Chocolate and Snow, What More Could a Kid Ask For?

Christmas in July is a very big thing around this area.  The boy's school is having a Christmas dinner as a fund raiser, local stores are selling Christmas items, many places are having major sales, and the Hunter Valley Gardens is having snow.  I had already decided to take the kids to see the snow while they were on holiday, but when we discovered it coincided with the Chocolate Festival, Brian decided he wanted to go as well.  So off we went last Saturday.

It was a beautiful day out - mostly sunny and 19 C (or 66 F), so apparently everyone in the region decided to show up as well!  We waited for quite a bit to just get in the gate.  Luckily for the boys, and for us, they behaved incredibly well.  Once we were actually in the gates the crowd spread out fairly decently - except for the snow events. 

The first place we headed into was where chefs (artists?) were making beautiful sculptures out of chocolate.  It felt like that dessert competition they show on TLC.  I can't imagine the patience and steady hand it takes to make these works of art!  Even the boys were interested in what they were making.  Plus, they liked the fact that it smelled like a fondue pot - yum!

The boys were hungry - probably from the smells - so we decided to have afternoon tea instead of lunch.  Seemed like a very wise decision, since the line to the cafe was huge and there was a large tent filled with chocolate vendors.  Off we went, almost all to the same stand.  Will was the only dissenter - he had seen a stand with beautifully decorated cupcakes and there was no talking him out of one.  I was surprised he didn't want the TimTam one, but he was dead set on the Rocky Road Cupcake.  It was massive and he only ate about half of it.  So we wrapped it up for later, knowing you can't keep a growing boy filled for long!

Almost as big as his head, which is saying a lot!

So off we went in search of snow.  It wasn't hard to find, just look for most of the crowd!  The boys decided they wanted to go sled riding first.  After - you guessed it - standing in line for some time they were ready to go!

You can't tell here, but Brian and I were seriously amused watching people that weren't used to snow trying to walk on it.  In their defense it was more like ice, but I'm not sure that made it any less funny to us.  I believe we managed to not laugh out loud, although I did have to chuckle at the people wearing ski pants, mittens, and beanies!

Wheee!

Complete joy

Off we went to the snowball fight that was set up over a volleyball net.  That didn't last very long!  Like I previously said, it was more snow than ice.  They both got hit once and decided that was enough.  Smart kiddos!

We had some time to kill before the appointed hour for the boys to ice skate, so off we went to explore a bit.  I love wandering around gardens and made the kids wait while I set up some photos, which they did very well.



See, some leaves do change color here



Orange trees bearing fruit while there was snow around

Why, yes indeed!

View from the lookout

I'm a sucker for a purple rose

The boys both very much wanted to have a go at ice skating, something they've never tried before.  Ice skating always hurt my ankles pre-arthritis, so Brian was going to wrangle the boys by himself.  I was happy enough to take pictures, but was praying there wouldn't be a major catastrophe.  After all, I do know my Wills fairly well, and the kid trips over air on a regular basis!  Nathan doesn't seem particularly inclined to sports, so we figured they'd both take a tumble and be done.  Boy, were we wrong!  Nath took off like a duck to water!

I promise, this was at the beginning of the session





Will, however, spent most of his time like this:

When he wasn't on his bum

I think this next photo series sums the entire ice skating experience up.  The announcement had just come on that their session was over.  Brian is trying to get the kids off the ice quickly - Nathan, because he's having to good of a time to leave and for Will, well, I do believe this is a case of a picture being worth a thousand words!



Going,



going,

going,

and both gone!

To both their credit, whenever they fell they just got back up and kept going.  In the above pictures, Will was giggling the entire way.  Also, they were on an ice-like substance.  I don't think a parent skated by without uttering "Boy, there's no grip on this" or "It's horribly slippery and harder to skate out there."

We stayed at the Gardens a bit longer, then packed it in and called it a day.  Everyone was tired and hungry by the time we got home, so we just headed out to the local RSL club for dinner.

We were thankful for such a lovely time together as a family and happy that the next day brought good weather as well.  That meant the sparklers were finally a go...

Celebrations in July

Before we moved to Australia, we had decided to keep celebrating American holiday, albeit in a toned down fashion.  We had a mini-Thanksgiving - yet still were eating off leftovers for quite awhile.  So when it came around to the 4th of July we decided to have some other people over, even though it was a different culture.  This became less of a concern when the Rehberg family began attending our church a few months ago.  Like us, they are ex-pats from the US.  Sara stays at home, taking care of Natalya and is currently pregnant with a little girl.  Her husband, Shane, is an engineer.  They are a lovely family that have quickly become good friends, and I'm certain we'd be friends even if we didn't have our "home" in common.  Since she was able to take more pictures at the party, I'm linking to her blog post on our Independence Day celebration.

