Standing at the platform at Ringwood waiting for the train to take us to Sound Relief when the sky turned black as doom.  This pretty much set the tone for the weather, clearly God has a bit of a sense of humour raining over an inch of rain on a bushfire relief concert. This did [...]

Sad news in the Parlevliet house. Our 1975 HJ Premier is no longer on the road. There’s a lot of bits and pieces she needs done, needs new brakes and calipers, has some significant panel rust that needs work. We had been toying with the possibility of fixing her up properly, a full cut back [...]

We were talking over dinner about how you age wine, and how to brew beer and stuff. I was saying how it brews fastest in the barrel if you keep it at around 25 degrees, which is room temperature. The problem being of course that unless you are going to wrap it in an electric [...]

The day before my birthday we were chatting idly, and Monique says “So…35 tomorrow…” “Oh OK”, says Ash. “I won’t have to wear tights under my dress” Nothing like kids to give you a bit of mental whiplash!

Our calendar at home has said ‘busy’ on the 21st of December, so I suspected something was on, although Monique had dodged the question pretty well.  So while wondered vaguely who it was that was busy, Monique had organised my Christmas present -  a trip to Spamalot, as well as a night at a hotel, [...]

Last weekend, Mon and Ash performed in our parish revue, entitled ‘A Load of Wild Bullocks, How the West was Spun’.  It’s run every two years, and is a variety show with sketches, musical and dance numbers and stuff, kind of like Gang Show if you’re familiar with Scouts. Might see if there are photos [...]

Ash was in the study designing a cover page for her assignment, and Connor came into the kitchen all excited and said “You have to come and see Ashleigh’s homework, it’s so good!”.  It’s so sweet when they have such joy in each other’s achievements. Mon  followed him to the study to see, and from [...]

We love making exciting cakes for the kids birthdays. This year, Melbourne Storm cake for Connor : Click here for full size. This was made with soft icing, rolled out and cut into shape, and loads of agggravation on my part when I thought it didn’t look as good in real life as it did [...]

Yesterday the kids and I took a school holiday excursion to the National Gallery of Victoria. It’s free admission to the permanent displays and most of the temporary exhibits, so I figured if they got bored after half an hour it wouldn’t matter. Wasn’t a problem though, they were fascinated and really enjoyed it. We [...]

You have to love some of the cliche Dad things. I’ll admit to feeling really sleepy on a Sunday afternoon about 2:30. Peej was so looking forward to fatherhood that he was practicing Dad jokes before his wife was even pregnant. One thing that I didn’t even realise was a Dad thing is the pile [...]