A Fun Week

What a busy but fun week. We attended the Annual Scouts and Guides Trivia Quiz.

The theme was the Olympics and Husband Deluxe was the MC.

Fuzzy Wuzzy won 'Player of the Week' for his amazing soccer skills on field.

He played goalie and didn't let anything get past him.

What a star!

Squealy has also been enjoying soccer but invariably he ends up absolutely shattered and freezing after his early morning game.

Poor little guy just crashes out wherever he can!

Soccer Carnival

String Bean played 4 soccer games today at the annual Catholic Schools Soccer Carnival. 1300 players from the local and surrounding districts converged on the Uni of Canberra playing fields for the day.

Given the rainy weather the night before I wasn't sure it would go ahead but we ended up with beautiful sunny weather today.

Our school was the hosting school so alot of organisational effort went into making the carnival the huge success it ended up being. You get this opportunity once in 21 years!

String Bean and her team: Team Awesome! Delia scored 1 goal and the manager said she is a natural soccer player!

Towards the end of the day during game play String heard her name being called... she ended up winning the raffle and scored a pink Nikon Coolpix camera and memory card! A lovely end to a perfect day :)

Pride and Prejudice

Steph aka Lizzie, second from the left. Photo from CT.

Canberra Rep are putting on 'Pride and Prejudice' and my friend Steph is playing Miss Elizabeth Bennett. How exciting!

I'll be going tonight with a gaggle of work friends and Husband Deluxe.

Wordless Wednesday

For Karen

A friend flicked me this today ;)

I didn't really have a blog post but needed to get rid of the hot chips blog post title!

Slushie's and Hot Chips.

Not overly multi-cultural but that's what our girls wanted to eat. We went to the multi-cultural festival on Saturday night with friends and enjoyed ourselves with half of Canberra. So packed it wasn't funny!

The festival has gone from strength and is just huge now compared to how little it was when I went as a child. Nice to see the festival evolving over time.

Coast Trip #4

One of many Lizards Squealy found in the scrubby bush land surrounding 'One Walk For All'.

While down the coast we took the 'One Walk For All' on the northern headland reserve at Ulladullah. There are two tracks to take and they are filled with the art works of local artist: Noel Butler.

Beautiful carvings tell the history of Ulladullah from an indigenous perspective. There are some stunning views back towards Ulladullah harbour and town centre on the southern trail. The northern trail has beautiful views of our fave swimming spot Bogey Hole and Mollymook.





Squealy loved looking for lizards along the trails. He also found lots of local birds.

Coast Trip #2

While away we caught up with friends for the day at Nowra. Jen and I visited the Jindyandy Mill Scrapbooking shop while the boys and kids played mini golf. We got together for lunch at the Plunkett Street park. We then visited Hanging Rock and walked along the river bank and through the rocks on Ben's Walk.

After the walk the kids were so lucky to be offered a motorcycle ride by this lovely biker. The kids had so much fun zooming around the look out on the back of a Yamaha!


We also went swimming at Wairo Beach at the end of Lake Tabourie and just near Crampton Island. Such a beautiful spot :)

Coast Trip #1

We've just returned home from a week away at our friends house down the coast. We usually spend a week there during the January school holidays.

String Bean: sitting pretty at Pebbly Beach.

While at Pebbly Beach we were lucky to see a huge goanna walking along, and quite quickly too I might add, straight into a bush. As soon as his head was covered by a big bush, he flopped in the sun. Squealy just about wet himself!

Sooty Oystereaters: rare birds. Spotted two nesting pairs on the rocks at Pebbly Beach.

Photo courtesy of: panoramio.com

NYE

Wow what a fun night. Pool party at our friends house. 8 kids and 2 big kids splashing around having a ball.

Got to catch up with friends from Melbourne as well.

Courgette

Panacotta and berries.

Husband Deluxe had his Christmas party again at Courgette this year. Beautiful setting and the food is really something else!