Brian and I celebrated our 12th wedding anniversary today, July 8th.  We actually went out to dinner on Friday night to a lovely restaurant called Ritual.  I had been hearing wonderful things about dinner there, and it did not disappoint.  I will do my best at explaining, but I would strongly suggest clicking on the above link to hear the owner's description of the restaurant.

Ritual is very into the science of food and taste.  They believe it is more important to base someone's meal on their taste, instead of just having the diner pick from words on a menu.  Prior to each course, the staff brings you two spoons with the main flavor of the options.  Based on whichever taste you preferred, food was prepared for you - without knowing what you would be receiving.  For example, for our entree course we had a bite of seafood and smoke and a bite of tequila, citrus, and Tabasco sauce.  Both were wonderful and it was very difficult to choose.  I eventually picked the tequila and citrus, partially out of deference to Brian's shellfish intolerance issue.  I was presented scallops done three different ways.  These were by far the best scallops I have ever had.  Everything about them, from the actual flavor to the texture, was phenomenal.

For the owner and chef, this was not just about the taste of the food, but the presentation and science as well, attempting to give you the best food experience possible.  As an appetizer we were given a complete soup in one bite.  It was presented on a spoon and looked like a red egg yolk.  You placed the entire bite in your mouth and were rewarded with an explosion of flavor.  The chef even explained the process to us at the end of the meal, as several of us were curious.  Brian's main course was presented over a Zen garden and included a Tree of Life made out of wire, with dried red cabbage and a dumpling-ish item hanging down like leaves.  It was beautiful and he did take a picture of it with his cell phone.  I've been urging him to put it on Facebook, as I can't do the description justice.

One thing I discovered was that it's not that I don't like duck, I've just never been served good duck!  I even was game to try the Bruleed Pate, and it was delicious as well. 

The whole meal went for about 3 and 1/2 hours.  We were seated at a large table with three other couples.  It was great fun to talk with other people we probably never would have met otherwise.  It would also be a blast to go there with a group of friends, and we are hoping to organize a dinner around Christmas with several other couples.  I plan on bringing my camera with me, as it is impossible to do justice to have lovely the dinner was.  It was an incredible way to celebrate our marriage!

None of this would have been possible without our friends Emmy and Gavin.  Our babysitting situation went pear shaped at the last moment.  What a wonderful feeling to know we have several good friends that we could call on in a pinch - of course we are happy to babysit their two girls at any time! 

On Saturday we went to the Hunter Valley Gardens for Snow Days.  I can't wait to go through my pictures and share them with you.  Who knew you could find a place that had "snow" and orange trees with fruit on them at the same place!

Elephant Toothpaste

Knowing that the boys had school holiday coming up, I began to look around for some fun indoor activities for rainy days.  Being a girl, I headed straight to Pinterest hoping to find some fun, new ideas.  I lucked out on a couple of different websites, especially one that had science experiments for children using pantry staples.  The boys and I decided that the one called Elephant Toothpaste looked like fun.  Luckily for me, I had everything handy except for the higher strength hydrogen peroxide, which was easy enough to find.

We had lucked out for the first week of the holiday and last Saturday was especially brilliant.  Sadly this week has not been the same story.  We did have one beautiful day where the kiddos and I went for a walk down to the beach and ran into some friends at the playground, but the rest of the time has been duck weather.  So we forged ahead making the toothpaste.  The boys were excited.  I had read through the process several times and felt confident I was ready to assist.  Everything seemed straightforward and the science seemed to make sense.  Admittedly, I'm probably not the best source to say it seemed scientific, but Brian agreed - and he graduated with a physics degree.

We started out with 2 empty and cleaned 600mL bottles.  We could have used a 2 litre, but of course the boys wanted different colors of toothpaste, which was fine.  In went the food color, hydrogen peroxide, and a bit of Dawn.

Not so happy about the camera, but you can see Nath's missing teeth

Next it said to put in the yeast mixed with water and quickly remove the funnel.  The liquid was supposed to bubble up quickly and then look like toothpaste being squeezed out of a tube by an elephant.  However, here is what we got:

It's a pretty good sad face, no?

I decided that I was smarter than a children's science experiment, so I mixed up another batch of yeast and water, waited 5 minutes, and then poured it in to each boy's bottle.  We anxiously waited for a few more minutes until -

Sorry for the thumb in front of his face.  He threw that in at the last minute.

