A Great Sunday In The Country

We had a great weekend. It was warm and sunny - around 20 degrees and it felt fantastic. The schools are closed last week and this week for winter holiday so we had nothing on our schedule- no soccer games, no baseball games - FREEDOM! . Plus Michael is out of town so I wanted to leave our plans flexible. Like the Sundays of my childhood when mom and I would set out on an adventure checking out some new town or beach I felt the urge to explore a new area of Sydney. On Sunday Angela, Nate, Reese and I explored the Northern Beaches coastline. We passed beach after lovely beach until reaching Palm Beach (where the North Beaches peninsula reaches a dead end). You may recall a prior entry about Palm Beach and the nice lighthouse climb there. Instead we took a passenger ferry across to the Ku-ring-gai national park. There is a small campground there accessible only by boat (the rest of the park is quite huge). We learned that in the summer the place is mobbed with tents but we found it almost empty and peaceful. It was a lovely day - we had a nice picnic, played with the native wallaby, looked for crabs, and napped on the blanket (well Reese did at least). All and all an excellent day.

Renewed hobbies - me time in the kitchen

Now that I am a stay at home mom (a woman of leisure as Michael likes to tease) I have been enjoying rediscovering my love of cooking.

You need to check out my new favorite cooking site....of course referred to me by my great friend Lisa the gourmet. http://www.smittenkitchen.com/ - I absolutely love it. We've gotten into making our own pasta. In fact I've have been cooking a lot in the last month- made excellent choc chip banana bread (see above), apple/cranberry turnovers (see above)-soooooo easy- a great thing to bring to book club or make for a special breakfast or dessert treat- look up the barefoot countessa recipe- she used apples and dried cherries but I liked (& only had) dried cranberries....seriously it took 10 minutes to make and the store bought puffed pastry made it easy and looked great. Nate has been my little chef helper- we've been watching this Top Chef like Australia show Masterchef so he's been into the food thing lately. Last night he made mac & cheese by himself and today he made mini berry shortbread cakes from a kid's cookbook we checked out from the library. He is so cute when he cooks and talks about cooking. He rates all my meals. His descriptions are very funny - "I love the combination here", or "30 out of 10" - he doesn't quite get the rating score thing ;) For now, until his tastes improve I'll enjoy the compliments.

Our perfect new pet

After two failed attempts at keeping fish we have new pet that I can handle. For the record- don't believe the 16 year old at the pet shop who claims that paradise fish are easier and hardier than goldfish. Yes, last Dec over the course of about 6 weeks we managed to kill not one but two fish. Not that Nate seemed broken up over it. For all his begging for a fish (thanks to Elmo and his fish Dorothy) he didn't seem get upset when he awoke to see it floating at the top of the tank.

After having a great time with the hermit crab he caught and played with in Fiji Nate has had a bit of an obsession with crabs. Unfortunately my web research has turn up some bad news....they are hard to keep alive as pets- they require two daily water changes and a heat lamp. No thank you- I am not going to take on that burden only to have the kids grow out of this interest in a week. Instead we've put our plastic tank (but quite expensive investment in fish gear) to good use. Meet Hermie- our plastic hermit crab. Yes- I've put Nate's bath toy into the fish tank and he loves it. He and Reese like giving the crab Cheerios for breakfast, letting him out at lunch for his daily exercise, etc...

It is wonderful - we get all the joy of a pet but no clean up and no worries! Success. Of course not to be concerned at the absence of good dog stories- we still have Sammy dog who is a handful but loveable.

GOALLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL

Great news.....Nate's inner soccer star came out this weekend. All of a sudden he decided to stop starring off into space and get involved in the match. He ran, he blocked, he kicked the ball. It was great to watch him having so much fun on the field. He had 2 very near goals and in the last 30 seconds of play he finally scored a goal. Yes I became one of those parents who freak out jumping and cheering. Post goal he was beaming- he was proud of himself. Then to top it off after the game Nate was awarded player of the game. He gets the team medal for the week.

Check out the MVP:

Shared photo book from Mimi

Click here to view this photo book larger

Dancing Queen

No longer a baby, Reese is a big girl now. Her vocab has been growing daily as are her opinions. She has starting to throw herself on the floor in a mini meltdown tantrum if she doesn't get her way- lovely!

On the positive side she loves music and to dance. Nate and Reese love hosting disco parties in their playroom. Check out this clip - I especially like the peewee herman move.

Australia's deadly

As with most nights, last night we were hanging out watching animal planet. We watched a show on Australia's top 10 deadly animals (yes there are more than 10 deadly species so they had to limit it). To name a few (beyond the obvious sharks, crocs, spiders and snakes) there are the blue ring octopus (not a lot of fatalities due to their bright coloring); the box jellies (hard to see killers along popular beaches by the reef); rock fish (which lay in the shallows by beaches and look like you are stepping on a rock); then there is the shell snail- if you are picking shells in the shallow waters around half of the country you could easily mistaken this bad boy and when you touch it you will likely die. After hearing how many things will put you in horrible pain, dizzy/numb, with some you go temporarily blind and some you stop breathing........it is amazing that anyone leaves the house let alone goes the beach.
But the best (and only funny) part of the evening is when they interviewed a surfer who was attacked by a great white shark. The guy was out with some mates taking in a birthday surf when he was mistaken for snack. Luckily he only sustained relatively minor injuries and the doctors saved his legs. Nate turn to us and said "bet that was his worse birthday ever". Michael almost fell off the couch laughing.