Connor and I like to play Yu-Gi-Oh the card game.  It’s suitably complex for Connor, and still fun compared to Magic: The Gathering which takes a lot of concentration.  We bought ourselves the Yugi and Kaiba starter decks, so we’d have an equally matched set and would have to survive on our wits alone – a criticism of all collector card games is that eventually the kid with the most money will have the best deck and win all the time. It’s also cool cos those two decks are based on the decks in the original  Yu-Gi-Oh manga, which we have (in English!) One of Connor’s best birthday reactions was when we bought him the duel disk, the big arm mounted card holding thing like in the comic and cartoon.

Nerdfest aside, we enjoy playing it for the above reasons, and are reasonably matched.  Ash plays occasionally and wins a few, maybe loses more cos she doesn’t get as much practice.  Mon didn’t really get into it for a few years – it’s takes a bit to get into it, she hadn’t really seen the cartoon, and it was a little nerdy for her, but a year or so ago, she decided maybe she’d like to learn.  So we taught her.  Big mistake.

She has lost one game.  Ever.

As promised, photos of the new car. Click them for full size

Further to the post about Christmas where we couldn’t go to Central Australia because of the car, I didn’t mention that the car also found new and wonderful ways to break down whilst we were in Port. You know how a few minutes after you turn your air-conditioning off in the car the water runs out? Well it wasn’t so much running out as running in. This high level of moisture, combined with the relentless humidity in Port made the interior lining start to fall off… You get the picture?

So anyway, we had been looking into buying a Subaru Outback, and not long after we got back, one came up on Carsales.com.au that fitted the specs we had been told to look for by our awesome mechanic (that’s Chris from New Car Service Centre who has worked on cars for us for about 15 or so years) and just as important – fitted our budget.

What was even more exciting was that when we clicked on the dealer enquiry button, it was in Hawthorn East, about 1/2 hour from home – all good! We therefore in the space of about 72 hours obtained ourselves an ‘06 Subaru Outback, nice blue gray colour, with only 68 000 kms on the clock – oh it’s a 2.5l for those who wish to know those things.

We are very excited and showing it off to everyone. I will go take a photo in a bit and add it here.

Most of you are probably up to date with the fact that we cancelled our proposed trip to Central Australia (or should I say postponed) because the car was not going to make it. Instead we went to Port Macquarie to see Jase’s family.

I had to work Christmas, so we left Boxing Day (“Oh, not good!” as Obi Wan would say) but apart from the trip up (you know traffic is going to be bad when they have set up porta-loos on the side of the road), we had a great time. It rained for the first week, but the thing about rain in Port is that it doesn’t feel the need to get cold to accommodate that, so we were still happily walking around in shorts and t-shirts.

Highlights of the trip were sitting around for hours playing either Monopoly Deal (after the initial problem of no one being sober enough to understand the rules) – great find Nana!, and Texam-Hold Es Poker (again this depended on the amount of alcohol imbibed.

Catching up with all my in laws as per usual meant lots of laughs and the kids were in seventh heaven spending that much time with their aunts, uncles and grandparents.

Hope you all had as much fun over the holiday period as we did.

Oops, I misled you, we didn’t do a cool cake for Ash (although Mon had made an incredibly rich, moist, and large cake for her) but we did for Connor. Connor had a science experiment party, which was fun, so we had to make a volcano cake!

Volcano Cake - with real sparks and erupting lava!

Cross section - notice the magma chamber and vents - this was deliberate!

We didn’t do exciting cakes this year for some reason, but here’s Ash’s cake from last year that we forgot to post! Click on it for big view

Ash’s school had Nude Food Day the other day.  This is a great idea with both health and environmental benefits, which asks kids to bring food that doesn’t have packaging – as well as encouraging the eating of more natural, unprocessed foods, it reduces landfill from all the packaging that is usually in kids lunches.

Excess packaging isn’t just a food problem though. A conversation on the way home from buying some DVDs and CDs at JB HiFi today:

Ash: Man I’m gonna be contributing to landfill with all the plastic wrapping on this stuff.

Jase: JB love to shrink wrap everything.

Ash: Maybe they should have Nude Food Day for other stuff

Jase: You mean like, Nude Movie Day?

Ash: Yeah………..NO!!!

This recipe really is quick and easy…

We went out to a Greek restaurant for dinner for a friend’s birthday.  Early in the night we noticed Connor had a small Easter Egg that came out of his pocket (We always have a few floating around in the cupboard for months and months), and Monique asked him why he had it.

“Just in case”

Just in case?  Just in case what?  In case he needs to plug a sulfuric acid leak, MacGyver style? He’s a good little cub scout being prepared with an easter egg in is pocket just in case.  We all had a good laugh.

As it turned out, the birthday cake was a strawberry cheesecake, the former half he doesn’t like and the latter half he can’t have, so Connor was wise to have brought an Easter Egg ‘just in case’,

Ash got the opportunity to go to Japan with scouts.  A small band of scouts and venturers from various groups around the east of Melbourne have headed off to Matsudo in Japan.  They’ll spend a couple of days with a host family before doing 5 days of Camporee, then a couple more days with their family before coming home. As well as representing Australian Scouts at a number of official functions connected with Matsudo’s sister city arrangement with City of Whitehorse, they’ll have some time for sightseeing and learning about the Japanese culture.

Ash was a bit nervous but very excited, here are some photo’s from the airport.