So even though it didn't perform as expected, the boys had a good time with it.  I'm not sure how it could have been done better - maybe a higher percentage hydrogen peroxide or more yeast?  If it worked better I would've linked back to the site.  It's not hard to find on google and maybe you can find a better one.  Here's one more picture of our end result:

I Want To Ride My Bicycle

Nathan is a chicken.  And, my parents would be quick to add, he gets it honestly.  I was chicken as a child as well. So when Nathan's bike arrived on the sea shipment, we conveniently forgot to put on the training wheels.  It's taken him a bit of time, but he decided to try riding his bike this past Saturday.  We were thrilled!  We packed up Will's scooter as well and headed out to a local park that has a lovely flat, fairly straight path to practice.

Nathan was fairly happy to try, so he hopped and Brian held on for a bit.



Off they go!





Will was being a great cheerleader


As soon as Brian let go, Nath promptly fell off his bike.  Nothing was hurt, but he refused to get back on his back.  And by refused, I mean screaming, crying, and telling Brian how mad he was at him.  We quickly decided if we let him quit he would never try again.  So we tried several different options.  First we tried cajoling - didn't work.  Then we took the tactic of "we believe in you and wish you believed in yourself."  No dice.  Then we went to the, and I'm not particularly proud of this, don't be a baby - look at Will trying.  Nope.  Then Brian went back to the I believe in you spiel and I took Wills out so he could scooter around so Brian could try to talk him down.



There's a cute track around the actual playground

After about 30 minutes from the time Nathan began his fit, I went back to try and bribe him.  Once again, not the best parenting, but it usually proves effective.  We let him know that if he tried again we would reward him with an ice cream.  He quickly perked up - never underestimate the power of ice cream.  Up he jumped with the following result -

A slight wobble...





and he's off!



This was followed by lots of cheering and clapping from us.  He loved it and we could hardly get him off the bike - until he crashed and scraped up the back of his heel.  We were afraid he would be upset enough to not try again, but he assured us he wanted to stop only because the cut hurt.  He was keen to try again on Sunday, but the weather didn't cooperate. 

So bribery wins again.  We ended up very proud of him and, more importantly, he was proud of himself. 

See - proud!



Melbourne - Part 2, Day 1

For our first full day in Melbourne, we planned a few events but wanted to spend some time just wandering around the city.  We started out with breakfast in the Prahran Market directly across from our hotel.  It is the oldest market in Melbourne and succeeded in making me miss our trips to Findley Market.  While there I had a coffee flight where I tasted the best coffee I have ever had.  It was so good I am joining their coffee club and having their coffee delivered to me biweekly.  One of my few complaints about where we live is the lack of really good coffee.  We've found one spot where I meet some friends every Thursday, but other then that it's mostly chains or weak coffee.  Problem is now solved!

The Iconic Melbourne Tram

After breakfast we hopped on the tram into the city.  Nathan wants me to let you know it was the 72 line, because he's obsessive like that!  The picture I have of the tram is not what we rode every day.  Those only do a circle around the city, but they give you lots of information about the buildings and city and it's free!  We rode one on our second day.

The first place I wanted to stop in was an old church because I love visiting old churches.  This is St. Paul's Church, a beautiful old Anglican church.  Although I'm certain they'd disagree, not much exciting has happened here, it's just a pretty church and it was a good opportunity to get my tripod out and take some pictures in the low light.  Here are a few pictures.

View from the front door to the altar



View from the chancel.  While we love our church here,
we miss our chancel choir!



Better view of the front door

I was surprised, but the boys actually enjoyed the church very much.  They thought the artwork was interesting and they loved the stained glass. 

Nathan was very excited because we were off to visit the State Library of Victoria.  More than just a library, it has a permanent exhibit with historical items from Victoria's founding until today - including Ned Kelly's armour.  There are also travelling exhibits and an absolutely beautiful reading room.

Much to Nathan's disappointment, the children's section was closed for a private function.  He was still incredibly impressed with the volumes of minutes from Parliament and some copies of very old books.

Nathan playing his dad in chess in the chess room

The reading room from the floor

The reading room from the top floor

Ned Kelly's Armour

I won't bore you with our walking around and lunch, but everything was very enjoyable.  We wandered through Chinatown and Federation Square, making our way down to the Melbourne Cricket Ground for the Aussie Rules Football game.  It was a beautiful walk across the river with the crowds headed to the footy game.  I haven't been to any sort of professional game in awhile and this was the boy's first game of any sort, so we were all excited.