The restaurant blurb:

Awarded one hat status by the Sydney Morning Herald three years running, Courgette is one of Canberra’s most gorgeous restaurants. Owned by celebrated chef, James Mussillon, Courgette is the ideal choice for an occasion that requires everything to be perfect.

We had lots of laughs, one practical joke and a few boring speeches. I've included a photo of the dessert as it was my favourite part of the meal!

String Bean's 9th Birthday

String Bean celebrated her 9th birthday yesterday at the CSIRO Discovery Centre. She just loves this place and really wanted her birthday celebrated here again.








Lots of fun had by all. Especially with the stick insects and turtles.

I also made her a tree full of spiders as a birthday cake!

Canvas Art

Here is my latest completed project. A mixed media collage canvas. Am super happy with how it has worked out. 8x8 using some photos from our holiday to Malua Bay in 09.

Little Athletics

String Bean has been attending Little Athletics and she just loves it. We know quite a few families with children at athletics, so it's like a big get together for us both.

So far String Bean has given everything a go and her times and distances are increasing.

She has been placed in the under 9 girls and it is a pretty big group of kids. The coach, Jeremy, is just lovely and he really goes out of his way to get the kids going, especially the shy ones.

Today Jeremy ran the 400m with String Bean so that she'd get her pace right. What a champ!

Fuzzy Wuzzy's Birthday

Fuzzy celebrated his 7th birthday party today with his friends and family.


He chose John Knight Memorial Park and the kids had fun following a trail of clues ending with a treasure chest.

Fuzzy loved his Ben 10 Omnitrix birthday cake.


The kids enjoyed opening all the presents once we were back home.

We were lucky to have fabulous weather and the kids had a ball.

Fete Time

Spent most of the weekend helping out at the kids school fete. Mum and I worked the craft stall which was heaps of fun.

The kids had a ball running around with their friends. The craft stall made over $1200, so we were really pleased. Not sure how much the cake stall made but they were crazy busy all day long.

'Braided Scraps' Quilt

Mum bought me the most gorgeous jelly roll last year for my birthday. Not that I could do anything with it at the time. So it stayed tucked away in my stash in the cupboard.

Anyway I totally fell in love with Janet's 'Braided Scraps' quilt on display at my local quilt store.

So I convinced a friend (thanks Jo-Anne) to join me in this class. Janet showed us all the tricks and I was able to very quickly knock up 3 out of the 4 braids needed for the quilt top.

Really pleased with the resulting braids, now just need to put on some sashing and borders and it will be all finished.

Nara Candle Festival

Seemed like a good idea: Nara Candle Festival. Beautiful setting. Japanese gardens. Candles. Japanese food and crafts.

Pity most of Canberra felt the same way. The lines to get any food were unbelievably long and not going anywhere fast. And the crowds! Couldn't move for people. Lennox Gardens was completely over run with Canberrans :(




Got seriously worried we'd lose one or possibly all three of our children in the huge crowds.

We gave up after about half an hour. What a pity, as it should have been a fabulous night.

Strike #2

Public school teachers across the ACT have once again had to go on strike to send the clear message that a real investment needs to be made in real terms for the ACT's public schools.

1500 teachers chanting and singing. Was noisy and huge.



A real pity that we had to resort, once again, to industrial action.

I'm hopeful Andrew Barr got the message today!

Canberra Times write up is here.

Photos courtesy of The Canberra Times.

A Catch Up

String Bean and Freya.

We had a lovely catch up today at Adore Tea with friends who recently moved up to Brisbane. We haven't seen Freya or Kay since January. They moved up to QLD just before the big flood hit. In fact they just missed the wall of water at Toowoomba by 2 hours!

Pity the weather turned yucky yesterday as it was bitterly cold. We sat outside and thankfully Adore Tea provide blankets. Once we were all wrapped up and chugging tea we were quite warm :)