It was perfectly aimed at Bianca's age group and she was totally involved in the show calling out answers whenever they asked a question, giggling at their antics and when they wanted a volunteer to go up to the front, she was the first to stick up her hand.

Bianca had to compete with the one Secret Agent (who was a mouse, or a guy dressed us a mouse) to lift up some items and the mouse really struggled. Bianca thought it was hilarious as she could pick these things up with no effort at all (obviously) and afterwards told me how she thought this mouse had weak muscles. For her effort she won a cute little toy elephant that she named Trunk and decided it was a girl.

Here is Caitlyn (with red mouse whiskers) participating in the show:

Then we made our way to the Old Elephant House where we met up with the Camp Quality people. It was so good to see some of the people that we've met since coming to Auckland and they treated us to a sausage sizzle and all the kids who went on camp got a book with photos of their camp. That was just so special and something that will be so cool to keep for Bianca. Thank you so much Camp Quality.

At the gathering Bianca got her face painted like (yes you guessed it) an elephant (after winning a toy elephant, this is now her new favourite animal):

Here are the kids climbing on the Tuatara display on the way home (Bianca with her elephant face paint):

And on a final note, Bianca had some really interesting questions for us as we were walking around the zoo:

What do elephant eggs look like? (Hmm, no elephants don't lay eggs)

How big are baby elephants? (They are really big)

Why are elephants so big? (I'm not really sure, maybe this is just the way they are made)

Why do elephants need tusks? (I think it is to fight)