MCG at night with lilies in the foreground

The first game I saw was the Grand Final two years ago.  It was live on ESPN and since Brian was working with the Aussies, we decided to DVR it and watch it later.  The game was between Collingwood and St. Kilda.  It was a lot of fun to watch and mostly not hard to pick up on the general rules.  Brian had watched it before when working in Australia so he was able to help me.  I picked Collingwood at random that game to back, so we've cheered for Collingwood since then.  I found out later - after this game, as a matter of fact - that Collingwood is basically the Yankees of the AFL.  Thanks, Amy!

Nevertheless, we cheered the Magpies on to a victory over the Geelong Cats.  At least, Nath is pretty sure it's because of his cheering that they won.  It  was an exciting game with Collingwood pulling it off at the very last second.  Nathan was incredibly into the game, often yelling "Crush it" and screaming when Collingwood scored.  It was fun to watch the boys have so much fun!

Will clapping along to the Collingwood fight song

Collingwood taking the field

Start of the game

I didn't take many pictures during the game because I wanted to actually watch. 

After the game we walked for a bit, trying to let the crowd thin out so it would be easier to catch a tram.  It was a beautiful night to walk.  We were exhausted when we got back to the hotel and everyone collapsed into bed.  The boys even managed to sleep in a bit the next morning!  We woke up refreshed, ready for our next day in Melbourne!

Melbourne - Part 1, Day 3

Brian had a leadership conference to attend this week in Melbourne.  At almost the last minute, we decided to make the weekend before the conference a short holiday.  We quickly purchased airline tickets, booked a hotel, and filled out the paperwork to pull the boys out of school for two days.  I'm so glad we went - I absolutely loved Melbourne.  It is just a lovely city for many reasons, not least of which is wonderful coffee! 

I know it seems weird to start on day three, but I dumped my pictures on to Brian's work computer with every intention of putting them on our external drive to edit at home.  I didn't dump the last day of pictures, figuring they would be fine to take home.  To my surprise, I couldn't open up the external drive on Bri's computer.  At that point he remembered his computer would only open up secure external drives - in other words, one that was given to him by his company.  So we are starting at the end of our trip.

After doing some research on Melbourne, I decided one of the absolute musts was to visit Philip Island.  We looked at several tour options, but decided to rent a car and drive ourselves.  Besides being cheaper by quite a bit, we weren't stuck just seeing one specific thing.  It was only a 90 minute drive, so we were off decently early that morning.

Philip Island was positively gorgeous.  Our first stop was lunch at the Nobbies, so named after the nob rising from the ocean in the picture.  The green space in front of the Nobby is on the path of a penguin migration.  The small islands in the background are the home to the largest population of seals in Australia.

Inside the visitor's center at the Nobbies  are monitors hooked up to a camera on the edge of Seal Rock.  It was amazing - the rocks were carpeted with seals.  For a small fee we were able to drive the camera around four minutes and capture a few pictures, which we could buy for another small fee.  Since it's a nonprofit organization we were happy to help out.

After letting the boys find out more about the South Sea - incidentally, the info was very well done and interactive - we headed out for a walk around the boardwalk.  It is a boardwalk to protect the nesting birds that are all over the island, including the Little, or Fairy, Penguin.  There were several nesting boxes built around, so I was hoping to see at least one penguin on it's own.  Almost immediately we saw people staring at a white spot on that first green island.  I whipped out my telephoto lens and was able to capture this.

He's the little white guy in the middle of the craggy part

I was very excited.  Penguins are by far my favourite animal and the main reason I wanted to visit the island, but a better explanation on that later.

Following are some shots of the coastline looking out into the Bass Strait.  It made me think of what I assume Ireland looks like - beautiful green, craggy coasts, and a wild sea.

The Blowhole

Yea for a tripod!

I loved the shade of aqua

After walking around for a bit we decided to head back so I could wander around some of the boutique shops.  On our way up we found this little guy in his nesting box.  Sorry there's not much detail, it's dark in the box!

So the main reason we visited Philip Island was to see the Penguin Parade.  Every sunset at the beach sees a lot of penguins emerge from the sea to find their homes on the island.  And when I say lots, there were 2,008 that arrived on the night we were there.  We opted to spend $20 more and have fewer people sitting where we would be.  The other upside was that approximately 70% of the penguins went by us.  It was absolutely brilliant!  They come out of the ocean in groups called rafts.  We watched them come in for about 45 minutes.  Apparently they are a bit confused in the fall.  Because the water is still fairly warm and the nights aren't very cool, they believe it's time to mate. 

I was also unaware of how loud they are when defending their homes!  They go back to the same house every time and become quite defensive if another penguin tries to infringe on their turf.  Funny side story - the ranger gave a short talk and took questions for the half four prior to sunset.  One of the questions was how the penguins knew which house was there house.  Cheekily, the ranger answered that penguins were very smart and were able to read the numbers on the man-made nesting boxes.  The woman sitting next to me, let out a gasp, and started nudging her partner, saying that it was amazing that penguins could read!  It took all I had not to laugh out loud!

Unfortunately, you are not allowed to take pictures of the penguins.  Their eyes are very sensitive to light, so flashes are very bad for them.   It probably wasn't bad that I was forced to sit and take it all in without my camera.  I did link to their website above so you can get an idea of what we saw.

While we were waiting, we started to chat with the couple behind us.  We quickly realized they didn't have Aussie accents, so I asked where they were from.  Turns out, you can be halfway around the world and run into somebody who live fairly close to you, because they were from Cleveland!  After some good natured sport related teasing, we asked why they were in Australia.  He works for Goodyear and was visiting their headquarters in Melbourne.  His wife decided to take off for some time and they were beginning to travel around Australia.  Like us, they absolutely love it here!  We all got a good chuckle out of everybody wrapped up in their winter coats, gloves, and scarves when it was approximately 50 F out.

We headed off the island back to our hotel to get ready for the boys and me to depart for home the next day.  I was glad the boys are fairly experienced travellers at this point - it made my life much easier.  Poor Nathan had some issues with his ears on our descent into Newie and began crying, but a few lollies helped.  I felt awful for him, that does hurt incredibly bad.  Luckily the jelly beans he had had the same effect as gum and his ears popped.  The boys were glad to be back home, but I'm certain we'll be back to visit Melbourne again - there's too many things I still want to see!

Partypalooza

We celebrated Will's 5th birthday on Saturday and had a Kentucky Derby party on Sunday.  I have decided I may be crazy!  At least I was smart on one point - because I didn't want to have to clean the house twice in one weekend, we had Will's birthday party at the local bowling alley, or tenpin as it's called here.  Bowling is assumed to be lawn bowling, and Will is five, not seventy-five!

The kids had a great time.  The package included chicken nuggets, chips, and drinks, so I only had to provide dessert.  Will had been wanting a King Cake since I had made one for Mardi Gras and I was happy to oblige.  A couple of days before the party he told me he wanted to have an apple pie, which was fine.  I did ask him why he changed his mind, as he had been quite gung-ho about the King Cake.  His response was that apples were healthy!  I told him not to worry about that, but I was happy to oblige.  Apple pie topped with a scoop of vanilla ice cream was a hit!

The kids were hysterical bowling.  I had no idea how competitive they would be, but they were still great sports.  Here a few pictures from the event.

Watching his bowl

Celebrating his strike



Chowing Down



Will was excited about inviting his entire class, but our general rule is you can invite one person for the age you are turning.  We also let Nath invite a friend so he wouldn't get too bored.  Will had a lovely group of friends come.  The girls were pleased to be invited as well, cheekily telling me it was because they were his girlfriends.  Apparently that description was accurate!

Yep, it was right on the lips

And not to be outdone....

This one ended up on the cheek



At least they're both sweet girls - and cute to boot!

Sunday after church we skipped the usual morning tea and headed straight to our house to finish the last minute party details.  Pretty soon we had our food spread ready - Hot Browns, Grilled Chicken with White Barbecue Sauce, a few greens, and for dessert - Bread Pudding and Derby Pie.  Yummy, but not exactly on my diet plan!  I did cheat a little bit and it was worth every bit of sugar!  I think everyone enjoyed the food.  One person remarked it was like being in a foreign country.

Since the Derby ran about 7am local time we DVR'ed a program called Run for the Roses.  The description stated it would be a history of the Kentucky Derby and would include a replay of the race.  Apparently that mean a replay of the last 200 yards - pretty helpful.  So I grabbed my iPad and gathered everyone around.  All in all it was pretty funny.  I had to look up separately Call to the Post and My Old Kentucky Home.  They group was fascinated that each state has it's own song.  I never thought about that being interesting. 

One of the other things I had a hard time finding were red roses.  Every time I asked a florist for red roses they handed me a dark, burgundy type color.  Apparently in Australia that is what is defined as red.  I was frustrated and trying to decide if fake roses were better or should I go with red Gerber daisies.  Finally, during my final shopping trip, we found red roses in the local grocery store!

It ended up being a nice party.  The kiddos all played together in the boy's rooms and outside, letting the parents just hang around and spend time together.  Sorry I have no pictures.  I've decided you need someone else to document a party if you're hosting.

It was a fun weekend, but boy were we exhausted on Monday!  We haven't done much at all this week, just relaxed along with the usual boring things.  Hopefully we'll have some fun this weekend!